One of the most difficult pills to swallow as a magician was the manipulation of language used when performers spoke of their experience. In fact, it almost became necessary in order to keep up with the others who were doing the same.

Performing a magic trick for someone in the Caribbean while you were on vacation suddenly turned into, “Performed at the (insert name here) resort in St. Lucia.”

Did a magic trick at Mardi Gras in New Orleans?
“Performed at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”

The real lucky ones who ran into a celebrity and showed them one of their routines?
“Performed for (insert name here).”

There were a whole lot of other manipulative marketing that happened (and still happens), but it was enough to build a solid BS meter for anyone I spoke with. It became so incredibly difficult to distinguish the stretched truth from the flat out lies (of which there were also many), that my default stance was to smile, nod and not believe a word.

(Side note: I see the same thing with writers, but that’s a post for another day)

This experience marked me for any sort of media, marketing campaigns and even reviews of products.

It took some time, but this formed a critical lens that was cultivated by a desire for truth and ability to read in-between the lines.

As we hear more about the world each day, each hour, I see this manipulation of language happening everywhere. It’s compounded by the endless comments, podiums and rants–each person more convinced than the last.

While an antidote (and vaccine) for COVID-19 is the priority, we should shift afterwards to building an antidote to the Orwellian doublespeak of our language.

This week has been incredibly difficult and I could feel a burnout in my near future.

When sharing this with a good friend, he reminded me I was in the same position last year. What did I do then and what have I learned since then?

All I remember is holding on until the most stressful factors dissipated. But how to hold on?

It was considering the things I had control over and the things I was willing… rather needed… to let go.

It was also a willingness to let go of the idea I had to be perfect in all areas. At that juncture, and this one, I had to make choices at where to focus my energy.

I also had to ignore my perceived opinions of others.

It’s doing the best I can given the circumstances.

I also realized this was a continued pattern of mine for the past ten years.

Maybe it’s time I finally learn my lesson.

Inspiration rarely shows up at its designated appointment time.

It ignores anyone’s summoning, much like a teenager ignoring demands to be home at a certain time.

It knows you’re around, but makes no effort to join you.

Expecting it to turn up when you want is a futile effort. it loves its freedom and will have no part in sacrificing any of it.

It’s aware of its power and enormous benefit to your work. However, it cares for none of the responsibility to deliver an inkling of usefulness to you.

It cannot be forced.

However…

If you keep the invitation open…
and let it know where you’ll be every day…
and work without expectation of it showing up…

it tends to join you.

We all have a pit of anger deep inside. It bubbles to the top, coming out in spurts of bitterness, malice or full on temper flares.

From a physical standpoint, it’s destructive.

From an emotional standpoint, it’s damaging to others.

However, if you don’t let these demons out, they fester… grow and become worse. Suppressing them with calming techniques only smothers them until they are given a sliver of breathing room to seep out again.

I found my own way of banishing them.

There are pieces of my writing no one will ever see.

They are written, promptly deleted and forgotten about. I dub it my periodic exorcism.

Here’s the process:

I write a scene of a story. In this scene, I channel that demon to cause as much destruction as possible.

I describe every emotion, every hang-up… everything that feeds it life and unleash it into a fictional world.

Then, I save it with the first name that comes to me. This is the name of that demon.

Closing the document, I give one look at the file and acknowledge the demon is now trapped in there.

Finally, and this is the cathartic part, I delete it.

The demon is exorcised and gone.

The issue with being a writer isn’t a lack of ideas, but an abundance of them.

Too many ideas, not enough time.

Lately, this time in quarantine is taking a hit on my idea bank–my imagination. My mind went from buzzing with plot hooks, character profiles, twists and crafted word play…

to nothing.

Nothing calling out to me.
Nothing in my periphery.
Just… nothing.

My mind has been so focused on getting through the day, adjusting to a new normal, working through crisis mode and adapting to an ever-changing teaching process that my creativity has waned.

It’s been fragmented to the point of almost non-existence.

It’s unsettling.

