Book ideas are the moments when the voices in your head become so loud it shakes free apple flavored thoughts onto the continuation of a living tree, which can be a sheet of paper, a computer screen, crumpled napkin or a receipt from a strip mall store that guarantees ten percent off the next time you visit.
Like an innocent calf branded during the early days of spring a writer forever holds where they were at the birth of their next adventure. Learning to trust its presence inside an already crowded hallway is an art form assumed bold, strong and covered in a perfectly ripened scent and yet its reaction to the first pages written resemble an extremely shy child introduced at a elementary school assembly.
I’ve met many authors; the closet type inspires me most. An idea bursts onto their daily habits, one maybe two weeks are spent racing to feed an itch that demands, “Don’t stop until you’ve got a beginning, middle and end.” Then without warning, the visual caught between the lids of your eyes disappears faster than the day it arrived; so the book, short story, romantic piece of poetry or heart felt lyrics to a song about the times are set aside to dry in a sun that never sets.
Book ideas are the moments when the voices in your head leave the rest of the wordy word landscape up to you. Like dreams we fall from before its conclusion, the attempt is to jump far and wide hoping a single print from your fingertip might locate the key to unlock the gate just like the other day when nothing else mattered but the desire to paint words onto the continuation of a living tree.
Writers are individuals with four thousand faces. When it gets too tiresome to hold up each persons Visa to be in your country the first expression is to huff and puff, grow angry, take a spill, pill or swallow an entire glass maybe ten of things made of grapes and other berries. I once did that; killed off one of the main characters…then stood for minutes that felt like hours staring at myself in the mirror exclaiming, “A good writer would erase what this drunk moment created. A brilliant writer would accept it and take the story a different direction.”
Book ideas are moments where everything around you becomes an object studied, listened to, touched, smelled then boiled in a giant kettle that reshapes your everyday into a puzzle piece that makes your story better. Mark Twain didn’t like the idea that his readers wanted an autobiography, “Don’t they understand that every book I’ve written is my life!”
An author writes to me this past Sunday, “Please get me published.”
To which I replied, “If I do all the work what will be used to teach the lessons you’ll one day share with a passerby seeking the same?”
Book ideas are no different than being a martial artist in search of the great Black belt and beyond…some schools hand those strips out cloth out like Halloween candy while others require years of training that show you the way. Determination only gets you to the front door. Walking the way everyday introduces you to universal connections meant to take place.
I am not a great writer. I’m perfectly happy knowing not everyone understands what falls from these hands. I carry with me a poet’s accent. How you place, arrange, cut loose, build up, reshape and curve words is what’s missing from today’s bookstores. What makes you original is the confidence of being truthful to the pair of shoes you’ve grown into.
Not all book ideas are meant to shoot from the soil and grow brightly lit petals much tastier than a rose; if that were the case there’d be less lawyers and doctors waiting to take your money. Halloween 78 required the writer in me to wait thirty three years to put it on display.
Take incredible notes when the voices become too loud, for there'll come a day when the best thing you can share with those invited to the circles you helped create will hold the little things that suddenly become music on days when missing you is much much too heavy to bare. Those tiny sketches, word dumps and plump new beginnings shall feed the imagination of the next generation inspiring them to put down the video games and find tremendous pleasure in giving the imagination permission to dance.
You don't need to sell a million books to be called an author; the only thing required is the tip of a pen or pencil, even the essence of your most simple touch lightly kissing the edge of a sheet of paper I call the continuation of a living tree.
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Showing posts with label getting published. Show all posts
Showing posts with label getting published. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Berlin Wall has fallen in the world of writing!
“Occasionally, never, when I’m in the mood, if I’m moved, only if I remember,” when it comes to writing I hear every excuse as to why you don’t…and yet, each experience improperly and untimely laid out during this daily adventure has the ingredients that could, may, might, quite possibly invite influence or inspiration to another person’s tough time or bad day.
Justin Halpern lives with his 74 year old father; something about getting old gives you a legal license to say whatever you want, whenever you want. Justin’s decision was to share with the world. Not only did **** My Father Said not only turned Social Media wanter’s into Twitter users but this Fall the book becomes a sitcom starring William Shatner.
The Meryl Streep film Julia and Julie began as a weekly blog; a common everyday woman who found pleasure in cooking challenged herself to bring Julia Child’s eloquent dishes to life then document it on the World Wide Web.
