True confession – I am the laziest of writers. I have always read, with no small envy, accounts of established writers who have a clear, defined schedule for their writing blocks – they wake up, settle down in that special corner where their pristine workstation is set up, and begin typing tidily at the laptop keys. They sit upright, blowing and sipping daintily on a cup of steaming black coffee as Seshat beams prettily through the window panes.
I’ve always been more of a “fly-by-the-seat-of your-pants” writer – I literally write when inspiration hits. This is not the quaint process in the previous paragraph, nope. It’s more of an unruly, disordered moment, such as the one I had a couple weeks ago, where inspiration randomly struck like lighting and I banged away at my laptop for an hour, drunk and high on the nectar of the writing gods before dropping into a deep sleep afterwards. Most times when that happens, I barely even remember that I wrote something until I stumble on my manic notes and find myself surprised anew at who the heck hijacked my laptop while I was out like a light!
Yep, that kind of writer.
I’ve been thinking lately about this website and how I can leverage it to build the discipline that I lack as a writer. In my experience (and I wonder if other writers feel the same), it’s a rather tricky thing finding the balance between writing on a whim when the capricious Muses decide I’m their vessel of the day, and writing on a very strict schedule as heartily approved by Disciplina. The former means I may end up writing only far and in between, while the latter somehow sucks out some of the joy in writing and leaves me with dry and staid words.
I do think I may (gotta caveat the fuck out of it) have landed on an updated content format for this website that may (again with that caveat) help me be more of a disciplined writer; and if you happen to be a hapless reader who stumbled on here and is now wondering what the heck it is you’re supposed to be doing here, hopefully this sweet summary helps you some too:
HOME: …self-explanatory. Hopefully the home page design which I cobbled together using my site logo is as absurd and confounding as you’d expect to feel in a literary opium den
ONCE UPON OUR CHILDHOOD: …landing page for my first published full-length anything which is now available as an eBook with major online retailers and in limited print via Amazon, with a full local print release coming soon (Can you tell I can recite this line in my sleep?)! Who knows, the section may eventually be renamed to *gasp* “Books by Lara Brown”…from my lips to Seshat’s ears!
ABOUT: …a facsimile bio that hopefully does nothing much to unmask the writer except to those who already think they know him/her
CONTACT: … you know what to do but keep it clean, folks!
WHAT LARA BROWN DID …the blog which now newly features several sub-sections intended to be a forcing mechanism for the earlier referenced writing discipline:
- Reveries: personal reflections and musings such as this here post
- #TheLand Series: short story series depicting the idiosyncrasies of a country named N
- #TheTart Serials: diary series of an irreverent twenty-fine year-old lady. I’m currently reworking this set of chronicles which actually dates back to my college years (when I was still a much more prolific fav of the Muses) and I remain tickled by the lead characters and her supporting cast
- #Nameless Vignettes: world building stories from the setting of a new book I’m now working on, albeit quite slowly. I’ve always been super-duper fascinated by mythology, specifically Greek and Roman, and lately have seen myself increasingly intrigued by Yoruba mythology but yet to see a book inspired by it that was written with the depth or the feel that I like. So, I’m attempting to try out that frequently mentioned advice…if you can’t find the stories you want to read, write them or something like that
- Short Stories: another self-explanatory one here – stand-alone short fiction pieces
- Poetry: full transparency, this is likely to get the least traction and content from me. I believe I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not a good poet (I can hear the heart of my high school English Lit teacher breaking from all the way over here)
So, there you have it! Now I must commit myself to writing or reworking at least one piece under anyone of these sub-sections at least once a week. If at least one person, besides me, finds some joy or food for thought in the writing, all the better, but as they say, there’s a means to an end and the writing is both in this domain.
Here is to holding myself accountable! -_-
L.
Photo by RetroSupply on Unsplash
Worlds via Words 