Writing with Rhythm

You'll be aware that rhythm is important in music, but did you know it's important in writing too? Poetry, whether or not it rhymes, is dependent on rhythm. The words need to flow freely, not trip each other up, unless you want to create that effect for a special reason.

But in prose, short stories, novels, even articles, rhythm is important too. If someone were to read the piece out loud the sounds must move in an attractive way. Of course, it's even more important for a piece of drama to have rhythm too as it's designed to be spoken. Actors will find it very difficult to perform if the words trip them up instead of tripping off their tongues.

So how can you make sure your writing has rhythm? The easiest way is to read your piece out loud, putting a mark against any words or phrases that don't work. Often all you will need to do is rejig a sentence very slightly to improve the rhythm.

If you aren't musical and you don't feel you have an ear for rhythm, you can acquire one by reading poetry out loud to yourself. Even reading one poem a day will help you to hone your sense of rhythm.

So go with the flow - add rhythm to your writing and hear it swing!

Writing in the Zone

One of the joys of writing is the ability to lose yourself in your work, so that you lose track of time because you're so immersed in what you're doing. Some people call this experience 'flow', others 'being in the zone'.

It's not an experience that is unique to writing. Other people have it too - sportsmen, performers, artists. The feeling that, just for the moment, nothing else exists but you and what you are doing.

It's one of the ways in which we manage to bend time in an almost mystical way, by making it appear to fly by at a much faster speed than usual. One minute it's three o'clock and you're just sitting down to write, the next it's six o'clock and you think, 'Good heavens! Is it that time already?'

This afternoon, for the first time in a week or so, I had a whole afternoon where I could just sit down and get on with my writing without having to go anywhere or do anything. I decided to write an article for Triond about how to save money. I enjoyed doing it as it's a topic I haven't written about before and so I found it a refreshing change.

Spending the afternoon creating an entire article from start to finish was a very pleasurable experience. It was very satisfying to get to teatime with my three-page article not only finished but submitted at the click of a button.

I also like the fact that I'll probably hear tomorrow whether my piece has been published and be able to see it on the internet. I'm confident that it will be published as the eight items that I've submitted since I started writing for Triond a couple of weeks ago have all been accepted.

So I look forward to being able to tell you the web address tomorrow. Watch this space!

Why not set yourself the challenge of completing a piece of work in a specific period of time - a morning, an afternoon or an evening? It doesn't have to be as long as my article. It could be a poem or a 60-word story.

Look on it as a challenge. That way you'll enjoy the sense of achievement you get when you manage to achieve it. And once you set your mind to it and focus on the task, you'll be amazed to find yourself in the zone too.

Shifting Time

I must admit that yesterday I cheated. Or I could say that today I cheated.

The posting that appears in my blog today, Friday, wasn't actually posted today. It was written yesterday and I arranged for it to be posted automatically on Friday using a special new feature of Blogspot that allows you to schedule postings for future dates.

But because I'm doing the same thing today, Friday, you won't be able to read this posting until at least Saturday. So when I called today 'Friday', that wasn't strictly accurate, as today is now Saturday. And yesterday isn't really yesterday, it's Friday. Or is that today?

Confused? You're not the only one!

I've been playing tricks with time. But then, isn't that what writers often do?

Take Vanishing Acts, for example, the book I was discussing yesterday - or was it two days ago.....? The central character, Delia, thinks she can make sense of her life so far until one day the police turn up at her house and arrest her father. What she learns after that completely turns her family history upside down. History is, in effect, rewritten, as far as she is concerned. The life that she thought she had is overwritten by another version, like a new version of a computer file replacing an existing one.

Then there's the way that Audrey Niffenegger played with time in her magnificent Richard and Judy Book Club read, The Time Traveler's Wife. The central character of the book, Henry, has a disorder which causes him to time-travel, spontaneously, against his will. It brings a new meaning to the phrase, 'If I knew then what I know now'. Would we want to know what the future had in store for us, for example, that this is the last time you and your wife will ever be together?

Then, of course, there are the usual sci-fi time travel adventures, including Dr. Who. I was particularly moved by an episode in an earlier series in which the adult Rose finds herself at the moment in her childhood when her father is about to be killed in a road accident. She is tortured by the inevitability of what is going to happen to him and her desire to prevent his death, even though saving him would mean her changing the course of history.

In real life, our future unfolds second by second, minute by minute, day by day. We don't have the luxury of knowing what the future will hold for us. Sometimes this is frustrating, when it means we have to wait and see how things will turn out. If we've lost our job, it would be nice to know that we won't be unemployed forever - this is just a little break, some time off before we get an even better job. It would be nice to know that our dad will recover from his heart attack, even though he's in Intensive Care and it's touch and go. It would be nice to know that the two-year old who is driving us mad with her temper tantrums will eventually turn into a pleasant, calm grown-up.

But if we did know everything that lay in store for us, all the downs as well as the ups, the things that don't turn out the way we hoped, we would find that knowledge unbearable. Like drivers on a dark night, we see just as far as the headlight beam allows us to. We can plan, we can hope, but we can never know exactly what the future has in store for us.

Perhaps that's one of the attractions of being a writer. The future of our characters is in our hands. We can know every detail of it, plan every detail of it, as well as every moment of their past. Talk about being a control freak!

Some writers carry this to the nth degree, planning every twist and turn of their plot before they write a single word. Others prefer to let their characters surprise them. I was amazed when one of my characters, a feisty shock-jock, ended up having a baby. When I started writing the play I never for one moment imagined that she would. But then I didn't know her so well in those days...

