Erin shared a superstition with me the other day. Basically, it dealt with the first night of marriage and the first person to fall asleep. According to this superstition, the first person to fall asleep on the first night of marriage will be the first person to die. Erin pointed out that I am generally always the first person to fall asleep. I can’t argue with that observation as I try to live (parts of) my life around the physical need for sleep.
However, in sharing this superstition with me she also suggested some ways to circumvent it. She said something to the effect of, “Let’s not go to sleep that night.” The reason for this suggestion was to confuse the superstition, to break it, and therefore to leave in Fates capable hands the actual order of death rather than to tempt Fate by telling her who should die first.
This is interesting to me in part because of the nature of superstitions. Children use superstitions in games all of the time.
”Step on a crack, break your mothers back.”
There are, probably, as many superstitions as there are people in the world. I’d love to say that I don’t have any, but I do. I don’t share the superstitions I have as I don’t feel they need sharing or are valid, in my own mind, and, therefore, don’t receive a lot of attention from me except for when I have to actually deal with them. Then anxiety sets in and I begin to wonder whether or not I am a failure just on the verge of complete and total destruction and other things happen (inside of me) with the outcome (hopefully) that the majority of the people I interact with don’t know that anything is going on.
However, I lived in New England. I lived in New Hampshire. I lived where watching the fog roll across the road looks like spirits and ghosts; and where, at the right time of the night in spring/summer, when you’re out, you can see fireflies in the bushes and trees and along the sides of the roads and it looks like there are worlds and worlds of fairies and spirits living in those very same places and if you are superstitious, those same superstitions could totally lead you to believe something that is, otherwise, highly improbable.
Talking about seeing the ghosts walking across the road to a New Englander is a no-no, though. It doesn’t matter how serious the individual may seem, you JUST DON’T share that observation with a lot of people. It may be cool to see; but it is not cool to talk about. Everyone knows its there, everyone sees it (not really), and no one wants to know about them.
And yet, that doesn’t really answer the whole superstition thing – at least for me.
As I consider this topic I also get to consider other places where superstitions are prevalent. My mind lands on sports.
For example: when I was in high school my dad gave me a shirt that, on one side, said, “POLICE,” and on the other side said, “FEDERAL AGENT.” From what I understand, during a sting, these were shirts he wore. I would wear that shirt to all football games. When I wore it we won. When I didn’t we lost.
The police asked me to stop wearing it because it could, potentially, confuse people. I stopped. We lost.
I then continued to wear the shirt and we continued to win. Except, the shirt would be on under other shirts. I could wash it, I just couldn’t not wear it. There are rules to these things.
Do I honestly believe that a t-shirt had some property to it that allowed my high school football team to win? Not at all. Does that change the fact that at 17 or 18 I wore that shirt to school every Friday and to the games after? Not at all. It’s a superstition. By definition, it does not have to make sense.
However, we’ve all seen movies or television shows where athletes believe that not shaving, not bathing, not changing underwear, socks will affect the outcome of the game. If they continue doing what they’ve been doing, they will continue to win. A lack of adaptation to new situations denotes a continuation of the current status quo. And yet, this is counter-intuitive… at least to me. Because, when the team starts losing they start looking for what they are doing differently than what they are doing the same that other teams have adapted to.
Superstition.
Gotta love that word. Just looking at it, to me, throws me in to a weird sense of mental paralysis. I keep thinking that there is more of a connection to what I am trying to do with my life. I want to write. The connection, and I will force it, is writers block.
I think writers block is a large crock of crap. It stinks in its most inherent sense. I was reading from a stack of books that I have and the author of the book, in his introduction, says (paraphrased), “My father never got truck drivers block. Why should I get writers block?”
Writing is a profession. Believe it or not, when you work toward specific goals and objectives within a profession, you obtain them. They may not be immediate, but the outcome is that, in the words of a man I recently met, “Cream rises to the top.”
If you are good at something, passionate about it, dedicated to doing it, you will be successful at it. Success, though, is subjective. But, that is another post for another time.
