Midnyte Reader: Script Magic - Guest Post by Erica Nunes.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Script Magic - Guest Post by Erica Nunes.

There are many ways to go about writing, as many ways as there are genres to write about. A common ailment of writers is the dreaded writers block. How does one get over it, move past and get down and dirty with the words? I found a way. Maybe it will work for you.

When I was in 6th grade my family and I briefly moved to a tiny town in Michigan called Walled Lake. Having grown up in South Eastern Massachusetts it was a bit of culture shock, pop was not music but something you drank, suckers were lollipops, and when I asked for jimmies on my ice cream I was told he no longer worked there, things were strange. The largest shock for me however, was due to the differences in grade structure. Although at home I had already been in middle school for a year in Michigan, I was dragged back to elementary school, to the uncool world of cartoon lunch boxes and sweatsuits. Oh, the horror! So to my classmates, I was the cool kid with my suede boots, vest and with my mile high bangs (showing my age).

To keep up this facade I decided my best course of action would be to be a bit of a trouble maker, but keeping true to my good girl character talking out of turn, a lot, was the only bad girl behavior I was comfortable with. This resulted in punishment. My teacher, Mr. Doorlag's favorite punishment was indoor recess during which you were required to write, the amount of how many words required were in direct correlation to how tightly wound his bow tie was that day, no doubt. Little did I know this punishment was one of the best things to happen to me in regards to my love of writing.

In a hilariously, ironic twist, this article

was written on my i-pad.

The words weren't profound, the stories weren't elaborate, the grammar was no doubt atrocious (honestly still haven't mastered that particular skill), but the physical act of writing the words in my handwriting was what sparked my love of the written word.

Flash forward lots of years and I found myself in college for the second time around. There were many essays to write, many research and reflection papers, each time I sat down at the computer to write I found myself surfing the web or refreshing my news feed for the umpteenth time and daydreaming of my next tv show streaming marathon. I was drowning in technology every time. Did I really have writers block? Was that really a thing? Then I remembered my 6th grade self and papers of idle chatter whose words flowed out of my number two, and it hit me...

Write. Actual physical writing. Putting pen to paper and connecting to my words was like magic. Somehow this visceral act ignited my inner Shakespeare, well okay not Shakespeare but Meyer maybe? It allowed me to stay away from the computer and it's beeping distractions and focus on the ideas in my mind. A secondary benefit of writing through this method comes during the editing phase. You have to transfer your beautiful chicken scratch to a digital format eventually right? During this process re-reading your work and typing it word for word is an easy way to come at it with fresh eyes, make adjustments, add, edit and in my case, fix the menagerie of grammatical errors.

So the next time you find yourselves staring down the pixels, pick up a blank notebook and your writing utensil of choice take a deep breath and get in touch with the ancient art of script.

Erica Nunes is a young housewife and mom of three living in South Eastern Massachusetts. Her passion for all things creative is manifested primarily in her makeup artistry, fine arts, and writing, with aspirations of becoming impossibly rich as a result of any or all of the aforementioned talents, or those not yet discovered, while remaining entirely gracious and humble.