Meaning

Sorting the Jumble

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 2 Comments

Sometimes when you’re an artist you will find yourself seemingly bogged down by more ideas than you know what to do with. When you are a writer this can be both a blessing and a curse. Some authors find themselves putting out two, even three novels a year at times. If you are at all familiar with the publishing process you will know that this is absolutely not an easy feat. Often times when you submit a book to a publisher you’re looking at somewhere between 3 and 6 months before your final product arrives in your hands – and that’s if you aren’t asked to do an extensive amount of editing. Of course, there is the running theory among the fans of some of these authors that there is a safe somewhere housing dozens of completed documents the author finished ages ago that they just toss out and update if they’re stuck on a piece. Regardless of how you look at it, the fact is that someone who can produce that many works with that amount of regularity certainly has a gift.

So how does it work? Some people can go through life and never get a single story idea at all, so how can others produce dozens of books in just a few decades? The simple answer is that such authors and artists have found a way to not only open themselves to new ideas, but to hone in on certain ones and tame their imaginations enough to allow them to focus on the task at hand before diving into another. Personally, this area is one that I could stand to work on a bit if I hope to ever find my works on the shelf of my local bookstore. As I’ve mentioned before, I can get ideas from just about anywhere, and often find myself working on multiple pieces at once, leading me to having more unfinished projects than I care to admit at times. Just in the last couple of weeks I found myself stumbling across I think four new novel ideas and one or two short story ideas, one of which I sort of started in a messy, lazy sort of outline. Before I go any farther here, let me elaborate that I am in no way complaining. I would rather have an excess of ideas than not have enough, but for some it can pose a true problem when trying to figure out how to manage the load.

So what do you do when this happens? There are two (probably more, but I’m only focusing on two) answers to this question, and they can be much more difficult than they sound. The first and preferred method for me is analyzing and looking deep into each idea that is currently on your mind. Look at these pieces, study what you already know about them, figure out what you still need to know about them and think of them all individually. Often, I’ve found, if you look at all of your ideas together and as an individual one will stand out more than the others. You may find that you already know more about this particular piece, or it may even just be that there is more urgency involved with one of them, as if this piece itself is more urgent to be written. Obviously, you take the piece that you know most about or the one that feels the most right and you run with it. If just focusing on the pieces doesn’t help clear the matter up, then you should take the step a  little farther.

If you’re the type of person who does an outline for your pieces, then try outlining them all. If you’re the type who will jot a few plot notes down and then feel ready to dive in, do that. Whichever of these two methods works best for you (and there may well be a post in that topic alone) is the one you should use, of course. Or, for those of you who  haven’t really used either but want to give it a shot, maybe try both if you find yourself in this situation. Once this process is completed for all of your works you may find that your answer has come to you in much the same way it did for those who found the first way helpful. Of course, if this isn’t the case and you still find yourself confused about which work to focus on, then just look through your outlines and/or notes and pick the one that you wrote the most about. That, I’ve often found, is the one that your brain is going to be most comfortable pushing forward with.

Now, for those of you who find that focusing doesn’t clear up the jumble and your outlines and notes are all just about the same length for every potential piece, then my suggestion is that you either take all of the knowledge that you have put on paper and give it a day or so to ‘cook’ and develop into a more solid possibility, or, if that doesn’t sound very appealing to you, then just pick the first idea that came to you (chronologically, or just for this experiment, whichever works for you) and run with it. You’ll often find that if this isn’t the right choice your mind will quickly let you know. Once the piece is settled and has asserted it’s place as the front-runner, you should be able to narrow your scope of ideas and charge into production. Of course, if you’re like me, this probably won’t stop the flow of ideas from coming. Fortunately, the methods I’ve put down here can be used as often as needed and will usually be very helpful.

One thing you may run into, however, is that your answer to the ‘which novel should I write first’ quiz may change every time, which is the issue I’ve run into numerous times. If this happens to you, don’t fight it. Follow your mind and let the story flow as you would any other time, being thankful that you’ve been given such a blessing. Eventually, no matter how many stories are on your to-write list you’ll get  to them all.  Granted, if you’re lucky enough for the ideas to keep coming right up until the day your own final page is written, maybe you have someone you can leave your notes to and they can carry the remaining pieces on in your honor!

