Coffee, with Cream and Ink Please

I have been away from the blog for a while, and to be honest, from my writing in general. Everyone needs a break sometimes, and there are only so many things that fit on a person's plate before things start glopping over the side.

I noticed a few things while I was on hiatus from the literary arts. None of it was a surprise.

1) I need to write to live.

I don't mean this as one of those cheesy sayings that people slap on t-shirts to hawk on Facebook. I don't mean this as a Thing to Say to Convince Others I'm For-Serious Going to Be a Famous Novelist One Day. I'm not going to be famous. I don't think I would want to be. What I do mean is that writing is that one thing I do that helps me keep track of all the things in my life, consciously and subconsciously, and to have an outlet for the geyser of creativity that lives in me and is constantly under pressure to escape. In other words, it allows me to live an authentic life and not just survive. Living and being alive are different. I prefer to live.

2) Writing and reading are the same thing.

I tried spending time with some of the good, good books on my To Be Read pile. Every single time I got to a line I loved, I couldn't sit still and think, "Wow, good job, author!" I thought, "Oh my gosh, how can I do that? Let me pick it apart syllable by syllable and see why the sentence is so musical." I don't think I can ever go back to passively reading a book, and I'm okay with that. Still, when I don't have enough time or energy to fall face-first into my own work, it can make me reticent to read something I know will stimulate all my book-loving neurons and set me on fire to write. Because the good ones do. Always.

3) There are a lot of episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

While I wasn't writing, I watched a lot of Netflix. I love old shows, and it was only a matter of time before I went down the cozy mystery rabbit hole. First, why would anyone be friends with Jessica Fletcher when you know someone is about to go belly-up every time she enters the room? Anyway, every time Angela Lansbury says something humble about her prolific backlist and making time between police investigations for her new book, I feel guilty. I mean, I don't even solve murders, and I can't make time for my book. I know it was the 80s and there was no Netflix and no iPhone games, but still. Guilt.

To pull myself out of this wordless chasm, I've forced myself back to my old morning routine, the one I had before we got a new puppy and my proverbial life-plate got quite so full. Every morning, no matter how much I oversleep, I do some writing. Most of it is free writing about whatever happens to be on my mind in the moment (some past gems include, "Scrambled eggs: who named them? Why not mixed eggs or jumbled eggs?" and "I've got the construction traffic blues"). Sometimes I get a snippet of an idea that I jot down to suss out later when I'm not suffering from the construction traffic blues and late for work. Either way, it affords me a few minutes in my morning for myself, my true self, and I can be done while I wait for my clothes in the dryer. (Let's be real. Every morning is an oh-crap-is-there-something-to-wear-in-the-dryer morning. Every.)

I feel better. I feel more like myself. From now on, I take my morning coffee with a lot of cream and a little bit of ink on the side.

Inspiration Monday: Blast From the Past

I have a guilty pleasure. Okay, truth be told, I have several, but the one I'm speaking of is my addiction to classic TV.

I'm not talking about catching up on the early seasons of Breaking Bad (which I seriously need to do). I'm talking about the really old stuff: black and white, cars with fins, laugh tracks, twin beds, talking horses, and kids named after beavers.

All through the 1990's, I lulled myself to sleep in front of the parent-approved, comforting glow of Nick-at-Nite. I remember every single one of these promos, and even now they make me smile. (I guess that's how nostalgia works, huh.)

Who doesn't want a friend like Ethel?

Sadly, Nick-at-Nite is a shadow of its former self, but I still love these old shows and have DVDs of them crammed in any nooks and crannies not already taken up by books. I've done some thinking about what makes them stick to the inside of my brain so well. They were made decades before I was born. Lord knows that they're not exactly the most complex storylines ever conceived. I've seen them a billion times, enough to quote them. The context is getting farther away from my personal experience and culture every single day.

And yet I can't get enough of them. I continue to enjoy them, I continue to belly-laugh at the same old jokes, cringe along with the protagonists when their schemes go sour, and get my heart warmed over and over again.

The Dick Van Dyke Show NEVER gets old.

I don't just like the comedies. I learned early on that I had a penchant for twist endings when I got hooked on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Watching Dragnet and The White Shadow I figured out that times were tough all over...and they probably always had been. Of course, I usually followed those shows up with a chaser of Get Smart or Green Acres and that evened things out. Sort of.

I think the key to re-watchability, and what I'm trying to cram into my writing process, is in these shows' simplicity. It keeps them fresh and relatable. I don't actually think that life was, is, or ever will be as simple as it is portrayed on those old shows, but I think we all wish it could be, and that is something I can build on in my work. These shows, whether comedy or drama, were designed to be accessible to their audiences, which is an important point some authors seem to overlook. The formula for these old shows repeatedly demonstrates the absurdity in life, both the silly and the sinister, and how easy it is to flip a plot if you drop the right breadcrumbs along the way. It doesn't matter what you write, those elements can strengthen almost any project.

Here are some links to a few of my favorite shows. If you can carve out a few minutes, give them a look and see what works about them. Yes, most of them have silly, simple plots, but so do most things if you carve all the meat off and take only the bones. In the end, everything, even the most complex plot, has to have its bones. We recognize them, we see them holding up the stories as we see them holding up ourselves. Borrow a few, see how they fit in a different time and a different place. Put the meat back on them and shape them up. You might find that the good old days still have a lot of good to give.