Write what you know

Okay, so that's almost the worst advice ever. What does it mean?

Write a story about tying my shoes, making Kraft Dinner, drawing a blood sample from the femoral artery?

I know how to do that stuff. Am I therefore limited to writing only about those things?

What about fantasy and sci-fi? I'm certain Frank Herbert never drank bile from the sand worms of Arrakis. Yet when he describes a Bene Gesserit sister writhing in the throes of spice agony, we feel it, we believe it.

Write what you know is an oversimplification of a complex idea. I think it means write with resonance.

Stories that resonate strike universal chords within the most defamiliarized of experiences.

A story about learning to tie your shoes might be boring. However, that universal experience would resonate with me in a description of a feral child having his feet horned into shoes for the first time, and staring in apprehension at those straggling laces. It would throw me straight back to kindergarten. I'd recall my own childish uncertainty in the face of shoelaces and adult expectation.

The spice agony described in the Dune Saga might strike a chord of familiarity within those of us who've recreationally/medicinally consumed mind-altering substances (I'm not pointing fingers, you know who you are).

So that's what I'm thinking about these days.

Resonance, universality, and sand worms.

The little truths that bind us all.

Open Mic On Wednesday November 27th

Come on down to Owl's Nest books for the last AWCS Open Mic of 2012.

Bring 5min worth of reading or just come to listen and enjoy some wine and goodies in a beautiful bookstore.

Where: Owl's Nest Books 
815 - 49th Avenue SW (Britannia Shopping Centre)
www.owlsnestbooks.com

When: November 27th @7-8:30pm

Everyone welcome!

Notebooks: where stories are born

This past Monday, in anticipation of the U.S. election media freakshow, I committed to a two day internet black out. I still had email, and maybe that's cheating, but the point is I didn't tweet, Facebook, wiki, tumblr, YouTube, CBC, Cracked, Onion for two whole days. Let me tell you what happens when you sever yourself from the massive decentralized information network that you've grafted your brain to.

1. You look outside to see what the weather is like.

2. You wonder if people you don't know will care or notice that you haven't tweeted what you ate for breakfast.

3. You decide to read, and become annoyed when your interest is piqued by the mention of a Russian tradition called 'Green Week' and you aren't allowed to wiki it. 

4. You watch TV and wonder if Stana Katic (Castle) is pregnant because she's wearing puffy shirts and you can't check to see if it's true. (FYI, she's not)

The other thing I did was dig out a tattered stack of coiled notebooks. I read through, oldest to most recent. There were notes for stories I've written and since published, stories half-finished and languishing in hard drive hell, ideas for stories I may never write at all, and   lots of bizarre, unclassifiable stuff.

One page is entirely blank, but for the following. "I don't smoke. Well, I do…but only when I binge drink." To my knowledge I've never used that line anywhere. But hey, I still might.

I've also got notes going back five years for a novel I'm working on now. Reading those early notes reconnected me with the germ of the story. The idea in situ. Sure, the writing is wretched and I appear to be using an alien style guide for comma usage, but there's a crackling energy embedded in that sloppy scrawl. I remember the words pouring out of my brain faster than my hand could take them down.

I didn't write at all during my internet blackout, but I learned something about my creative process. Coiled notebooks are where my ideas take their first gasp of outside air, where my characters take their first steps. There are all kinds of unrefined goodies that pour out when I put pen to paper. I think I'll unplug more often.