Writing's Own Superstitions

Writers can be superstitious about their process. Hemingway used to sharpen twenty to thirty pencils before he sat down to write. That may be simple procrastination technique. It strikes me as a bit superstitious, too. I bet many writers cling to certain behaviours or activities hoping to bring back the muse, fearing the ominous writer's block or just desperately trying to get closer to being a real writer.

We all want to be real writers. Nobody wants to be called a wannabe, even though we want to be something. The term wannabe implies an underlying reality that the person doesn't have the talent or what it takes to really be it or really make it. They just want it, hoping it will come. People who are actually out there doing it actually know you've got to more than want it.

When I was in high school, I played competitive basketball. I remember one direction I got from the coach a few times that stayed with me:
"You have to want the ball."
It was peculiar to me.
Well, of course I want the ball.
So does she and she and she...who doesn't want the ball.
I would just say okay, yeah, but deep down it was strange to me.
But now that I think back to that, she was right. You have to want the ball.
She meant, you have to really want it; you have to want it so bad that you will pass out before you stop running; you have to be willing to dive for it, take hits for it and reach farther than you ever thought you were capable of reaching.
If you're superstitious, you won't make it. It's as simple as that.
If you have hang ups that prevent you from diving for it, then you will remain in the wannabe category and never reach the really-want-it stage of success.
So I guess I need to get busy wanting it and writing.

Superstitions

Why are some people so afraid? Ladders, a certain colour cat, flights of stairs, cracks in the sidewalk...I had an aunt who would never walk up or down a flight of stairs while someone was coming or going the other way. She would never cross paths with anyone on a flight of stairs - that was not good.

Superstitions are the beginnings of OCD: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder -- not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, avoiding black cats or omens of any kind, eating things in threes, or double-and-triple checking all kinds of habits that have no logic to them -- only to sedate phobias.

A superstition makes people walk around ladders, throw salt over their shoulder and be extra sensitive on a Friday the 13th.

OCD makes sufferers do those things but on a more severe level, making them look odd in their behaviour, showing actions that attempt to control or master the rising anxieties ever-present in their chest.

While superstitions have slightly faded out with the times; OCD seems to have come in with a vengeance.

A common modern superstition shows up often in our inbox which is utterly ridiculous but people buy into it anyway "in case, this might be true.." A friend forwards an email to 10 friends because if they do, they'll be very rich soon, or if they don't all hell will reign down on their lives. If anything like that were true, we could all quit our jobs and keep tragedy away forever. How an email message of text built with binary code is going to determine your life's next phase is beyond me, and yet, all kinds of rational, well-educated people do this on a regular basis. And nothing ever happens. If it does, it's a complete coincidence. Somehow this makes me see why religion can have impact and sticks to people -- because people want something to believe.

Friday the 13th

One day is never a way to start any piece of fiction. How about Friday?
Friday is too contrived - even more contrived is Friday the 13th. Superstition may have less to do with fiction than I originally thought. Superstitions are all about very specific circumstances that predictably provide open-ended outcomes that are supposed to be evil. So your character experiences a Friday the 13th. Or your leading lady walks under a ladder. Too contrived. Too predictable. The reader knows to expect something bad. It's like hitting your readers over the head with a literary sledgehammer device. There are better ways to foreshadow. I throw out a challenge:

Write a piece of fiction using Friday the 13th and make it exciting...unpredictable...engaging.