Okay, folks, it’s time we got personal. I only have about an hour to write this blog post, and I have too many have-developed ideas to commit to one that I can successfully develop and crank out in the next hour and eighteen minutes. I may also throw in filler words as often as I can find places to put them (see what I’m doing?). At first I felt like this was a cop-out, and defied the challenge I set for myself three weeks ago. However, I thought about it for a second, and after some serious ego rationalization, I’ve decided this is a challenge in its own right: I usually spend at least two hours on a blog post, and I’m seriously lacking in the time department right now. How about I talk about my creative process for a while?
I always start my posts at my handy laptop. I may have some notes scribbled down on a piece of paper or a cue card I keep next to my bed (I’ve woken up several times to barely legible plot ideas and half-formed characters that I somewhat remember writing when the red numbers on my clock said 4:09, or some ridiculous time like that), or I may have some ideas flitting around in my head throughout the day, but I don’t usually end up with the topic on which I actually want to write until I’m here. I like my laptop because I can bring it with me anywhere, and I think I’ve done enough travelling with this baby to say I feel closer to it than I feel to any of my other possessions. And considering I own a Nintendo DS, that’s a pretty bold statement. Currently, I’m sitting in my friend Fatemeh’s room, realizing that I don’t have nearly enough time to write about an idea I was actually quite excited about it. I don’t want to reveal any details seeing as how I’ll most likely use it in the next week and a half, but I will divulge enough to give you a general picture of what’s to come: it’s science fiction. And about happiness. Surprise surprise, right? A story by Jonathan about happiness is not the most original theme I can think of, but I take a perspective on it I haven’t covered yet.
That’s my next point: where I get my inspiration is as variable as my location of writing. I try to inject a bit of myself into all of my stories, and I think I do a pretty good job about it, for the most part. I play with issues I come across in my daily life (take note of any political issue I’ve brought up; I haven’t mentioned and taken a very clear stance on it for no reason), and I fiddle with the people I meet and know. Most of my characters aren’t directly based on close friends and family, but there are a few mentions of people in my stories that immediately make me think of a certain someone. I use my blog as a creative outlet, so really it just reflects whatever mood I’m feeling, or want to be feeling at the time. I often end up very relaxed by the end of a post, even though most of them are finished right near my midnight deadline. I’m confident in my ability to meet deadlines (a point I’d like to highlight for any potential future employers!), so I don’t get stressed about it. Four years ago I would be a nervous wreck every night I wasn’t done my post by eleven, but high school is ridiculous time for everybody, so I didn’t really expect that phase to last.
The actual I ideas and plots you see manifest themselves are as from my brain as I can make them. I’m especially fond of my story “House at Sea” that I wrote way back near the beginning of this project, because I wanted to write a story that appealed to people for different reasons, depending on their personality, and my relationship with them. Obviously, I can’t control the latter if I don’t know the person very well or at all, but the first one was my prod toward a psychological research question. I found it difficult to write the story at certain parts, but I think that makes it a stronger post in the end result. I didn’t just ramble as I’m doing right now, or in some of my other posts. I took some more time with that one to figure out what would happen to the house during its life course, and what would happen after that point happened. Unfortunately, due to my poor time management skills (discard this, potential future employers), I don’t give myself quite as much time as I need to work out all those fun plot elements like foreshadow, theme, motif, and character foil. I also like to read into my own stories, and see what I’ve managed to come up with just by virtue of trying to write an interesting read, and I think that the tree in the front yard is a very nice compliment to the house by the water. The animals are foils, and while my foreshadowing comes a little late (and it’s a little direct), I was trying to take the perspective of the house, that sees the world very differently than a human would.
