Even RollerBulls Gotta Talk About Writing
Thu 2013-07-11 21:42:51 (in context)
Vacation is not a thing to pin one's hopes for productivity upon. Obvious exception: Writing retreats. But this is not a writing retreat. This is San Fermin en Nueva Orleans, and I am a RollerBull. I have the horns on my helmet to prove it.
(I have officially filed for a week's vacation with my roller derby league so as to get credited for some of the practices this trip is making me miss. So what am I doing while on vacation from roller derby? Roller derby, of course.)
Yesterday I attended a practice with the Crescent City Derby Devils in preparation for Sunday's mix-up scrimmage. We practiced for Saturday's "Encierro" (the Running of the RollerBulls) by performing drills that involved whacking each other in the butt with approved Fat Bats. This is really a good thing to practice. There is a right way and a wrong way to "gore" a runner. Dropped your bat? You did it wrong.
During that practice I was invited to participate in a super secret mini-run where a handful of RollerBulls would surprise the Voodoo Hash House Harriers during their Thursday night run... walk... hunt... pub crawl thing. This week's activity was billed as "Running of the Bullshit", after all. So that's what we did. We weren't on skates because of the threat of rain, but we had our horns on and we jumped out from behind the bushes and chased the runners and whacked some butts and everyone had fun.
Afterwards, we stood around chatting in front of the snoball stand. One of the runners, upon hearing I was a writer (look, it comes up, people ask you "What do you do when you're not doing this?" and there's your answer) got curious about the process.
"So how do you turn an idea into a story?" Er. I'm not sure? Mainly, I try not to disqualify ideas before I've explored them, I guess.
"Do writers just write it down as it comes to them, or take notes, make big outlines, or...?" Depends on the writer. Depends on the story, too. Every writer has their own process and every story has its own life-cycle.
"How long does it take?" That depends, too-- "I mean, think of, like, one page of a story. How long does that take?" Dude. It depends! "But how long--" UP TO 90 WORDS PER MINUTE, OK, YOU DO THE MATH.
And it turns out, I am a crappy explainer of process.
I've heard it said, though, that process isn't teachable. A writer might suggest things that another writer might not have thought of, but in the end every writer discovers their own process for themselves. So I guess while I could probably explain my process, at least for a given story or maybe for a given day, I can't explain What Writers Do. I could only give examples, one after another, at great length. And while my querant seemed persistently curious, I'm not sure he was that curious.
But so anyway that appears to be it for today's writing content. Don't expect much from the rest of the weekend, either. It's San Fermin en Nueva Orleans, y'all.