Tag: Inspiration

Inspiration Redux

It’s Finals Week, and all my inspiration is tuned into making it over the hill. So, I grabbed this from the vault. The following was inspired by “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion for my English 404 Creative Nonfiction class.

Language
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I’ve been told that the inspiration for writing is everywhere. Just open your eyes, I’ve been directed. The person or object in front of you, even when it’s a computer screen or the view of the backyard through your office window. Look up in the sky like when you were a kid, and you stared out your bedroom window and conjured up images from the cumulous clouds above the Patterson Projects in the South Bronx. It doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as you write something. Oh, they’re very insistent. The inspiration is there and everywhere. I must open my eyes, ears, and mind to the possibilities.

For a long time, I couldn’t write a thing. Well, that’s not accurate. I could write a love letter, a script for a radio show, a television news report, a technical or policy paper, or maybe sneak in a poem or two. Still, these were either the duties of a job or some frivolous moment to fill while I waited for something more serious to come along. Filling time. That’s how I sometimes thought of creative writing. You know, the writing where you open your heart and soul and scream words onto a page until they click into moving pictures. Or, to put it another way, they can walk into living worlds and settle down to rest as long as they want.

Education
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

A million other writers and I have said it before, writing, authentic writing that spills out honestly when you grab the courage to free yourself, and your soul will follow, is difficult. Almost impossible if you’re not honest with yourself. Writing on demand can seem easy when you’re just pecking away at the keys in the hopes that something comes out and all that seems to appear on the screen in front of you is gibberish that even your eyes can’t translate. But you did exercise your fingers and proved that you could type. Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.

When I was a television reporter, and I had to crank out two-three scripts in the span of a couple of hours (without the aid of a computer or Grammarly), you had notes, and maybe you had a chance to watch the news film (probably not) or the video (doubtful). You had to tap your memory banks, write a story based on fact, make sure it made sense, and ensure that it weaved with the visual element into a minute-and-a-half report that was succinct and clear enough that someone at home would take that time to watch it. Not sure I would call it “creative writing,” but you did hope it moved someone’s feelings or mind an inch. This is before the internet when people did sit in front of a television at an appointed hour or at least had it playing in the background over dinner and watched and heard crime stories or scandals or some stimulating “if it bleeds, it leads” news report that had spun out of your electric typewriter only an hour before. My goal was, to tell the truth in the best way I knew how and my inspiration was the reality I had witnessed or at least gotten other witnesses to share their stories.

Language
Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay

The Creative Writing I do in college is different and more challenging. Some people can do any number of processes, exercises, and techniques to get their creative juices started. I start writing simply enough. A title. A thought. An incident from my past. A word. A single word. What’s important is that I start typing. Type. Type. Type. Take a breath and then start typing again and be confident enough to ensure that a stream of sentences flows across the screen and that it makes some sense. Okay, maybe not at first. It’s my first write. Perhaps it will be gibberish at first. It’s a beginning.

Then, I go over it, the writing. Sometimes, I’ll study it on the screen, making immediate changes as I go along. Or maybe after the fourth or fifth versions (I’ve done upwards of twenty versions during the course of writing a piece), I’ll print it out and read it aloud, listening to the cadence of the words, the connection of those words, the specific words themselves, hoping that I’m not repeating the exact words, nouns, prepositions, adverbs, complex sentences that run into each other because I sometimes forget that there are such things as periods or commas or semi-colons. Grammar not being my strong suit sometimes. Always thinking what’s a better way to say something (Word Hippo is my thesaurus friend). To visualize it first and then splash it across the page so that whoever reads it stops for a moment to absorb it, to bring it into themselves and allow it to fill their head and soul with the music of the words and beauty of the picture that is flashing before their imaginations. That’s when you know. Yeah, it’s all good.

Lifelong Learning
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I don’t want to stop there. I want to be continuously inspired to make the words sing louder, and the picture is brighter, the colors forcing you to look at them while at the same time they burn into your very essence and your heart dances gleefully and more heartedly than the first time you read or heard my words.

There’s so much more to learn. To exercise my fingers across this page, to tap that thing inside all of us so that those unique words just come forward and wrap me and you in ecstasy.

Yeah, that would be good.

Writing For My Life

The following was written in response to an assignment to read “Write Like a Motherfucker” for English 404 Creative Nonfiction.

Writing
Photo by Antonio Ruiz

I don’t remember if I read this somewhere or someone told me this: Writing is writing. Period. If you’re not vomiting words onto a page and instead just looking out the window, standing by the coffee machine, or sticking your head in the dryer waiting for inspiration, then forget it. You’re wasting time. The blank page should be an opportunity, not an invitation to stare.

It took me sixty-eight years to realize that I could not take the opportunity of the blank page because I didn’t see it. I was too blinded by every insecurity and disorder created by drug addiction and alcoholism ever imagined. When I did get sober or straight enough to write, it was but a drop in an ocean of living. And more often than not, it was like the trash you see floating on that ocean. Embarrassing and disgusting all at the same time.

