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I always loved to sing. My dad sang, in a community ensemble and as a cantor at church, and I always watched his performances with envy. Singing for singing's sake was inevitable, but I REALLY longed to do it on STAGE, with applause ringing in my ears and fans throwing roses, or at least handing me a bouquet of roses nicely. I joined the school choruses as soon as they started, but it took a bit of convincing for my elementary school choral teachers to let me squeeze into the more selective Musical Drama ensembles. What, a timid little nerd-girl like me, wanting to sing on stage? But as awkward as I was in social situations, being on stage was something else entirely, and SINGING on stage was the best it could get. If only I could convince the rest of the world I was the star I knew I really ought to be!
So in middle school I took voice lessons from a family friend and accomplished soloist. About halfway through the first lesson, she stopped me and asked, "Do you ever make fun of those fancy opera singers in cartoons, with the big fruity voices? Do you ever sing like that, for fun?" I giggled. Of course I did. "Good. This time, I want you to give me Over-the-Top Opera Singer. Make it as SILLY AS YOU CAN."
I did. I figured her huge grin was because I sounded funny. "How did that FEEL," she said, almost triumphantly, "in your face, and chest, and throat? What do you think you sounded like just now?"
I shrugged. "Silly?"
"Actually, no. You sounded GOOD. It sounded like goofing off in your ears, in your MIND maybe, but what was coming out of your mouth-- it sounded like you knew what you were doing."
And the sillier I thought I was being, the BETTER, it turns out, I GOT. Within a month I went from being ignored by my choral directors to lining up solos.
This happened, in slightly different circumstances, to a classmate of my sister's, too. They were having tryouts for their middle school one-act musical, and this girl had planned to be in the chorus, or maybe even the crew-- never considered trying out for a PART. But as tryouts ended and everyone started shuffling off to go home, she stepped to the middle of the stage and, just to screw around, belted out the refrain of the audition number. "WAIT!" the director shouted. "Come back here. Do that again!" AND that was how she landed the lead in the middle school musical (and continued to score lead roles for the rest of high school). By letting go of inhibitions and being silly.
This advice is shockingly brilliant as applied to singing. But I'm beginning to suspect it applies to writing just as well. I know I've mentioned a few times how I've been writing to prompts in the mornings. Sometimes I get essay questions that remind me of nothing less than the Writer's Block prompts on the LiveJournal homepage. Sometimes I get just a phrase or a setting that I have to describe. But other times I get actual Story Prompts, telling me to write a fictional scene. I put this box of prompts together four years ago, from various sources, and I have NO idea where they all came from anymore. But whoever came up with the prompts that went something like "You get in a minor fender-bender with your favorite actor who also happens to (you notice accidentally) have a dead body in his trunk. What happens?" and "Your favorite possession is threatening to jump off the Empire State Building. What now?" and "You're doing a crossword puzzle with a friend, when you notice the puzzle is SENDING YOUR FRIEND A MESSAGE, one that makes her storm from the room crying. WRITE THIS SCENE!"-- anyway, whoever you are, if you're out there trolling the Internet for your handiwork, YOU ARE BRILLIANT. I am assuming all of those prompts came from the same place because they're all just that much insane. And insanity is really not that far beyond genius, after all!
It is genius, because writing to those prompts taught me how to really LOVE writing again, and part of THAT is because they were so SILLY that I didn't feel like I had to THINK too hard about them. It was OKAY if what I wrote made no sense, because neither did the prompts! It was OKAY if I threw in completely random plot points, and followed them up with a sentence like, "I know, that sounds completely random. But that's because it WAS. Such things happen sometimes." It was OKAY if I glossed over inconsistancies and logical fallacies. I was WRITING, and it was FUN.
Sure, it's nothing I can make a living off of-- I can't PUBLISH bad X-Files fanfiction (that's what became of the Empire State Building prompt) or my ever more complex and ridiculous Pipeweed Mafia Saga (which began with the dead body in the trunk prompt, but has since spun off and taken over a whole bunch more prompts some of which WEREN'T even story prompts, including the crossword puzzle one although I hadn't intended it to, it just happened. I think I just like saying "Pipeweed Mafia." It's a bad habit). But I'm writing MORE now than I have since Sam was born. At this moment I've got THREE partial blog-posts in drafting mode, several story prompts I keep adding to, and occasionally-- OCCASIONALLY!-- I'll even add a few lines to a story that might actually SELL someday.
But who's to say that, somehow in the course of all my SILLYWRITING, I don't stumble upon something that IS useful? After all, ALL my writing as a child? That was SILLYWRITING. My ever in progress work in progress about Ian and Billy and friends? Began life as an all-night joke-fest between my two best friends and I in high school. It was EXACTLY the sort of random idiocy that I'm writing to prompts now. Years later I looked at it and said, "You know, I could actually make this WORK!" But I didn't INTEND it that way.
So maybe part of the PROCESS of drafting is Doing Your Opera Singer Voice on Paper. You get it all out with the INTENT to be as ridiculous as possible, only to discover that the results are actually GOOD. Full of LIFE! Of course, in the case of writing, it needs massive REVISIONS... but you've given it the spark of creativity that makes it WORTH revising!
