Creative Craft

Another Saturday afternoon here at the old homestead and the temperature rests right at 91 degrees. Later on, I’ll be making wood smoked pizza with my granddaughter. As a pizza maker, I’m a newbie, but learning fast.

What does that have to do with writing?

Everything.

Pizza making is a creative process like writing, painting, and many others. There are two sides to these activities–the craft side and the creative side.

It doesn’t matter how well a painter can draw a line if he or she can’t mix color, prepare canvas, or select and care for the proper brushes. It requires both sides for the results to be superior. Without the craft…

Writing requires the same diligence as any other artistic endeavor. Even the best story ideas will not sell if not accompanied by a solid foundation of language, grammar, usage and style—the craft. The resources available these days on the web for working on the craft side, be it pizza or writing, are endless.

So how do you develop the craft?

Just like making pizza—the more you learn and practice, the better you become. And believe me, when Ernie and his swamp friends show up for pizza, it better be superior—or else.

It was just last Saturday, during the dwarves’ monthly write-in, that the thermometer pegged at a sunny 95 degrees. With the cooler and fan on the patio, we survived the heat. Today, as I write, it’s raining and the temperature is 44 degrees. Some years, Arizona spring can be an adventure.

The downside is—I missed my weekly trip to the Gilbert farmers market. It will be a week of surviving on supermarket tomatoes and less than fresh eggs.

A positive milestone for the week was my first batch of pizzas made on my new pizza stone. They turned out great and will feature on our write-in for May. Everyone gets to design their own pizza!

So why talk about food and the 7 Evil Dwarves write-in? In point of fact, it is extremely rare that we actually write anything during our monthly get together. It’s our monthly social, which sometimes includes our spouses, kids and grandkids. Probably the only constants are my cooking and Ernie’s desserts.

Instead, we get together to brain-storm story ideas, workout plot points for various stories, and work on each other’s flagging muses. Occasionally, we even pick a topic ahead of time. It’s our creative support group. In several ways, it is even more important than our critique sessions every two weeks. As writers, we sometimes get to feeling isolated and the group helps by bringing us back into a community of actual people. (Apart from Ernie’s swamp friends, of course)