Saw this on HuffingtonPost right after my earlier post but didn’t know how to insert the video. Still haven’t figured it out (so if anyone can help me with my Basic Acct, thanks!) but here’s a link to this timely song from the amazing Paul Hipp:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-hipp/fearless-song_b_30283.html

I recommend going to his site for his funny/scathing/insightful videos (I’m the Decider Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo; Dick Cheney Blues; etc.):

http://www.myspace.com/paulhipp

Enjoy!

I can bring lip balm and toothpaste on the airplane when I fly out for the Rutgers One-On-One in October! The fearmongers have decided small quantities of gels and pastes are acceptable but just so we don’t completely let go of our fears, those items must be placed in a quart-sized zipped plastic bag, and will be screened separately as we go through security.

The mid-term elections are upon us and the obvious manipulation of people’s fears would be funny if it wasn’t so effective; Karl Rove knows exactly what buttons to push. We are a nation paralyzed by fear. And this administration knows that a frightened nation is a pliant nation.

I’m so grateful to Michael Moore’s BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE because he pointed out how the media work so hard to keep us afraid. I sort of knew that before seeing the movie when it came out but was still susceptible to those messages, but now that stuff can’t touch me. My mate watched the news last night and I caught the opening teaser with a woman saying “It was scary. It was very, very scary.” Then the news anchor introduced the opening story about four local government offices receiving white powder in their mail and again we see the woman telling us that it was very, very scary (in case we’d let go of the fear in the intervening seconds). I’m not doubting it was frightening to open that mail but let us form our own emotions, okay?

So I haven’t worked on my WIP since Thursday. I was at my local SCBWI conference this past weekend and felt a bit overwhelmed by it all but think I can jump back into it today. Writing a first draft can be a scary process but I think I can get past the fear…………..

4,924 / 38,000 (13.0%)

Wasn’t sure if I’d make the word-count today but got another 574 down on paper. I’m feeling wobbly about their quality but it’s a done deal and I won’t mess with them anymore today.

4,354 / 38,000 (11.5%)

It feels so good to plug along on this project. 520 words written today. I’m not the kind of writer to get carried away in a whoosh of words and ideas. Not anymore, anyway. I’ve done that in the past and then had to deal with the aftermath of tangents and characters speaking/acting in less than thoughtful terms. I don’t mean I censor my characters but I have to move slowly while getting to know them so I don’t create a story that isn’t true to them. We’re all getting to know each other right now and I don’t want to rush to judgment.

Unfortunately, I now have this in my head. Everybody sing………..

Getting to know you,
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you,
Getting to know what to say

Haven’t you noticed
Suddenly I’m bright and breezy?
Because of all the beauty and new
Things I’m learning about you
Day by day.

Scary,isn’t it?

3,836 / 38,000 (10.1%)

So having completed my word-count for the day after surviving some moments of trembling doubt and insecurity about the way my latest project is unfolding, I sought other writers’ methodologies. This, from Arundhati Roy, explains the method behind her exquisite THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS:

“The only way I can explain how I wrote it was the way an architect designs a building. You know, it wasn’t as if I started at the beginning and ended at the end. I would start somewhere and I’d color in a bit and then I would deeply stretch back and then stretch forward. It was like designing an intricately balanced structure and when it was finished it was finished. There were no drafts. But that doesn’t mean I just sat and spouted it out. It took a long time.”

“When I write, I never re-write a sentence because for me my thought and my writing are one thing. It’s like breathing, I don’t re-breathe a breath… Arranging the bones of the story took time, but it was never painful. Everything I have – my intellect, my experience, my feelings have been used. If someone doesn’t like it, it is like saying they don’t like my gall bladder. I can’t do anything about it.”

“Only about two pages were rewritten. I don’t rewrite. It was just a lot of arranging.”

“As a very young child my mother gave me a book called Free Writing and we were encouraged to write fearlessly. The first coherent sentence I ever wrote, which is actually in this book, was written when I was five. It was about an Australian missionary who taught me. Every day she would say, ‘I can see Satan in your eyes.’ So, the first sentence I ever wrote was: ‘I hate Miss Mitten and I think her knickers are torn.'”

Wow. This isn’t how I work but since each book I write takes a different path, maybe someday I’ll have something close to this experience. I can dream, right?