When it comes to writing, the practice of writing and the exploration of writing answer the outcome of that writing. If you study it, do it, and work at it, then writers block is a superstition that you might be afeard of, but not one that legitimately will have any hold on you.
You can be afraid of ghosts, but that doesn’t mean the fear of something will, in any way, answer the reaction to the potential for that thing.
For a lot of writers, the fear of writers block is far more prevalent than the realization that the profession of writing supercedes the fear of writing. In my mind the fear of writing is what causes writer’s block. Fear success and success will always haunt you. In order to find success in writing you have to write.
What is more frustrating was something I found in a book the other day that I was browsing. Basically, there are four stages of writing from Creating Short Fiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction by Damon Knight. First stage is the fantasy stage where you are writing more for yourself than for an audience. You are creating scenes and characters that are more an element of daydream than of something thought out and finished.
Stage two is a break from those ideas and stories that are simply for yourself – it is a progression toward communicating with the people around you.
Stage three is where you have the ability to write complete stories, but there are technical problems that get in the way.
And stage four is where you are not only writing, but producing and as a result possibly even selling the stories you are producing.
On top of all this, the author also tells the reader not to expect to get to a point where publication is possible in the first decade (or more) of writing unless you (as writer) are extremely skilled and talented and lucky. He actually suggests that most people need to wait until they’re in their 30’s to start thinking about writing successfully because, and this isn’t a shock, that’s about the time it takes for an up-and-coming writer to find the success he/she craves and has been working toward.
Point in case, I was in a play last year. I was sitting next to a girl who was in the play and she said, “I totally had writers block going on, but last night I started writing and, well, it just totally came out for, like, hours. I couldn’t believe I finally broke the writers block.”
She’s 20. She didn’t produce anything of value. Later, she admitted to throwing it all out. And yet, she felt a break in some invisible block and found comfort in writing.
I think that’s great. I’ve written professionally. Companies don’t wait for you to get done not being able to write. They want things produced right now. They, often, don’t care that you have to work through your own issues to get to the point where you are writing what they want you to write. If they are paying you, and you are taking their money, they expect that you are writing and not making excuses.
You learn to write very quickly in these scenarios. I know.
Moreover, a lot of authors will tell people who ask that they can expect to write two or three failed books before they publish the first one. Depending on the genre, that number can leap to four or five. Depending on the person, and their tenacity, that number can get a lot higher. Word count-wise, the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands and millions of words… all before the author finds the first real modicum of success.
I’ve yet to hear or read an author who has said those words have to all be in fiction. I got to break a lot of my teeth in through technical writing. I got to spend time writing fiction. I’ve had some people, and been able to experiment with different programs and applications, that have helped me discover what I’ve been doing wrong in some areas and then proceed forward from there.
On top of all that, I’ve been forced to accept that the way I do things (writing-wise) is not always the best way to accomplish something. Sometimes, the same thing needs to be done very differently. You cannot expect that copying the success of one item will repeat with another item. You have to be willing to adapt and move forward.
Moreover, you have to be willing to “rip it back” to the start and begin again. That’s what writing is all about. That’s what perfecting something is all about. That’s what the process of doing anything well is all about. Not the product of a single session at a computer or typewriter or pen and paper, but the outcome of a lot of effort and work and revision and writing and plotting and planning and struggle with the realization that what you are doing today will be very different from what you end up doing tomorrow; but, also, that you have to plan to struggle with the art, form, and function over a lifetime. You can’t just be in it for the short score, otherwise, you lost before you started.
I think the point in this brain spew is that in order to write you have to sit down and write. Go back to Finding Forrester and William Forrester’s advice (a movie Erin got to watch with me the other week). The process of writing will help the act of writing. Start with someone else’s words and when you feel your own coming, start writing them.
Let me add, when you sit down to write, and you feel nothing coming from the direction of what you intend to write, and feel that you should declare it writer’s block, figure out what you want to write, first, write it and then go back to what you meant to write. Your mind isn’t stopping you. It’s merely centered somewhere else. Fix the problem and then produce.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Bond. James Bond