In the past five years Blogging has become a writer’s paradise; an avenue of release without having to worry about editors, publishers, bookstores and walking through a flea market and spotting your work now selling for a nickel. Blogging has very delicately welcomed the shy, easily embarrassed, the timid, fearful, the ghosts and over willing into a theater of: This is me and I’m going to shove every rule about writing to the side and write like I speak. Mark Twain is a great example of why you should always be you as a writer.
Having such a place to perform has unlocked lives. Feel creatively constipated and bloated? Write! Had a great weekend filled with love or misguided adventure? Write! Can’t believe the way your boss is treating you and it’s turned you into a drug abusing alcoholic with no hope for tomorrow? Write! On the opposite end of your writing instrument isn’t a sheet of paper I call a once living tree…there’s a pair of eyes that need to know they aren’t alone.
Julia Cameron couldn’t have said it better when she penned out, “You were born to write. You have the right to write.”
Blogging is an incredible new beginning. It’s a platform to display your art so you can learn to ignore criticism. (Another Julia Cameron-ism)
Because writing is becoming a valuable tool again…what can’t be lost are the stories you wish to share. Those are the tiny torn pages from a notebook you used in school uncaringly thrown into a box now sleeping in the attic. Sleeping not dead. But! But! Who would want to read my stupid childhood chicken scratches? Who would want to travel along with the imagination belonging to a timid half witted hard working employee who writes every now and then because it’s like getting lost in the words of a great novel except you’re the creator of the final page?
Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have paved the way for authors, performers, singers, songwriters and other creative outlets to make it to the shelves of where reading is going…digital.
The Ipod’s of books isn’t just the Nook and Kindle…your cell phone can latch onto a free AP that’ll connect you to a world of storytelling. Now you can be a part of it. The walls of discomfort have fallen. The reasons and purposes that forced you to hide your works of writing art no longer have silence to look forward to.
In 1977, while fighting hard to stay interested in high school I wrote a Rock n Roll novel called Halloween 78; the original handwritten in pencil collection of words about a teenage garage band who makes it famous due to a stupid stunt sits heavily protected in a weather proofed box because I knew one day it would be released but because of my addiction to radio, the writer in me was forced to think only of 30 and 60 second commercials you tune out of.
My first book published wasn’t the one I wanted to be remembered for but I was playing a game called, “Publisher wants…publisher gets.” Although the book has been read by people from India to Russia and somewhere in central Carolina…the joy of writing and getting published still hasn’t set in. In fact it’s blocked me from keeping future work from reaching bookshelves.
I still wrote but just like 48 billion other writers, the written was quickly hid totally forgetting the idea that writers and what they create isn’t supposed to be about me but a willing passerby who needed something to push them through the next level of play. It doesn’t matter what you write, every word that moves through you has the strength to make it to those wandering eyes.
When my books began to appear on Amazon.com it seemed like, “Whoa…is this dude just writing to write?” No…this dude’s had these books sitting in a farm yard barn ready for publishing for three decades completely bathed in goober amounts of the same fear that keeps artists away from displaying their unexplained reasons for writing.
Now that digital books have begun to make their way onto a readers path…the new journey has grown wings allowing writers who’ve been hidden for a lifetime to step outside their normal way of breathing to share what could become the next great novel.
After 32 years, two marriages, nine radio stations, eight dogs, a cat and several birds I call my Jazz singers…Halloween 78 will be released this fall. It’ll sit next to the multitude of self help books that carry my name for no reason other than to say, “It’s time to give away what doesn’t rightfully belong to me…a story.”
If you write or want to write then do it but don’t be like an artist who puts paint on a canvas and expect to charge astronomical amounts of money for something that was given to you for the sole purpose of sharing with the universe. I’ve been at war with the music companies of the world for charging $17.99 for a compact disc then $100 for a concert ticket. In this age of new beginnings for writers…be a true pioneer and keep the prices extremely cheap because the more readers you collect, the bigger the chances one of them will reach into the future to change another life.
You are the messenger and the day of bringing what you hear to life for the world to see has arrived. I am so proud of the words you’ve written and hidden but its now time to let it go for the world to hold. Now you can finally get back to breathing and from it new words will begin to play with your imagination and that’s where a writer's life begins.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
Justin Halpern lives with his 74 year old father; something about getting old gives you a legal license to say whatever you want, whenever you want. Justin’s decision was to share with the world. Not only did **** My Father Said not only turned Social Media wanter’s into Twitter users but this Fall the book becomes a sitcom starring William Shatner.
