Photo by http://www.epicfireworks.com/

My writing partner Steve’s favorite two holidays aren’t Christmas or Thanksgiving, they’re Hollowe’en and 4th of July.  Both offer an element of mischief (good, clean, fun, American mischief, of course) and both offer some wonderful spectacle.

4th of July in the United States is a time of celebrating our independence, (it was from England, for those not keeping track) but it is also a time of community.  We get together in parks, on beaches, in high school athletic yards, to sit on blankets, eat bar-b-que, drink beer and, most importantly and to the point, watch fireworks, those colorful, loud displays of concussive excitement that explode exuberantly over our heads.

There is something amazing in the wonderful, bright displays.  Even a simple, less elaborate show is wonderful to behold.  One with some money and brilliant creative minds behind it can be breathtaking, inspiring, quite literally earth-shaking.

So why am I writing about our annual celebration of fire on a creative writing blog?  Because I truly believe that creativity in any form can be just as breathtaking, inspiring and earth-shaking, in almost as literal a way, as a 4th of July show.  When you paint with all your heart and soul and a viewer stands in front of your painting, surrounded by other gallery-goers and other works of art, and is held speechless by your creation, you have created your own fireworks display. 

When you write with the inspiration of your entire subconscious or “other-than-conscious” life and a reader falls into your world, only waking back up to reality when the supper burns on the stove, you have created a colorful, loud display of concussive excitement that exploded exuberantly inside their head.

Bring your 4th of July to the rest of your year.  Create fireworks where ever and when ever you can.  Be loud and colorful.  Be excited.

And on this 4th of July weekend, enjoy the fireworks, both real and figurative.

Geoff Hoff~
Co-presenter of the creative writing course On Writing a Short Story.

I took a drawing class once, not sure from whom, I was in high school at the time, where the teacher said, “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.” After a moment to process this, my drawing improved unbelievably quickly. I was drawing a face at the time. I had put a nose where I knew noses were supposed to be, eyes in their proper place, a mouth down below. After that comment, I looked to see what was actually on the face I was drawing. It wasn’t nose, eyes and mouth, it was specific shapes and shades of light and dark in specific relationships to each other. The drawing I produced was the best one I’d ever done to that point. Amazing what a simple adjustment in perspective will do.

There is a similar process in writing. People often write what they have been trained is there rather than what really is there. Rather than looking at the sky, they type blue. It’s rarely just blue. Right now outside my window, it’s a pale blue graduating toward dusky grey at the horizon. Rather than imagining the whole of something, people will parrot what they have heard others say. The cat doesn’t just purr, she softly vibrates with pleasure, her eyes closed and her body relaxed, swaying back and forth gently to the slow rhythm of her breath.

Do you have to use all those words when you write? Do you have to describe every subtle detail? No. That would make your writing very tedious for you and for your reader. But when you really look at something, in your view or in your mind, you will know which of all those words to use that will most communicate it. Even if you end up just writing, “the cat purred”, because you have first really looked, it will inform what comes before and what comes after and will make the word picture you’re painting much more compelling.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a29)

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I hate the word “hope”.

I’m going to let that sentence stand there by itself for a moment.  In fact, I’ll repeat it.

I hate the word “hope”.

How can I hate it?  The word means looking for a brighter future, it is a vision of a greater life.  It is the basis of a political philosophy that desires utopia. Pheh.

When you hope, you immediately give up your power, you immediately give over to the fates your responsibility to do anything more.  I hope this will work.  I hope I get inspired.  I hope they don’t mess up the government.  I hope I can keep my New Years resolutions.  When most people use the word hope, they’ve already decided that whatever they hope for probably won’t happen.  Once that decision is made, it probably won’t.  “But I am not responsible.  After all, I hoped, didn’t I?  What more can I do?”

Plenty.  There is plenty more you can do.

This is very insidious in art.  Hope is the enemy of art.  I used to tell my acting students, don’t hope.  Do.  Do the work so hope is unnecessary.  Do your homework.  Do your imagining work.  Take control of the process by laying a firm foundation of lived in circumstances and there is no need for hope.  I tell you, my fellow writers, the same thing.

When you hope in art, you are telling yourself that there is a possibility that it won’t happen.  When you give yourself that possibility, you stop being creative.  Don’t hope.  If you need to do something, trust instead.  Don’t hope your resolutions will work, trust that you created a new year filled with well imagined possibilities.  Trust that your vote counts and make sure it’s heard, don’t hope they will get it right this time.  Trust that you can create, that you’ve done the imaging work, that the work will move you, that the Muse will then whisper in your ear.

Give up hope.  Then do something.

~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

I know people who would rather not be challenged in their lives.  They prefer a comfortable job and, as my friend and mentor Pat O’Bryan calls it, a McLife.  It’s valid.  It has confuses me, but, as the philosopher said, confusion is a very high state and understanding is the booby prize, so I don’t need to understand it, I just need to accept it.

It’s valid, but it’s not for me and never has been.  I’ve held jobs often in my life, but always considered them a way to support my habit of creating art.  (An often very bad habit, I assure you, much like smoking, but without all the ashes and nicotine stains.)  I have not yet found the proper balance between work, money and freedom.  Lately I’ve been working ten to twelve hours a day almost seven days a week in order to make it all come together, in order to create something worthy of society and worthy of myself, looking for that moment when “it” starts to take care of itself and I can go see plays in London’s West End for a week or two, then blithely write my heart out.

