Getting Back to Being Bored

Parenting experts say that letting your child be bored challenges their young brains to be creative. It is in difficult silence that they discover exactly who they are, what they want, and what they love. Kids need to explore, discover, and use their brains to experience the adventure inside themselves. 

In my blazing hot summer of planning, creating, and getting back to writing I’ve discovered something marvelous — Grownups need boredom too.

Actually, grownups need a lot of things that we prescribe our children. Over the course of our longer and longer lives we change and grow, discover and rediscover ourselves almost as much as we did as kids. Even though we bask in the glory of having reached thirty, forty, sixty, eighty, and reflect on how much we’ve changed, in the same breath we disparage the prospect of ever changing again. 

I was a child back then, we say over and over of every possible age, But now I am grown. Now, I have arrived. 

With all this growth, perhaps we need to take our own parenting advice. We should encourage ourselves to play. Be curious. Explore. But most of all — Be Bored.

Sometimes, for grownups, we call this mediation. Free your mind, experts advocate, focus on your breath. But meditation can feel abstract and out of reach for those who have never tried it. In Judaism they call their day of boredom Shabbat, in Christianity, the Sabbath. For some people it’s called backpacking, for others it’s a morning sipping tea alone on the porch.

There is a constant influx of information in our lives. With e-mails on our phone, radio in our cars, podcasts or jams while we’re working out, books or movies in our down time, we rarely spend a moment taking in absolutely nothing. And how could we? We’re busy! Children and partners and pets demand us, chores distract us, the chicken needs precise ingredients and monitored cooking. But doing nothing is exactly the sort of thing we’ve been missing.

Boredom scares us. It’s that kingdom trapped in our perpetual inner selves, the parts we hate, the stress, the fears you would never verbalize or even dare to think. What if the stress seeps in? What if dissatisfaction plagues our thoughts? We imagine the paralyzing disaster of what we would dare to think if we only had a moment. 

Creativity lives in the folds of boredom. In long summer drives through the nothing of the country, in a steamy shower staring at the dripping white tiles, in patient hours waiting for something to begin. It is freedom at its best and its worst, it is torture, and luxury, and peace and ingenuity.

I am finding as wedding planning is dying down and I’m settling back into the day to day writing life, I have to remind myself to be bored again. If I remove stimulation and practice being with just myself, inspiration always comes.

Occasionally we instigate a tech-free day at our house. No tv or computers, no phones or internet, no online recipes or googling the difference between it’s and its. Tech free day is a day where we only have paper and each other, a day where everything turns off, so our brains can turn back on. It’s not often we can partake in such a luxury, but when we do, creative juices flow, long talks are inspired, unique and inventive dishes are made. 

Boredom is refreshing. It is youth, and elongated time, and experience. It is the seed of passion, and the place where we grow. It is a practice and a necessity. And it’s time we all had a little taste.

Force yourself to be bored. I implore you. You’ll never know what might be buried inside until you dare, for a moment, to look.

C. L. Brenton

How to Force Innovation (Hint, don't force it!)

This is a piece I wrote a while ago for Newsaratti (which by the way shut down, yeah, sucks, I know!) This is still incredibly true and useful for all professions. I'm posting it here mostly to remind myself how to restart when I get stuck, but also because it might help someone else out there too!

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Innovation and creativity are the two most valuable things in business and in life. We are constantly solving problems, constantly trying to make our brains pound out new solutions for our changing lives. 

So what happens when you get stuck? When a problem is staring you in the face and you can’t get over the hump. How do you force your brain to be creative? How do you get unstuck, and find a perfect solution?

Look at it upside down.

Or inside out, or backwards. Artists and photographers have known this trick for centuries. When you’ve been staring at one thing for two long it gets muddled in your brain. You can’t even tell if it works anymore, let alone if it’s good. When an artist turns his painting upside down, he can see the relationship between shadows and light, he can see the abstract forms and colors, rather than just a bunch of water lilies on a pond. Find a way to turn your project upside down. Whether you follow your steps from Z to A,  look at it from the consumers perspective, or read each sentence of your proposal from end to beginning, you must change your viewpoint entirely. There, you might find the answer your looking for.