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Avoiding Negativity and Getting in the Zone

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 3 Comments

Monday’s post addressed the ways we should handle the limitations others put on our work and how best to adjust our work to fit the pubic opinion (i.e., don’t). Today I will be discussing what to do in regards to negative commentary directed at you, your craft or a piece of your work.

First of all I must make the statement that seems very obvious here. You should always do your absolute best to avoid all negativity in your life and in your craft. I know this isn’t always easy, but it is necessary if you are going to maintain sanity and continue in what you love. I also have to say this, no matter how much it pains me; sooner or later each and every one of us will absolutely have to face the negative comments of someone who doesn’t like or understand our work or our craft. There is no way around that, unfortunately. There are almost 8 billion people on this rock, and whether we like it or not, they aren’t all going to love what we do.

The negative commentary we will have to face can come at us from many different mediums and they all can hit us in a different way. I think one of the most important things I can say here about how to handle getting this feedback is that you should never let it get to you. You will have to develop a very thick skin if you hope to gain success in any public field. No matter what area you go into you will have to deal with people who may not like your particular contributions. Obviously, some of these people will be civilized and willing to have an intellectual discussion with you regarding your work, but there are always going to be those that won’t. No matter how the person giving you negativity or criticism is acting, it is always important for you to keep your head. As someone who has been known to have a bit of a temper at times, particularly when I feel something I’m passionate about is being attacked, I know that isn’t always easy. But it is crucial that you not be seen as irrational in the face of criticism. That, I’m afraid, is something a lot of us are never able to come back from.

The way you are approached has a lot to do with how you handle the situation, as I’ve said, and it is important to note that, no matter what is said to you, you should NEVER engage in an argument, especially on the internet. Being realistic, that will never turn out well. In my own experience you can tell the type of person you are dealing with from their comments and how they handle themselves in their initial attempt at discussion. Obviously if someone comments on a piece of your work and tells you that you are a talent-less hack who should crawl back under a rock and hide for the rest of his life, it would just be best to ignore that person. In regards to the shout out I made on Monday, which helped me realize the topics for this week, I don’t think you should ever apologize for your work. I understand how tempting it may be to drop a quick ‘sorry’ in when you decide to respond to someone who has made negative comments on your work, but the bottom line is that it is YOUR work. You are the one who had the idea, you are the one who developed the piece and brought it into the world, and having the ability and the courage to do that, to me, excuses you from ever needing to apologize for doing so.

Looking at your work in this way can open you to a whole new level of understanding and can make you feel that you instantly have a greater freedom in regards to the craft itself. When receiving feedback that can be construed as negative I think it’s important to look at exactly what the person is saying and how they are saying it. If they are telling you that your work is stupid because pigs can’t actually look up even though there was never even a single mention of a pig in your work, you can probably pretty quickly dismiss that person. However if someone is telling you that they found it hard to relate to your piece about overcoming depression because their best friend couldn’t overcome the problem then you have the opportunity for a candid discussion that can, if handled right, gain you at least one fan and improve the public opinion of your work. Maintaining civility and having a strong, meaningful conversation about your work here can be a great move on your part and may well set a lot of people’s opinion on what type of person you are.

In the event that your negative comments don’t come from someone sitting in front of a computer screen, your interaction is going to be that much more crucial. Face to face encounters with a fan (or someone who doesn’t like us or our work) can make or break the way we are viewed as well. If we are in a public setting and someone comes up to us and says that they absolutely hate our work and they think we made a terrible mistake by being a writer (or artist,  whatever the medium) we have to choose our reaction very carefully. In my opinion the best response to something like that is more or less “I’m sorry you feel that way”. By saying this I think you are showing respect for the person’s opinion while not apologizing for what you and your work stand for. Of course, most of this seems like common knowledge, so I’m sure we all know about how not to react to hecklers (most likely because of how we’ve seen celebrities do it). However, one very important thing I will leave you with is that you also have to learn how to react to positive commentary as well.

