![](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2504\/3915529903_618b327387.jpg\")
<\/a>No, my creative urges are all expressed through words.<\/p>\nI write for work. I write for publication. I also write for myself. And I have vastly different ways of writing for all three.<\/p>\n
When I write for work, I strive for functional. I don't look for turns of phrase or sneak in subtextual snark. Usually, I don't have the time for creativity; I often produce 5,000 words a day or more. I approach my writing for work as an exercise in journalism. I try to get down the Who and the What and the Why. I keep a facsimile of the Kansas City Star<\/i>'s style guide from the early 20th-century, when Ernest Hemingway was a cub reporter, taped up in my cubicle as a kind of inspirational totem.<\/p>\n
When I write for myself, I strive for feeling. I call upon the deep recesses of the psyche, the things that I keep locked away because they're too dark or too painful to be reckoned with or revealed. When I tap those deep reserves, however, there's a power<\/i> that takes even my breath away.<\/p>\n
When I write for publication, even when I write for the blog, I fall somewhere in between. I write a little more playfully than I might at work. I also try to write with more meaning<\/i>. When I write for publication, I want it to connect with the reader. I want the reader to feel<\/i>, and sometimes I have to dive down into those deep currents and see what treasures I can find there.<\/p>\n
I keep a file of ideas. Ideas for stories. Ideas for books. Ideas of no importance whatsoever. Just ideas. Some ideas have been in the file for a long time, waiting for the day I feel<\/i> the idea and it's ready to grow; either it's germinated, or it's cross-polinated with something else. Ideas are seeds. Writing brings the idea to flower, and it creates a garden.<\/p>\n
I feel the most creative in the morning, though in all honesty I do most of my writing in the afternoon and evening. The morning brings the ideas, the afternoon brings the energy, the evening brings the discipline. If only I could bring all three together…<\/p>\n
I may not be able to draw with pen and paper, but I can<\/i> write with pen and paper. Indeed, I love<\/i> to write with a pen. There is something indescribable about working with a pen. The slowness of handwriting, the subtleties of the muscle movements — these force me to engage with words differently than I do with a keyboard. Typing, the words need only be in the neighborhood, because it is so<\/i> easy to change them. Handwriting, though, the words need to be right<\/i> because, while I can scratching them out, changes take time and break the stream of thought. When it's important, or if I need a start or a boost over a mental speedbump, I write by hand.<\/p>\n
I do not have the best writing process in the world, but it is a process that works for me. I wish I could draw. I can't. Oh, I'm sure that I could, if only I would pick up a pencil, put it to paper, and practice day after day after day. Except that I don't think that, even with practice, that I would be able to etch out something that looked like anything. IContinue reading “On Writing, Morning and Noon and Night”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[101,784,4102],"class_list":["post-5586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-plinky","tag-postaday2011","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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