Talk it through with someone outside your group

Laymen are great at helping figure out solutions to problems, and not because they have great ideas. When you explain your problem to someone else two things happen: one, you have to explain your project from start to finish in a way anyone can understand, and two, they ask questions. These two processes combined are incredibly helpful in jump starting creativity. Often times just by explaining the problem to someone outside of your work group, you discover where you went wrong. Maybe you veered off track somewhere, or need to push further in one area, or had an original idea that you never tested and you’re only now remembering it. The layman’s fresh take on your problem could dislodge the mental block you’ve had all along

Input equals output

    Great artists look at a lot of art, great writers read, great inventors study other inventions. The more you look at what other people in your industry are doing the more your brain might say that’s cool, but what if…? No idea is entirely unique. Each invention, each theory, and each innovation is built upon years of good ideas before it. Why disregard everything your competitors are doing when you could just build on it. From store front design, to touch screen technology, to great art, people have built on the innovations of those before. That’s what they’re there for.

Do it at the same time everyday

In his book “On Writing” Steven King talks about training your muse to show up at the same time everyday. He’s not talking about a little sprite that shows up and fills your head with magic,(though he might as well be). He’s saying that your brain is a muscle, and when you train it to be creative, it will be. When you’re creative at the same time of day, everyday, your brain knows when to work, it kicks into action and pumps out ideas. Whether you’re a nighttime innovator, or a morning creator, find a routine and stick to it. The results are powerful.

Do something else

Read a book, listen to a podcast, go to an art museum, color in a coloring book. Do anything that lets your brain run in the background. Ever heard of the shower principle? Your best ideas are prone to come when you’re not thinking about them i.e. In the shower. You have a powerful processor in that skull of yours, give it a while to run in the background while you look at something beautiful, or listen to something interesting. Sometimes those stimuli will spark something you hadn’t thought about before and the answer will come.

In the end innovation isn’t something that can be forced, only nurtured. Pounding your head against the same desk isn’t going to do anything for you. Step back, change course, and get your brain thinking about something new.

C. L. Brenton

A Perfect Morning

Another week of hard work and butterflies gone, and I am still immersed in an epic hack up of my novel. It is painful and overwhelming and inspiring and exhausting, but it is worth it, and in the end it will be wonderful.

Enjoy

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We live in Stoker’s castle. We are dim and it is colder than we expected. Like a tomb or that place where they heap dead bodies and innocuously call a freezer.

I don’t want to spend another minute in there but he likes the sound of it. He thinks the dripping is evocative and strange, the architecture ornate and gothic, the floor tiles laid perfectly for such an early 13th century extravagance. 

I stare through the barred window and try to convince myself this isn’t a dungeon and this isn’t our tomb. 

I thirst for Sunday mornings, I crave the bouyance of a Wednesday afternoon. I want silence and exuberance, solitude and company, a flood of ideas and a quiet mind. I am a thousand scientific notions - Entropy, chaos, decay, dichotomy.

Sometimes before he wakes up, I sit outside and soak in the morning. The dog flops in the grass, his nose twitching, delighted at the intricate smells of a quiet day. The birds are all a titter, chittering graceful unglorified tunes without reason. Singing made up songs just to sing. Just for the joyful noise of it. 

He wakes and speaks as if nothing matters but the stench of his own words. 

Then it’s too hot, the dog licks his asshole uncomfortably, the skin on my forearms seethes as if they’re on fire. The birds squawk uncontrollably and I imagine our yard as a hellish paradise with no escape. A secret garden drowning in flame.

I think about that as I shiver, and watch him stare at the buttresses flying overhead. He and I are cowards stuck in the middle of the beginning of the end. The scars become us, don’t they? Like tiny little bandaids polka-dotting our cancered skin. 

This way.

He pulls me down another hallway away from the group. Ancient suits of armor are held up by god-knows-what and it’s all I can do not to poke them and see if they’ll just fall down. I follow him to a tapestry beyond a series of stanchions barely barricading the path.

Where?

I whisper, but I don’t really care. I’m just glad to get away from the stink of farts and belly burps that is a group tour in Europe. I walk past the same stone bricks we’ve stared at all morning and I wonder if scar tissue could ever get cancer. If in the end, maybe all we are is a mottled ball of them.

When he turns to me, I see it in his eyes. Then I taste it on his lips. And somehow, the hellfire and the frigid halls become one entire life. Somehow, as my heart beat slows, the stone brick hallway folds into our kiss. All of it lingers, and then slips away like a morning.

C. L. Brenton

How to write a story (Five simple, no brainer tips)

As I go to author talks, seminars and tutor writing at my local high school, I am amassing a wealth of very simple, boiled down tips for story writing that I wish someone had taught me when I first started. Whether you're considering writing a memoir at the end of your life, or you're starting your storied journey at the beginning, I hope these tips help you as they have informed my own process.

Exploring Emotional Honesty

Think about the most emotional experiences in your life: children are born, people die, you get mugged, robbed, raped, your house burns down. Now I don't blame you if you don't want to write about those experiences, but you would be missing out if you didn't use them.

People love reality shows for a reason. They love loooking into other people's lives and imagining how they live. Have you ever been sucked into someone's facebook feed you barely know, or become fascinated with the comings and goings of your mysterious neighbor? Humans are intensely curious about other humans, and your life experience is unique from any one else's. That is what you're selling. These are the meaty emotions you have to farm. The more honest you can be about your own emotional life, the more engaging your story will be. Period.

Just Write it

Write your story as fast as you can. No one said you have to write it in order (though I wrote a novel out of order once and it was a huge pain to piece together later.)  Write about your emotional moments, write about a specific moment and twist it slightly to make it more interesting. Maybe in your emotional birth story your baby comes out as an alien instead. How would that change that emotional story? Whether you're writing westerns or scifi, romance or upmarket fic, honesty sells. Remember, honesty does not necessarily mean accuracy. You can be honest without being truthful.

Be the Reader

As you write, pretend you're reading the story instead of writing it. What do you the reader expect to happen? What do you want to happen? Let that inform you as you go. Chances are, you've been subconciously dropping hints along the way, and you don't want to disappoint the reader once you have them flipping pages to see what happens next. Remember the cardinal rule of story telling: Don't show the gun in the first act if you don't plan to use it in the third.

When (not if) you get stuck, ask yourself two questions: What does my character want? And how is this going to end? Both questions can help drive the story forward, and help you make better decisions.

Plot is Just a Game

There's this game I used to play on long road trips called Fortunately/Unfortunately. One player starts a story with a plot item - once upon a time there was a polar bear. The next person starts the next sentence with the word unfortunately. (Unfortunately he was very fat.) The next person starts with the word fortunately. (Fortunately all the ladies loved a fat polar bear.) And on and on until you reach a conclusion. Usually you'll want to determine the number of sentences you'll write before you come to a conclusion so your story doesn't trail on forever.

If you play this game with yourself and your own storyline, you'll have a pretty good plot outline to start with. Your character will struggle through adversity, get little wins, and come out a hero.

Talent = Practice/Time

Your first story won't be amazing, nor will your second, and nor will your third. If you're at all concious, you'll realize this. This will disappoint you. Good. Be disappointed. It will push you forward.

Keep writing, and keep editing your work (more on editing soon). One day (with practice) you'll be a better writer, and that version of you can go through all your unpublished work and edit (or rewrite) the concepts you love into something new. 

Writing is learning and growth, and above all it's a journey. Having a finished book is not as satisfying as the work that goes into writing every single day. There is always another book to write, and the next one, we always promise ourselves, will be better.

P.S. It usually is.

When Instructed

When I was at Jury Duty last week I ate lunch in the beautiful gardens behind the Walt Disney Concert Hall. A young couple was having their wedding photographs taken there, and I sketched their portrait in words. Enjoy!

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Mirthless and faceless they only touch when instructed. Her nails are still wet, his tuxedo is too new it itches. Her long white dress must be carried along side her as if she were surrounded by and floating in a white puffy cloud.