Whether it is in person or online when someone gives you or your work a compliment you must be able to hold your head up and thank them. You should never gloat about the success of your work (in either circumstance) and you should always be grateful to have a fan give you a compliment. Granted, this advice probably isn’t necessary since every writer I’ve spoken to still gets chills whenever they’re complimented,  no matter how famous they are. Regardless, the main point of this ranting jumble of topics is that we should always avoid negativity when possible, and whenever it isn’t possible we have to learn to not take it to heart and react in a way that shows we are capable of intellect and respect. After all, the person who wants to publish your next book might be monitoring just how well you react to compliments and criticism and the wrong response may well send them running.

 

Writing Freedom

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 1 Comment

As I was sitting down to make a post today I realized that my topic had actually been staring me in the face for a few days and had been brewing behind my eyes without me even realizing it. Last week I made a post that exceeded the “word limit” that I was lead to believe should largely be monitored when blogging. Upon realizing how far over that 600-800 rule of thumb I had gone I threw in an apology for those of you who had stuck with me long enough to make it to that point. The next day I was pleased to find a comment from one of my readers (http://heroicallybadwriters.com/ ) who told me that I shouldn’t apologize for the length of the piece because it worked and was a strong post. This really made me feel good and got me thinking in the back of mind about how often we are subjected to standards, rules of thumb and general restrictions and negativity that our work should never be bound by.

A good author can pen a story in as little as two words, should the story only take that many, but the same author can need to use thousands of pages to tell the story the way it deserves (and demands) to be told. Neither of these is more correct than the other and neither of these is necessarily better than the other. Every story is unique and every story has a certain amount of space needed to come through in its full glory. So why do we let negativity in? Negativity, of course can mean more than just listening to those who say a good paragraph only contains 5 sentences or a good story stays under 20, 000 words. It can also be those who directly insult a completed piece of your work. I think what I may do, in order to fully address both of these issues, is make them two separate posts. So today we are discussing the limitations put upon us by others and how it is perfectly acceptable to break them.

How many of you have heard, either on your own or in a class somewhere down the line that stories and letters and any other sort of writing must be kept under strict control lest it break free and lose all meaning? All of us, I’m betting, have heard this in some form or another.  But how much truth does it hold? Admittedly, words of caution like this can be very helpful in the process of training your brain in the art of professional writing (i.e. journalism, technical writing and the like) but when it comes to creative writing they do more harm than good most of the time, in my opinion.

Take, for example, the art of Flash Fiction. Yes, it is a wonderful concept and I’ve written some myself, but let’s look at the ‘rules’ behind it. Flash fiction is typically story that has to be told in under 100 words (or 500, depending on the venue in search of the piece) that must have a solid enough plot to be understood, which sometimes has to follow a certain theme. Like I said, this is a great form of art and a wonderful challenge for some writers and some ideas, but for others it can be devastating. When an idea hits it can be something that may be told in one sentence or it can literally take years of your life to write and come out in such a large hunk that it has to be split into seven books for publication’s sake. Imagine being a beginning writer who is hit with an idea that falls somewhere in the middle of these two examples who  tries to write that idea for a flash fiction contest somewhere. The process of trying to cut down huge, multi-faceted idea like that into a manageable 100 word piece may be enough to send the poor soul right out the door and prevent them from ever writing again.

As another example, let’s look at a magazine that really inspires someone and allows them to come up with an idea that they absolutely adore, but maybe falls just short of their 2,500 word minimum (yes, they do exist). This person may spend hours or days hacking at their story and trying to add enough material to make it reach this limit only to find that the story no longer resembles the masterpiece they originally felt it was.