Another of my posts of which I’m particularly proud, “Paint Shit, Make Money”, I wanted to include an anecdote in a short story that doesn’t define the plot, and doesn’t even really advance it that much, but develops the background, and sets a tone for the rest of the story. I noticed from my stats page that it’s pretty popular among you readers too, so I must have done something right by it! Maybe you just all wanted the shock factor. I like the eww factor that you can laugh at; it allows you to either relate to a character about all the traits people find gross about themselves, or gives you some distance from a character you find repulsive, yet fascinating. I mentioned in one of my Facebook links to my blog’s page, I enjoy thinking about how I would interact with all of my characters if I were to come across them in my life. The preachy bitch from last night would definitely rank at the bottom of my list of people I wanted to meet, but even so, I think there’s some worth in figuring out how you would talk to a person you’re writing about. Not only does it give me a personal connection to my writing, but it also makes it really easy to figure out what kind of situations they would encounter in their lives. For example, I find Cassy Gregarious an outspoken, misinformed, bigoted, elitist cunt, and wish nothing but the worst for her. However, she has feelings and thoughts, and just because I would like her to burn in the hell she spends so much time talking about, I know she won’t wind up there in my story. She’s going to do her best to keep her seat of power, and use all her charisma and cunning to persuade her audience in her favour. I like leaving certain characters undeveloped, like that audience, or teacher and parents in “’Rithmetic”, because it leaves more for the reader’s interpretation, which is my next big point.
A little while back, I presented a short letter I had written to a group of people sitting in a makeshift jazz café. The experience taught me that either I can’t read my own writing very well, or my writing is best left unspoken. Particularly with characters that have really strong personalities, I find that it’s best for the reader to breathe their own personalities, biases, and lives into the words. It sounds like a tacky business model (or a pretentious hipster model), but reading is an organic process of communication between the writer and the reader. I almost want to call bullshit on myself for using organic in that manner, but I have a valid explanation for the word that doesn’t just make it something to skim over and throw into the context of the sentence! By organic, I mean that it’s a multi-step process to read and understand literature: when I write a story, I use all my experiences, knowledge, biases, and interpretations/appraisals of the world, and bundle it into a concrete (yet hopefully eloquent) stream of at least 2,000 words. In this set form, I can’t add any more information or emotion to the writing; once it’s posted, I have no say in how it’s to be read. I kind of fudge this when I declare my brief opinion about this, but for the most part, I can’t tell people how to feel about my works. Then, as readers, you all pick up the story, and what you make of it hinges largely on your interpretations of the world, of me, and of the specific words used in the story. My mother, who raised me from an extremely early phase in prenatal development, probably has very different thoughts about my writing than my “friend” Navi, who was yet to read an entire post the whole way through without skimming over parts. Thanks pal. Beyond these two examples, everyone has a different way of seeing things. I don’t believe in much, but I do believe in the value of human diversity. Otherwise my high school English classes would have had even more tiring discussions because everyone would just agree with each other about everything. When I’m dead and gone, I think it would be interesting to have teenagers argue about whether the protagonists of “Paint Shit, Make Money” was gay, or just really intrigued by semen.
Now that I’ve covered my opinion of information transmission (which I’ll admit is significantly based on my exposure to sociological theory), I think I’m due for a general reflection of my work. I’m happy with what I’ve produced this far, and have am very confident that I’ll continue to be happy with what I write. I try to mix it up as often as possible without being mixed up for the sake of variety; in fact, I scrap 80% of my ideas because I think of them purely for being different from what I’ve just written. They aren’t very good ideas, but they stand in stark contrast to what’s already on my table. I love hearing feedback from you people when you say a story is really funny or thought provoking, but I’m using this appeal to encourage more reader engagement with my story variations. I love talking about writing, and I don’t need to have high-intellect, literarily deep conversations about my story; just tell me if you really like a character, and why! I have ideas of my own, but I love collaboration (thank you, RezLife, my current employers), and feel like I always have a lot to gain from feedback. My plan for the final 10 entries is to get a bit darker, and a bit more serious, but if people like my light-hearted comedy-esque stuff, I’ll be sure to keep a healthy dose of that around! I know tragedies are never as fun as comedies, but I think tragedies are worth talking about in their own right. You can’t always be positive, so why not embrace every side of yourself? When I said I use writing to express myself, I mean it. People are complex, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Even the airheads in your math class that are probably blowing the prof to get a passing grade have more going on in them than you think. I take the side of others to look at the world more critically, and explore a life outside of my own. It’s sad that a lot of people are starving in undeveloped nations, and many more are starving and homeless in developed countries, but what’s it actually like to live as them? Charity is fine and dandy, but I think my life will be better off spent broadening people’s horizons, and opening minds to new perspectives. I think all change starts with attitudes, and I’ve always considered myself a “get to the bottom of everything” kind of guy, so let’s keep digging down, shall we?
Word count: 2,072
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