Many martial arts have a segment of the practice devoted to mastering memorized forms, sometimes called katas. They’re a choreographed series of steps meant to serve as a training routine and also as a presentation unto itself. At each of his belt tests, my son has had to present various forms, which are judged by the instructors.

In the final fifteen minutes of this particular class my son’s instructor asked the students to invent their own form. Ten steps—anything you want!—now go!

The resulting chaos was amusing, but also very interesting. Given a blank canvas, these students reacted in different ways. Some stood still, staring at the mirrored wall and contemplating the multitude of options. Others lapsed into familiar memorized steps. Still others went wild, mixing together an varied assortment of moves, haphazardly jumping, spinning, and chopping.

This array of behaviors caused me to reflect on my own martial arts training. As an adolescent I studied karate, receiving my black belt at age fifteen. I had tried several different schools, but it was a community recreation center karate instructor who really inspired me. His name was Bill, and he taught a relatively small system called Ashan-Tao.

What was interesting about Ashan-Tao was that, first, Bill’s classes were very informal compared to many of the other schools. It worked for me. Brought me out of my shell. However, more important (to this story at least), was the fact that this particular system did not believe in memorized forms.

In my recollection, Ashan-Tao was founded to be a very pragmatic form of the art. It focused on full-contact boxing and sparring so that practitioners would be able to understand what it really feels like to have someone punch you. Forms, I was told, ask you to rely on memory. They ask you to think about a series of moves, to recall that exact series over and over again. But in a fight, you don’t have time to think. You can move in a memorized form. You need to react.

Memorized forms are certainly good for for learning how to slip fluidly from one move to another. They also help hone your technique. But watching my son’s karate class reminded me that some of the dangers of memorization is that you get locked into it. Freed from it, as the students were last night, they each faced a certain crisis.

Ashan-Tao focused on sparring. Sparring is simply two (or more) opponents facing one another and enacting a fight—usually without the full contact. It’s a sort of ballet, but it’s not choreographed like the forms are—it’s free-flowing. It’s like jazz in that way, it’s about letting your body move, reacting to your opponent, sensing subtle changes in motion rather than contemplating moves. There’s a joy to that—a freedom. Musicians can find this moment when they jam.

And writers can, too.

I had a screenwriting teacher at a community college tell me that once. It was my first (and only) screenwriting class. The instructor was an older man, maybe in his fifties. In my mind, he wears loose clothes with long scarves and newsboy-style caps. But memory, we know, is just a dirty reflection in the mirror, and the further back we go, the more obscured the original image becomes. But let’s call it the spirit of the truth and please feel free to imagine scarves.

And maybe a pipe.

He smoked his pipe, and he talked about how musicians jam, and how writers can do it, too, but it’s oh-so-hard.  And that’s fair. And it’s true. But it doesn’t always have to be.

Sometimes we get too bogged down with what a story should be, and we either freeze up, lapse into memorized steps, or just throw everything together haphazardly. We forget that it’s not always about what we think should happen, but simply what happens next. We start with a blank canvas, but then we put down a word, which becomes a sentence. Now we have our opponent. We work with that sentence, play off of it, react to it, but we’re also moving, typing or scribbling, allowing ourselves to feel rather than think. We dance with our fingers on the keys and let the story be our trail through the night. No, we don’t know where we’re going, but that’s okay—we know the basics, we know the moves, we just need to let them take us where ever they go.

photo by Boso (via Flickr Creative Commons license.)

Some time last year, my friend Paul Montgomery, as part of his writing duties on the website, iFanboy.com, made a creative challenge — to adapt a fable in comics form. Write, draw, whatever. I didn’t think I had the time to do it, but Paul’s challenge planted a seed. I started thinking of a crudely drawn strip that’s something very different from what I usually do. I decided that my personal challenge would be not only write the script, but to draw it too. I set about trying to teach myself how to draw a simple cartoon.

I didn’t complete the challenge, but the process itself was so fun that I put together a PDF and sent it to Paul. The package contained my original notes, doodles, scripts, and my attempt to teach myself to draw pigs and wolves. I had a lot of fun. I don’t think I’ll ever finish it, but for what it’s worth, it was a fun experiment, and I got a lot out of it.

Now I’ve put the PDF online for you to read, if you so wish.

Enjoy!

Download the PDF.

This post was originally published on Murmur.com

Last week I talked about my road from creative writing to an audio drama podcast. A bit of a twisty road, but it’s an interesting one. Obviously, the common link is story. If you know me at all, you know I’m all about the story. If you don’t, please allow me to introduce myself…

My name is David. I’m a writer.

Now, that’s a bit of a bold statement that usually means one of two things: I make my living by writing or I’m one of those feel-good hippie types who says that he’s a writer because he writes, regardless of whether he’s published or not. The internet is full of the latter, and the label is sometimes looked upon with derision.

The truth is that I am both of these things. And I am neither. And I suggest to you that the definitions above are not an either/or proposition. In my case, one begets the other begets the one.

