An exercise in writing.

This post is about the craft of writing. A few years ago, I was writing and I experienced a writer's block. I'm told writers get these blocks all the time. I tried a simple exercise to unclog my brain and to get the creative juices flowing again. The exercise suggested I write about something from my childhood and change the ending of the story. Sounded simple enough. 

I tried the writing exercise and ended up writing a short story that was actually quite interesting. I tried the exercise again and wrote a second short story. This second story included a character from the first story. I was having such a great time overcoming my block that I decided to write a third story. This third time I utilized a trick I had found in a collection of short stories I had read many years ago. I told the first story, from the perspective of one of the other characters in the story, because oftentimes different people view things different ways.

Then, I decided to write about something not from my own childhood but from the childhood of one of my story's characters. It was about him having served in the Second World War, around the time of the Siege of Budapest. I have done some reading on the actual historic events of that period and so I was able to insert some truth into that account.

Without realizing it, I had started to write a novel. Each of the short stories, of which there are now ten, have become chapters in the novel. I'm not sure what the story is about yet and probably won't know for certain until the book is completely written. But, at least I don't have writer's block......at the moment.

The Meeting You Miss Might Be The One You Need

On November 14, 1997, it snowed in Dartmouth. It wasn't a big snowfall, just enough to make the roads and sidewalks white and slippery. I had intended to go to the AA meeting at Club 24 that evening (it was a Friday), but the snow gave me just the excuse I needed not to go. I probably should have went. I was planning to start My Big Adventure on the following day, leaving Halifax on a train bound for Wyoming. In the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous it states that "at certain times the alcoholic has no effective mental defense against the first drink." I didn't know it yet, but tomorrow I would encounter one of those times. Perhaps I might have heard something at that meeting that would have helped me make a better choice. Maybe I would have heard something that would have changed my mind about leaving at all. I will never know because I didn't go to the meeting. It became the meeting I missed.

Tomorrow, I will post an excerpt from The Seventh Crow entitled The Haircut. It will tell you what happened on November 15, 1997