May 24, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

Here’s a guy who’s earned his poem’s title. He went to college, served as a U.S. Naval Officer during WWII, got a Master’s Degree from Columbia, THEN a doctorate in poetry at the Sorbonne, which led him to the growing lit scene in San Francisco. There he was on the ground floor of the whole Beat movement – ultimately publishing some of the freshmen works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. By all means, call upon this poem’s energy and bravado whenever you want to laugh in the face of the Dark-Side Dwellers!

Constantly Risking Absurdity
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he’s the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

This poem was brought to my attention by the always risky and unfairly radiant Ann Smith, a teacher with over 30 years experience, a lover of words and passion, and a charter member of The Wild Quills Writers Group! Ann poses the provocative challenge: “What would you do if you could not fail?”

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May 12, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.”

-Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

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May 3, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

How to Spot the Dark-Side Dwellers of “The Writer Mystique” and Avoid Their Horrid Fate

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

For in this world – a world in which you may simply wish to express yourself, play with concepts, invent alternate universes, or answer life’s most pressing questions with a spin and system all your own – there are people who are card-carrying experts at maiming your moxie.

To makes matters worse, they often don’t strive to be spiritual killjoys – they…just…are.

Who, pray tell, ARE these oblivious asphyxiators, these unwitting denizens of “The Writer Mystique” and its gloomy, hobbling dark side?

• The Critics. A motley bunch, the Critics are chameleons. Under normal circumstances, they’re often some of your closest, most supportive pals. But tell ‘em about or show ‘em something you’re writing – a project-in-progress, a published article, a seed of a book idea – and if they’re standing in front of you, you can actually feel the wince. The corner of an eyebrow pops, and a smear of an upper lip curdles in plain sight. They may say, “Congratulations” or “Sounds great” but they don’t mean it. Or worse, they’ll take the next half hour telling you what’s wrong with your idea, or how you could have done your article better, or that they just saw a feature in the NY Times about how the market is hopelessly saturated with exactly what you’re interested in writing. Why do they do this? Well, chances are pretty high these Nanny Negatives may be…

• Thwarthogs. This group once had daydreams galore. They may have even practiced acceptance speeches, or known what couture they’d wear at their big book signing, or as a nominee at their first industry awards ceremony. Then something happened (like, say, Life), and the carefully plotted fantasy went askew. Perhaps they received one too many rejection letters, or maybe they got as far as earning a bad review for a larger-scoped endeavor that was close to their hearts. Whatever it was, they took it far too personally and decided the game wasn’t for them. (Or anyone else, for that matter!) Dream amputation hurts like heck. These people believe that Writers are something they are not, and they’ll never be. Case closed. Yeeowch.

• Insanely Successful Writers. Not all of them, but you know the ones. They own entire shelves at your local bookstore. They charge for their book signings. They’re rumored to franchise their name to clandestine ghostwriter sweatshops that specialize in mimicking the author’s cash-cow, reader-approved formula. Somewhere during their ascent to Publishing Legend, they’ve forgotten their struggling-writer past. ISWs assume every starry-eyed fan: 1) is doing it all wrong, 2) can’t possibly know how to rip a piece of paper, let alone a plot, 3) is an inferior talent, intellect, and humanoid. These ISWs have forgotten that, in addition to talent, there’s timing, luck, circumstance, connections, and personal life stories that may not look like their own success trajectories. Thus, they perpetuate The Writer Mystique so that dibs on the craft remain exclusively theirs.

How many of these rascals hang out in your address book? Are they so close to you that they bring the sweet potato pie at Thanksgiving dinner? Or do you smell their toasty Quizno subs over cubicle walls every now and again? Or maybe they were once instructors or idols, until the day they scoffed at your manuscript in front of a roomful of peers?

Learn to identify these creative curmudgeons and you’re that much closer to cutting through the fertilizer and sowing the seeds of your wildest writing dreams.

Because the truth is, if they stopped snubbing, correcting, and poo-pooing your work long enough to unleash, produce, or fail miserably at whatever’s been haunting THEM all these years, they’d be far more compassionate toward your own plucky pursuits.

To crib from an overused dating dictum:

It’s not YOU, it’s THEM!

Let the power of that truth sink in. By the time it’s absorbed and you’re ready to overcome The Writer Mystique once and for all, the last installment of this three-part article series will show up on the blog…

And all will be well with your writing world, in ten easy steps.(!!!)

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? Please do! Just kindly include this blurb with it:
As “Chief Creativity Evangelist” of Epiphanies, Inc., Lani Voivod is a daily poster child for Adult ADD and all its trimmings. In between creating kids’ content on Barbie.com and launching pop diatribes via her American Midol column on DeadBrain.com, Lani aims to “tickle your inner scribe or scribber - write here, write now” with her Wild Quills Ezine!

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