When people speak of self-care, I assumed I was doing an adequate job. Now I realize I have more work to do.

A lot more.

There are two camps with regards to speed in writing.

One says that anything good must come from a concerted effort, taking time to work through each pain-staking detail.

In this camp, anything written quickly has diminished quality and never be “that” good.

Another camp says speed is the only way to finish stories, as it accelerates your learning about the craft through sheer volume.

In this camp, stories are written, shipped and left to the audience to decide whether they’re any good.

The problem is there are award-winning, internationally best-selling authors in both these camps. There are also staples of literature on both sides as well.

This leave us with the only logical conclusion:

Art takes as long as it needs and the speed at which its produced has little (if anything) to do with quality or longevity.

Janis Joplin.
Geddy Lee
Freddie Mercury
Alanis Morisette
David Bowie

All voices that are instantly recognizable. They had a distinctive sound, not because it was forced, but because it was developed.

They committed to it.
Owned it.
Refused to be produced into something else.

Artists are remembered for their perfection or distinctiveness from what perfection should be. Everyone else melts in the background to be remembered as brief one (or two) hit wonders.

They stay with us beyond their time and place.

The world today is flooded with people trying to fit the mold or be different… which is just another mold they’re trying to fit. Non-conformist conformists as I once dubbed them.

What we need is a commitment to a perfection of that mold, or commit to perfect their own mold.

Everything else is just background noise.

My children are satisfied for the moment, allowing me to open up my notebook to write a few sentences. Later, we might have another small time of reprieve where I can do some reading beside them.

Large chunks of time are valuable assets; coveted and squandered. Every decision to say yes to something means a no to something else.

To commit to personal projects require a different frame of thinking. They cannot be thought of in ideal tomorrows:
“When my life hits this milestone, I’ll…”
“When I have time on my hands…”
“I just need a week…”

The ideal time rarely presents itself and in the event it does occur, the mental preparation may not be in place. How often do promises about spare time go unfulfilled?

Waiting for time results in more waiting.

Time is a commodity that must be selfishly stolen during the day.

Moments must be taken when they can.

In my last year of high school, I was part of the yearbook team where many fond memories were had.

At the onset of the year, however, our teachers were on “work-to-rule,” meaning no extra-curriculars. The first, and most frequent, question people had for us is whether we could still do a yearbook without sports.

It was a valid question, considering the proliferation of sports in high school culture. But, to us, the answer was obvious:

Of course!

When we sat down to outline the sections, we discovered there is still a lot that goes on in a school beyond sports. in fact, most of those other things are minimized, forgotten or ignored to make space for sports.

The work-to-rule was lifted partway through the year, but sports still didn’t become the dominant theme. The pages of the ignored and forgotten were getting their time in the sun.

As we look to today, we are now answering questions that were only theoretical to ask:

Can you have a church with no buildings or gatherings?
Can you work from home all the time?
Can we ever ignore profits to bring manufacturing back?
Can we still have a functioning society?
What really matters?

It seems that when we eliminate the sacred cows of society, we discover a lot that has been ignored or forgotten.

They are finally getting their time in the sun.

It’s a fabrication for the minds of academia. A justification of their position as teachers of literature.

It’s a sterilization of a creative process, broken into fragmented pieces. it neglects the fluidity and interconnectedness of all the parts.

Prewrite (brainstorm and outline) – Draft – Revise – Edit – Publish

It neglects that everyone works in a different way.

It even starts with a faulty premise: brainstorming.

Coming up with ideas doesn’t happen in a vacuum. it’s not something you sit down with and magically spark new ideas. They happen in response to things and while in the process of what you’re doing.

Some writers dive right in and brainstorm as they go.
Others will do it, then ignore everything they’ve written.

We’re not even at the writing itself and this process is shown to be broken.

Outlining, revising, editing… some international bestselling and award winning authors write clean first drafts (no outlines), then lie about their process.

Why?

It’s what people expect to hear.

There’s a conditioning that writing has to follow a certain process.

However, writing is an art and like all creative endeavours, there’s no formulaic process you need to follow.