If you google me, you’ll see I have several writing credits on IMDb.com. But this doesn’t mean I made any money by writing. It just means my short films were deemed worthy of inclusion in a film festival. As part of the creative team behind an audio drama podcast, we’ve been nominated and won awards for writing on our series. However, I earn my salary with a business card that reads “Marketing Communications Manager.”

Doesn’t exactly summon up images of corncob pipes, ink-stained fingers, and click-clacking typewriters, now does it?

I do write, of course, and writing has been a part of every job I’ve had since college. In fact, being a “Writer” has gotten me nearly every job I’ve had.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I assumed that I would get a job as a bartender. I had tended bar in San Francisco while attending college, and it seemed the easiest, most marketable skill to bring to any town.

Unfortunately, upon my arrival in Hollywood that fateful July, I learned a tough (albeit slightly obvious) lesson. Everyone in Los Angeles is a struggling actor or writer or producer. And that means there are a LOT of bartenders.

However, I also had my degree in English and Creative Writing, so it seemed foolish not to at least try to get a job as a writer.

I sent a resume full of retail, barista, and bartender experience to an advertising agency, along with a short story I had written. The short story was published by the college literary journal. It was my first publication, and I even did a public reading to a room with, oh, a dozen people in it. A small accomplishment, but one of which I was proud.

Even moreso when the same short story landed me a job as a junior copywriter.

The woman who hired me was my age, newly minted in a management position with the task of hiring entry-level writers. My story had touched her. It had made my resume stand out from the pack. She loved it enough that the rest of the hiring process was pushed along quickly. She was very nice, though not a great manager. She was the first person I met who felt guilty about being a writer.

“Well, I like it, even though I’m not really helping anyone,” she would say. It felt as if she was minimizing her own role.

“But you write!” I wanted to say. “You get to call yourself a writer!” I felt too guilty to actually voice this view. What would happen if she had a comeback?

“Yeah, sure… while kids are starving on the streets.”

“But… words! You… make things up… with words!”

That job ended badly, and, in all honesty, it was a good thing. It was a special niche advertising firm that worked almost entirely in classified ads. I spent most of my days trying to think of clever ways to promote that a hospital was seeking registered nurses.

But I had made my living as a writer, hadn’t I?

And then that same short story got me a job at a production company. A sardonic brit was moved by my story, and brought me on board. Within six months I was scripting satirical commentary and straight news stories. I had a job title of “News Producer.” Later, as the production arm of the company split off, I became the “In-house Producer,” and I was able to write several scripts for different marketing/ad pieces, including an X-Files themed piece for a famous Hollywood lighting company.

After the dotcom bust laid waste to the production company, I struggled a bit. I took several small freelance writing gigs, but I wound up in a day job with an even worse title: “Product Manager.” I had traveled the opposite direction intended. However, even in this position, I made it known that I was a writer, and whenever something came up, I was ready to offer my services. I wrote marketing copy for newsletters and brochures. I wasn’t a good fit for the company, but at the same time, I was able to start my career making short films. And I was gaining those hard-earned writing credits on IMDb.com.

That job led me to the position I’m in now, which involves graphic design, writing, and various other creative tasks. The company I work for is a small one, but they value my creativity, and the job itself allows me to focus on these aspects of my personality in a variety of ways. I spend my days writing marketing copy  and my nights writing scripts and novels and short stories.

Do I make my living as a writer? I do, at least in part. But more importantly, I live my life as a writer, and living it this way has gotten me a number of different jobs. It’s informed my entire career. It takes a certain amount of bluster to say you’re a writer, and even more to back it up. But if you really live it — and this means constantly applying writing to all aspects of your life, whether it’s an advertising tagline or a feature film script or a column on a website  – it will get you where you need to be. There are all different kinds of people who call themselves writers. Yes, it’s a profession, but I see that as a limited definition. I won’t say it’s a calling. For me, it’s just a way to live.

When I was fifteen years old, I was awarded a black belt in the small Ashan-Tao martial arts system. It was a relatively young style, developed by a correctional officer at Folsom prison, and it was known as a system that promoted intense, full-contact sparring. For the most part, the black belts were hardened, athletic men in their late 20′s and above. It would have been a big deal when I, at 15, received my belt, but I wasn’t the youngest. A year before me a  friend who was my age had received his black belt — the youngest student to have received such an honor. As the time of my own test grew closer, we began to hear murmurings of whether or not 15 was too young to be granted the honor and the responsibility of the black belt. At a special meeting, my friend, the young black belt, shrugged off the criticism with the following response: “I earned it. You can take the belt away from me if you think I’m too young. But I am a black belt.”

Our teacher relayed this story to us with a proud smirk.

I received my black belt later that year. I earned it.

I haven’t made any money selling a screenplay. I haven’t earned royalties off the sales of a novel. Call it what you want… but me? I am a writer.

How about you?

I actually wrote very regularly and was more disciplined and productive in a sustained manner than I usually am.

My NaNo Stats:

Pretty cool, huh? I’m currently at 51,600 words, and I just need to write a couple more scenes, and then I’ll be spending the next few months revising and polishing the work. And then….? We shall see…