FAWC | Magnolia Beginnings

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.” ~Aldous Huxley

I started this blog on a whim. This is absolutely untrue, of course, because I have been writing, throwing my writing away, and dreaming of writing, since I was able to hold a pencil. Why do I want to pretend it’s just a silly thing I’ve given very little thought?

A whim by Dictionary.com definition is:

1.A sudden desire or change of mind, esp. one that is unusual or unexplained.

2.A windlass for raising ore or water from a mine.

So the need to write is most definitely not sudden, a change of mind or unexplained. Judging by how many others are writing, the desire is not all that unusual either.

It does feel a little like raising ore from a mine. You know that it’s in there but sweet mother it’s not that easy to get it out is it?

So now all I need to do is to find a psychological windlass that will dredge my soul of all of the homeless characters and the sadistic need to tell a story so that it is out of the mine, much like the monster in Alien, and on to this screen.

As proof that my sadistic tendencies run deep I currently have 27 days to produce a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 pages fit to present to ten others in addition to a published author at week long class I am taking at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Now, I signed up for this sucker on a whim, I can promise you that!!

The moment of truth has arrived. It’s now or never. Shit or get off the pot, as my dear mother was fond of saying.

The countdown begins. Any and all encouragement is appreciated and needed.

I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart. ~Peter Altenberg

I don’t care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you’re also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.
Nora Ephron

thewritersworkshop.net

I have a book in my head and my goal is to write enough to attend a workshop at the Fine Arts Workshop Center In Provincetown in the summer of 2013. Now this may not sound like an insurmountable task unless, of course, one has not written a single word. Then it becomes a little more difficult.

When I was teaching I was lucky enough to have my class conduct a Skype interview with award winning children’s book author Linda Sue Park who wrote an incredible book, A Long Walk to Water, that we had read in class. One of my students, who has a severe language based learning disability, intends to become an author and asked a great question. He wanted to know if she ever had writer’s block and what she did about it. Of course like everyone that writes she agreed that not being able to do so on occasion was quite disturbing and then related a story of a friend of hers, also an award winning novelist, who writes for 15 minutes a day, every day. She limits her time this way and rarely experiences writer’s block. My thoughts were that she must be a furious typist but I thought is seemed do-able. So, I promised myself I’d spend 15 minutes a day writing, every day, no excuses. That never happened, except for blogging which wasn’t supposed to count for that 15 minutes, until today. A full page is out of my head and saved on to the computer. I’m sure I’ll edit the crap out of it, figuratively and literally, but I like it. I can feel it when I read it it. Now that I’ve told all of you I suppose I’ll need to follow through too.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin