As I haven't posted in two weeks I was surprised to see that there was a spike in page views last Saturday. It seems that someone in France and someone in Romania may have read through the majority of the posts I've written this year. If you're reading this, I'm not sure how you came across my blog but hello!
I've ordered two of the three things I need to complete my Halloween costume and one of them shipped today so I'm pretty stoked. I really enjoy dressing up for Halloween but I'm not terribly social so I generally end up wearing my costumes while watching tv in my apartment. When I started this job I found out that my office encourages staff to dress up for the occasion but I only had a week's warning last year so I wasn't able to do much. This year though, I had a plan months out and I'm excited to see things coming together. I'll have to share a picture when I'm done with everything.
I gave blood on Tuesday for the first time in four years. Why the long break? Well, to put it simply, I hate needles. A lot. My courage was rewarded, however, with a noticeable lack of bruising. I also learned that the stinging you feel for about 30 seconds after being stuck isn't from the needle. It's from the small amount of iodine that gets into your blood from the scrub they do to sanitize your arm. And here I had thought it was just my body's reaction to having a pointy piece of metal shoved inside it. I'm not sure if this particular piece of information will ever be relevant to anything I write but it has made me more comfortable with the idea of giving again in the future for some reason.
I read a quote recently, advice from a published writer to those aspiring to be, that encouraged people to focus on feeling emotions deeply in the interest of being able to better portray emotion in writing. I consider this to be good advice in general, though I might try to focus more on being able to describe how I'm feeling rather than perhaps feeding an emotion until it's reached it's greatest depth - for two reasons. One - because if we can't describe even the most surface emotion then having gone to lengths to feel it is worthless in relation to our craft. Two - I think the suggestion to embrace and experience all kinds of emotion runs the chance of encountering the same issues found in method acting. Namely, that the pursuit of a certain mentality or emotion, especially inherently destructive ones like depression or rage, can easily have damaging consequences. A lot of people have spoken out against the idea that artists need to be depressed in order to create their best work. It's fairly easy to see the problem with such an idea but the danger here is much the same as that of indulging in anger and selfishness. Our characters will hopefully experience some of these emotions as well as more positive ones if we write them well, but I don't believe that we need to personally experience a murderous rage in order to write one any more than we need to be orphaned to convincingly write a character who has been. It's easy enough as it is for us all to give in to feeding anger, self-pity, and sadness as it is - and if you choose to pursue those things, it might turn out that no one is ever able to read that story you were writing. I want to read your stories. There are people out there who will need your stories. It might be the psychology major in me that gets me so wrapped up in topics like this but please everyone be safe. There is a difference between dedication to your work and disregard for your health.
No comments:
Post a Comment