Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Voices in my Head
Hey - just thought this might be a nice way to start.
By taking off the pressure or, rather, re-directing it.
Limiting a piece of writing in some way (in this case to a 750 word limit), takes the pressure off the writer to make it 'mean' something in the end. We're all so caught up in the fantasy of being profound and genuine, it can get in the way sometimes!!
I know that is one of the problems I have. When I sit down to write something, I start to mentally decide where this is going, what is the resolution, and so take all my attention off the job at hand. In pursuit of the great white whale of great writing. Meaning.
Fuggeddaboutit. I found that if I knew I only had 750 words to write, it made me focus on the job, the ending be damned. Also, it's healthy, many a great turn of phrase has been spliced out in order to fit the limit. And you know what...I didn't miss them in the end.
The point was to practice, practice, practice. The great novel comes later.
It's healthy to practice giving up some of that obsessive focus, if you tend to do that, and just concentrating on one aspect of a piece.
This piece of writing was an exercise I did for the class a few weeks backs where we wrote about posting a letter. Using three different 'voices'.
If anyone is interested about talking about 'voice', jump right in.
Or better yet, write something mundane and punch it up by changing the voices around. It was actually quite liberating to find three distinct characters in my head. I would not go as far as to say I nailed the 'voices' part. Reading it over, I find things I can change even now.
But I will leave it as is. Cos who wants to be bloody perfect?
*********************************** *********
A person mailing a letter in the First Person voices of:
Someone in love
I wake up this morning, refreshed and exhilarated. It is a most unusual state of mind for a major depressive like me. That is what Tania likes to call me: a major depressive. As if there are minor depressions in life that can cause one to misstep but nothing more. Tania is my therapist at the center I go to each day. I spend an hour with her in a tiny gray office every morning, talking about my demons.
?Dear Tania? I will start. Or is that too formal, too distant, for she is more than dear. Then I decide that I will start with 'Tania', for that is enough. She needs no window dressing.
I will write to tell her about my dream of her. No, no, that might scare her. I must instead tell her how I feel about her. She understands me like no other, sees deep into my soul and does not flinch. When she walks in the room, it suddenly smells like childhood, like laundry hung out on a line on a sunny day, warm and fresh and careless. Her eyes see only me, I know. Tania must love me to be so kind with me.
*******************
Someone who is dying
I can't write this letter, I just can't. Where you found this, how you tracked her down, I don't have to know ? your methods weren't always the most kosher, and I'd just rather go to my deathbed not knowing.
And that's another thing, what am I going to tell her. Hello, remember me, Paolo from back in the day in Hell's Kitchen. We went to the senior dance together. I'm about to kick the bucket and I just wanted to know how your life was. For all I know she's even more senile than I am and stuck in a nicer nursing home to boot.
What do I need this for? I mean, yeah, she's been on my mind more and more lately. I shouldn't have left her, I know. But I was a young brash Italian boy from the neighborhood, about to be 'made' and she was this rich Jewish princess from the Upper West Side. We were seventeen for chrissake.
Puking? Yeah, I've been puking a little, just enough to keep Mike the Nurse busy enough so's he can stop stealing my morphine. I feel great, what do you mean maybe I'm just not up to it, maybe another day. Give me that. See, you got me yellow lined paper. What am I gonna do with you, huh? What are you gonna do after I'm gone? Tell me? Bury me wrapped in yellow lined writing paper? Jeez, I had some of that good stuff around here someplace from when Tina last visited. Yeah, in the top shelf. That's it. Good.
*********************************** ****
Someone who is a paranoid conspiracy theorist
It's all a plot. I'm telling you. It's not safe to do anything any more.
I mean, there I was, trying to post this letter. I had my gloves, surgical mask and booties on, like I do whenever I have to touch something filthy in a public place. Yeah, they make these especially for on-the-go use, so you can just throw them away once you're done. Of course that just means they can make them substandard and just sell more of them and make even more money. But I have a scientist friend who said they were ok. Then again, what does he know, you know.
I was standing at the letter box on the corner of Lyman and 23rd, you know, the one that's just been put up so it's brand new. I had my letter, all sealed in the plastic baggie, ready to go. I had warmed the stamp up with an iron and then stuck it on. I mean, can you imagine people actually lick those things, even after they've been touched by other people. And they could put anything in that 'glue': a mind control serum that's supposed to make you vote Republican each time, bacteria that can lower your immune system and give you a raging infection so you can end up in the hospital, pay forty dollars for a Tylenol pill and pick up another thousand bugs while you're there. No thanks. I'm not getting duped into any of these schemes. No sir. I'm protecting myself.
