Category Archives: autobiographical

A Writer’s Exploration: Plight of the Obsessive Revisionist

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I enter my own world when I write. I know all artists can identify – some call it entering the zone or finding their own space. The sights and sounds around me become non-existent; I hear nothing but my mental voice. As a painter sees only color, form, and texture on the canvas, I see nothing outside of the words on the page or screen and the mental images I intend them to portray. Smell, taste, and touch are similar experiences, except for the sips of beer or water as I work, which I tend to forget about pretty quickly until I have exhausted my brain for the night.

I enter an entirely new world when I revise. With all senses alert, I traverse this alternative environment capturing every pertinent detail for the reader who dares to enter it. Life spent in this world far exceeds the time spent in the first round of creating it. It is an art unto itself, one that has occupied my brain at all hours of the day and night regardless of activity – cleaning the dinner dishes, driving my daughter to an ice rink, working on a project at my job, enjoying a show – revision never sleeps.

Once upon a time, when I was eighteen or so, I would fall in love with my first draft. Yes, I was one of those people. God forbid I corrupt those authentic words no matter how unnecessary, weak, or confusing the language might be. I quickly came around, though. By the time I graduated college, my creative writing mentor, Dick Allen, had instilled in me the necessity and value of revision. My power over the craft and technique were less than stellar at my nascent age, but the effort was there.

Last summer I pulled out my writing archive (read: large airtight Rubbermaid container filled with notebooks and printed manuscripts) to review what I wrote nearly twenty years earlier, in search of stories I might revitalize. Some stories were immediately cast aside; they are not the person I am today. Minimal effort on revision, I determined, unintentionally breaking rules with minimal consequences. Others showed promise. I went to work on them for the full summer, cringing and laughing at the elements I allowed to stay in the final drafts when I was just starting out.

So here I am today, revision is a permanent addition to my pantheon of obsessions. I have a touch of OCD, well, maybe more than a touch, but I have learned to manage it over the years, funneling it into my creative endeavors. Thankfully, I would never qualify for the latest wave of reality TV shows exploiting people’s strange addictions and compulsions, not that I would ever take part in those. This writing thing, whether on my blog or other channels, is my reality show with me in control. Those TV shows do serve as great source material for creating some interesting characters, however.

I spent the other night compiling line edits, comments, and other feedback from at least ten different people (I lost count) for a story I have been developing for the past several months. Hours passed without my knowledge, the occasional blurt from my daughter or whine from a cat piercing my focus, but I persisted. When I decided to finish for the night, I had learned seven hours had passed and it was nearly 1:00 AM. I finished my warm Ruthless Rye IPA and went to bed satisfied that my new story had grown up a little bit more. Of course, my story wrapped itself around my waist and followed me to bed where it continued to play out as I slowly fell asleep.

Thing is, if it wasn’t a story my brain was mulling over as I tried to sleep it would have been some other not so happy – even stressful – thoughts in a continuous loop plaguing my sleep. I will always opt for the former; call it my form of escapism in support of mental wellness.

A Writer’s Exploration: Finding My Nonfiction Voice

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I tried something new recently. It was risky – well, not really risky, let’s say daring – I applied my fiction voice to my nonfiction work.

Over the years, as I have developed my business writing prowess, I always felt there were certain molds I needed to fit in to and expectations to meet. Often times I found myself writing in a stilted, unnatural voice, like I was listening to myself on the other side of a two-story brick and mortar wall. It never sat right with me. It felt like a chore. I would spend countless collective hours revising and refining, restructuring and reworking – as I am sure any writer has had the good fortune of dealing with – to sound reasonably good. And the good was good, sometimes a little better than good, sometimes it was dry, business-like, professional, regimented, bland and craving a makeover of charisma and soul. Sometimes I hated the venomous amorphous beast that slowly gnawed at my psyche little bits at a time. It made me crazy; my mental wellness was not quite at stake, but crazy nonetheless. But I did what needed to be done, I stuck to my due diligence.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wrote well, when I was into it. And if not well, well enough for the sake of well enough. I wrote news articles and business information for the corporate intranet, website content, ad copy, various employee communications, a few press releases, a speech or two … whatever a Corporate Communicator would write on a regular basis. It did the job, it communicated clearly and efficiently, and I fulfilled my obligation. Nevertheless, it felt distant to me – like another shallow faceless automaton wrote it. I was starved to fight my way out of this monotony.

Since last August, I have been writing a short fiction piece for my MFA writing workshop course. You could say it is a psychological thriller among other things. During the process, I found myself seeing the story and interpreting it into the written language in a novel way. My writing voice, to my surprise, had evolved to a new level. Though it is hard to pinpoint the catalyst, I fell in love with the writing process all over again (I had to throw in one more cliché, really).

Then it hit me in a subconscious sense – because I did not actually speak or think these words – why not use this evolving fiction style, this new voice, in my nonfiction? I tried it out on a few small pieces. I found myself perceiving what I was writing in a new light with a different thought process. I introduced elements of this evolving voice to a recent book review … and it blew my mind. Reading the work back to myself aloud, I could not believe the barrier I had leapt over. The style was so fluid, so easy to follow, so full of humanity and personality. It was, and still is, an incredible feeling. My true nonfiction voice has emerged from the dark depths of white offices with beige carpets!

