Daily Confessional
It's been over 2 months since my last post...did you miss me? I even missed myself and I'm pretty sure that I've been with me...at least most of the time. Time has moved more quickly it seems of late, but I've had moments to reflect and gather my thoughts, trying to figure out where I am going from here.This blog has been more of a confessional than a nuts and bolts venue, but that's more of who I am. This isn't a place where you come to learn how to be a great writer, and I am the last person to tell you how to become one. My process will be different because of who am and how I write. I tend to write best from emotion and visual representations. Call it an actor's point of view. Mainly because that is how I think. I see a scene and write it as I would be giving the reader a play-by-play of a movie. I get into the character, feel what they feel, remember where they've been and react how they would react. I'm just quirky like that.
However, there are a few ideas that drive my thoughts on almost a daily basis, not only when I have story ideas, but in every day life. So let me drop a morsel on you to savor, maybe even give you some incentive to take it to the next level.
Out of Control
More importantly, what is out of YOUR control? There are some who would say that everything is out of your control. There are many things you could call these people, but the proper term would be FatalistsYou can find a great deal of information on the Internet about about fatalism beginning with definitions and getting deeper into various philosophical thoughts on the subject, but I am going to deal simply, as I am sometimes prone to doing and approach this from a layman's perspective.
Fatalism is the basic premise that every event is predetermined and that one hasn't any control over the outcome. Throw free-will out the window and explain away life-changing episodes with, "everything happens for a reason." Often those with such a view have a variety of negative life experiences and assume little responsibility for the situations in which they found themselves.
Destiny is pretty much the same thing, only it has more than a slight advantage in the arena of positive connotation. Destinies are for those who achieve success (no matter how limited,) unless you're a character in a Star Wars story line, in which case, it's pretty much a crap shoot.
The thing about being a writer is that you can craft that story, the moments that lead to the moments, the way people are brought together, the things that tear them apart, all of those things happen the way you want them to go. The beginnings, the endings, the roller coaster ride in between, that's all up to you.
And I'm unclear on how fatalistic I am to believe that right here, right now...I am exactly where I was meant to be. How much did I choose and how much was predetermined? Who knows. Looking back I know that there were some things that seemed to just fall into perfect place.
Except this entry. I really wanted to get into Semantics here too, but I think it's just going to have to wait until next time.
Here I go again
It's been a long year. I've wondered just how I've gotten to the place I am now and what kind of direction I'll be heading in during 2016. If you've been reading here, you know that I follow a few types of M-spiration for my writing.Lately, it's been a lot of music during my drive time and 2 songs brought me to this place. Whitesnake's "Here I go Again" with "I don't know where I'm goin'/But I sure know where I've been ..."
But it's really the lyrics from Rush "Freewill" that puts things into perspective:
There are those who think
That life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance
The chorus is more telling:
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill
