I’d like to continue writing about creative writing. The sheer notion of it is like sitting in a room walled in mirrors with a lightbulb swinging on a cord. Everywhere you look, there you are, while there you be.
People ask me, “Steve, how is it that you knock out column a week for over 30 years and you haven’t run out of ideas?”
To them I say, “You’re looking at it.”
Much of my inspiration comes from staying busy and being observant. If you like to write, get out, meet people, do things, you’ll find topics to write about. Events do not have to be sensational to be worthy of mention. Oftentimes it is the subtlety of the event that makes it stand out. One can write about a ferry ride to San Francisco and never get off the boat.
One of my favorite writing prompts for students was this: “The room was vacant.” At first, they are slow to write to it, and then they can’t stop. Artists love a blank canvas.
When I am not traveling, not gallivanting catawampus, but sitting on my wampus at home, I still have deadlines. Those writings must well up from within. Where else? It’s where we are today.
If you are a world traveler, a gadabout socialite with a million friends and a million travel miles, you will collect a world of beautiful experiences that will bring you joy to your final days. However, if you are not curious, inquisitive, and seeking, you will find nothing to say about them, and your experiences will have to speak for themselves.
Thinking and creating are not separate events. Ideas grow during the process of creation. Writing is thinking. Just begin. Paragraph two flows out of the end of paragraph one, not its beginning. When it’s time for me to write, I begin to write. I don’t pace back and forth or pick at my keyboard much. Here’s what I do:
I come in, sit down, open my word processor, and type two or three sentences immediately and while I’m typing, I’m also thinking of what will come next. Often I’m able to keep going, and often I ultimately delete or rewrite the first paragraph.
I like to feature people. People are interesting just being human. When I’m fortunate enough to meet someone who strikes a keystroke in me, like Renaldo from Chile who we picked up hitchhiking out of Woodstock like a child of God, I feel enriched and eager to share. They tell their own story and I just have to write it down.
Art is thinking. They function as one.
But, hey.  I’m not talking about taking notes and doing research. Those tasks must be done with meticulous detail. Hard work, sweat, and diligence are required. That is pre-writing. That is flower gathering for the bouquet you build in your kitchen. That is body building for the race ahead.
Creativity flows through all of us. Part of being human is breathing in the world and exhaling it as your own. Experience through information gathering is still the essential backbone of writing something worth reading.
I enjoy researching my interests. Having an audience and being able to take to the keyboard is reciprocating and rejuvenating. Writing feeds my need to research and research needs writing. Thus, I know a lot more about pinball machines, smokers, and birdhouses than I ever thought I would.
My advice to writers is to poke yourself in the neck with a pencil every time you use an adjective, and whack yourself across the knuckles with the eraser end for every adverb. Those aren’t bad words, but you should think twice before using them and pay dearly. They should be worth using.
Imagine your mother gently kissing your forehead and stroking your brow with each noun you write, and dad standing beside her waiting in anticipation to yell “Way to go!” and give you a fist bump with every verb you scribe.
My advice to writers is to write immediately after an event and over write and write dumb stuff and keep writing until you think of something good and don’t stop to whack yourself for adverbs or hesitate as you dust your monitor or look up, just type your absolute best and keep pounding away at the keyboard, then walk away, no matter how wonderful it is and how eager you are to share it with the world.
Check it for grammar and step away. Don’t look at it. Let it ferment for a day or two, until just before deadline. Then, with fresh eyes, and a clear head, and some objective distance, sit down and read it again. Either it will sing with the voice of the muses, or it will squeal like gas escaping a punctured sepulcher of discarded entrails supposedly sacrificed to the gods in a public ceremony earlier that afternoon.
Wow. That’s ripe! Phew!

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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