So, I opened the slot, it's one of those that swing down, and I looked in just to make sure there were no wires or cameras. This country is just out of control, you know. They give you all these freedoms, in writing no less, and then one by one they take them away. And then just as I was about to put the letter in, this drunk loser just banged right into me, the letter slid out of my gloved hand and landed in the gutter next to the street. I mean, really. Is there no end to their deception? Do they have to dress FBI agents as homeless vagrants? I saw them coming though, I did. They were onto me from the minute I got off the bus, and I was on to them.
*******************************
See? It's not so bad, revealing yourself to the world, warts and all. Says she to calm her raging insecurity..:)
By taking off the pressure or, rather, re-directing it.
Limiting a piece of writing in some way (in this case to a 750 word limit), takes the pressure off the writer to make it 'mean' something in the end. We're all so caught up in the fantasy of being profound and genuine, it can get in the way sometimes!!
I know that is one of the problems I have. When I sit down to write something, I start to mentally decide where this is going, what is the resolution, and so take all my attention off the job at hand. In pursuit of the great white whale of great writing. Meaning.
Fuggeddaboutit. I found that if I knew I only had 750 words to write, it made me focus on the job, the ending be damned. Also, it's healthy, many a great turn of phrase has been spliced out in order to fit the limit. And you know what...I didn't miss them in the end.
The point was to practice, practice, practice. The great novel comes later.
It's healthy to practice giving up some of that obsessive focus, if you tend to do that, and just concentrating on one aspect of a piece.
This piece of writing was an exercise I did for the class a few weeks backs where we wrote about posting a letter. Using three different 'voices'.
If anyone is interested about talking about 'voice', jump right in.
Or better yet, write something mundane and punch it up by changing the voices around. It was actually quite liberating to find three distinct characters in my head. I would not go as far as to say I nailed the 'voices' part. Reading it over, I find things I can change even now.
But I will leave it as is. Cos who wants to be bloody perfect?
*********************************** *********
A person mailing a letter in the First Person voices of:
Someone in love
I wake up this morning, refreshed and exhilarated. It is a most unusual state of mind for a major depressive like me. That is what Tania likes to call me: a major depressive. As if there are minor depressions in life that can cause one to misstep but nothing more. Tania is my therapist at the center I go to each day. I spend an hour with her in a tiny gray office every morning, talking about my demons.
?Dear Tania? I will start. Or is that too formal, too distant, for she is more than dear. Then I decide that I will start with 'Tania', for that is enough. She needs no window dressing.
I will write to tell her about my dream of her. No, no, that might scare her. I must instead tell her how I feel about her. She understands me like no other, sees deep into my soul and does not flinch. When she walks in the room, it suddenly smells like childhood, like laundry hung out on a line on a sunny day, warm and fresh and careless. Her eyes see only me, I know. Tania must love me to be so kind with me.
*******************
Someone who is dying
I can't write this letter, I just can't. Where you found this, how you tracked her down, I don't have to know ? your methods weren't always the most kosher, and I'd just rather go to my deathbed not knowing.
And that's another thing, what am I going to tell her. Hello, remember me, Paolo from back in the day in Hell's Kitchen. We went to the senior dance together. I'm about to kick the bucket and I just wanted to know how your life was. For all I know she's even more senile than I am and stuck in a nicer nursing home to boot.
What do I need this for? I mean, yeah, she's been on my mind more and more lately. I shouldn't have left her, I know. But I was a young brash Italian boy from the neighborhood, about to be 'made' and she was this rich Jewish princess from the Upper West Side. We were seventeen for chrissake.
Puking? Yeah, I've been puking a little, just enough to keep Mike the Nurse busy enough so's he can stop stealing my morphine. I feel great, what do you mean maybe I'm just not up to it, maybe another day. Give me that. See, you got me yellow lined paper. What am I gonna do with you, huh? What are you gonna do after I'm gone? Tell me? Bury me wrapped in yellow lined writing paper? Jeez, I had some of that good stuff around here someplace from when Tina last visited. Yeah, in the top shelf. That's it. Good.
*********************************** ****
Someone who is a paranoid conspiracy theorist
It's all a plot. I'm telling you. It's not safe to do anything any more.
I mean, there I was, trying to post this letter. I had my gloves, surgical mask and booties on, like I do whenever I have to touch something filthy in a public place. Yeah, they make these especially for on-the-go use, so you can just throw them away once you're done. Of course that just means they can make them substandard and just sell more of them and make even more money. But I have a scientist friend who said they were ok. Then again, what does he know, you know.