Writing
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I love the line in “Write Like a Motherfucker.” The one that tells us, “You have to tell us what you have to say.” It has been mainly in the last four years since I turned seventy that it dawned on me that I understood these instructions. While school assignments have been an excellent excuse for writing (no one but me was going to write those class essays), I’ve also realized that it could be a great learning opportunity and a lab for experimenting. I could write until I developed carpel tunnel syndrome, knowing that sometimes I would write some good shit and other times I would write lousy shit that I wouldn’t want to read a second time. But that was okay. I wrote something.

I wrote through my moods (and boy, do I have moods) and the times that I ached from everything that can hurt in a soon to be seventy-four year old man. Fuck, it has come down to time. I don’t have time to waste. I got plans for my future, so I have much catching up to do. To use whatever time I have left (thank goodness old age is a family trait), I’ve got to keep busy.

Writing
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Best lines in the essay:

“The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. Its strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”

Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column #48: Write Like a Motherfucker

That is good advice that I live by every day on this plane. Do it because not to do it is not to live.

Inspiration

The following was inspired by “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion for my English 404 Creative Nonfiction class.

Language
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I’ve been told that the inspiration for writing is everywhere. Just open your eyes, I’ve been directed. The person or object in front of you, even when it’s a computer screen or the view of the backyard through your office window. Look up in the sky like when you were a kid, and you stared out your bedroom window and conjured up images from the cumulous clouds above the Patterson Projects in the South Bronx. It doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as you write something. Oh, they’re very insistent. The inspiration is there and everywhere. I must open my eyes, ears, and mind to the possibilities.

For a long time, I couldn’t write a thing. Well, that’s not accurate. I could write a love letter, a script for a radio show, a television news report, a technical or policy paper, or maybe sneak in a poem or two. Still, these were either the duties of a job or some frivolous moment to fill while I waited for something more serious to come along. Filling time. That’s how I sometimes thought of creative writing. You know, the writing where you open your heart and soul and scream words onto a page until they click into moving pictures. Or, to put it another way, they can walk into living worlds and settle down to rest as long as they want.

Education
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

A million other writers and I have said it before, writing, authentic writing that spills out honestly when you grab the courage to free yourself, and your soul will follow, is difficult. Almost impossible if you’re not honest with yourself. Writing on demand can seem easy when you’re just pecking away at the keys in the hopes that something comes out and all that seems to appear on the screen in front of you is gibberish that even your eyes can’t translate. But you did exercise your fingers and proved that you could type. Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.

When I was a television reporter, and I had to crank out two-three scripts in the span of a couple of hours (without the aid of a computer or Grammarly), you had notes, and maybe you had a chance to watch the news film (probably not) or the video (doubtful). You had to tap your memory banks, write a story based on fact, make sure it made sense, and ensure that it weaved with the visual element into a minute-and-a-half report that was succinct and clear enough that someone at home would take that time to watch it. Not sure I would call it “creative writing,” but you did hope it moved someone’s feelings or mind an inch. This is before the internet when people did sit in front of a television at an appointed hour or at least had it playing in the background over dinner and watched and heard crime stories or scandals or some stimulating “if it bleeds, it leads” news report that had spun out of your electric typewriter only an hour before. My goal was, to tell the truth in the best way I knew how and my inspiration was the reality I had witnessed or at least gotten other witnesses to share their stories.

Language
Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay

The Creative Writing I do in college is different and more challenging. Some people can do any number of processes, exercises, and techniques to get their creative juices started. I start writing simply enough. A title. A thought. An incident from my past. A word. A single word. What’s important is that I start typing. Type. Type. Type. Take a breath and then start typing again and be confident enough to ensure that a stream of sentences flows across the screen and that it makes some sense. Okay, maybe not at first. It’s my first write. Perhaps it will be gibberish at first. It’s a beginning.

Then, I go over it, the writing. Sometimes, I’ll study it on the screen, making immediate changes as I go along. Or maybe after the fourth or fifth versions (I’ve done upwards of twenty versions during the course of writing a piece), I’ll print it out and read it aloud, listening to the cadence of the words, the connection of those words, the specific words themselves, hoping that I’m not repeating the exact words, nouns, prepositions, adverbs, complex sentences that run into each other because I sometimes forget that there are such things as periods or commas or semi-colons. Grammar not being my strong suit sometimes. Always thinking what’s a better way to say something (Word Hippo is my thesaurus friend). To visualize it first and then splash it across the page so that whoever reads it stops for a moment to absorb it, to bring it into themselves and allow it to fill their head and soul with the music of the words and beauty of the picture that is flashing before their imaginations. That’s when you know. Yeah, it’s all good.

Lifelong Learning
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I don’t want to stop there. I want to be continuously inspired to make the words sing louder, and the picture is brighter, the colors forcing you to look at them while at the same time they burn into your very essence and your heart dances gleefully and more heartedly than the first time you read or heard my words.

