News — Jason Baltazar

SWEEPING OPINIONS: I think every artist has their go-to patterns and habits, a set of creative tics that they return to time after time whether consciously or not. Another thing I think (trumpet sound) is that these habits are part of what drives us to make things in the first place, generative obsessions with certain subjects or textures or sentence/story structures (in the writing world these end up getting called "Voice," or at least major components of Voice). These habits can be what sustain us during times when inspiration isn't responding to our texts, or when life's other responsibilities demand more of our attention–leaning on habit can allow creative reflex to carry us and keep the muscle memory primed for later, rapturously inspired work to come. In other words, these patterns and habits are important, maybe essential tools in our creative toolkit. Like that one wrench-y thing. END OF SWEEPING OPINIONS.

BUT, in my experience at least, I can sometimes have too much of a good thing. I have a kind of restless temperament as a writer; I want the next thing to somehow be different from the last. I’m not going for complete reinvention, but a different shape, different angle, different combination of elements. Do I manage to actually make each new thing different? Ha! Absolutely not. Which means after a while I end up feeling bored with my work, or, in my lower days, like an absolute fucking fraud of a one trick pony hack-ass fraud person. Or whatever.

It's similar to the feeling you get when you have a particular route you drive so often that you lose awareness of all the little decisions you're making on the road. You just find yourself parked wondering where the last twenty minutes went. When I catch myself feeling this way I sit down and do an exercise I call "left turning," that's meant to consciously resist my most engrained reflexes. Basically, forcing myself to take a left turn everywhere my usual route requires a right.

The point of left turning is surprising yourself and trying to let go. Shifting a pattern once it starts to emerge.

How does it work? Well, it's a little different each time but generally I'll start off by writing a sentence or two in a voice that's not my usual wheelhouse. In the most recent left turn story I wrote the voice was an elaborate, clinically precise multi-clausal 3-4 line sentence deal. Once I have this baseline, my second left turn is starting the next paragraph with a detail that seems incongruous with the voice and then trying to figure out a way to meld the two together (a character with a cartoonish name and behavior that clashed with the highfalutin narrative voice). By the end of the second paragraph I'll usually have enough a combination of voice/character/situation to draw on for story momentum, so a lot of my left turns come via what the characters do and say.

My overall goal is for each subsequent paragraph to introduce something or pivot in a way that resists the pattern my "usual" sensibility wants–character type, tone, story logic, sequence of events, etc. Obviously, what comprises a left turn is contingent upon you and the previous decisions you've made. As long as you're not letting your go-to moves dictate the development of the story as it moves along, countering them with the unexpected, you're left turning. Any time Inner Writer starts saying "oh, I recognize this road, I feel very secure and confident about how to navigate from here," and they flick that right turn signal, try to jerk the wheel left.

A few more left turns from the last one: I had my characters speaking to one another in a very formal diction, so on the second page I introduced a new character who only spoke in alliterative exclamations. I gave a weapon that was treated with reverence a humorous and unpredictable effect when it was finally used. At the halfway point when the protagonist briefly leaves the main setting I shifted the narration to a neutral, contrasting voice. In the closing section what had been an absurdist horror story became an earnest romance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The main thing is I had a blast. And when it was over I felt a little looser, more energized to keep writing, reassured there were still some lively new creatures lurking up in my brain wrinkles. This may just be a completely idiosyncratic manifestation of my own personal artistic neuroses, sure, totally, but I thought I'd share it in case it maybe helps someone else through a real or imagined rut.