So today, May the 25th, we can all join together and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLY 'ARRISON. You started out life as a joke at a sleepover (which, incidentally, wasn't even on May the 25-- I think it was April 23 or something), but now you are my best imaginary superhero friend. May I continue to bring wonderful characters like you into the world, just by learning to let the sillies out.
So in middle school I took voice lessons from a family friend and accomplished soloist. About halfway through the first lesson, she stopped me and asked, "Do you ever make fun of those fancy opera singers in cartoons, with the big fruity voices? Do you ever sing like that, for fun?" I giggled. Of course I did. "Good. This time, I want you to give me Over-the-Top Opera Singer. Make it as SILLY AS YOU CAN."
I did. I figured her huge grin was because I sounded funny. "How did that FEEL," she said, almost triumphantly, "in your face, and chest, and throat? What do you think you sounded like just now?"
I shrugged. "Silly?"
"Actually, no. You sounded GOOD. It sounded like goofing off in your ears, in your MIND maybe, but what was coming out of your mouth-- it sounded like you knew what you were doing."
And the sillier I thought I was being, the BETTER, it turns out, I GOT. Within a month I went from being ignored by my choral directors to lining up solos.
This happened, in slightly different circumstances, to a classmate of my sister's, too. They were having tryouts for their middle school one-act musical, and this girl had planned to be in the chorus, or maybe even the crew-- never considered trying out for a PART. But as tryouts ended and everyone started shuffling off to go home, she stepped to the middle of the stage and, just to screw around, belted out the refrain of the audition number. "WAIT!" the director shouted. "Come back here. Do that again!" AND that was how she landed the lead in the middle school musical (and continued to score lead roles for the rest of high school). By letting go of inhibitions and being silly.
This advice is shockingly brilliant as applied to singing. But I'm beginning to suspect it applies to writing just as well. I know I've mentioned a few times how I've been writing to prompts in the mornings. Sometimes I get essay questions that remind me of nothing less than the Writer's Block prompts on the LiveJournal homepage. Sometimes I get just a phrase or a setting that I have to describe. But other times I get actual Story Prompts, telling me to write a fictional scene. I put this box of prompts together four years ago, from various sources, and I have NO idea where they all came from anymore. But whoever came up with the prompts that went something like "You get in a minor fender-bender with your favorite actor who also happens to (you notice accidentally) have a dead body in his trunk. What happens?" and "Your favorite possession is threatening to jump off the Empire State Building. What now?" and "You're doing a crossword puzzle with a friend, when you notice the puzzle is SENDING YOUR FRIEND A MESSAGE, one that makes her storm from the room crying. WRITE THIS SCENE!"-- anyway, whoever you are, if you're out there trolling the Internet for your handiwork, YOU ARE BRILLIANT. I am assuming all of those prompts came from the same place because they're all just that much insane. And insanity is really not that far beyond genius, after all!
It is genius, because writing to those prompts taught me how to really LOVE writing again, and part of THAT is because they were so SILLY that I didn't feel like I had to THINK too hard about them. It was OKAY if what I wrote made no sense, because neither did the prompts! It was OKAY if I threw in completely random plot points, and followed them up with a sentence like, "I know, that sounds completely random. But that's because it WAS. Such things happen sometimes." It was OKAY if I glossed over inconsistancies and logical fallacies. I was WRITING, and it was FUN.
Sure, it's nothing I can make a living off of-- I can't PUBLISH bad X-Files fanfiction (that's what became of the Empire State Building prompt) or my ever more complex and ridiculous Pipeweed Mafia Saga (which began with the dead body in the trunk prompt, but has since spun off and taken over a whole bunch more prompts some of which WEREN'T even story prompts, including the crossword puzzle one although I hadn't intended it to, it just happened. I think I just like saying "Pipeweed Mafia." It's a bad habit). But I'm writing MORE now than I have since Sam was born. At this moment I've got THREE partial blog-posts in drafting mode, several story prompts I keep adding to, and occasionally-- OCCASIONALLY!-- I'll even add a few lines to a story that might actually SELL someday.
But who's to say that, somehow in the course of all my SILLYWRITING, I don't stumble upon something that IS useful? After all, ALL my writing as a child? That was SILLYWRITING. My ever in progress work in progress about Ian and Billy and friends? Began life as an all-night joke-fest between my two best friends and I in high school. It was EXACTLY the sort of random idiocy that I'm writing to prompts now. Years later I looked at it and said, "You know, I could actually make this WORK!" But I didn't INTEND it that way.
So maybe part of the PROCESS of drafting is Doing Your Opera Singer Voice on Paper. You get it all out with the INTENT to be as ridiculous as possible, only to discover that the results are actually GOOD. Full of LIFE! Of course, in the case of writing, it needs massive REVISIONS... but you've given it the spark of creativity that makes it WORTH revising!
So today, May the 25th, we can all join together and say HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLY 'ARRISON. You started out life as a joke at a sleepover (which, incidentally, wasn't even on May the 25-- I think it was April 23 or something), but now you are my best imaginary superhero friend. May I continue to bring wonderful characters like you into the world, just by learning to let the sillies out.
