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"Micahcycle" 15 December 2015

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1. Make a unique character, with a highly specific flaw that puts into question their ability to clearly interpret the world. 2. Do horrible things to your character, but never steal away their humanity. 3. Never make your character ignorant or crazy. 4. Enable your character to change, despite their flaw, and through trial, to understand a profound truth of the world. Figure out the profound truths of the world. 5. FEEL your character’s struggle. Make yourself weep and angry and tired. Make yourself swoon. Find out what it means to be someone who is not you. 6. Empathy is of the highest importance. If a reader does not FEEL, then it is not drama but journalism, and journalism that is also fiction has little value. 7. FEELING is communicated through the senses. Communicate through images, sounds, scents, and textures, not through words. You will primarily communicate through images. 8. Put your character in a situation that is highly dramatic and unique, leaving your character naked to their flaws. 9. Spend a lot of time planning the plot. Create plots that are so unique and off-formula that nobody believes you’ve spent any time at all thinking about plot. 10. Let your character want something, but don’t give it to them easily. Give them what they’ve earned. Make them work the entire story to earn it, or not. 11. Every scene you create must feel strange and unfamiliar. Strange and unfamiliar builds mystery, and feels dangerous, and mystery and danger feeds curiosity. 12. Invent settings that are interesting and peculiar, or find something interesting and peculiar in settings that are banal. All settings are metaphoric reflections of your character’s interior. 13. Never be obvious. Never be coy. Make a reader have to work a little to understand what they’re reading, but eventually pay out their effort in empathy and clarity. 14. Reveal something in your endings, creating a convergence of plot and story. Write the ending in a way it doesn’t feel tidy. Be French with your endings. 15. Don’t under-write. Supply everything a reader needs to see and feel and think. Control the reader at all times. 16. Don’t over-write. Don’t make a reader read a single word more than they need. If you make a reader read a single word more than they need then you’ve given them permission to skim. 17. Always find the exact right nouns and verbs. Verisimilitude is largely determined by the accuracy of nouns and verbs. 18. Write with a prose style that seems organic and free though it is completely planned and controlled. 19. Don’t worry about length. A story will be as long as it needs to be, and not a word longer, or shorter. The story dictates its length. 20. No short cuts. Think of the most demanding ways to accomplish what you want and do those things. It will save you time in the end. 21. Never intentionally offend anyone. But don’t worry if people are offended by your work. 22. Make your titles simple and a little odd. Make a reader have to read your story to fully understand the title, and make a title that helps a reader fully understand the story. 23. Choose projects that make you feel something intensely. Be obsessed. 24. You must give yourself up to the story. Eliminate yourself. It’s not about you. 25. Don’t work around other people. Other people will make you self-conscious. Find some place you can be alone. Be alone. 26. Do not look beyond yourself for validation. 27. Be brave enough to take yourself seriously. Once you decide to take yourself seriously you will stop imitating others and will become original.

Alan Heathcock (via relatedworlds)

Excellent advice for stories AND poetry...makes me want to write something more personal, permanent, and substantial than just a homework assignment... I will have to revisit this tonight!

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Exhaust

Can’t catch words that escape me.

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“Give someone a mask and they’ll show their true face.” 21 February 2015

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“Life is like riding a bicycle, in order to keep your balance you must keep moving!” 06 March 2015

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“Color your life with a rainbow of memories.”

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“LOVE.” 16 February 2015

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“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” 14 February 2015

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“I’ve never been a girly girl, but I’ll always be a lady.” 17 February 2015

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“One thorn of experience is with a whole wilderness of warning.” 06 February 2015

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“Style is a reflection of your attitude & your personality.” 31 January 2015

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“Make Time to Travel.” 30 January 2015

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“Welcome to my Imagination.” My first mixed media art journal page. 29 January 2015

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Imposition

After revision of indecision Thus my submission to inquisition About my mission, the expedition, outside of my jurisdiction.

Attrition of disposition. Premonition from your derision. Depraved volition guides blind incision, repetition, to bony prison.

Shall I succumb to demolition, or will it be the malnutrition, ‘til I transition: Decomposition Beyond recognition to apparition?

Manacled Inhibitions.  Exhausted will, no ammunition. Capitulate decommission, whispering my contrition. Helpless to supposition the existence of divine position… “SHOW YOURSELF, COME TO FRUITION! SAVE ME FROM THIS EXTRADITION!”

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cul de sac

traveled with you and got nowhere

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Point and Laugh!

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“A smile is the curve that sets everything straight.” :)  ~Unknown