I have also long been amazed (I first started noticing it when I was in junior high school) at many American’s pride in their own ignorance.  They want to be ignorant, and distrust those who aren’t.  I don’t say all Americans, or any one class of Americans, but I see it as a very large portion of my fellow citizens.  Again, it confuses me.  I am so passionate about wanting to know everything about everything, I don’t get people who don’t want to know anything about anything.

Again, I suppose, it’s valid.  Most of us have come from peasant stock, and the way to survive as a peasant is to lay low, not be noticed and do as you’re told.  That’s what you do, and that’s what you teach your children.  I absolutely come from peasant stock, so it would seem that I should also want to lay low, but I also come from parents who questioned, examined and wanted to shake things up, so I inherited some of that, too.  I like to cause ripples.  (I do it nicely, of course.  Usually.)  One of the best ways to cause ripples, to question, to shake things up, is through art.  With art, it can be done either didactically or subtly.  I’ve used both.  (Yes, believe it or not, I can be subtle.)  Subtlety usually works better.

There will always be people who are bosses and always be people who are employees.  How could we have bridges and power stations and the West End theatres and the Internet itself if that weren’t so?  However, and I’ve said this before, I think that art, the creation of it and the consumption of it in all of it’s messy iterations, is what makes a society live, thrive.  The bridges and power stations and theatres are just the trappings, the tools needed for society to function and survive.  In order for it to thrive, there is art.

In this day of mass media, the Internet, social networking, etc., the peasants have been given the keys to the castle in a way not ever seen in history.

Only some of them (us) will accept the keys.  This is valid.  I want my own set.

~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

I have recently been accused of being reactionary. The person didn’t mean that I espouse ultra conservative political views, or that I want desperately to return to an older time. They meant that many of my posts on the process of writing during the 30 day blog challenge (Only ten more. It’s been quite a ride!) have been reactions to things others say rather than new things I say. There is some truth to this. I often react to what have become rules in any art form. It is how I examine them for myself.

I think rules are important. I think you need to know the rules of your particular discipline. However, I think you also need to know that they are myths perpetrated by the agreement of a society over many years. Myths are important, but they aren’t true.

We often equate the word “Myth” with something that isn’t valid. “Oh, that’s a myth. In actuality… ” etc. (Well, most of us wouldn’t say “actuality”, but I’m pretentious and verbose.) We think of myths as quaint beliefs from an older time. Things like Mount Olympus and unicorns. Remember, these things weren’t considered myths by the people who lived believing in them. They were only called myths once a “more enlightened” people from later times examined them. What will future generations consider myths that we now hold as truth?

Myths are valid. Society needs myths in order to function. Any discipline needs myths in order to perpetuate itself. However, when we equate “myth” with “truth” we can get into a difficult corner.

Myths have power when they are unacknowledged. When they haven’t been examined and understood in context. Once they are examined, we can choose to follow them or consciously circumvent them. At a more basic level, every individual has his own myths. One of mine might be that we need to rename our “truths” as “myths” so we can examine them. I have examined that myth and choose to still live within it’s precepts.

The myths that I have been examining in these posts, the myth of inspiration, the myth of writer’s block and “write what you know”, etc. all came about because they were useful to the writer, to the artist. They helped the artist produce. When adhered to as if they were immutable universal law, however, they control our process in an unproductive way.

I will continue to examine (and, sometimes, debunk) what I see as myths in the writing process. In that process, I may unwittingly create my own myths that need to be examined. That’s how it works.

~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of such how-to guides as On Writing With a Partner and On Writing a Short Story.

I had a conversation with a friend in high school, sometime back during the Lincoln administration, about art and society.  She was a talented piano player and singer who was becoming disenchanted with art.  She said that, with everything that was going on in the world, it seemed to her a life pursuing art was a pointless life, that there was so much more that was so much more important to do.  My comment then was that a society without art is a dead society and, therefore, pursuing art might be the most important thing one could do; assuring the preservation of society itself.  (My friend, by the way, ended up going to Juilliard, so she seemed to have gotten past her disenchantment.)

I still fee that way.

This is not just an empty, philosophical stance.  Consider that one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power was declare which art was sanctioned and which art was “decadent”.  What they considered decadent was anything that showed any creative or original voice, not necessarily things that were sexual or salacious as the word decadent might imply.  Art is often considered dangerous by totalitarian governments or dogmatic people.  Again, not necessarily only art that questions policy, incites descent or demands change, but any art that questions anything because questions cause thinking and thinking is very dangerous.  That’s the kind of danger I’m attracted to.

Art has the power change everything, to preserve everything, to question everything.   It can provoke thought, emotion, action.   It can express the inability to act.   It can funnel great mourning and great joy.   It can tell the truth and can both tell and expose the great lie.

So.  I don’t know if what I do is the most important thing I could do, but it is close to the only thing I can do so what’s to be done?  Even in those moments when I despair, which are rarer as I grow older, I remind myself that what I do is contributing to the evolution of the mind of man and I find some peace.

~Geoff Hoff