fear

The One I Feed

There is a saying that goes a little something like this:

An Indian (Native American) Chief is relating a story to his Braves after watching a fight between two of them earlier.  The Braves wanted to know why they fight each other.

“In all of us there are two wolves.  One white one, One grey.  The white wolf is full of peace, harmony, happiness.  The grey is fear, anger, envy, jealousy.  They are in a battle to the death and the winner gets to claim your soul.”

One warrior, impatient with the old man’s stories says “Who will win?”

“The One I feed.” replies the Chief.

What I love about this story is the understanding that there is good and bad (not necessarily evil) in all of us.  We become good or bad depending on our actions, our thoughts, our behaviour.  It also teaches us that we can change.  If we step back and realise our actions have consequences then we might not make such rash decisions.

Stories have been helping us understand ourselves for thousands of years.  Like the hero figure of old, they can be used to inspire others to do better.  But that can only happen if they feed the white wolf.

When you want to lash out because you’ve been hurt remember, this is the grey wolf talking.  He’s hungry and wants to feed off your negativity.  Feed the white wolf instead.

Panic!

Arrggh, what do I write about?  First I’ll put pen to paper and go…….and……go…….okay, stay where you are then.  If I stay here long enough something is bound to come out, right?

Well, it doesn’t always work out like that.  Sometimes the muse/writing fairy, call it what you will, is having a day off and forgot to tell you.  It’s enjoying itself in the sun while you’re sat inside on a rainy day trying to come up with something enticing, something which draws readers in and has them hooked until the end.  Only, it’s not happening.

Sometimes these things clear after an hour or so.  Sometimes it can last weeks on end.  So what do I think stops us from writing? Fear.

Fear of failure and fear of judgement, self-inflicted or otherwise.  Fear that one day someone will come along and say ‘What a load of drivel’ and I’ll say ‘You’re right’, but I’d be wrong.  You see, it is only their opinion and unless you value the person, then their opinion is meaningless.

As a writer, you need to be thick-skinned and pig-headed.  You’re not going to rock everyone’s world, which means that someone will hate what you write.  The only person’s opinion that matters is yours, the rest is just a bonus.  So now that the fear demon has been fought off, what do you write about?  I propose that you write nonsensical gibberish.  In other words, write anything which pops into your head.  Here are a couple of examples;

Every garbled pillow eats a good biscuit before bedtime, or so I’m told.

This megalomanic loves eating chocolate apple cores wrapped in sensuous plastic uniformity.

This is called free writing.  It doesn’t need to make sense, nor should it be punctually or grammatically correct.  It just is what it is, writing in it’s purest form free from any restriction, rule or law tying it down.

So next time you get stuck, why not give free writing a go and see what you come up with.  Happy writing!