Reading and writing

I've been reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon over the past week or so. I'm planning on reading The Once and Future King by T.H. White next. And at some point I need to get my hands on a copy of Malory's Morte de Arthur and read that too.
It's interesting to read the same story from so many different perspectives. Especially from the perspective of the women, like in The Mists of Avalon.

But that's not really what I wanted to write about tonight. I wanted to write about what really makes a writer.

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time... More and more as I've struggled with my writing.
What really makes someone a writer?
Is is talent? Is it ideas?
Honestly, I don't think it's either of those things... Specifically, I think that it's one thing in particular.
It's the soul that makes a writer.
A true writer isn't made by talent, or ideas, or even how much they write. I believe that a true writer has words in their soul. That's how they see the world, through words. Almost as though they live in a great story.
I wish I could explain it better, but my problem has always been that the words get stuck on their travels between my soul and my fingers.

And voice...
I've been told that I have a strong voice in my writing. Sometimes that's been a bad thing... Like essays in school for example! *chuckles* Teachers and professors don't like to hear the writers voice in position papers!
But in my own writing... I wonder. A few things.
Do I really have as definitive a voice in my writing? And if I do, is it a detriment to my story? Does my inexperience and naiveity come across as contrary to the story I'm trying to tell?

I must beg your pardon... I know that this post has been a lot of rambling, nothing really important, but it's things that've been on my mind lately.
Especially what makes a writer... If I can organize my thoughts on that a bit better, I may touch on that subject again someday.

Writing styles...

One thing that has always seemed to confuse Duncan, is how I write.

I can't write if I go into a quiet room and sit by myself. I can't write if I close myself off and just listen to music.
Well... I can I suppose... but it's hard. And the product is never very good.
I seem to do my best work... in front of the television. Usually watching a movie.

You know those tests that they tend to make you take in school? The ones that tell you if you're a tactile, audio, or visual learner?
I was always a highly tactile learner, with visual coming in an average second, and audio a very very very distant third.
I need that visual connection for my mind to really work properly. When I get stuck in my writing, I need those visual images to focus on... even though I'm not really focusing on it...

Wow... did that ever NOT make any sense!

Looking at the TV and letting the images on the screen just kinda flow past me helps me refocus and reset my brain in a way. Like I can think about things better when I'm not thinking of them. My brain works better when my thoughts aren't so busy getting in the way.

And this isn't even what I had intended this post to be about.
Though my digression is a fair demonstration of my other point.

I rarely know where my writing is going to go. I usually have some kind of basic idea, but no clue how I'm actually going to get there. I write my characters, and then they take me along for the ride.
It makes for some interesting times though. When all of a sudden I realize things that are right at the heart of my characters, things that they've been telling me subtly for pages, and I just didn't realize what they were trying to say until they came out and hit me with it. *chuckles* There's been a few things like that in my novel. With one character in particular who keeps giving me trouble... But that's really a whole different post.

Apparently it's an unusual way to write. So many writers talk about outlines, and have huge notebooks of history on their story and their characters. I can't write that way. I've tried, and I wind up with notebooks full of involved backstory, but nothing at all in the current-times story that I was trying to write.
(By the way, can you just imagine what kind of difficulties I had in creative writing in school?! Where the teachers are obsessed with outlines and carefully controlled characters and narration?! It's no wonder I almost flunked English ... sorry Language Arts :p ... in sixth grade!!!)
So I gave it up. I stopped trying to make myself be that kind of writer, and I just write. I have some basic ideas about where my characters are coming from, but they tell me they're life stories as they help me figure out what's happening with them in the story I'm telling.
It may not be the way a lot of people write, but I think it works for me.

I have a few ideas for another post, but it's gonna take a lot more thought before it's ready to go up.
Complex issues, like voice... and what really makes a writer.
Hopefully tomorrow or Friday... Though I don't know if I'll be up to actually posting on Friday, since I've got a nice long massage that afternoon!
We'll just wait and see, I guess!

Ponderings of the day...

