Information Overload and A Pretty Little Snowflake

In life, there is nothing so daunting as sitting down and staring at a blank piece of paper or a blank Word file.
It’s there, right in front of you, a million different possibilities.
A million different ways to begin that book, begin that chapter, begin that paragraph.
Your book will be the sum of all the creative choices you have made to create it.
Should you open with dialogue? With exposition? With action? With gunfire? With psychological warfare?

That shit is scary.

Scary enough to possibly paralyze you. Stop you from writing altogether. You put off writing, because you feel that fear, that anxiety, that overwhelming sense of dread and being scared of making a mistake.

You want it to be perfect.

But what you don’t realize is that your strength is in your imperfection.
Your choices are uniquely you.
Your mistakes are there to let others see into your heart.

The Japanese have a term for it; it’s called wabi-sabi.

Don’t you realize that if anyone else wrote your book or your poem or screenplay or took that photo, that it would be completely different? Every element that exists in that creation is a part of the creator.

If someone else took Denton and Monty and their supporting cast, and an outline of “Resurrection Angel” or “Everlasting Life”, they would write a completely different book.

Those two books, and the ones that follow are uniquely William Mize. Uniquely me.
It is the mirror that I have chosen to be reflected in.
Each word, each sentence, is me, revealing myself to you.
Part of me is in Denton, part of me is in Monty, part of me is in every character, every hero, every villain that I create.

People who know me intimately like to think that they can point to a sentence, a snip of dialogue, an action or habit or quirk, and say “That’s you!”

They are right and they are wrong.

Perhaps I’ve said something in the past, during conversation, that finds its way into a book, but for the most part, it’s like hanging a watercolor in a torrential downpour. The colors soon begin to meld, the lines become less distinct between truth and fiction, between fantasy and reality, between life and art.

Please don’t let this fear stop you from writing.
Please don’t hold back.
Please don’t hide.

Reveal yourself.
Reveal your beauty.
Reveal your dark side.

These are all a part of the magnificent equation that is you, the creator, the artist.
These are the parts that we, as readers, as viewers, want to see.

Begin.
But begin small.

Perhaps it’s not the fear of revealing, the fear of intimacy that scares you.
Perhaps it’s the size of the project that scares you.
It’s too big.
It’s too overwhelming.
It’s too complex.
It’s too much.

It’s not.
Or, rather it doesn’t have to be.

You can start with one sentence, and turn that one sentence into a magnificent piece of work.

Author Randy Ingermason has what he calls his ’snowflake method’ of plotting and planning a novel. He shows you how to start with that one sentence, that one brick, and shows you how to place another brick beside it, another sentence after it, to make a magnificent creation.

I encourage you to read it, print it, give it a try.

Start small.
Feel safe, feel secure.
Write one sentence.
Then another.

Allow the work to become you, allow the work to reflect you.
Allow the creator and the creation to become one.

Like Moby says, we are all made of stars.