Dad videotapes the whole affair on an old camcorder. He wants to remember every piece of today, from the way the blue fountain shoots out sunlight instead of water, how his wife holds the bouquet of pink haphazardly as if she were an incompetent hand maiden, a bored complacent intern.

They think they have resigned to nothing but they have resigned to everything. The photographer babbles on in Chinese. He places her creamy hands around his bronzed neck, and they don’t smile. He doesn’t touch her unless instructed.

The photographer poses her fingers one by one. This is true love, he thinks, fingers like this, neck like this, now tilt your head and smile. Smile at him. He presses a chipped nail, he moves dad filming a flower by the root of a tree out of the shot.

Click click click.

Instinct takes over when a silky white petal falls in her hair and he delicately removes it. The light shifts, a breeze presses the long spines of branches out of the way, and ruffles the poised leaves. 

The photographer corrals the bride and groom, this way, this way. 

Mom places the bouquet back in her daughter’s hands and scoops up the folds of her dress exposing her cherry blossom legs that blend right in with her small shoes.

They are mirthless and robotic. They don’t smile unless instructed, move unless instructed, laugh, bend, fight, lust unless instructed. They don’t hold hands, yet they move carefully.

We have to return that suit in good shape 

You have to have that dress for the rest of your life.

Dad films the way the light reflects off an impossibly tall glass building, he films the leather ruffle on her unscuffed shoes, he films mom bundling up the folds of her dress, the fountain again, the way it shoots out sunlight instead of water. They are eerily silent, eerily somber for such a beautiful day, a beautiful time, and a beautiful place.

The photographer runs up ahead and captures the nothing of this moment. They will treasure it forever, it will hang in the tapestry of their lives for eternity. Sometimes she will wish to go back there, sometimes he will wish it never happened at all.

Her pearls catch on something, a zipper maybe, a button, they pause. Mom lets the white fluff of her dress pour back to the ground and she delicately unhooks them and presses the pearls back to her neck.

Click click click.

Dainty elegant fingers scoop up the folds of her dress, and they walk along again as if she were floating in and surrounded by a cloud.

The awe of a white gown and a black tux follows them through the expanse of quaffed gardens.

Behind them, laughter fills the void in their wake. Families wander through with their own cameras, their own love, their own mirth, and they touch each other whether they’re instructed to or not.

 

C. L. Brenton

I do. I do.

I am beginning to understand my path as a writer, and what I want my work to stand for. I am perpetually searching for humanity in all things, farming emotional nuggets from moments and memories distant and near. 

I wish I could say where each piece draws its inspiration, but the answer is a lot of places. My work is not autobiographical but "patho-biographical." It pinpoints, perhaps, an emotional pulse in a lifetime of relationships, reading, and understanding.

I am grateful to have an outlet for weekly expression that I can share, and you can read. The rest of my life is spent toiling away on novels, such an internal endeavor, it's hard to mark my progress in any meaningful way. The work itself is satisfying, but there is no immediate response.

I hope you enjoy my meanderings, I certainly enjoy pulling words out of my journal each week to share them with you.

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I do. I do.

I do not care about pressed napkins, dusted pianos or three course meals. But you do, so I do. You do not care about harmonies, staccato rhythm, or poetry. But I do. I do.

You cannot say a million things and I cannot say a million more. We tiptoe across each other like lovers in the nighttime. Like poets uttering only innuendo, only metaphor. But we are not lovers and we are not poets.

I was born of you and you were born of me. An umbilical cord stretches across states and time zones connecting two bodies, each puppets puppeteered by the other.

I do not care about quilted toilet paper, matching upholstery or crystal stemware, but you do, so I do. You don’t care about lines on a canvas, the difference between dawn and dusk, or cheeseburgers that taste even better when you eat them in the car. But I do. I do.

You are a frustrating reminder that you can’t love exactly everything about any one person. You have to pick what you love. Discard the rest. Even though your daggers are sharper than the rest. Even though they stay with me like a cloud of gnats, biting over and over until I get used to their perpetual sting.

You are the crate and barrel to my thrift store cacophony, you are the dust free, grout-less tile, matching pillow case nightmare to my rug-free, scratched paint, sweaty dream.

