Writing rules and techniques don’t work for me.

Except one.

An immediate disclaimer: Morning Pages never worked for me, too. 

Now that I made this bold confession, there is nothing left for me to lose. I hope :)

So here’s an intro publication about the Unscripted Chats stack. Or, why it’s not about writing how-to’s. 

In the About page and in my first post, I said that this Substack will feature chats between the writer (me) and her characters. I feel at ease saying such a thing here, among writers, because we all know that having convos with our characters is absolutely normal. Right? 

Anyway, this is the only writing technique that works for me. I tried them all! As a Capricorn, I’m very disciplined when it comes to my passions. Meaning: I dig deep and practice everything related to my urgent interest/endeavor. And whenever universal rules failed to serve me, I get frustrated thinking that something is wrong with me. That’s exactly how I dropped lots of my passions. But writing was resilient. It lingered. It followed me. 

I decided to give it another chance. At that time I was re(re)(re)(re)reading one of Agatha Christie’s stories. There was a character - a writer who practiced the following technique: he immersed into a character, taking a walk in their shoes, seeing things through their eyes, hearing and listening to their voices. 

Photo by Kyle Head on Unsplash

I loved that technique. Perhaps it reminded me of acting classes I took and enjoyed immensely. Our professor, a renowned stage actor, told us the same thing: you have to completely immerse into your character’s skin. Even if this character is an object.

“Imagine yourself being a chair with one of four legs broken. Perform it.”

That was the very first exercise we had at acting classes. Geee, how I loved doing weird stuff like this! So, why not apply this fun thing to something with which I struggled? To creative writing. 

And!!! It worked. It finally worked. 

• Writing first thing in the morning didn’t.

• Writing every day didn’t.

• Planning didn’t (in fact, it almost killed my desire to write!)

• Outlining didn’t (I even tried excel as an outline tool - the horror! I HATE excel with all my creative heart)

• NaNoWriMo didn’t work.

• What if… and other writing tricks/prompts didn’t work.

• Freewriting for 20 minutes (and for any other time) didn’t work.

• Walking (swimming, weight lifting, dancing of all things!) didn’t work.

• Etc etc etc 

Acting did it for me. I felt like my characters were impatiently waiting for their turn to jump into my body and start living through me. At some point I thought my mind would blow, because of all people it inhabited (my poor family and friends back in those days! On the other hand, I truly believe our cat enjoyed it). 

That’s when my Capricorn discipline came in handy. I forced myself to structure (dreadful word) ideas for novels. In other words, the loudest voices got the priority treatment. Yep, just like in real life :)

I think at some point the two characters I was impersonating, decided to bestow their total trust on me. They started to share stories with me. Thanks to practicing immersive-ness, I was on alert 24/7: for hints, for signs, for details my characters shared with me. I was hungry to hear, to see, to know. Writing was going on with an amazing ease. 

After we exhausted each other, I got back to other characters. The same technique worked again. Successful impersonation was rewarded with intimate conversations. 

So, that’s the idea behind this publication: to keep those chats going. Chats are happening in different settings. Whenever they’ll occur in places I know very well, I may share some “local” tidbits about them. After all, most of convos are happening against the setting of the mythic Cote D’Azur. 

Thank you for reading! 

Please be aware that:

• English is not my native language

• I keep «author’s style» intact (including grammar mistakes) as a proof of authenticity (no ai involved)

• I’m a coffee maniac