This morning I started writing a piece about President Lincoln’s use of language in the Gettysburg address. Instead, as happens frequently, I ended up writing something totally different.
You see, my muse is fickle. She arrives when she wants, and while I can’t predict her arrivals, I’ve learned that I can attract her through a simple act: writing…ANYTHING. She loves the rhythmic sound of fingertips striking a keyboard and if she’s in the mood, we start dancing.
But that’s when all bets are off. Any thoughts of continuing down the original story path are futile, as my suddenly invigorated fingertips struggle to keep up with a barrage of wild new ideas. Some are good and others aren’t, but it doesn’t matter. The thought-train is barreling downhill and my job is get out of its way.
That’s what happened when I started writing about the Gettysburg Address. As I studied an old photograph from the actual event, I wondered what the people in it were thinking. That’s when she arrived and steered me away from a linquistic story to a more historical one. The resulting rough draft wasn’t quite StoryHowish, yet, it still lead me to think more deeply about my own process.
Writing, as in storytelling, is not a linear process. No matter how hard you try to maintain a strait line from point A to point B, the muse forces course-corrections to F, then through W, and finally concluding at Z. Resisting such deviations leads only to frustration. Therefore, the measure of any skilled storyteller is the ability to put one’s ego aside to find the right story.
Have you set out to tell a story but find yourself blocked? Woo the muse with the call of the keyboard. Perhaps she’ll help you find a better path.
Now, let’s see if I can finish that piece on the Gettysburg address.
Photo Credit:Williams, Sophus, photographer. Woman Looking at Book as Another Woman Points to Something in the Book. , None. [Berlin: loescher & petsch ; verl. e. linde & comp. sophus williams between 1867 and 1873] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/96519653/.
I’ve always liked writing, but I can’t say the same thing about reading. My reading experience differs from most of my writing friends, who describe the joys of discovering their local libraries, where they spent hours both finding and devouring books.
I just couldn’t do it. Reading was a physically painful process. After about a half-hour, my eyes would hurt, and I needed to stop. It wasn’t until I graduated from college that my optometrist diagnosed the problem.
“You’re nearsighted,” Dr. Baker, said. “So, I’m prescribing you reading glasses.”
I looked at him quizzically. “But, Doc, everything up close is clear. It’s the things in the distance that are fuzzy. Why do I need reading glasses?”
“To remove eye strain,” he said, before explaining how eye muscles contract to focus close and relax to focus far. “You’re an engineer. Your entire world is only a few feet away. Because of that, your eye muscles never get a chance to relax and thus they remain in a perpetual state of near focus.”
So, rather than giving me corrective glasses to compensate for my nearsightedness, Dr. Baker prescribed reading glasses to trick my eyes into thinking that they were focused out far, thus forcing my eye muscles to relax, and helping my distant-vision to return.
Those reading glasses changed my life because I can now read for hours and my eyes never get tired.
I learned a valuable lesson that day. When trying to solve a problem, it’s frequently best to treat the cause as opposed to symptoms.
It’s also a hint for storytellers who are trying to find an angle. If a story is the result of people pursuing what they want, and what they want is to solve a problem, there are at least two different ways to go: compensate for the symptom or eliminate its cause. Each one will lead to its own story.
So, what problem are you trying to solve today? Have you considered both approaches to solving it?
Photo Credit: Bain News Service, Publisher. Assembling Main Engine. , ca. 1915. [Between and Ca. 1920] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014706627/.
About five years ago, my son and I had the opportunity to play with a DJI drone. Since we’re both content creators–Bryan is a sound designer in the video game industry and I’m, well, you know–we’re always looking for projects to work on together.
It didn’t take long to recognize the advantages of drone photography. The gimbal-stabilized, bird’s-eye-view HD video was stunning. Yet, these majestic images also came with a downside because drone cameras don’t record audio. And for good reason. The only sound that a drone-mounted microphone could capture would resemble something akin to a plague of locusts.
Most drone photographers compensate for this limitation with mood-setting music beds, supporting fast-moving footage with hard-driving music, and peaceful panoramas with cinematic soundtracks. But neither storyteller nor sound designer was interested in producing this type of video. We wanted to create something different that used both of our skills. And so we brainstormed ideas.
Since we only had a limited time with the borrowed DJI Phantom 2 Vision Quadcopter (the weekend) and we didn’t trust our fledgling piloting skills (must avoid crowds), we decided to record me doing something that I like to do early in the morning: find a deserted basketball court and shoot baskets.
And thus we had a plan. I would shoot baskets, then write and record some sort of internal monologue. Bryan would fly the drone, design the audio, and assemble the video.
The following is the final version of that collaboration.