What do you want but for the rest of us to be like you? What do you want but for the mess to stay outside, and the dreams to stay gray and in bed where they belong? 

We are led leveled and hard boned and different. We are different but on a spectrum from A to Zed, from high to lowest of low we are the same. We are from the same street corner. Literally. We read the same books, we dated the same man, we loved the same movies, we cried the same tears.

We grew up together, even if I’m not entirely sure I know what that means. Now, there are not enough seats on your prim couch for one more me, and there is not enough wild in my world for one more you.

I sink back into pillows and you perch on a thin wire frame. And because you care about pressed napkins and euro shams and curtains that close, I do. I do.

My love is like a tangerine

This past week has been a whirlwind of old friends and writing. Lots of writing. I'm happy to present a recent piece written in the midst of it all. Enjoy!

It has come to my attention, that the sixth letter of the alphabet is missing on mobile devices as well as some browsers. I can't seem to fix the problem. Just know, for now, that I know how to spell. Sorry!

______________________

My love is like a tangerine. That pucker faced sour and sweet, ripped from the tree, the darkest orange you’ll ever know. 

We are tied like the braid in a horses tail, platted like his mane. Our sandals kick up manure and the heat is waves of glass radiating from the ground. I sip my beer and look at you. A perpetual flora to my grizzled fauna. A sunbeam in brunette.

The dust clogs up my lungs and the smell my nose, and when you grab my hand the taste of it fills my mouth. You pull me along windy trails, I pull you toward the ocean. We are the amber bubbles in my beer, constantly following one another up.

I look up and I think, you must be the sky that’s blue, and I’m the cloud that’s gray. Some people think the cloud makes the sky more beautiful, but not everyone does. 

You sip from my aching beer, and I sip from you. I am the sweet sting of tangerine on your lips and you are the yeast on my tongue. I tell you about the sky and the clouds. I tell you that not everything makes the sky more beautiful. Planes don’t, I say. Cars. Satellites. But clouds. They do.

We are the bow that hangs over the altar. You are the flowers, and I am the leaves. Some people think the green makes the flowers more beautiful, but not everyone does.

You are the twisted knobs of a tree and I am the breeze. You are the creamy expanse of field, and I am the gnarled fence, snaking its way through. You are the rain dripping down the window, and I am the shower steam condensing on the walls. I am the sweet sting of beer on your lips, and you, my love, you are the fizz of tangerine on my tongue.

Bison

I just returned from an epic road trip across the Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. I spent a lot of time in the Minnesota snow (or melting snow) and now I'm back, in beautiful, sunny california, going through everything I wrote out there on the road.

This is one piece I sort of love. Inspired by Southern Utah.

Bison

We're chasing winter and in a day we're caught between summer and snow. It's just a brown assemblage of dots on a skyline. Mundanity bleeding into more mundanity. Rock, river, flora, and fauna all blended on the same palate until each is a murky brown.

Not that it’s not beautiful, it’s beautiful. It’s the sort of beautiful that doesn’t stop because it’s cold, the sort of beautiful that doesn’t fade with age. It’s beauty in change, in sunsets, and old growth, and rainstorms and clouds that sweep across the night sky as if they’re cleaning it. Just doing some routine maintenance ma’am, just dusting the atmosphere.

Change is growth and death and life. I changed you for years but there was no beauty in it. Not like the birth of a million tiny grasses after the first snow melt, not like the way a trickle becomes a river and wedges itself into the heart of a canyon. Pressing deeper and deeper until there is no way in or out. Change is just like love that way, it’s neither optional, nor mandatory.

Sheets of ice skate down a gray river, and I’m more home than I ever was with you. Four wheels pester the road, grasping at nothing on slick smooth glass. We wobble and skid, but the road is straight and empty and we are fine. 

Hawks sidle up to fence posts. Crows gawk and flap down the long stretch of asphalt that divides two farms who’s beginnings and ends are not clearly defined on a map. A cow stops in the middle of the road, two hooves planted on either side of the yellow line, and I wonder if he too is not clearly defined. Standing between two things, two fences, two lives. Stuck in Americana like the rest of us fighting few. He’s all black and I wonder if that means something, until I see the graceful curve of his horns and realize he’s a bison and all my metaphors take off into the nothing of air, into the miles of space between us and another human, into the expanse of highway that hasn’t seen another car in days.