This post has kinda been simmering in the back of my head most of the day... You'd think that would make it a little more coherent, but it's still not... Too many pieces in it, I think.

So I keep something called an Inspiration Book. It's just a little leather-bound notebook that I keep in my purse, and I write down things in it that inspire me. Sometimes it's song lyrics, sometimes it's quotes from movies, or little lines from books. There's a few things in there that I've written myself, and even a thing or two that friends of mine have written.
Anyways, I've been going through it lately, copying it from a large book, to a smaller one that's a little bit easier to carry around. It's interesting going back and seeing some of the things that are in there that have moved me somehow.

And that kinda brings me to the second part of what's been going through my head... Things that move me.
I read a poem a while ago, something that was written by someone I knew, and it moved me to tears.
Sometimes I feel like things move me, but I don't really understand why. I can read a poem or a story that I really have no direct connection with, maybe because I've never experienced anything like what's being described, but it touches something deep inside me anyways. Almost as though I had experienced it. As though there's a million different people inside me, and that it's really them that's being touched...
And yes, I know that makes me sound like I have MPD, but that's not what I mean at all. Maybe it's just part of being such a character-centred writer...
Besides, I'm just kinda rambling here... Bear with me.

Because this brings me to the third part of my thoughts... My novel. (such as it is)
For those of you that may not be familiar with that particular piece of work in progress, I've been attempting to write a novel for about 2 years now. It's coming slowly.
There are a few little excerpts hiding somewhere on my blog (all very helpfully titled with excerpt in the post name!) if you're interested in reading a bit.
But what gets me is... Where did the story come from, and how am I managing to write it?
I have no first hand experience that is even close to what my main character is going through, and yet I've been told by a few people that my portrayal is very accurate and convincing.
I remember where I got the idea... But that still doesn't really explain how such a complex, emotional story has managed to fight it's way out of my head.

... And now, I don't know what to say anymore. The thoughts have tumbled from my fingers through the keyboard, and onto the screen, but I really can't say that they make any more sense to me now than they did when I was just tossing them around in my head.

I'd welcome any insight you may feel like sharing!

Two poems...

It would take me a long time to go through my story and find another excerpt, so here's a few poems.
One of them is the one I mentioned in my last post, and it was written this past summer, on one of the most beautiful nights I've ever seen.
The other one... I don't actually remember when I wrote it, but I found it on my computer while I was typing something else up, and it still managed to speak to me, so I decided to share it too.

~~~
~Mother Moon~

Mother Moon, I see thy face,
And thy golden reflection
In the water's night-dark glass.

I see thy tears
Streak, one after another,
Across the midnight sky.

You call to my soul.
Hearing my darkest wishes,
The most forlorn and forgotten dreams.

Answer my prayers, Mother Moon.
Grant the wish of your quiet servant.
For one moment… Bring thy heaven to earth.
~~~

~~~
~The Darkness of Insanity~

In the darkness
I feel the insanity closing in on me;
The insanity and the sadness.

In the darkness
I wonder about the world around me.
About the truth, and about reality.

In the darkness
I doubt everything around me.
I see nothing good in myself

In the darkness
I feel like I'm drowning.
The pressure around me is awesome.

In the darkness
It's so much harder to fight the insanity.
So much harder.
~~~

Well, there's my sharing for today.
Enjoy.
Comment.
As you wish!

Well...

It's been a long time since I posted, mostly cause it's been a really long year.

Losing my dad last February was really really hard on me. I couldn't write anything after, for a long time... I didn't have the heart for writing. I couldn't work on my story, had no poetry in me... I was a mess.

But in about June or July (4 months or so after we moved into our new place... Yes, we bought a house), I picked up a pencil, opened my laptop, and words slowly started to flow again. Not quickly, not as brightly as before, but flowing.

I haven't written much, and I still haven't been able to write a poem for my dad, but it's nice to be writing again at all.

I do have a poem that I want to post, but it hasn't made the transition from paper to computer yet. I'm gonna try and do that later today, and then I'll post it.

And hopefully I'll be posting a lot more often now.