Sunday, June 26, 2011

The comfort of night...

I've always been fond of writing at night.  When I was younger, I imagined that to be the fancy of a teenager who didn't go to sleep until 2 or 3am, anyway, and liked it that way.  As I've grown, I've found that my inclination towards creativity hasn't found its way to the daytime hours yet.  That's not to say it never happens or isn't possible, it just seems to take more effort.  If I establish a daytime routine, it tends to work well enough and has in the past - I wrote a novel in my senior year of high school by having an independent study hour overseen by my creative writing teacher.  That was at 9am or thereabouts, as I recall.  It worked.  I popped in my headphones and went on with it.

In real life, it's harder to find or create time that structured.  When you're in school, in a situation like that, you're left with no other purpose than to write.  It's nice.  Other stresses vanish and that one in particular is pushed to the forefront.  I can wax poetic all I like about a writer's purpose being to write and so on and so forth, but a writer is a person and sometimes a person's purpose on a given day is to make meatloaf for dinner, take the car to the shop or have a drink with friends at the downtown bar.  These are the adult responsibilities of real life and they have to be acknowledged and satisfied.  But most adult responsibilities in life have one thing in common - they fall under the jurisdiction of the day.

Besides that, the day is the time of business.  It's a time of hustle and bustle!  Even in a quiet apartment complex, there are comings and goings, children playing, motorcycles going by.  But once night falls, silence descends.  Oh sure, there's still ambient noise to be had, most of it road noise from afar, but otherwise, the world tends to be mercifully quiet and peaceful.  And for the writer, who has had adult responsibilities to deal with, they're melted away.  Either they got completed or they became the next day's matter.  And so, it's at night that the mind can better unfurl, unrestrained by daytime worries and daytime noises.

I like to do things during the day.  Go for a walk.  Cook.  Talk to people.  Run errands.  Read.  Play a video game.  These are responsibilities, hobbies and joys of mine.  Sometimes I write.  Sometimes there's something pressing that I can't ignore that I need to write about - this morning was like that.  Last night, as I was going to sleep, after following the Detroit Tigers game, I started to write my article for The Daily Sports Update.  When I woke up, it was still there.  Before I even showered or got my pot of coffee started, I got it down and published it to the blog.  It felt good, felt nice.  But it's not always that easy.

Tonight was a good night and perhaps there'll be more like them now.  My woman works an early morning shift for her job and goes in even earlier now, so as to get in a morning workout.  This leaves me with great freedom at night; she went to bed at 8:30pm or so tonight.  Almost as soon as she did, as I sat at my computer pondering how to fill the rest of my evening, that creative spark struck and I finally - FINALLY - pushed through a part of my novel that I wasn't enjoying.  I put my earphones in my ears, turned on iTunes and got to work.  One hour and several pages later, I had another part done and a fresh feeling to myself as I realized that this particular part of my novel only has a couple more pages before I can get moving on with the primary plot, something I've been struggling to do for a few days.

Was that possible earlier?  Sure.  Probably.  But there's a certain ease to it at night... all of my daytime worries are faded.  Anything I didn't do today is firmly the property of tomorrow.  So this time, this remarkably precious time between now and when I lay my head to my pillow... it's completely uninhibited, completely without hindrance.  It's the blank page that the day can never be, because the day itself authors work upon us.  The night makes no such impositions on us and for that reason, it's so often at night when I find myself tap-tap-tapping away on my keyboard.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Welcome to the Writer's Block

I haven't really kept an active, creative blog in a long time.  Not since I was in high school, probably.  Perhaps not coincidentally, I wrote more frequently while I was in high school; but I generally attribute that to the fact that I needed something to do to keep amused in class.

Anyway.  Welcome to the Writer's Block.  I'm Pierce Wilkinson and odds are you either know me personally or you've stumbled upon this and you have no idea who I am.  That's fine.  It's good to meet you or, if I know you already, it's good to have you reading.  I am a writer.  I've always identified myself as such, but I haven't always put forth the effort necessary to be truly successful in that endeavor.  Recently, I decided to re-dedicate myself to what I've always considered to be my craft.  Creating and maintaining this blog is part of that.

I plan to do a few different things with this blog.  One thing I intend to do is use it as a critical outlet; I find it hard, as a writer, to get overly engrossed in entertainment - movies/literature/TV/video games; anything that's written, really - because part of me is always analyzing it, wondering how I could have done better, wondering what aspects of it had never occurred to me before, etc.  Sometimes that's a simple thing - such as "well, that was a mediocre film with inconsistent character development and a flimsy plot" - and sometimes it's more complicated, such as considerations over whether or not a film is too realistic (at the cost of enjoyment) or whether an author's style annoys me.  A more detailed example - coming in an article soon - is an assessment of realism vs. fun; at what point does making fiction "realistic" detract from the enjoyment of the audience?  Where's the line in the sand in that regard?  An example I'll use to whet your appetite is this - in the TV show 24, which I'm sure most people are at least conceptually familiar with - not once does the hero stop to eat, sleep or use the bathroom... over 24 hours.  Some people have criticized that; I say I don't want to watch Jack Bauer take a dump, so I'm okay with it.

Secondly, I intend to use this as a creative outlet.  It's called the Writer's Block for two reasons - first is because writer's block is a real thing and it is a problem for all writers at some point.  Life gets in the way, or other problems get in the way, or there's that one little plot wrinkle you have to get out before you keep writing, or it's just that blank white page and that blinking cursor mocking you... and sometimes being able to discuss that, or being able to discuss where I am creatively, can help cross it.  The other reason it's called the Writer's Block (note the caps this time) is because that sounds like it could be a place!  Right?  Hey, welcome to the Writer's Block.  Pull up a stool or a chair and grab a beer, or a coffee, or some water, if that's your taste, and let's chat about life.  Works for me. 

And thirdly, I may preview some of my works here.  Be it the introductory chapter of a novel, or some other snippet of a longer work, or the occasional short story - you'll see it here.  I am not a genre-bound writer; I've always worked hard to avoid that in my writing.  Like most writers, I have certain recurring themes that I'm sure my readers will notice over time, but I enjoy branching into different genres.  At the moment, I'm working on a medieval fantasy novel - the first in a trilogy, actually - and after that, I am considering some thoughts for either a science fiction space opera type of work or a contemporary novel.  Maybe taking some time out to write short, although that's never been my forte, sadly.  And, of course, for blogging. 

So, I'll say it one more time - welcome to the Writer's Block.  Enjoy your stay and come back as often as you like.  I look forward to your readership.