An architect, he explained, is a writer who crafts in excruciating detail the skeleton of his narrative and the identities of his character. An architect outlines and revises before even putting prose on page.

Contrarily, a gardener is a writer who begins with a seed, an idea planted from their swirling subconscious on to the page, and then tends that idea as it courses on to completion. Martin identified himself, smiling from behind that bushy beard of his, as a gardener. And, my observation of many writers who discuss such things or pen instructional texts on fiction, are these seed planters. They seem to generally regard architect writers as oddities.

Martin’s dichotomy seems apt to me. I suspect there’s a tendency for writers to identify as gardeners, but I certainly don’t. When I try it, I suffer my greatest setbacks as a writer, meandering with decorative, but ultimately aimless prose. I paint myself into corners, and have no idea what I’m after. If I’m a gardener writer, I have a black thumb.

I think to myself, therefore, I must be an architect! A ha! Glorious! All I needed to do was prepare copiously, and then the writing will simply be laying the flesh on the bones I’ve so meticulously crafted. And, that may be so. But, there the tendency is to daydream, to outline or imagine elaborate settings that lack any actual narrative.

The dichotomy, like so many things, is easy to take too far, settling into prescriptive ideas about the process. Obviously, gardeners need to address plotting and planning at some point. And, architects have to inject some spontaneity along the way else they’ll craft wooden tales.

At the very least, it was helpful for me to hear someone like Martin acknowledge that his organic approach wasn’t the only path there is.

The exhibit featured artifacts from the Whydah, a slave galley turned pirate ship by “Black Sam” Bellamy in the golden age of piracy. The ship wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717 during a storm. Barry Clifford located the wreck in the 80s, and it’s now touring the nation in various museums. The exhibit displays the usual stuff — cannonballs, parts of muskets, various tools and utensils, and an impressive display of real pirate treasure in the form of hundreds (thousands?) of silver coins. It also had many interesting insights into the make-up of pirate crews (including many black and Native American sailors, their mentality about going “on the account” (a.k.a. signing on to be a pirate), their almost dandy style, and the cultural mess of the triangular slave trade.

I tried to sketch down some notes about it all, but managed to lose the notes on my smart phone. Still, it was inspiring stuff, and I managed to write down much in my journal later on.

Canada and I decided to cut our trip a bit short and drive back home late Thursday night. She asked about my note taking and what I was up to with this writing thing. I explained it all to her, my idea for a fantastical novel of sky pirates. She knew I had been up to something, and I think is more than a little pleased I’m finally getting around to that writing thing she’s always wanted me to do. She has no idea how I needed to get all that out from the echoes of my head.

I spent a lot of time this weekend doing more research and sketching out more ideas, names, second-world geography. Oh, true, it’s not the first time I’ve dived into a creative project like this, and often those ideas sit idle, or used in ways other than fiction writing. But, I have an inkling — only that so far — that I’m finally getting myself into a strange routine to see this through.

Check out both posts:

Planning Arrangements – here he talks about narrative structure and writing.

Building Secondary Worlds – Mark breaks down the components of imaginary places he writes about, from names of characters to the color of the buildings they inhabit. Fascinating stuff.

When I was 15, my dream was to be one of two things – bass player in rock band or a novelist. I’m was always a pretty mediocre musician at best, but I could write. Or so I thought, anyway. I chose my beloved University of Iowa based solely on its world renown graduate fiction writing program, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. My mother made me reply to at least one other school just to be safe. I barely bothered. I was a Hawkeye.

I actually made it into a select portion of the university’s undergraduate creative writing program (taught by some talented Writers’ Workshop graduate students), but the truth was I wasn’t ready to become a world renown fiction writer. I got the journalism bug not long after I decided I needed to have some kind of job. I needed that job because I wanted to marry my girlfriend – now wife – and have a home and family. That desire outweighed my novelist dream.

I got a great education along the way, and a degree in English and journalism both. The journalism degree turned out well. I’ve been working at a media company for 13 years, and have a respectable income sufficient to buy this wonderful house I’m sitting in now.

No regrets. I knew all along I was making choices that would prevent me from being the writer I dreamed of being some day. Pay the bills first. Feed the kids. Get a nice home for us to have a decent life in. Then, writing.

Ok, not even then. I’m currently a graduate student . . . in a Masters of Business Administration program. Not exactly a beatnik existence, huh? At least it’s also at Iowa! Life-long Hawkeye, here. Classes chew up a lot of my time, and will continue for a couple more years. But, it helps my career considerably. It ensures my kids have great coverage and a college education some day.

