Crowe Creations Excerpts: Really Stupid Writing Mistakes

Really Stupid Writing Mistakes: How to Avoid Them

by Sherrill Wark

The stupidest writing mistake of all is not writing. Equal to that one is thinking you don’t have anything of value to say. Too many of us compare our ideas with what has gone before us then cower in the shadow of what They say is good to print, or what They called literature. Never mind literature! Literature is what you were forced to read in school. If you write a book, they might force children to read yours in school after you’re dead, too. But if you never write one, it won’t happen. They aren’t always right. One of the most popular (million-selling) storytellers of our time was once considered by Them to be a mainstream hack. Write the book or story or screenplay you want. Never mind Them. You are the one with the ideas. Start writing down those nuggets. Make a list. Make a pile — new ideas on the bottom — and work your way down. Start writing! Not tomorrow. Now! Look how high that pile is already.

You poets aren’t going to get away with anything, either. Poetry is a point of view that can only come from within that one particular poet’s soul and if he misses it? It’s gone forever. No one else can ever see it the way he did for that nano-flash of inspiration. Grab those ideas. They’re yours alone. (If you’re a poet, you’ve probably already learned to scribble that thought down somewhere. I’ve even telephoned myself to leave an inspired phrase on my voicemail.)

This book is directed at those of you who have a novel or a movie inside you clawing to get out, and I firmly believe that each of us does. Our lives are stories. Even you poets have stories in there. C’mon, ’fess up! You short-story folks? Stop hiding behind those trees over there — I see you! Show yourselves. I hope poets, non-fiction writers, short story writers, and others might find something of value here.

Life is a big disco ball (and yes, I’m that old) illuminating the dance floor of the universe with billions of facets, each of which looks out from the central whole from a slightly different angle and onto a slightly different scene. No one looks at anything exactly the same way as anyone else even though we are all made of the same stuff, are all connected, and our core common. The writers among us have this obsession to report back everything we see from our unique vantage point. Why? That’s what we do. It comes from outside us and inside us and drives us to write.

Maybe we don’t write very well. Maybe our language skills are not the best. Maybe we’ve been criticized for offending someone, for writing nonsense, for not writing within the parameters of The Box. That’s not what’s important. What’s important is reporting what we see from our own perspective. Even if — through this reporting of our own experiences — we benefit only one other Earthling in our lifetime, that’s enough. Those of us who are driven to write have a great responsibility indeed. This responsibility is so important, that if we don’t grab the dream snippet our Muse gives us from the Idea Pool, someone else’s Muse will snag it, hand it over to its writer who’ll use it, and we’ll miss out on the opportunity. Something that important can’t be allowed to drift away into the ozone like some child’s party balloon.

Remember the movie ET? Remember the little guy’s weird fingers? How important they were to the movie because they directed healing powers? I’ll never forget what they looked like because I dreamed about them a couple of years before the movie came out. I even wrote down the dream (that dream notebook has since disintegrated with use) and said to myself “Hmm. Isn’t that interesting, fingertips with suction-cuppy things on the ends. I wonder what it means. I should look into writing something about them, see where it leads. Tomorrow. I shall do it tomorrow. If I get time.” It might have worked for Scarlett Tomorrah-Is-Anothah-Day O’Hara, but writers have to be diligent and grab the string of that idea before it floats into the neighbour’s yard.

THE LIZARD BRAIN

The amygdalae (singular, amygdala) are two little guard dogs deep in our brain. When any semblance of a threat — real or imagined — appears, they react to protect us. But they are lazy guards and have convinced themselves that they must never, ever learn anything new, nor un-learn anything they already know, just in case. Well, bless their li’l ol’ hearts for caring about us that much, but sometimes they can destroy us with their caring.

This part of the brain is not called The Lizard Brain for nothing, it’s the remnant of our evolutionary switch from ocean to land, and deals, pretty much, with instinct and biochemistry, not logic. Would you trust a primitive fish to tell you how to run your life? Of course not, yet to argue with The Lizard Brain is extremely difficult, it is what tells us not to put our hand into the fire. It also tells us that we’d better not let anybody in on that controversial idea of ours or they might not like it — they might not like us. One negative experience in our past can inform our “guard dogs” that we dare not take a chance even if our idea might be the best thing that ever happened since the self-parking car. Just in case? Just in case we become rich and famous? Just in case our idea gets read in schools for years and years into the future? One single experience that is perceived by the amygdalae as a negative or frightening one, can do us in as far as ever writing anything of our own goes. But it’s possible to get over it. Not easy, but possible.

The Lizard Brain has come under more intense study recently because it seems the amygdalae are involved in the fear response that triggers a type of emotional learning. Scientists have found that it’s also involved in aggression and in pleasure (the twisted pleasure that aggression can arouse in some individuals), in depression, and also (possibly) in autism, sociopathy, and psychopathy.

My genre is horror, my medium screenwriting, so obviously, I love this stuff — have been fascinated by aberrant psychology since childhood — but I’m not introducing The Lizard Brain to you because I find it a cool concept. The Lizard Brain is where Fear of Failure and Fear of Success can root in irretrievably deep. We writers tend to be a sensitive lot, and we also tend to be somewhat solitary, so the only place we’re going to get any toughness and determination, not to mention support, is from nobody else but our own selves.