Both of these examples may seem like they’re easily avoidable, but that’s likely because you’ve been in your craft for a long time. Once these two beginning authors took the time to examine their possibilities, I would hope that they would see there are other avenues for their work and they would move forward, but trust me when I say that isn’t always the case. Obviously, a good portion of the lesson to be learned from those two examples is just as much to do with finding the right place for your work as it is about breaking the limits put on you by others, but the true lesson is that we have to learn the work itself. We have to able to set it free. There will never be a time that our work will set limits for us, so why should we adhere to limits others try to set on it?

Art is about freedom of speech and creativity and allowing our true selves to explore parts of the world that we haven’t before, right? Of course. So if we start a story and immediately try to put chains on it and tell it that it can only do so much, it will never be a piece that fully satisfies us. Of course, looking at grammar rules and standards of language and syntax and everything else is what we, as authors, should do, but if Faulkner had decided to write The Sound and the Fury without using stream of consciousness because it didn’t follow standard rules, where would the book be now? What would it be? Would it have any real standing in the literary community as a record breaking piece that truly allowed us to see into the characters’ point of view? Probably not.

My point here is that while, yes rules for writing and for art can be very helpful and useful, no piece should ever be changed from what it wants to be in order to fit the rules, especially if those rules limit it and change its meaning. When you are taken by a piece and it comes out in its full glory and your final product is something that doesn’t adhere to rules or guidelines made for other pieces, don’t fret. Your work knows what it is doing. Sometimes the guidelines laid down for art are really little more than that. Guidelines. There are guidelines everywhere in life. Obviously some are more important than others, but some – like those involving the arts – can be bent. While it is absolutely crucial to drive on your own side of the road and follow traffic signs, it’s more than acceptable if we read the newspaper out of order or sleep for less than 8 hours a night. Yes, guidelines are important, but as an artist you should NEVER allow someone else’s opinion control your work. Editors and agents will work with you to improve a final piece, yes, but under no circumstances should you be afraid to write a piece the way it needs to be written because you think someone else will judge it in one way or another.

Art is about freedom and power and idealism and more things than I can possibly name here, and in no way should you try to restrict your creative abilities because you think your final product won’t fit into one genre or another. So the next time you are overcome by an idea and you want to let it out, don’t try to put a leash on it so it will fit someone else’s idea of a ‘good’ piece. Don’t put your work under a microscope and change it if that change alters the meaning of the piece itself. Allow your work to run free. Allow it to be what it is meant to be. It will make you much more satisfied in the long run and will allow others to be blown away when taking it in. Because, no matter how much we may doubt it or be told otherwise, there will always be at least one person out there who would love to have our work as it is meant to be see. Why should we deprive them of that?

What Writing is to me

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 8 Comments

I’ve talked a lot about how writing is my passion, my calling, what I love, but I haven’t actually taken a lot of time to explain why this is or what the craft itself means to me. I’ve seen a lot of authors and artists who discuss why they pursue their craft and how it makes a difference to them and I think it’s awesome to read things like that. I hope you all feel the same, and I hope you’ll respond in the comments and tell me a bit about what your craft means to you.

First and foremost I definitely have to reiterate that writing is ingrained in every part of my being and has been for as long as I can remember. I heartily thank my mother for this. From the time I could hold a book she made sure I had as many as I wanted. From reading and consuming everything I could about my favorite topics (typically vampires, the supernatural and the mysterious) came the burning urge to create. For a long time I sought out the best way to do this. My imagination ran rampant nearly 24/7 (a condition that nearly had me basically diagnosed as ADHD or some other such nonsense that is intended to squash individuality and creativity – but that’s another story altogether) and I was seeing stories in everything. I tried my hand at drawing and talking my way through my stories, but it wasn’t until I first put pencil to paper that I felt the true release of writing my words down.

Of course, at first I had no idea how serious and helpful that feeling would be. I jotted down small reproductions of some of my favorite stories, and occasionally attempted to pen a semi-sequel as I’ve explained before, but once that first real original idea flooded into my brain I felt the true release and power of the craft. Many of us who are fans of any sort of art be it painting, music, books or movies have felt what it’s like to be moved to tears while enjoying a piece. Imagine that feeling while you are creating something of your own. I seriously hope some of you have felt that kind of power, that sense of absolute purpose. It is something that I will never forget and will hopefully experience many more times in my life.

