Panorama of San Bernardino

Friday, June 3, 2022

Breathe baby breathe

Right now, I am giving my mind space to breathe writing wise. No new writing project on the horizon. I did finally finish a first draft of my play adaptation. And I always have this blog which I update weekly to flex my writing muscles.

It feels good. To rest that creative side is important at times. Stories usually come to me. My favorite way to write is in a generative workshop with prompts. I am not an organized writer. I'm a scribble or type furiously for hours writer, then I take a breath slowly and edit later. 

Let me say this. Fuck outlines. For those of you who use them, goody for you, I'm glad they work for you, but for me, personally, outlines stifle my creativity and feel too much like my legal work.

What is so interesting is that even in my day job as a deputy public defender, which is hectic AF right now, I don't outline. I write openings, closings and motions in a fury then go back and organize my writing. Maybe I'm backwards that way.

When I was in college, learning how to write essays, which I think I already instinctively and naturally knew how to do, the thing that helped me most was the idea of a topic sentence and a theme. 

To this day, when I write an essay, which I can often do in a flash, I start with that and add my research after. Yes, things can change based on my research but my theme always remains the same. As Jackson Maine, a character in one of my favorite movies (the recent version of "A Star is Born"), said:

"Look, talent comes everywhere, but having something to say and a way to say it to have people listen to it, that’s a whole other bag."

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