Hugh's Cherry Post

I'm entering this mostly blind. I'm a cautious person by nature, but I'm neither very good at research, nor at taking advice. And so I'm just wading in. How does one start a blog? Do I tell you a little about myself? Or is that something you're meant to discover along the way - the scattered crumbs for cyber-Hansel-&-Gretel(2.0) to follow to some half-baked idea? Anyway, it's not about me, it's about writing...

I'm spilling the contents of my head.

Here's the thing: I refuse to believe there is one way to write. There isn't. But most writers know this and that's one of the reasons the community builds. When it comes to unlocking creative energy, to harnessing it, making it yours, making it universal, wrestling it to the page and then whittling away the excess (or in reverse order) to something more refined, there are so many variables that one can consider that you could almost become overwhelmed before you'd begun. But as a writer you wade into that mire. And as a writer, even as you curse and shake your fist, you love it. A million-and-one set-backs, but each with its own potential for a minor victory. As a writer you are a receptor for it all, and every method, every little piece of advice can help - even the pieces you don't take.

They say there are no original stories left to tell. Maybe that's true. But there are an infinite number of ways in which to tell them. So, just as we patch together our own stories (novels, screenplays, etc.) and try to create something original, something our own, from every and anything - perhaps, so too, we can create our own technicoloured-dreamcoat-method, gathered from anything and everything... even if it's what not to do...

I know I'm already learning. Hopefully it'll be better next time.

Welcome to my scrap of cloth.