The Power of Observational Thought

So I've said multiple times that this blog is to do with the Arts (theatre, writing, film, music) aswell as a bit of sentiment (seemingly a lot) so it's no surprise that this specific post is going to meld the two into a hopefully understandable mixture. The other day at University in my creative writing class we had been told to create a PowerPoint Presentation that showed our influences, to explore the power of influence and to see just how creatively effected we are by the mentioned people or things. I mentioned briefly Charles Dickens, specifically 'Hard Times', Patrick Suskind and his book 'Perfume' Jane Austen and 'Emma' and Emily Bronte 'Wuthering Heights. Those were the books that have quite a profound effect on me, in the classic sense, but with a more contemporary feeling and for me on the most personal level I spoke about John Green (The Fault In Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns etc) Nicholas Sparks (Dear John, The Notebook, The Guardian, Message in a Bottle, Safe Haven etc) and on a more cinematic level Frank Capra and my favourite film of all time; It's A Wonderful Life. Those are truly my greatest influences but I felt that I needed to add in an admittedly cheesy aspect, but one that truly is my all time most important influence; and that's life, and observations. Before I got really into wanting writing and film as a career rather than a hobby I really enjoyed photography, and I used to take pictures of the world around me, and when you do that you realise things that you don't notice the first time. When you're sad or low, you tend to notice these things aswell, because you're looking for something to let you escape and make you happy, and find these small wonderful elements of life that normally would be overlooked, and they are fantastic influences. Small little things in this life that could quite easily be a catalyst for a piece of prose or poetry; the closing of an eye in sleep, the one bright leaf laying amongst hundreds of discoloured autumnal leaves. And its powerful, its an incredible sentimental and emotional thing, there's a connection you can feel to small objects within a larger universe, because essentially that's what us as humans are, and if one day a human can notice a leaf; something they are surrounded by and find beauty in it, then that leaves hope. If we can find beauty in something we see everywhere everyday, then surely we can find beauty in ourselves and our friends, and our lives, and our family. Yet it's a thing that not that many people seem to do; to just notice life. But it's one of those things that more people really should do, Observational Thought is a power to be reckoned with.

Shorts to Novels; Belief in the Creative Flow

As I approach the halfway mark in my Novel I've started to become a little more relaxed and positive about trusting the 'Creative Flow'. This Novel has been in development from the very first conceptual process to actually putting every bit of planning into writing it for at least 14 months. During those 14 months character profiles, brief timelines, back-stories have been changed quite dramatically, and as I've been writing it I've found myself concentrating TOO hard in order to make sure all the planning is executed correctly. Yes, there is such a thing as concentrating TOO hard, of course there is. With my writing I've been guilty of doing it before, but sometimes you have the idea and you plan it then when it comes to writing you get sucked into this worry that it wont be good enough, or that the genre wont be right, or that this wont go right so you try to mould it as much as possible. That cut's out the belief in 'creative flow'. When I say Creative Flow what I mean is the self-belief that you've thought of a good story and will thus write a good story. You have to give yourself the freedom to then go ahead and write it, write it being aware of what you're writing... but to an extent. There's no way that any writer will allow himself to write a poem/short story/epic/saga/novel without reading through it and editing about a million times. So the way I look at it is that you should write it, change things if you feel they desperately need it or they don't work with other bits, but ultimately trust yourself to finish it first, and then go back read it and edit it with a fine tooth comb. Writing is a fun thing to do, if you go through the whole process worrying and be over-critical before you've finished then you're completely changing the happiness and wonder of the process.