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writer's idea part 1
08/20/2007 = 01:41 PM

I decided to repost this piece, originally written in January of 2006, in memory of Miles Levin, a real boy.

I received Jack Heffron's Writer's Idea Book as a gift some five years ago and read it from cover to cover without being the least bit inspired.

I just reopened it the other day, only to interrupt myself on page 13 to run to the computer and jot in an idea I had, which developed into a whole other entry.

My mindset has changed in the past few years, all because I've been sticking to my guns and not letting life stop me from writing, as it is so very wont to do to me.

But I digress.

I have days when I'm looking at the clean white box and thinking, "I need to put some words up in there, but I got nothing."

Maybe you don't have those days.

If you don't, I worship you and everything you stand for. You are the Andy Martellos, jugglers-extraordinaire and fire-eaters, to my Golf Widow, dropper of spoons and too-much-coffee drinker.

You are the Bud Buckleys, the Deni Bonets, the makers of music and dreamers of dreams, to my Golf Widow, wistful and envious on-looker and -listener.

You are the writer I wish I was, you person who opens the word-processor of your choice and starts writing fearlessly and flawlessly, producing words that make everyone laugh, cry, think.

Identify.

Sympathize.

Dream.

.:coffsixweaselscoff:.

If you are not that person, and you have those dry-spell days like I do, have a look at this.

I've decided to try a three-part exercise from Jack Heffron's book to see if I can wake my brain up from those empty white box days. This isn't a meme, but if anyone feels like coming along and using it as writing prompts or whatever, have at it.

Here's part 1:

Write about the most creative person you've ever known. Explain why you feel he or she is so creative, offering examples of his or her creative accomplishments.

— The Writer's Idea Book, © 2000 Jack Heffron

As easy as it would be for me to write about someone whose creativity I admire, I thought it would be more of a challenge for me to write about someone for whose creativity I have no respect whatsoever.

The most creative person I've read over the past few years really did her homework. She invented a character out of whole cloth, said character being a teenaged girl with cancer. The character had a diary on Diaryland, a persona on eBay^®, a couple of close friends (whose diaries and personas were also created by this writer), and gradually, she built up a following of real people who would have killed tigers to protect the character, because the real people had no idea that the character was fictional.

By the time the truth came out, there was more than one heart broken by this character, because the writer not only permitted, but encouraged real people to interact in real ways with the character, and either didn't feel it necessary or was too wrapped up in the character herself to tell the real people that they had become friends with, sent gifts to, or fallen in love with (in more than one instance) a figment of her imagination.

I've never been sure whether to feel sorry for this writer, assuming she was delusional and truly had come to believe in the character she created, or to be infuriated with her to have drawn us in so very deeply.

I am pretty sure most of my anger is at myself. I feel as though I should have known we were being duped. I also feel stupid for having tried so very hard to emulate the character (when I assumed she was real), feeling that I had no business whining about my own aches and pains when she was dying. She was brave, she never complained, and I should've known then, that if it seems too good to be true, well ...

I am sorriest of all that the writer didn't trust her audience. Because she, the real person, seems as though she could have been the sort of person I could really have liked and admired, had she only trusted us enough to let us see her own personality, as a creative person and a writer with a really innovative idea for character development.

Instead, when we started attempting to untangle the fiction from the reality, she persisted in berating us for not believing, depicting us as horrible, subhuman monsters who would hurt a girl that had already seen enough pain in her short life. And, my lord, did she lay that guilt on thickly. I would wake up in the middle of the night, doubting myself, doubting the facts even as they presented themselves, one after another.

This was what ultimately caused me to despise her.

Not on my own behalf, but for hurting my friends. The ones like the dear friend of mine who, having survived cancer herself at a young age, was trying to mentor this girl who didn't exist. I wondered if the writer was laughing at my friend's pain, revelling in her gullibility for believing that her advice and comforting words were going to a real person and not being exploited as part of some psychological manipulation.

Friends like one of the boys who had fallen in love with the character. I know how hard it would have been for the writer to admit that she had cheated him, that she had fooled him, but the more she tried to cover up the fiction, the more the whole process evolved from a creative writing exercise into flat-out lies and deception.

As a result, the character stopped being a courageous, sweet girl and became a mockery, a slimy, distasteful metaphor of the writer's desperate clutching for self-preservation at any and all costs.

It's not for me to "forgive" her. She did nothing unforgivable to me. I feel like an idiot for having believed so deeply in the story, but that's my own fault. The other people she hurt, they've got their own dæmons to face, and she may or may not answer to them. She doesn't owe me anything.

I don't admire her methods, and I don't applaud her actions, but I must acknowledge her creativity, whether I approve of it or not.

drinking: cherry fruit₂o
listening to: UB40, Kingston Town
sad about: wendy wasserstein. now there's an honest creative writer i'd really have liked to have met.