Ask the Author: Mandy Khoshnevisan
Answered Questions (4)
Mandy Khoshnevisan
(Edit: I guess my advice for aspiring writers is pretty similar to my earlier-penned advice for conquering writer's block! But I do believe it's true: getting out of your own way will help you move forward. Put your critical brain in a box somewhere and let your delighted brain steer the writing process. Let yourself surprise yourself by the thing you made. And don't let your critical brain erode your perspective and cause you to believe that any one piece of writing is precious, magical, and in constant danger of being ruined. Have a fun time writing, and fix it in post.)
On the act of writing itself:
My advice would be to just write something. Using your favorite writing tool (computer, pen-on-paper, finger-in-ketchup, whatever), put some words down. Don't know exactly how to word the thought in your head? Just write the most obvious things down. Write a lot of dumb sentences down. Fix them later and just keep going. When you're done, call it done. Congratulate yourself on writing a thing!
Produce a piece of writing. Then produce another one. (Or maybe get unstuck from the middle of a piece of writing by writing another piece of writing instead!) As an improvisor, one thing I've learned is that creativity leads to more creativity; you're not going to "use up" your brain power by writing too many things. The act of creation may feel scary, and creating a product and calling it "finished" may be even more terrifying—but once you've finished one piece, you're free to start another one.
If you write one thing in your entire life, that's gotta be one darn amazing thing. But if you write two things, that's 100% more things than you had before! The more you write (or maybe even just the more you imagine that you'll one day *have written*), the less scary and precious each individual piece becomes, and the less dangerous it feels to finish it.
Don't be a Mr. Casaubon!* Finish that "life's work" and keep going on past it! (Says the person who's only published one book, so far ... but I've also written a lot of dumb sentences in my life.) Good luck!
(*See "Middlemarch")
On the act of writing itself:
My advice would be to just write something. Using your favorite writing tool (computer, pen-on-paper, finger-in-ketchup, whatever), put some words down. Don't know exactly how to word the thought in your head? Just write the most obvious things down. Write a lot of dumb sentences down. Fix them later and just keep going. When you're done, call it done. Congratulate yourself on writing a thing!
Produce a piece of writing. Then produce another one. (Or maybe get unstuck from the middle of a piece of writing by writing another piece of writing instead!) As an improvisor, one thing I've learned is that creativity leads to more creativity; you're not going to "use up" your brain power by writing too many things. The act of creation may feel scary, and creating a product and calling it "finished" may be even more terrifying—but once you've finished one piece, you're free to start another one.
If you write one thing in your entire life, that's gotta be one darn amazing thing. But if you write two things, that's 100% more things than you had before! The more you write (or maybe even just the more you imagine that you'll one day *have written*), the less scary and precious each individual piece becomes, and the less dangerous it feels to finish it.
Don't be a Mr. Casaubon!* Finish that "life's work" and keep going on past it! (Says the person who's only published one book, so far ... but I've also written a lot of dumb sentences in my life.) Good luck!
(*See "Middlemarch")
Mandy Khoshnevisan
Soon I'll be starting work on a fiction project... something to do with a family in space. Stay tuned!
Mandy Khoshnevisan
I got the idea for "Managed Mischief" because I noticed a gap between the worlds of teaching and performing. Lots of adults take improv classes because they want to be performers—but there are also lots of people who take them for other reasons: to have fun, to meet people, to gain self-confidence, to improve their public speaking, etc. Similarly, as a teacher, I've observed that many drama teachers use improv as part of their curriculum in teaching kids to be performers. I've also seen lots of teachers, camp counselors, and other group leaders using improv games and exercises as icebreakers and group entertainment, in totally NON-performance settings.
SO! I realized that improv teaches a lot of very important social and life skills (it certainly helped me overcome 100% of my stage fright) which could certainly apply to life — AND, that people who were playing these improv games in more casual settings could use these games with more effectiveness if they better understood what skills those same games were teaching players.
Because improv games are like little behavior labs, players (especially kids) learn things from them that a casual game leader might not expect. Therefore they have more power and more potential than someone who may just be trying to kill some time may expect. The first section of "Managed Mischief" gives some basic background information on teaching improv, so that a leader or instructor can choose a game that fits their current group, get the most benefits out of playing it, and ensure that everyone is engaged and having fun.
Have you played some of these games, or other ones? Have questions or comments? Let me know what you think!
SO! I realized that improv teaches a lot of very important social and life skills (it certainly helped me overcome 100% of my stage fright) which could certainly apply to life — AND, that people who were playing these improv games in more casual settings could use these games with more effectiveness if they better understood what skills those same games were teaching players.
Because improv games are like little behavior labs, players (especially kids) learn things from them that a casual game leader might not expect. Therefore they have more power and more potential than someone who may just be trying to kill some time may expect. The first section of "Managed Mischief" gives some basic background information on teaching improv, so that a leader or instructor can choose a game that fits their current group, get the most benefits out of playing it, and ensure that everyone is engaged and having fun.
Have you played some of these games, or other ones? Have questions or comments? Let me know what you think!
Mandy Khoshnevisan
My improv training has taught me that it's much, much better to just write SOMETHING and move on, than it is to sit and search for the "right thing." If I'm stuck, I'll just write whatever's in my brain. I find that when I "can't think of anything," it's either because I'm actually thinking of too MANY things, I'm only thinking of "dumb things," or I'm trying write myself to a place I've already thought of but I can't figure out the transition from here to there.
In all instances, I've found that the best way to get past that is just to write down the dumb thing I'm thinking of and move on, even if that thing is something like, "Blah blah somehow a miracle happens fix this part later."
You can always erase, edit, or just throw away something. Improv has taught me that, rather than thinking of inspiration as a precious precious resource that can be used up, and that I better stop thinking of things before I use up all my ideas, "inspiration" is more just about trusting my ideas and being confident that yep, some of my ideas are better than others but I will never run out of them, and that ideas beget more ideas. It gives me perspective and the confidence to make a lot of "imperfect" content that I can play with, instead of fretting and sweating and getting hung up over creating one "perfect" thing that may never ever live up to my dream of how it should be.
(For more on improv and creative confidence, you can check out my book, "Managed Mischief!" ;o)
In all instances, I've found that the best way to get past that is just to write down the dumb thing I'm thinking of and move on, even if that thing is something like, "Blah blah somehow a miracle happens fix this part later."
You can always erase, edit, or just throw away something. Improv has taught me that, rather than thinking of inspiration as a precious precious resource that can be used up, and that I better stop thinking of things before I use up all my ideas, "inspiration" is more just about trusting my ideas and being confident that yep, some of my ideas are better than others but I will never run out of them, and that ideas beget more ideas. It gives me perspective and the confidence to make a lot of "imperfect" content that I can play with, instead of fretting and sweating and getting hung up over creating one "perfect" thing that may never ever live up to my dream of how it should be.
(For more on improv and creative confidence, you can check out my book, "Managed Mischief!" ;o)
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