So what is writing to me? That’s my topic here, after all. To me writing is that sense of purpose, a sense of belonging and solidity. Whenever I’m having a stressful day or I’m feeling angry or upset in any way I can sit down and put pen to paper and create my own outlet, my own freedom. Granted, sometimes this works better than others, at the very least the act of immersing myself in a world of my creating will take everything else off of my mind. While working on creating that world of my own I can put everything else off or, if I choose, put a similar problem on a character and help them tear it to shreds. That kind of power is, in its own  way, one of the coolest parts of being an artist. You are creating your own world and anything can happen there. You have absolute power while making this world and you can put anything you want into existence. If you want to neutralize all pain and suffering, it only takes a few strokes of a paint brush or a few well organized words. When I place myself in a world that I’ve created I am in complete control and that allows my creative mind to soar to all new heights.

Writing is just as much about that unloading as it is about absolute freedom for me. When writing I can say anything, do anything, BE anything. Whatever I say goes in my own world. If I want to walk on the ceiling and only sleep on the kitchen table, I can create a world where that happens. As I’ve stated, I can look at nearly anything and see a huge story involving it. In life, I can allow my imagination to run rampant and make its own explanation, but at the end of the day water is still wet and fire still burns, but by using my imagination in my writing I can put any situation – possible or impossible – into play with few consequences. Honestly, there aren’t any consequences for this act, but if you’re creating a six headed camel with the legs of a spider and you can’t at least give some explanation for how it came to be, it may well harm your readership if you’re allowing anyone else to read the piece.

Regardless of the situation, writing, to me, is absolute power. It is freedom. It is the one thing I can do and the one place I can go where I can indubitably be me and change the world into exactly what I want it to be. Writing allows me to shed the burdens cast on me by society and allows me to fully embrace my creativity and imagination. It allows me to focus on what I want rather than what is pushed upon me. When entering my own world I am able to use my calling and do what I truly feel I was created to do. And I owe all of it to God and those who have supported me. So many of us have a bit of talent in one craft or another, but because someone maybe told us a particular piece wasn’t one of their favorites we let it crush us and prevent us from continuing on in our passion. I’ve had both sides. I’ve heard people tell me that I’m one of their favorite artists; one of my friends has even repeatedly called me the next Stephen King, a compliment which I certainly don’t deserve but humbly give thanks for. On the other hand I’ve had people tell me they got nothing from my work or that it was over their head, not their style or that they just generally didn’t care for it. Yes, those comments do hurt, but I try to remind myself that it takes all kinds to make the world go around. But, I don’t let them crush my spirit.

I know that I am meant to write. I was put here to use the written word to create as many worlds as possible in my time on the planet and I intend to do just that. So with this post I want to give a very heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported me. Obviously I can’t name every single person here, but of those who have made a difference, these people are some of the most influential. First and foremost, I thank God for making me the man I a and giving me the gift that I have and love so much. I also than the person who dealt with my writing before anyone else and told me never to give up on it; my mother (who just happens to have a birthday Sunday; Happy Birthday Mom, and thank you for trying to understand my insanity!). My friends Josh and Nicole, who have been my audience longer than most anyone else and who have told me they love my work even when I myself hated it; thanks for everything, you two. Finally, three teachers who influenced me even more than I can describe; Jereial Fletcher, Larry Hypes and Gillian Huang-Tiller – you three were great in helping show me more of my true potential and turning me on to writers who could do the same.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I hope my point has definitely come across like I meant for it to. When you ask me what writing is to me, I can give you an explanation that would last days and weeks, but in truth, the answer could also be the most simplistic and vague one possible. What is writing to me? It is everything. It is who I am. It my breath, my life, my blood, my purpose, my calling and my freedom. I would love to hear from you all about what your craft is to you as well. No answer is too long or too short and no answer could ever be wrong. So feel free to jump in on the comments below or message me personally. I hope all have an amazing time searching within yourself to answer the question “what is my craft to me”.