Akting Out

For those of you who haven’t seen “The Matrix” (if you haven’t seen it, seriously, stop reading and go watch the Matrix, right now. I’ll loan it to you if you need a copy.), the title of this blog was inspired by an two scenes from the iconic film; in the first, Neo (Keanu Reeves) visits the Oracle for the first time and meets a child who is telekinetically playing with a spoon like Laffy Taffy. She gives him the spoon, and of course, Neo being new to this and all, can’t do it. The girl tells him not to focus on bending the spoon, which is, of course, impossible. She tells him instead to realize the truth; there is no spoon. It is he who must bend, not the spoon.

A short time later, Neo and Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss) are standing on top of an elevator in a shaft, about to shoot the last cord holding the elevator in place. If this goes right, the elevator will plummet, and they’ll be rocketed to the roof and land safely. If it goes, wrong, well, there’s really too many things to list, but the end result is, they’re dead.
So just before Neo pulls the trigger and sets the plan into motion, he whispers to himself “There is no spoon.” And pulls the trigger. I won’t spoil what happens, but if you don’t know, really, please stop and go watch this movie.

I field a lot of questions about writing, but the one I hear the most is; how I do I do it right? What if I do it wrong?
That’s the beauty of writing, and every writer’s first step; there is no right or wrong way to do it; you just do it. No, really, it is that simple. There’s no trick, no gimmick, and most importantly, no frakkin shortcut; you just write.
It doesn’t matter is you misspell every single word that you put on paper; the only thing that matters is that you put it on paper. You don’t have to worry about right or wrong at this point; you don’t have to show it to anyone (that comes later). You don’t have to worry about formatting, grammar, or any of that other nonsense that keeps most of us up late at night. You want to write something? Fine, do it. Quit worrying about it and do it.

The best writing in the world comes from what’s purely written, when the author isn’t worried about what it looks like. When you’re just writing with reckless abandon, whatever story you’re trying tell comes through pretty clearly. Yes, you will make two million writing mistakes along the way. At this point, it doesn’t matter. True story; I took part in National Novel Writing Month two years ago and just went crazy. It led to a publishing deal two years later.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to writing. Don’t get hung up on the process and just do it. You may be surprised at what happens.

There is no spoon; it is you that has to bend.

Thanks for reading, and good luck. More to come.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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