writer

Freewriting Session 1: January 2023

/ Devon L. Miller / 2 Comments

I’m convinced that any writer who claims they never have writer’s block is probably either a liar or not a very good writer. Those of us who admit to having writer’s block like to share our methods for overcoming it. Because my writer’s block is often brought on by my anxiety, which causes an inability to concentrate, one of my favorite methods to beat the block is a freewriting session.

A quill in an empty inkwell positioned next to a blank notebook page.

For those who don’t know what freewriting is, it’s when you write with no regard to grammar, punctuation, or spelling. You just write. You can use a writing prompt, or not. You can time your session, or not. The only real rule is to just keep writing. Many moons ago, a creative writing teacher put on music in the classroom and told us to write whatever the music evoked and to keep our pens moving until she turned the music off. What was so amazing about that day and that exercise is that, for the whole time, the anxiety and the thoughts I’d been fixated on went quiet. My brain focused on nothing but the music and what I was putting on the page.

Well friends, my anxiety has been bad and, as a result, my productivity low. A good friend introduced me to some new (to me) music. You see where this is going…

The music my friend introduced me to was Hypogeum by The Oracle. I chose track II: The Face in the Shroud because it’s the longest on the album.

So, without any further ado, I present the results of my first freewriting session of the year. (Note: I typed this freewriting session, so spell check kind of automatically did its thing):

***

Each step fell heavier than the last. What if this didn’t work? What if all the effort, and pain, and cleansing, and preparation amounted to…nothing? Would she be permitted to stay? What would a life in the cold, unforgiving wilderness look like if exiled?

All she knew was this life inside these walls with the strict rules meant to prepare her for an ascension. And what was the ascension, really? All of those around her had apparently ascended but were still here. They did walk about with a strange glow in their eyes that indicated a certain knowing of all things. But then, why didn’t they tell her anything?

Another footstep. Another turn through a twisted labyrinth both metaphorical and perfectly real and tangible.

Another footstep. Stomach drops at the glow ahead. This was not the natural glow of a fire, but a pulsing green which quickened to match pace with her heart. She fought to breathe.

Another step; another turn.

The light pulsing in front of her now. Figures she could barely make out. So familiar yesterday, and so strange today.

My Acting Teacher Was Right About Writing, Too

/ Devon L. Miller / 3 Comments

Each flyer, poster, and playbill on my acting teacher’s office wall represented a show he’d worked on, and the wall was packed. Some prominently displayed items came from university productions and were covered in student autographs, while others came from bigger things—New York and LA things. Though I couldn’t have been more than a college sophomore (and had gone “off to college” the distance of a whole 20 miles), I was convinced that I knew what I wanted in life. A wall like his was on the list, but there was a problem.

My scene performances were falling flat, and though the teacher I visited was neither my advisor, nor the instructor of the class in question, we had a rapport and I trusted his advice above others. Besides, the Theatre Arts department was a small one, so he didn’t have to lead my class to know that some students crossed their fingers to ward against drawing me as a scene partner.

One of my old headshots. The fresh face of a young woman who knows exactly what she wants in life. She is, however, wrong.

My teacher and I had a conversation that I now imagine we must have had a million times, that went over my head a million and one: Do you really want to be an actor? Of course, I do! Why else would I be here? And paying tuition, no less! Acting requires both bravery and vulnerability. Well, yeah. I’m standing on stage in front of a crowd of people, vulnerable to judgement and rotten tomatoes. That’s bravery. You’re going to have to find a way to empathize with the character and that might require digging deep and pulling up ugly stuff you don’t want to look at. In the real world, I wouldn’t have auditioned for this role in the first place.

His advice didn’t sink in in time for me to connect with Blanche DuBois, to live truthfully within her given circumstances, and my grade on the scene reflected it. I heard my scene partner got the playing-to-a-brick-wall curve.

Still, much to the dismay of potential scene partners of the future, I performed well enough overall to advance to the next semester’s acting class. Much to their delight, I didn’t last long in the department after that anyway. Halfway through my college career, an acting teacher asked me to drop her class. It should have crushed me, but I’d never been more relieved. I did one better than drop her class and changed my major altogether. If I was going to dig that deep—if I was going to take a character’s hand and let them lead me into some scary place I didn’t want to go, time after time after time, it would be a character I created. I’m a writer, now, I’d chirp, though I knew on some level I always had been. Fade out.

Fade in to the other day. I sat at my computer, frustrated as I ever let myself get without taking a breather. No matter how I wrote, rewrote, and wrote it again, my scene fell flat.

The observant reader knows exactly where this is going: I wasn’t (and am probably still not) digging deeply enough to do the job right. I understand it, now; truly grok it in a way that I hadn’t when I thought I was an actor. I’m working on a novel with a lot of ideas and characters. I don’t necessarily like all of those characters, but to write them correctly, to do any kind of justice to the world I’m building or my protagonist within it, I’m going to have to find a way to empathize with them and dig deep and pull up ugly stuff I don’t want to look at, or it’s all going to keep falling flat.

So, that’s where I am, folks!  I’m pulling up ugly shit I don’t want to look at, and it sucks as much as it sounds like it does. However, it’s what needs to be done to make sure the novel doesn’t suck, and that’s the important part…even if it is taking a bit more time and a bit more out of me than expected.

And maybe, if I work really hard and write a really good book, some interviewer will ask me: So, how much of this character is autobiographical? And maybe, in the most appropriate answer to the question yet, I’ll summon a demon to devour their soul.