I was standing at the letter box on the corner of Lyman and 23rd, you know, the one that's just been put up so it's brand new. I had my letter, all sealed in the plastic baggie, ready to go. I had warmed the stamp up with an iron and then stuck it on. I mean, can you imagine people actually lick those things, even after they've been touched by other people. And they could put anything in that 'glue': a mind control serum that's supposed to make you vote Republican each time, bacteria that can lower your immune system and give you a raging infection so you can end up in the hospital, pay forty dollars for a Tylenol pill and pick up another thousand bugs while you're there. No thanks. I'm not getting duped into any of these schemes. No sir. I'm protecting myself.
So, I opened the slot, it's one of those that swing down, and I looked in just to make sure there were no wires or cameras. This country is just out of control, you know. They give you all these freedoms, in writing no less, and then one by one they take them away. And then just as I was about to put the letter in, this drunk loser just banged right into me, the letter slid out of my gloved hand and landed in the gutter next to the street. I mean, really. Is there no end to their deception? Do they have to dress FBI agents as homeless vagrants? I saw them coming though, I did. They were onto me from the minute I got off the bus, and I was on to them.
*******************************
See? It's not so bad, revealing yourself to the world, warts and all. Says she to calm her raging insecurity..:)
Comments on this journal
Is she angry mad, or crazy mad. That does not come through. Or, rather, I get the feeling that she is angry mad. Is she angry enough to kill herself? I which case, you could expand it to include her thought process some more as so how she reaches that conclusion.
Keep writing and revising, this is good.
Dear Diary,
It's been ages since someone has written me or seen me. I wonder what they are doing? Are they thinking about me? Do they care if I'm alive or dead? Do they ever wondering if I'm being treated right here at this dreaded so called sanctuary for the elderly? If only they would take the time to visit me. I don't need much time to show how much I need them, how much I miss them and how much I would rather be with them. Nor would it take much time to see my sores, bumps, cuts and swollen limbs to know that this "sanctuary" is a living hell. But they wont come. They are too busy with their lives to visit me or write me a simple letter. They have forgotten how much I loved them when they were young and how I took such good care of them and worked harder than any man to give them the best life any child could dream of. No, to them I am nothing but a useless old bag that has no place in their lives or the lives of their children. Forgotten and Unloved I end this final entry.
*********************************** *********
I think it's a measure of one's success as a 'writer' - atleast in my opinion, as to how well one can 'become' another character.
As always, it will happen more easily the more you practice writing.
Also, don't worry if something comes out that way, it's always better to write it all out without editing it. And then taking a break from that piece of work and coming back to it with a fresh eye to edit it.
Peace
Sorry - I haven't checked this village..yikes! I'll have to set up an alert.
Voices. Hmm..let me see. You know how a book has a narrator. Well, the narrator has a persona, a past, he has his/ her story. That colors his/ her viewpoint. Think of Holden Caulfield in the Catcher in the Rye. Or Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Let's say you have a market scene with sellers and buyers, let's say at a fruit stall. It's crowded, busy and hot. You know, like the ones we have back home. And you want to describe it.
One way to go about it would be to just plain old describe it. What 'you' see. So, the writer (you) become the narrator. It's ok, because it's honest and it's good because it's very personal and so you'll be able to really get into the description. But you have to be apart from the scene. It's a kind of point of view (or POV) called Omniscient.
Let's imagine though that you want to write about it from the point of view of one of those characters: like a fruit seller, or a buyer, or better yet from the point of view of the little boy who runs around after the buyers offerring to carry their purchases. Now that makes it more exciting - you get to 'see' through another 'character's eyes. And so, let your imagination fly.
That boy has a certain 'voice', not just his way of speaking. But what he notices and the way he talks about them will tell us a lot about him. If he notices how the fat women always sweat and leave the smallest tips and are never nice to them - that tells you something about how he feels about a particular thing, in this case, the fat women.
So, in the exercise above - we all wrote about posting a letter. Simple, straighforward. I might do it the same way each time.
But we practiced it in different voices to get the hang of how to do it.
Writing is an amazing faculty. Like a muscle, the more you use it, the better it gets.
The more you practice a certain exercise, the easier it becomes.
Stephen King likens it to filling up your writer's tool box. You need to have a few things in it, so that when the time comes when you need a particular skill - you have it right there.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Also, Nush - no worries. Take your time. Hope CCU is relatively painless for the rest of the rotation.
Take care all. And thanks for staying interested. I'll try to be better about follow up.
Peace