C. L. Brenton

6 Ways to Motivate Yourself When You're Feeling Unmotivated

Writing is fun. That’s why I do this right? Because it’s fun. The joy gets me through all the revisions, the tough starts, the long, laborious, complicated endings. Sometimes I get stuck, sometimes I get lost along the way, sometimes I get overwhelmed and I feel compelled to plan instead of write, to get lost in google search queries - what does it feel like to freeze to death? Drown? How to survive an airplane crash? And whats that phrase again? Something about horses…? All research for future books I promise myself, all the product of an over active daydream.

Then what happens when you get rejected, or turned down. It happens to everyone but how do you rehabilitate your sensitive little brain. How do you pick yourself up, power through the shit and get back to work? As artists, and humans, we’re in a constant battle with ourselves. We’re constantly trying to make our brains want to do things it doesn’t want to do. Math homework, going to the gym, doing the dishes. How do you motivate yourself to do the big stuff, the stuff you need to do to accomplish your Big Goals?

I hate to write a list, and I hate even more to title this post “6 ways to motivate yourself when you're feeling unmotivated” - but consider it an homage to my latest project with Girl Meets Strong and consider it also entirely glib.

1. A little bit today is a lot tomorrow

My daily writing goal is 2,000 words. It’s not that much and usually takes me about two hours. That means if I want to write a 100,000 word book it will take me fifty days. A few months of editing and wham, bam, thank you ma’am I am done! 

It’s never that easy, of course, but the concept is that simple. Work on something a little bit everyday, and eventually it will be done. I just saw a banjo player last night who built his banjo over the course of two thousand hours and twenty five years. It’s gorgeous, plays beautifully, and is a huge source of pride for him. Can you imagine working twenty five years on a single project? Me neither. But the concept is the same. Work every day, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you amass words, or paintings, or talent.

2. Don a super hero costume.

So you want to be a writer, an artist, an entrepreneur, a better secretary, draftsman, barista, or astronaut. What does that person wear? It can be cliche if you want, a beret, a suit with a red tie, glasses and a tight bun — but imagine it anyway. When you picture yourself as the best blank that ever lived, what are you wearing? What about when you accept your award for greatest barista ever? Come on, you’ve imagined it. When you’re a guest on Oprah (it’s okay, in your fantasy she can still have a show) what do you look like?

Now wear it. When you’re feeling unmotivated or uninspired put on your costume. Hell wear it even when you are inspired, I don’t care! Bam, you’re an artist. Pow, you’re an entrepreneur. See? It’s just that easy to become an astronaut. So a costume isn’t everything, but it’s a great way to trick your brain, to reinvigorate your dream, to entice excitement back into your world. For me it’s a gray hat and glasses, neither of which I need sitting in my dark office with 20/15 vision. See how long those eagle eyes last me wearing prescription readers and staring at a screen in the dark all day, but they make me feel like a writer damnit. And sometimes that’s just what I need.

3. Power cards

Okay so this is the most hokum new age mumby jumby I get. You can buy this amazing deck of cards on amazon with really great mantras on each. This is not your grandma’s famous quote book, these are deeply insightful powerful phrases that work. Everything I touch is a success. I release all criticism. Even as I write the phrases I can feel the stress melt off me, my breathing get easier. I am deeply fulfilled by all that I do. Ahhhhhhh.

I have four of the sixty-four cards propped up on my desk as I work, and they help. They really do. When they stop filling me with a sense of calm, I change them out. There are some that focus on relationships, family, and body image. Whatever you want to work on as a human in that moment, the cards will help. You can hang them in your bedroom, on your mirror, put them in your desk drawer at work, just make sure you really read them when you pass by. They'll reinvigorate your spirit. It's incredible.

4. You’ll be great. Eventually.

There are no overnight successes, and no child prodigies. There are only people who work very hard for a very long time. The great thing about that is, if you work very hard for a very long time, eventually, you’ll be great! The reality is, every second that you aren’t working, there is someone out there who is. They’re who you need to catch. They’re the ones to beat, that invisible jerk who’s working ten times harder than you. Go on. Run faster.