A Writer’s Exploration: No Longer Just the Student

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In my educational quest to improve my knowledge of Public Relations and Corporate Communication, I have found myself inadvertently applying this new acquirement to my conversations and online commentary. Suddenly, I am no longer the student. It’s not that I was nascent at the start, I have worked in this field for a long time in varying capacities and media (mostly of the visual kind).

My current studies are spent reading a plethora of history and craft books on the PR/Corp Comm disciplines, which has given me the ability to link together my scattered and isolated thoughts amidst my misfiring synapses in a holistic manner. No longer am I seeing a challenge from one point of view, it’s all about the bigger picture and approaching this PR/Corp Comm subject it with ease.

This brings me to my writing. After all, this is an exploration on writing, my journey, my … whatever. Where does it fit in? It’s all about communicating well, so writing well is key, obviously. Without a doubt, other key factors are important – speaking well, articulating thoughts and ideas well, knowing how to use the technology to distribute the communications well, and knowing how to read the audience. But at the root of it all is knowing how to tell a convincing story and educate others in the process. Writing effectively is a culmination of those requirements; using language in the right way for the right cause means the difference between success and failure in this business. A typographic mistake or misused word can lead to grave losses of clients or income.

To conclude, as I have yet to make a real earth-shattering point, communicate clearly and with vigor; be the most effective storyteller possible using the shortest amount of words and time. Write the words with love or whatever emotion is best suited for the situation. Just don’t write words for the sake of writing words like I find myself doing with this sentence to over-exemplify this point and beat it into the ground.

The adventure in writing continues soon, with more substance and less abuse of a blog post. And more intent too!

On writing, again: finding clarity

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Tonight I write from a laptop, a MacBook Pro to be exact, though I like the challenge of the iPhone blog post from the other night. If you are trying to grasp this logic, it’s okay, I have not yet worked it out in my own mind.

The big subject on my mind lately is writing – in all of its various forms. And the flip side, for me anyway, feeling scattered as I keep up with other roles in my professional life that mix up a variety of skills: creative and professional writing, graphic design, web design including HTML and CSS coding, the occasional image editing, managing relationships with outside organizations and overall project management with lot’s of hands-on involvement. The list can actually go on much longer but I need to stop myself before I completely bore you and myself.  Besides, it’s all on my LinkedIn profile for those who want to know more.

I find myself vehemently seeking out focus. Focus in my personal life and professional life. And balance, that would help. Over the past few years my professional role has grown significantly, which is a great thing as it has brought writing our of dormancy and back into the forefront – kind of where I left it a few years after college – while allowing my other skills to flourish. Only now it’s back with a [insert burning, raging, or other synonymous adjective here] passion, rapidly consuming my brain when I am attempting to focus intently on a project using five or more of the skills listed above.

And that leads me to this moment as I type this blog post. I know, this wasn’t all that concrete, really more of a release. Sharing these thoughts rather than keeping them locked up inspires me to write rather than watch TV or waste time on Facebook. It’s helping me reclaim my focus as I go through my scattered day. Seems to be working.

On my return to school and writing

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I must be insane choosing to write this post with my iPhone. Blame it on overtiredness – it is almost 1AM, afterall – and I don’t know what surprises lie ahead with the wonders of autocorrect and a very small touchscreen keyboard. I like to challenge myself, even on the most mundane level, though it tends to be more masochism than sensing accomplishment. I suppose if I were anyone else, I would be a self-loathing monk flogging away nightly in a remote monastery atop a 1,000-foot cliff overlooking the beautiful Mediteranean seaside city below, always out of reach yet so enchanting.

So this brings me to where I find myself now. I have overcome a major hurdle in my life, pursuing a masters degree, and most importantly, in writing. Last night I completed my first week at the WestConn MFA Writing residency, I knew from the first few minutes in my first workshop with the talented author Dan Pope that I had indeed found my new home. Actually, my old home surrounded by talented, uninhibited artists from all walks of life – a critical facet missing from my personae since… I don’t know when. This group of students and mentors, made up of many established professionals and some younger aspiring creatives, welcomed us new students as if we were never strangers. The talent this group exudes is mind-blowing, to use one of my overused cliches, and I am proud to now be affiliated with them.

So enough gushing for tonight, I need to be able to sleep without the feeling of having turned into the “sensitive male” that I despised so much in the 90s. Not that I have a problem with guys showing emotion, I have a stoic reputation to maintain (really?), and those sensitive male types need to get over their self-pitying watery-eyed selves.

I have no idea where I am going with this and I am too tired to review and edit. Probably a total waste of a post riddled with errors and nonsense considering I consider myself a writer, I forget what I said, I think. I wonder if my surreal lucid state kicked in during any of this? That said, good night world, time to start the real writing in the morning.