We have other brushes with time in our working life. Perhaps we are doing the sort of writing where we are assailed by deadlines at every turn, shooting schedules, rewrites, producers yelling for redrafts. Perhaps time is dragging for us because we have writer's block and can't motivate ourselves. But then there are other moments when we are 'in the zone', when time becomes irrelevant and we appear to be outside of it because we are so lost in the creative process.

For some of us, these occasions are few and far between, unexpected, uncontrollable gifts. Others have managed to develop the knack of creating this sort of 'flow', creating our own timelessness within time. Susan K. Perry's 'Writing in Flow' is a fascinating look at how some writers manage to make this happen with many suggestions to help us acquire this emotionally satisfying state.

It's great when you are so absorbed in your writing so much that you completely lose track of how long you've been working. In fact, I think it's just happened to me. Is it that time already?

It's later than I thought, but there's no need to worry. You're not reading this in real time, so I'm ahead of myself. At least I think I am! How did that time shift work again....?

The Pink Wafer Effect

When you're growing a plant or a flower, you can get it off to a good start with a well-dug bed of top quality soil; you can keep away bugs; you can encourage it to flourish by giving it plenty of water and regular doses of Miracle Gro; but apart from 'forcing' it to mature earlier with a bit of hothousing, you can't actually make it grow.

I know the Prince of Wales is meant to encourage his plants to grow by talking to them, but as far as I know, he doesn't actually say, 'Come on, you little blighters, grow, or else!'

Plants have their own natural growing pattern. You can provide them with optimum conditions, love, care and conversation, perhaps even a little Reiki, but sitting agonizing over them, harrassing them, bullying them, is not going to make them grow the slightest bit faster.

Creativity's a bit like that. Last night, in my class, we were discussing how the writers and co-creators of the Life on Mars TV series came up with the idea for the show and went about writing it. There is a very interesting section in The Official Companion in which the four writers, Matthew Graham, Ashley Pharoah, Tony Jordan, and Chris Chibnall discuss the process of bringing the series to fruition.

One of the things that amazed the students was the fact that the three co-creators went off for a weekend in Blackpool to come up with ideas for television series. OK, so they did hire a small conference room and spend time in it bandying about ideas. But they also got out and about on the Pleasure Beach and spent lots of time playing.

To my adult learners, who in their day jobs are confined to an office from nine to five (or longer) five days a week, it was unthinkable that people who have a limited time together to come up with ideas for a deadline would waste time on playing.

So many beginning writers are used to squeezing their creativity into the odd hour or two that they manage to create for themselves among the obligations of job, family, household chores, tax returns, you name it. You mean some people actually go off and have fun!

I remember that in the American TV series, Thirtysomething, the two ad men, Michael and Elliot, worked in an agency which had basketball nets so they could relax their minds by playing, and thus give themselves space to come up with creative ideas.

One of my students works for an advertising agency, and confirmed that even on our side of the Pond, you do find that sort of thing in creative working environments. One of the companies he worked for even had Playstations in their offices.

To someone who works in local government or education or business, having time to 'waste' like that is just unthinkable. There are targets to be met, schedules to adhere to, timesheets to fill in - in some firms, every minute has to be logged and accounted for.

Of course, even creative people have to meet deadlines and fit in with other people's agendas. But giving your employees, giving yourself, time and space to play, to freewheel, is not time wasted. It's during that 'down time', when you're relaxed, that the 'aha' moments come.

So what are we writers to do? Install a basketball net in our front room so we can have a quick slam dunk? I don't think it would work for me. Ball games were never my strength and I can't say I ever found them relaxing, even when I was young.

But yesterday, while I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I did put on a CD and practise some of the belly dancing moves I'd been learning in my Arabic dance class. It must have made my brain more flexible as well as my waist, for once I went back upstairs to the computer to carry on with my web design work, I managed to solve with ease a Dreamweaver problem that I'd been struggling with all week.

Other times, if I can't think what to write, I'll sit and play the piano for a while. My friend who writes science books has a glass of wine and strums on his guitar. Another has candle-lit baths when she just can't find any inspiration for her romantic novels. And many writers go for a gentle walk when they find themselves at an impasse.

I don't think it really matters what you do. It can be anything you find relaxing, just as long as it gives you some breathing space and takes away from you the pressure to create, just for a few minutes.

It's like trying to remember something that you know when you just can't think of it, somebody's name perhaps. If you keep on and on trying to remember it, you'll stay stuck. But if you stop trying to force yourself to remember, and get on with something else, the missing information will suddenly pop into your head when you least expect it.

There's a telling example of this in episode 1 of the first series of Life on Mars. The detectives are trying to get an elderly lady to remember why she'd come into the station to make a complaint. The more Sam Tyler (with his modern, pressurized policing methods) tries to coerce the woman into remembering, the more flustered and useless she becomes. Then eventually Gene Hunt chips in with 'Pink wafers! I love pink wafers, don't you?'

Immediately the old lady relaxes, and after a genial chat and a few extra biscuits, she is able to produce the information the cops are after, vital information which leads them to the murderer. It's a priceless scene, very funny, but also psychologically true.

So if you're struggling with your writing and the Muse appears to have left you, don't beat yourself up about it. Go and practise your belly dancing, play an instrument, talk about pink wafers. Give yourself the space to play and before you know it, you'll soon be back in the creative flow.