Still, I didn’t lose that creative urge entirely. For much of my leisure time over the last 10 years, I created indie role-playing games. I had some decent success, too, and wrote and published three unique games – a Western game called Dust Devils, a horror game called 44: A Game of Automatic Fear, and a Greek myth inspired modern fantasy called Nine Worlds. The latter two are available for free at StoriesYouPlay.com.

But all of that added up to much less time reading, and almost zero time writing fiction.

About two months ago, something changed – the kind of change I think people require before they can will themselves into doing something hard. After all this time, I wanted to read fiction again. I’ve read more books in the last two months than I have in the last two years. It’s refreshing, and it’s not going away any time soon. Something in me clicked.

Something else clicked, too. I got that desire to write again, that dream revived. And, I confess, it remains just a desire. Writers write, of course. So, all I can say so far is that aspiring writers research. I’ve spent my last few days writing some imaginative notes about the age of sail, the moons of Jupiter, Archimedes, and Pascal. Oh, and pirates.

There’s a wonderful idea there, begging to get out as a work of long fiction. It’ll take hard work, patience and willpower, all amid an already very busy life of work and school and family and friends. Given 20 years of distant dreams, I have no illusions how challenging it will be.

I’m going to give it a shot.

The first kind of writer’s block is the dreaded blank slate. It’s that intimidating phase of creation where the entire universe of possibility is open before you, and you can’t write one shred of it because you don’t know where to even begin, perhaps even what to write at all.

I don’t often lack for ideas. But, even with some broad-storke notions of what to write, I still have to zero in on something concrete, something compelling.

The second kind of writer’s block is getting stuck in the middle of a story. You’ve got characters in some situation, and you may even have a general idea where you want them to be later in the story. But, as a writer you hit that wall and you’re not sure how to move them into the next step in the story. This kind of block has its own challenges and frustrations as a writer. But, at least  you know you’ve gotten somewhere.

Right now, I’m working on a short story and I’ve hit that second writer’s block. It’s a turning point in the story. I even know where I want the characters to be. But, I can’t yet get them there.

Some writers have great advice about overcoming these problems. Some even publish about the topic. My advice is recognize a couple important things as a writer.

First, it doesn’t much matter if you’re a literary genius or a best seller. Even if you are, you aren’t going to write or sell nothing. Accept living in your own skin. Accept your own ideas as intrinsically worthy to the most important person in your life — you.

Second, don’t try too hard to look outside yourself for solutions. Take a break. Go live. Read and watch other media. Read. Do what you do to rejuvenate. Those things will get your brain working again. Don’t worry if you feel like you’re “stealing ideas” by reading other material. If you’re really into writing, your brain can’t help itself. It will think up ideas in your own way. That is creation.

Third, if you have the option, let someone read what you’ve written so far. Some people don’t like to do this. I’m mixed on it myself. But often, another reader will see exactly the corner you’ve painted yourself into. And, often, they’ll say something obvious that you can’t see, like “Why in the world would this guy say that?” Answer that question, and the dam’s likely to break. You may have to ask questions, and that’s ok. The notion that we are alone in writing our work, and that others don’t contribute to the creation is pretty foolish.

Now, if I can just get myself out of that corner I’ve painted myself into…

I’ve been reading Cryptonomicon, and finally reach that page count where I’m suckered in. Stephenson’s chapters are frenetic minutiae with kick-in-the-gut closers that keep me turning the pages. The book is thick — over 900 pages. At my careful pace I’m not likely to finish soon. But, I’m hooked on the interwoven story line of WWII cryptography and millennial Internet biz wheeling and dealing. I’m eager to see where it all goes.

A friend and I have kicked off a writing exercise exchange to keep on task. We started with a simple 1,000 word piece with bite. I quoted a snippet in the previous post. I surprised myself with a simple, straight-shooting piece of fiction that I turned out to enjoy quite a bit. Our next step is cleaning up the 1,000 words, maybe expanding them into 2,000.

Now if I can catch a break from all the homefront activities to repair some water issues on the house. Once I get that cleaned up, it’ll be a load off my mind. I’m always amazed how stressed I get with home repairs, even ones that aren’t worth losing sleep over. Give me a week, some drywall patching, a new window sill, and I’ll be young again.