INSPIRATION

 

A lot of people want to write but they say they can't come up with any ideas. Oops, first misconception ( i like that better than mistake). You don't come up with ideas for a story any more than you decide to invent something if there is no need for it.  All the ideas are out there already. Your job as a writer is to recognize them. All of life is fodder for a yarn, if you just open yourself to all the untold  stories around you.

If you sit at your desk and try to think of ideas you will just end up with a headache and perhaps a bunch of crumpled bits of paper on the floor. 

Just promise yourself that you will be wide awake, totally aware of the world and all the players out there and you'll be amazed at the ideas that start to land around you. Something that seems insignificant to the average person can end up being the catalyst for an epic novel or at least an enthralling short story. 

When you get that "ah ha" moment, jot it down, record it on your phone, repeat it in your head ten times, anything that will keep it fresh. And then if it really is the right one, something marvelous will happen; you will start getting the next pieces of your puzzle. Be ready. Collect them as well. Don't sweat it if they don't seem to go anywhere. You're a writer, you can take care of that later. 

Once you have that little stack of sticky notes or one liners recorded, simply sit down and write. I'm serious, it is that simple at first, even if it doesn't remain that way. It doesn't matter what it looks like at first, you've left the starting gate and you have your notes to guide you. Just write. When you run out of words, stop for the time being. Let what you've written marinate in your mind, until the next few pieces of the puzzle come to you. And then do the same all over again. 

There will come a day when you start writing and you won't be able to stop. It'll be as if your fingers are just channeling directly from the universe, without that troubling business of thinking. 

That's the first and biggest hurdle. The rest is for another day.

In Praise of the Short Story

 

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with the novel, even if it is an epic extending over five generations of family history, several wars, countless tragedies and countless hundreds of pages of print. It worked for Tolkien, Tolstoy and numerous others spinners of lengthy yarns.

Personally, am quite hopelessly ADD (not that there's anything wrong with that) and that precludes me reading, never mind writing such tomes. 

My big brother encouraged me to read the Hobbit when I was young. I lasted about  four pages. 

Now imagine having to keep track of every detail in a book spanning several hundred pages. I for one would lose track by the time I wrote page 15.

But the short story is like a perfect visit with relatives, in and out in 30 minutes. Everything you need; action, humour, drama, joy, heartbreak is laid out frugally so the reader can move on to the next adventure without having to scroll back and find out who that character they swear they've never heard of is.

When i write a short story, i don't plan it's length. I just write until i see I either paint myself into a corner and need to abort,  or i am pretty sure i am pretty sure the reader has been satisfied with the  journey. 

I am often told that i should add on, continue the story. Usually I decline, because that's as far as I can take this boat load of characters. We're at the shore and it's time to disembark. Often i leave my readers hanging a bit, but I'm convinced in every case, their imagination will carry them the rest of the way.

So, long live the heavy weight novel, it has it's place on the bookshelves of literature. 

But let's praise the short story for it's ability to take the reader from here to there and back again, but at warp speed.

The Quick and the Quirky;

   There are a lot of reasons i have for embracing the short story, and i'll get to them later, but for now suffice it to say that i have long been a fan. I have been writing short stories for the past decade, but without having a sounding board, they largely lay on my hard drive, or sat silently languishing on a few brightly coloured USBs. 

I joined the Parliament Street Writer's of Toronto about 12 years ago, and it was go time. Time to bring out my stories and subject myself to any abuse or praise i received. Happily, i found they were warmly received, and i was given helpful, positive suggestions. I went back to the keyboard and rewrote,, edited, slashed, added, completely rearranged in some cases, until i started to think, "Hey this ain't bad." 

Fast forward a dozen years or so, and it was time to give my dementia an outlet. Over the period of several months, with the help of my amazing formatter, Joan Frantschuk, "The Quick and the Quirky" became a real, live, breathing (well maybe not breathing) collection of my favourite creations.

They run from, sci-fi, horror, fantasy and stories about writer's and their characters; all coming from my rather dark, slightly skewed sense of humour. Despite the typical anguish of the writer, i can say i thoroughly enjoyed writing them and putting them into something i can share..

I hope you will give it a try. 

Amazon.com: The Quick and the Quirky: 9780995960329: Porter, Stephen F.C.: Books

Teaching in the Spirit

Teaching in the Spirit:

I spent many years working as a classroom teaching in the Public

Education system. I later specialized in working with kids with social, emotional and behavourial issues. It was a wonderful, wacky, and sometimes frustrating ride, and I came to know some very special young people.

My main takeaway was that everyday we teach in the same worn out paradigm, we are missing an amazing opportunity to show our kids there is a better way to live. 

As adults we may think we have life all sussed out. But we're stuck in Ground Hog day. The same old shit just repeats itself in every generation. 

The world won't change through through religion, politics or even activism. It will come from each person who passes through it. If our kids come to an awareness of who they really are, learning compassion and equanimity, then maybe there is a chance for a better world. 

That gives adults a pretty awesome responsibility. We can't just wing it anymore. Perhaps we have to first admit that we haven't been doing such a crack up job of guiding our youth.

Teaching in the Spirit is meant to be a path to helping our kids towards that better way of living. Drawing on many of the messages of the masters throughout history, with practical ways of implementing them in the classroom, it offers teachers and others who work with kids, ways of putting meaning into instruction, without upsetting the sacred apple cart.

 

Welcome to the Show

Greetings and welcome. This is my first post, in my first new blog since publishing my second book.

This will be a place for me to talk about my journey of writing, give some hints on this wonderful and maddening process, and of source, to flog my books.

I hope you will visit me often, and i promise to try to find something fresh to say every few days.

The font for this post is Ubuntu, which is a Nguni Bantu word which roughly translates into "I am because you are." The Buddhists might call this emptiness, and the common English expression is "no one is an island". This is something i strongly believe in and have made it the basis of my first book "Teaching in the Spirit."

There, you've learned something and i haven't even finished this post. 

Here's looking forward to bigger, better and more.

Steve