The Meryl Streep film Julia and Julie began as a weekly blog; a common everyday woman who found pleasure in cooking challenged herself to bring Julia Child’s eloquent dishes to life then document it on the World Wide Web.
In the past five years Blogging has become a writer’s paradise; an avenue of release without having to worry about editors, publishers, bookstores and walking through a flea market and spotting your work now selling for a nickel. Blogging has very delicately welcomed the shy, easily embarrassed, the timid, fearful, the ghosts and over willing into a theater of: This is me and I’m going to shove every rule about writing to the side and write like I speak. Mark Twain is a great example of why you should always be you as a writer.
Having such a place to perform has unlocked lives. Feel creatively constipated and bloated? Write! Had a great weekend filled with love or misguided adventure? Write! Can’t believe the way your boss is treating you and it’s turned you into a drug abusing alcoholic with no hope for tomorrow? Write! On the opposite end of your writing instrument isn’t a sheet of paper I call a once living tree…there’s a pair of eyes that need to know they aren’t alone.
Julia Cameron couldn’t have said it better when she penned out, “You were born to write. You have the right to write.”
Blogging is an incredible new beginning. It’s a platform to display your art so you can learn to ignore criticism. (Another Julia Cameron-ism)
Because writing is becoming a valuable tool again…what can’t be lost are the stories you wish to share. Those are the tiny torn pages from a notebook you used in school uncaringly thrown into a box now sleeping in the attic. Sleeping not dead. But! But! Who would want to read my stupid childhood chicken scratches? Who would want to travel along with the imagination belonging to a timid half witted hard working employee who writes every now and then because it’s like getting lost in the words of a great novel except you’re the creator of the final page?
Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have paved the way for authors, performers, singers, songwriters and other creative outlets to make it to the shelves of where reading is going…digital.
The Ipod’s of books isn’t just the Nook and Kindle…your cell phone can latch onto a free AP that’ll connect you to a world of storytelling. Now you can be a part of it. The walls of discomfort have fallen. The reasons and purposes that forced you to hide your works of writing art no longer have silence to look forward to.
In 1977, while fighting hard to stay interested in high school I wrote a Rock n Roll novel called Halloween 78; the original handwritten in pencil collection of words about a teenage garage band who makes it famous due to a stupid stunt sits heavily protected in a weather proofed box because I knew one day it would be released but because of my addiction to radio, the writer in me was forced to think only of 30 and 60 second commercials you tune out of.
My first book published wasn’t the one I wanted to be remembered for but I was playing a game called, “Publisher wants…publisher gets.” Although the book has been read by people from India to Russia and somewhere in central Carolina…the joy of writing and getting published still hasn’t set in. In fact it’s blocked me from keeping future work from reaching bookshelves.
I still wrote but just like 48 billion other writers, the written was quickly hid totally forgetting the idea that writers and what they create isn’t supposed to be about me but a willing passerby who needed something to push them through the next level of play. It doesn’t matter what you write, every word that moves through you has the strength to make it to those wandering eyes.
When my books began to appear on Amazon.com it seemed like, “Whoa…is this dude just writing to write?” No…this dude’s had these books sitting in a farm yard barn ready for publishing for three decades completely bathed in goober amounts of the same fear that keeps artists away from displaying their unexplained reasons for writing.
Now that digital books have begun to make their way onto a readers path…the new journey has grown wings allowing writers who’ve been hidden for a lifetime to step outside their normal way of breathing to share what could become the next great novel.
After 32 years, two marriages, nine radio stations, eight dogs, a cat and several birds I call my Jazz singers…Halloween 78 will be released this fall. It’ll sit next to the multitude of self help books that carry my name for no reason other than to say, “It’s time to give away what doesn’t rightfully belong to me…a story.”
If you write or want to write then do it but don’t be like an artist who puts paint on a canvas and expect to charge astronomical amounts of money for something that was given to you for the sole purpose of sharing with the universe. I’ve been at war with the music companies of the world for charging $17.99 for a compact disc then $100 for a concert ticket. In this age of new beginnings for writers…be a true pioneer and keep the prices extremely cheap because the more readers you collect, the bigger the chances one of them will reach into the future to change another life.
You are the messenger and the day of bringing what you hear to life for the world to see has arrived. I am so proud of the words you’ve written and hidden but its now time to let it go for the world to hold. Now you can finally get back to breathing and from it new words will begin to play with your imagination and that’s where a writer's life begins.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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