What’s All That About, RYCJ?

Some times I really want to take my time and go all out citing sources in the posts I pose, but ultimately decide (after eliminating a culmination of excuses) to save the intense work for a book. At any rate this is all here to say this will be another joinder where I'll be musing once more off the cuff. (Note: Speaking of writing off the cuff, I thought I was making joinder up! But looka here... spell check thinks it's a real word. Guess I'll have to look it up... which I'll do after posting this.)

I read mostly nonfiction; bios, mems, and the sort, but write primarily fiction. I love writing fiction. I think I said it before. It's the one time when I get to really free my creativity. Don't have to bother with intricacies, provided I can weave one hell of a story. Just tell, and yes TELL, the story. (Will explain that novelty in another post.) Make it tight. The sky is the limit.

But then, and it was a while back when I first read this, but read it again recently, about writers writing what they read, or reading what they would like to write. I'm not too sure about some of the findings. I'm no longer even sure if writers even need to be readers at all. I want to say I think they should. In fact, I may have said I think they should, and certainly cherish the value in not only reading genres specific to ones writing, but find any learning venue beneficial. Ironically however, it brings me to this quantum.

Paramount to sumptuous noncompliant writing, I like the idea of formulaic fabrications. I remember this paper Mache art class where I learned how to make masks. As a child I found the 'formula' intriguing, especially the part about blowing up balloons. I recall thinking... now how in the world can these balloons make a mask? And then we got to tearing old newspapers into strips, and making paste from flour and water. As these masks begin to take shape my next thought was, whoever thought to do this? You know what... come to think of it, I'm just going to go on and blame my blameless blaséness, or maybe wily willingness, to explore creating to its boundless ends all on this art class. Ever since, there's not too much I don't think can't be put to good use.

That art exposed, I, too, thrived in environs where it was required to work within a basic design. I loved the challenge of 'coloring within the lines' while creating something I truly loved. Those were my chief concerns... what made the challenge. It had to fit inside the box. But most important, I had to love it.

On these fronts I wholly respect fiction writing in its respective standard containers, and thus had no deliberate intentions of straying outside its bounds heedlessly, though I am very glad I did. By choosing to write as I have has pushed the envelope, kicked open the sky so-to-speak, but it also has allowed me to fully appreciate a proverbial lexicon I may have otherwise never realized (in its undiluted deviations) had not it been for that one seductive art class.