Making the Right Writing Decision Every Day

I don’t know about you, but in my personal experience and talking to my peers, a common way of expressing creative thoughts is with a creativity word-vomit session. Writing and writing till your fingers grow numb and then the well dries up. There’s nothing to be found for days, months, who knows how long? It is just dead end after dead end. 

After taking a screenwriting course with Professor Geoffrey Gunn, he emphasized that one of the most important things to take from this class is the habit of writing every day. That seemed impossible to me last summer. To be fair, I was at a time where I knew the next semester I was entering I was going to overload and I was going to be a Resident Assistant (RA). So, I was gonna be busy. (And I was.)

I went through a semester of no creative writing, and I decided I cannot just wait around. Life is survivable without art, but it isn't living. I emailed a professor I had for my Freshman year writing class, Dr. Joni Tevis, and expressed how much she changed my writing and how good of a creative writer I hear she is. I told her can't take another creative writing class before I graduate because I can't fit it in. It's not in the cards, but I wanted help getting started again. The way she speaks has such a conviction and power that you automatically listen. No ifs, ands, ors, or buts. You listen. She accepted my request. We plotted some important dates. We created a goal. She sent me off with a general college ruled notebook and I was on my way. I thankfully already had ideas, and I just started writing. One day at a time. Of course there would be days where I felt more inspired than others, but that would mean 5 pages written in a day, not 50 pages written in a day and a side dish of burnout.

Every so often, depending on the milestone, I would stop by for 30ish minutes describing my process, setbacks, days I skipped, but for the most part, I showed up and I didn’t skip writing often. It became a natural habit. I’m constantly online due to an I.T. major and just existing in a world dependent on screens. There was one daily habit I already had before the creative writing journey: coloring. I like to do something with my hands every day. I was a musician for years, so having something to grab and do, just be human and do something creative without technology is an essential daily practice for me. These two kind of just combined together in my mind. I first color as soon as my day allows and then I write. I prefer to do these activities in the morning, so I have at least one thing that brings me joy before the world around me has any potential of bringing me down. Whenever I don’t write it feels like something is missing. Not that I feel empty, but more like an itch I can’t scratch. I know it’s there, but my brain is actively shoving it down.

A coloring page I completed fairly recently!

One of my biggest milestones during the writing process was when I was on the tour bus for Furman Singers. Although my progress was minimal because I was just so busy, I still showed up some of the days for that week I was on tour.  Dr. Tevis gave me a green notebook, it almost felt prophetic. I was writing a story containing an alligator, and every day I was met with green. It felt even more like the stars aligned when I went to the Bass Pro Shops pyramid and saw baby alligators, much like the one I wrote. 

An alligator I saw at the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid!

In one of our last meetings together I told her about my coloring habit and she gifted me a coloring book. I genuinely felt so seen in a way I have never felt before. Starting this journey with another made it something so beautiful. I won’t see her for a while as it is the summer now and I will be going abroad in the fall, so I stocked up on some notebooks: blue and red. Seems appropriate for the stories I’m writing. And if I get ahead, I’m sure I can find another notebook somewhere. 

People ask me: why on paper? Why did you do that? Now you have to transfer it online? To that I say: I don’t know. She gave me the notebook. If I wrote literary fiction rather than screenplay it could potentially be an easier transfer, but I liked it on paper. Having it on paper and transferring it digitally was satisfying. It gave me a chance to revise because I had to. I still probably have more revisions to go, but for now it’s completed. The story in its original form also exists somewhere, my dorm for now, and I think that is neat. Granted, now I have printed it out and it exists physically, but it goes back to working with your hands. There’s a power to using your hands to create. It is so innately human. Using our hands to create art is much like the original creation of fire. It is controlling that little spark and seeing where the light takes you. It can be dangerous, but if you tend to it, you have something beautiful.