Anna DeStefano's Blog

Writers aren’t all that different for saner mortals. Even though most of us wear our freak flags like parade banners. As part of our every-day, we offer ourselves up for rejection–the very reality we tend to fear most. Because we’re bent that way. We write about our neuroses and dreams and innermost secrets. Then we go one step further in our quest to understand, by slapping our names onto what we’ve created before sending it out into the world to be judged. Which is tantamount to dropping your pants, then plastering a pic of the gory details all over social media. And in the end, most of us writer-types, the honest ones anyway, will admit that we’re TERR-I-FIED by the entire process, even though we cant’ stop ourselves from indulging in it. Why? For the same reason a “normal” person follows his or her passion. LOVE.

You don’t get to pick and chose how your mind works or what makes your creativity thrive. Life, in my honest opinion, is about learning to love who and what you are–and the love that you’re born to pursue.

Challenge that core reality, and you’re denying the inner freakishness that you’re here to explore and share. Take a look at my Things My Teenager Says series, if you want an idea of how proud I am of kids (and adults) who figure out exactly who and what they are, then fly that uniqueness proudly. I’m still on a path to owning my own stuff, probably a step or two behind my gifted teen. But I’m a writer. What can I say? I pay more attention most days to internal landscapes, than I do the world around me. I’ll catch up eventually. I’ll understand, one of these years, everything that love is supposed to mean to me and everything it’s not. Until then, I’ll be crazy, loud and proud, and fake it ’til I make it.

Being crazy in love with your uniqueness, even when it means standing out in ways that shriek at your insecurities and desperation to belong–that’s the life goal I wish for myself. And yourself. (more…)

My Soul of the Matter posts are usually about my life and the life I see going on around me, and how I try to change daily the things I let prevent me from actually living. Because surviving isn’t enough. Thriving should be the goal. How We Write is usually a motivational rant about finding the soul of your writing, and not just worshiping craft rules. Today, I hope to accomplish both.

How we write isn’t always about process and technique. Because we’re creating story. And story is a powerful mechanism for changing minds, and through them our world. Always has been. We write because something drives us to touch readers’ imaginations and hearts and emotions. Their souls. That’s a powerful motivation that should never be completely obscured by our how.

My point?

Every story has a beginning. No matter how beautifully you’re capable of stringing words together, your story begins and ends with your character and your reader’s experience of that character’s journey. Your story must resonate with the heart. It helps if you connect with a theme (even in comedy) that reaches deep inside for a universal truth that can’t be denied. Then, if your gift is writing and you can master the toolbox of techniques that we must learn to bring that vision to life, your reader’s world will most definitely be touched by whatever inspired you to reach them.

How do we write ?

We focus first on the story, for as long as it takes to discover what we most want to say. And only then do we sit down to write.

For me, I’m an angsty writer who wishes my gift was making folks laugh until they cry. My work is cathartic at more of the other end of the spectrum. Darker-themed, challenging emotional journeys come to me. Always have. Like this morning, when it only took the first five minutes of my news program for my entire day (my life) to shift as I listened to this. (more…)