5. Do exactly what you want to do.

Bash all schedules, don’t look at any lists. Today you get to do exactly what you want to do. I used to think that schedules were the key to my success, and I still try to adhere to some - write every day at the same time, etc. But schedules aren’t everything. You are governed by this big gray mass sloshing around in your head, and this other red sinewy muscle thumping along in your chest. You have to take care of both in order to be successful. Follow your bliss for a day and see where it takes you. It might be just the break through you need.

6. Forgiveness.

You will miss a day. That’s okay. Something in your brain is telling you you need a break, you need to think about this longer, you need to take a walk, see a friend, tackle some things on your never ending real-life list. You’ll get back at it tomorrow, and the next day and the day after that. Forgiving yourself for one slip-up will make you more likely to come back tomorrow.

I once heard this great quote about success in a couple’s vows at a wedding. I wish I could attribute it to someone but here it is anyway:

If you want to succeed at a thing, you must jump in the water, swim as fast as you can, and slowly increase the speed.

Good luck!

C.

Baby, I Was Born This Way

“I can’t remember the last time I had a cold,” I told my friend over dinner the other night.

She looked at me and cocked her head. “That’s because you haven’t been working.” 

But I have been, I have been working, I wanted to scream. Maybe if she had said “You work from home,” it wouldn’t have felt so snide, but she thinks writing means I don’t work at all. And that really bothers me.

Whether it’s painting, drawing, photography, or pottery, people tend to see making art as a leisurely activity. Something one does in their free time to unwind, to escape, to make Christmas gifts for their loved ones. Sure there are hobbyists who do just that, but the work you can buy, or see in a museum, or read on your kindle, has taken years of training and perfecting.

A fan once asked Picasso to draw him something on a paper napkin in a bar. Picasso whipped out his pen and quickly handed the patron a work of art. 

“Four hundred dollars.” Picasso demanded to his admirer's surprise.

“I just watched you make that. It only took you a minute.”

“No,” Picasso replied. “It took me twenty years.”

It’s so easy to see making art as a function of time. Sure, you think, If I had a few months, I could write a novel too. But the truth is, it’s not just one novel, it’s not two, it’s not even years of creative writing classes, reading great literature, or books on plot and grammar. The difference between a hobbyist and a professional is passion, pure and simple. It’s momentum so strong, it would be impossible for the artist to stop making art.

I have been a writer everyday since as long as I can remember. Just ask my mom how many times she had to stomp down the hall to my bedroom when I was in middle school, because I was obsessed with writing on my clunky typewriter. CLICK CLACK CLICKS filled the ears of my sleeping parents and sisters while I lived out my romantic notions of being a writer. 

These days, thanks to Apple, my typing is softer, my writing confined mostly to daylight hours, and my work less covered in whiteout. But the driving force is the same. I live to write, only recently have I begun to tell my friends and family who and what I really am.

After telling a friend about my experience admitting all this to people, he told me that mine was irrefutably a coming out story. When he came out as gay, he experienced all the same placations I did. It’s just a phase, or I wish it was easier for people like you, spread through both our stories like a virus. Though mine was peppered with writing is so therapeutic, isn’t it? and his had the inevitable isn’t there a pill for that?  the judgements were oddly similar. That we had made an undesirable choice, and society would frown upon it. But it’s not a choice. He can no more decide to like women, than I can decide to stop writing. To quote Lady Gaga, something I almost never do, Baby, I was born this way.

I waited, I kept it to myself because I didn’t want to risk derision in my fledgling years. I wanted to prove to myself that I was a writer before I was forced to prove it to anyone else. Now that I've finished a book that I'm proud of, that agents want to read, I’m confident that I am a writer.

It's taken years of hard work to get to this place. I know it will take years more before I'm where I want to be. I know that hard work and passion create talent and drive careers forward. And I know that nothing anyone could say, no matter how well-intentioned, or hurtful, or unsupportive could ever ever make me stop.

C. L. Brenton

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