Lynda Rutledge

Want to be a writer?
•Travel.
•Risk geographically. Leave your comfort zone.
•Take long drives.
•Travel back roads away; this will stimulate.
•Travel interstates home; this will meditate.
• Look. Really look. Until you see.
•Travel through the desert at least once.
•Empty your mind: Listen to the whole lot of nothing.
•Think big wordless thoughts, as big as vistas.
•Stop at tourist traps; gawk; buy weird souvenirs.
•Take a long train ride at a window seat at least once.
•Feel oddly connected to whizzing world outside window.
•Go out on the ocean beyond sight of land at least once.
•Feel small and yet chest-busting large.
•Wander a foreign city without knowing the language at least once.
•Feel oddly connected to spinning earth outside words.
•Savor the tingle, fear: That's your perspective adjusting.
•Embrace what goes wrong; it's the stuff of your best stories.
•Just don't drink the water.
•Proust: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
•Listen to the guy.
•Shake up your vision: Take a see voyage.
•Travel.

(more to come-stay tuned)

Column #7: LISTEN

Want to be a writer?
•Listen.
•Eavesdrop.
•Enjoy waiting in line.
•Choose 50 items or less line at grocery store.
•Scan tabloid while listening. Appear nonchalant; be cool.
•But listen.
•Never be bored again.
•Take the crowded bus, the packed train
•Listen to rude cellphone chatter
•Train your ear
•Everything is material because everything's alive
•Your writing should be alive
•How?
•Specifics: Details spring words to life
•Don't ask: "Why won't that bird shut up?"
•Ask: "What kind of bird was that?"
•Don't ask: "Why won't that guy shut up?"
•Ask: "What did that guy just say?"
•Be invisible; be wallpaper, a fly on the wall
•Feel blood pressure drop when delayed, jostled, waitingwaiting
•You are a spy: Your world is bugged.
•Shut up. Listen.
•The world is a noisy mess.
•Make it work for you.
•Capture mental soundbites to relay to page.
•Revel in even the sound of silence.
•Ahhh.
•Now fill it up with what you've heard.
•Listen.

(more to come-stay tuned)

Column #6: JOT

So you want to be a writer?
•Jot.
•Jot, jot, jot.
•Jot a lot.
•Give yourself permission to be a writer who respects his/her ideas enough to jot.
•Got a good memory, you say? Famous last words.
•Jot on paper napkins, receipts, magazine page margins (then rip discreetly and pocket.)
•Interrupt conversations if you must. Be self-deprecating, apologetic or lie like a dog, but jot before the idea flies away.
•Borrow/swipe pens if you must.
•Jot on your arm.
•Text yourself.
•Leave yourself a voicemail.
•Buy one of those tiny Swiss knifes with a pen.
•But jot that thought. Or curse yourself for trusting your memory.
•Your mind wants to create, but it's a fickle thing. The edges of forgotten ideas last to persecute you, the exactness of the words, the spark that ignited the thought, may not linger.
•It may not even be a good idea, but if you don't jot, it will become the Idea of the Century, the Bestselling, LifeChanger that got away.
•Who needs that grief?
•So learn the power of the scribble.
•Jot.


(more to come-stay tuned)

Column #5: WHINE

Want to be a writer?
•Learn the fine art of the whine:
•Feel paranoid; unappreciated; ahead-of-your-time.
•Take other writers' successes as a personal affront since they're not as good as you (They may not be).
•Spend lots of time at coffee houses expressing this feeling.
•Whine until you're sick of the sound of your own voice...
•Then go out and live.
• No, not not in front of the tv: Out. Out there. Beyond your door. Away from the vapid glow of your computer screen and comforts of remote controls.
•Build a house with Habitat for Humanity, pick up cans along the highway, walk dogs for cancer, shelve books for the library, read to the blind: You get the picture.
•Offer your way with words to help the cause.
•Get good at it; good for the good.
•Feel on-the-nose appreciated.
•Feel less self-involved yet inspired.
•Take that feeling back to the vapid glow of your computer screen.
•Cordone off a no-whine zone: Create.
•Realize most artists aren't appreciated until they die.
•Don't die. Live. Write. Right now. For the sake of it. For the art. For your soul.
•Then and only then, take a nanosecond when you feel the urge as a nice cleansing purge and...
•Whine.
•Feel better?
•Good.

(more to come-stay tuned)

Column #4: LAUGH

Want to be a writer?

• Laugh.
• Take your craft seriously but not yourself.
• Lighten up.
• Even the moodiest writing often has comic relief:
• Billy Crystal and Robin Williams played Hamlet's gravediggers. Look it up.
• Humor is one of the sharpest tools in your box:
• Use it sparingly in your writing soup, like salt.
• But on yourself? Pour it on...
• Pour until you crack yourself up.
• Not a born wit? No worries. Not the point.
• Master the art of self-deprecation. That'll do.
• But don't overdo. Same goes for humor.
• (Unless you're Billy Crystal or Robin Williams.)
• Understand the writing life is tough enough without laughter
• Brevity may be the soul of wit...
• Laughter is the soul of sanity.
• Cry and laugh if you must, but do it.
• Brood if you must, but keep it short.
• Rhino hide is a writer essential, but even rhinos hurt.
• Rejections pierce any hide: Expect it.
• But laugh and you can handle anything.
• Life is too serious not to treat with humor.
• Did you hear the one about the writer who never learned to laugh?
• Died young. And wrinkly. And had not one iota of fun.
• Save the moody darkness for the page.
• Save the literary angst for your book jacket photo.
• But for yourself?
• Laugh.