Pause...

So I wrote a handful of pieces for Futures and the plan was to try and finish it out but...

That character that popped up at the end of the last one? She wasn't supposed to be there. Or at least I hadn't planned on her being there. But she was. And then she had secrets to tell me about other things. Basically I still know how it ends, but my path there has changed so now I have to think about it again.

Instead today you get a weird little writing process piece.

Chuck Tingle made a post a couple weeks ago where he said that he felt like he didn't write so much as open a channel to the creative forces in the universe and just transmit them. Which, I know, is very woo woo and weird to anyone who has never experienced something like that.

But it's how I write so I totally got it.

It's the main reason why I typically don't write longer pieces. Why I love micro fiction. I can sit down at the computer, read a prompt, or not, and just write. A few hundred words later and I have a little story. Sometimes it's just a scene that seems lifted out of something else. Sometimes it's a character or characters I've written about before. Some of you might remember the "bar people" that I spent a lot of time with a few years ago. They all had little stories to tell and so I told them.

And that's what it really feels like. Like these are people who have stories that they have trusted me to tell you. I know, like from a logical place, that they aren't. That everything is just something that's bouncing around in my head and I'm making it all up. But it doesn't feel that way. It feels like someone told me a story, or is telling me a story, more accurately, and I'm writing it down.

I rarely edit. (Much to the chagrin of some of you) I rarely plot things out. I just sit down and write. Or tell myself the story while I'm cleaning house then try to remember it to write it down for you.

It's the same way I used to tell stories when I was a kid. I've talked before about entertaining my friends with stories when we were on tour, or on the drive up to camp. We didn't have phones to scroll or even walkmen to listen to. If you were lucky and could read in a moving vehicle without getting sick you could do that, otherwise it was find a way to entertain yourself. And sometimes we were on that old school bus for 12 hours. I made up a lot of stories.

I used to do it with Katie. We'd tell each other long stories that we went back to again and again. Playing in bed on a Sunday morning while we let Brent "sleep" next to us we crafted stories with her green army men.

I did it in New York when I first met the group of people I played MouseHunt with online. I wove a story about gangster squirrels and the pigeons who worked for them. Taking my cues from how they were moving around the park. And what made the people around me laugh more.

Tingle talked about how writing like this takes a really light touch. Like you can't hold on too tightly. You have to be loose enough to not try and control the flow.

Open a channel to the creative force in the universe and just translate.

A lot of times I write so fast that I don't remember what I've written.

A lot of times.

Like an embarrassingly large number of times.

I print off all of my stuff (I'm old, give me a break) and I could right now go pick up one of my fiction binders from the shelf and surprise myself with a few twist endings.

And then also post a few links here of things that I love.

That was another thing Chuck posted. How odd it is for us when someone talks about how much they like themselves. Or how talented they are. Or handsome. We automatically shut people like that down. So vain. So cocky. So cringe. But...why don't we all talk about how much we like ourselves? How talented we are? Why are we more inclined to shoot ourselves down instead of build ourselves up? And why are we more comfortable with people who are self deprecating instead of self loving? I thought it was an interesting line of thought.

I know I'm guilty of it for sure.

So today I'm giving you the suggestion to tell yourself how great you are and then open yourself up to the creative force in the universe and see what it tells you.

Maybe you have a story waiting to be translated too.