There’s so much more to learn. To exercise my fingers across this page, to tap that thing inside all of us so that those unique words just come forward and wrap me and you in ecstasy.

Yeah, that would be good.

Writing

Writing
Photo by Antonio Ruiz

To be honest, I can’t think of anything to write about this week. Well, that’s not totally accurate. My problem is that I have many things to say but can’t decide which one to write about. I looked for inspiration in the three books (not counting the one in the bathroom, Z by Vassilis Vassilikos) I’m reading. There’s The 1619 Project (yes, that one that has the entire GOP in angry hyperdrive convulsions) created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Growing up Latino: Memoirs, and Stories, edited by Harold Augenbraum and Ilan Stavens, and Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez by Richard Rodriguez. There’s a lot of angst, trauma, love, and inspiration in all these books.

They did get me thinking about what to write about, and then I hit this wall. I could discuss the role of racism in the country, and then I thought, Where do I start? Or I could write about my own story about growing up in the South Bronx, but that would take more than a thousand words. Hell, it would take a multi-book series, which would be for just the first thirteen years. There is also the story about my education at Saint Rita’s Parochial School in the Bronx. It was there that I transitioned quickly, like Richard Rodriguez, from speaking only Spanish to speaking only English.

Writing
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Then I came across a couple of old poems and a blog post from last year that exemplifies my struggle about putting words to print. There was this one from November 2018:

Writing is not easy. The words in my brain swirl around like balls in one of those bingo cages. Turning over and over again, waiting to be spat out. B10. A36. D0. Constructing. Building a sentence. A meaning. Something that makes a point. Or not. Plays on words and images and meanings. That will excite me. That will open a new window to see what is outside or inside. Make me and/or you uncomfortable or comfortable. Just sitting here moving words around as they spit out of my brain. G20. O9. O11. D3.

The point was that writing is like trying to hit the jackpot in a Bingo game. Waiting for those numbers/words to spring out from wherever they spring out is often left to luck. It’s not something you can control. They pop up from somewhere, in this case in your head, and you’re just lucky when they help you with the jackpot, the finished piece.

There was also this piece that I wrote for one of my Creative Writing classes at Long Beach City College, Writing at 5 a.m.:

When your mind is 
waking    fuzzy from dreams. 
The coffee high trying
to find clarity    
where there is none. 

We write
the pencil crawling       hesitantly
across the soul              reluctantly
making letters              wishfully so
we can define words     hopefully.

We write 
like a knife
cutting up
our souls
spilling all over
that fine white notebook.

While we suck it all up
with a no. 2 pencil
And hope
we understand it all
before
anyone else does.
Writing
Image by Simon from Pixabay

Truthfully, I stopped using a pencil and notebook to write my pieces (except for ideas and outlines) some time ago, but you get the point. Writing is hard not because I can’t come with ideas; hell, I have a million of them. It’s because I have to dig around in some deep emotional shit, using my creative process like a knife cutting up my soul. When was the last time you wanted to cut up your soul?

Look, this is hard. Yet, I am like every other serious writer committed to writing until you can’t write anymore, as in when you have dropped dead. Read this piece from last year, Writing Until I Drop Dead.

There is something about writing that frees one’s soul.

There is something about shouting from your mind through your fingers, tapping a keyboard, and letters miraculously appearing on the screen in front of you. Spelling out meanings/hard words/soft words/definitions of real-life/made-up life/life as only I know it.

I wish I could reach back into the past for that one memory that eludes me to understand myself better, and I could write about it and tell other people who might use it to understand themselves better.

I just want to help.
I wish I could reach into the future to see that where I have been had not been a total waste of time.
That all this effort has not been in vain/that lessons have been learned/words, have set a vision and clarified the truth of where we are today/at this moment/so people can better understand themselves.
I’m just trying to be helpful.
And isn’t that the point about my writing?
Tapping out words that float around me/out of the neurons in my brain/I hate having to tell you this in person/because I’m shy and I’d rather my words and the stories they shape speak for me/really.

Imagine for a moment what type of house/street/neighborhood/city/state/country/planet/universe we could build if we just took the time to write a love letter to ourselves/our lovers/and haters/and we had no time for hate or war/If we just took all of our time to read those love letters.

This is why I will write until I’m dead.
I’m just trying to be helpful.
Writing
Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay

I’m not saying this is all excellent writing. The point is that you write because, well, because. You write to flush out your mind and soul. You write because there is some truth you’re trying to unravel, discover, lay bare. Or you write because you’re obsessed with spilling your guts, and even if you’re pained by the process, you just can’t help yourself. Damn, it sure looks like some S&M kind of shit. Pleasure out of pain. Wait that sounds more like what a heroin addict might do. Yeah, been there, done that. I’ll just stick to writing to flush out my mind and soul.

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