I know Tolkien didn’t allegorize. But I can’t help but see a metaphor here. It’s probably just me, but hey.

The Hobbits are us. In particular, they are us who don’t know or care to know about the wider world, the world outside of our little culture’s scope—the world of Lewis prior to Mythopoeia. Ted Sandyman is the hobbit par excellence, and even the more pleasant ones want nothing to do with news of Mordor and of Dwarves and Elves and adventures and magic. They just want to eat and drink and party,

I wonder if, perhaps, my vision should not be one of writing so much as of creating. That is, I write to create. I could do other things that are creative as well. The creating is the thing, and the creating makes writing so much more wholesome to the reader.

What’s more, what if I focus all of my creation on a single point, a single secondary world and all of the laws and guidelines and mythologies therein. Wouldn’t that world be the richer for it? Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile,

I have kept myself from internet access for my past few writing sessions, and I am finding that in my off time I am still thinking of writing. In fact, it doesn’t seem as difficult to get into the writing mindset at all—when I have sat down to write-or-else. I am wondering if there is a connection, and it seems like there might be. Dr. Glahn mentioned how letting our attentions be drawn to other things constantly keeps us from really delving into things. Before, I would go to Facebook or to Netflix or to YouTube, and sometimes these would just be short trips, but I wonder if even these little distractions had serious repercussions.

You are not constrained to write anything other than what’s natural to you.

And what’s natural to you can be described as “what you want to write apart from external constraints.”

It’s the same idea as “be yourself.” You don’t want to act like someone else or like some standard or “what you should be.” You want to be authentic.

The central impression of this process, and one that I would do well to remember, is that I am learning.

I think I found the following either on/in Rico’s book, Writing the Natural Way, or on her website, but I didn’t record its exact location.

“Human beings are capable of processing the world in two distinct ways: Named Sign and Design mind by Gabriele Rico, the Sign mind (left hemisphere) thinks linearly,

Clustering larger stories seems to require that you cluster in chunks. Then you cluster each chunk. So, something like chapters, sections, scenes, and on down to clothes and feelings.

Incidentally, writing from the hip and clustering both seem to require the Design mind—the exploration of new territory, and the hidden desire to make new connections. The only thing I question is the disconnectedness sometimes of how new scenes will come out. For instance,

I need to nuance my understanding of the purpose of clustering. We learned it for random vignettes, but this is not its only usage. This was merely a tool to learn the process and to practice it.

Because the right brain does not order or sequence or define, because it seeks to explore, to make new connections—to join numerous sprigs into some unknown end, it seems to work best without any agenda in place—any known end. Else, you are sequencing, defining, ordering things to fit an agenda,

Learning to art

Is like tending a thistled field.

Until you plow, it chokes its fruit.

But thorns scratch

And catch

I’ve been pretty lax about posting for the past half-year. After unloading my first armful of vignettes, publishing drew my attention, and I have since been more interested in submitting than posting. The logs I still carry await the publishing fire.

An oak looms in the garden,

My effigy of pain,

I’ve not climbed since May’s rain,

When soaked hands slipped, bones broke, skin ripped,

And I ran inside, alone.