Long-range thinking about the writing life

In the course I just finished with Eric Maisel, he closed the last session with a discussion of the long haul of the creative life. Most of us get stuck, often quite pleasantly, in the current project. That becomes our focus. How do we complete this book? this series of paintings? this album of songs? We're concentrating on this tree in the forest of our creative lives.

Maisel encourages us to frequently and regularly step back and look at that forest. What is our body of work? And what do we want it to be? These questions concern both quantity and quality. Here are some things to consider:

1. Do you keep a notebook or other file for new ideas? Subjects, themes, ideas, characters? Do you visit that file frequently?
2.Do you pencil in time to just sit with your imagination and doodle?
3.Do you know what your next project will be, even if you have just started this one?
4. Do you need additional skills? Are you on the lookout for ways to get them?
5. Do you read widely in your field and in other fields (or visit galleries or listen to music)?
6. Do you have a plan (evolving, flexible) for your body of work?
7. Do you regularly think about what success might mean for you?
8. Do you keep up with what's going on in your marketplace and how those changes might affect you in the long run?

For these are conversations about the long run, about living fully into your life as a creative. Just something to consider.

Working with back story

In the last two manuscripts I've edited (one a very good novel, the other an interesting memoir), both writers have struggled to work well with back story. As you probably know, back story is the story or pivotal events of the characters (usually the main ones) before the novel begins or the specific event in the memoir took place.

There are some good rules for back story that I use in my own fiction writing and encourage my clients to use, although my encouragement is not always successful as some people are married to a particular memory in a particular place. But here are some problems and some suggestions.

Tip #1: Use back story sparingly and at just the right moment. 
In the novel I was editing, there were some important pieces of information in the growing up of one of the major characters that needed to be inserted somewhere along the narrative. The author chose to do these as memories sparked in the mind of the narrator. Unfortunately, there was no pattern to these memories and they were not linked to external events, just a kind of loose "that made me think of Patty when..." As the reader, I found myself unable to figure out how old the girl was in each memory and how the memories fit together to help me understand her. I suggested the author go back and put the memories in chronological order and do at least some of them as flashbacks, rather than just the narrator telling us about them.

In the memoir I was editing, events that had been timely in earlier chapters showed up in later chapters as back story. Now, it's fine to allude to earlier information. Authors do that all the time. But information can't be presented as new information in several places. That tells the reader that the author has no control over his information. This is a self-editing task.

Tip#2 Don't insert a flashback or back story into an action scene. 
Good writers don't have characters stop and remember something in the middle of an argument. An exception is something that passes quickly through the mind of the character. "When he shouted at me, I heard my dad's voice yelling at my mother." That much we'll buy. But a whole scene from childhood will throw the reader back in time and diminish the drama of the scene at hand.

Trusting your writer self

I have a couple of shelves on books on writing. Some are well-worn, others untouched although they looked interesting when I was in the bookstore or they were recommended by another writer. This morning while I was journaling, I noticed the spine of Courage to Trust on my shelf, a self-help book a friend had mentioned recently and one that I've skimmed. Then I saw John Lee's Writing from the Body, one of the untouched books, and opened it to a section called "Afraid to Trust." Okay, too many coincidences, so I read the section.

It starts with this quote from Wendell Berry: "One puts down the first line...in trust that life and language are abundant enough to complete it."

I've been struggling with the early-morning novel writing the last few days, eking out 100-150 words in my allotted hour instead of the 300-400 I'd been averaging. That in itself is okay. I don't have a quota to fill each day. But I feel deeply unsure all of a sudden about where the story is going. I'm not unsure about all that I've already written. It's a solid idea, and some good writing, but I'm stuck with where to go next and I've grown suddenly timid. I'm not afraid of wasting time. Any writing experience is a good one and part of the lifelong apprenticeship I've committed to. And I don't think I'm afraid of making a mistake--that's easy enough to correct.

I think rather that I've lost trust in my relationship with Frankie, my character, and in my relationship with my muse, whoever and however that shows up. That all the communication we had built up over the writing retreat has dissipated in the face of just a few minutes to write each day and then onto paid work and commitments and my other life. And there's no help for that now, not for the next month or so anyway.

So I'm committed to taking a deep breath and recognizing that I'm overcommitted and relaxing around that and solving it as a very solvable problem. And I can shift into trusting my writer self to wait and be there when the time opens up.

Shifting gears from the retreat

For 8 full days, I was on a writing retreat. Other than some kitchen chores and occasionally checking emails, I had all my time free to write and be with my characters. I wrote each morning first thing for a good hour in my room, watching the light come up through the alders in the marsh. Then I moved to the kitchen and did my morning pages journaling for another hour over tea and breakfast.

Most days I went back and reread what I had written in the early hour and then planned to do something else for a while but the story and the characters kept talking to me and so I'd write a good while longer. Then I'd check email in the other building but while I was doing that, I was really thinking about what to write next. The same thing happened when I took my 2-mile walk down the road in the late morning. I'd be letting my mind wander but it always came back to Frankie and Lola and what was going to happen to them next and I'd come back and write some more and the day would drift away like that.

I wrote a lot, 10,000 words, and now I'm back full tilt into my other life of paid work and the gym on a schedule and fixing all my own meals and running my own errands and fielding client questions and talking on the phone to family and friends and loving on my cats. It's a wonderful life I have, but not so conducive to hanging out all day with my characters.

So I've been feeling a bit frustrated since I came back. I'm getting up each morning and writing for the early hour but it's a shift from the retreat, knowing I can't just drop in when I feel like it. I may have to sort out something in addition.

Playing small, playing big

In the personal transformation work I did about a decade ago, we used to talk a lot about whether we were playing big enough. Were our dreams, our goals, our desires small (modest, ordinary) or were they huge and challenging and calling us to be our best and most outrageous selves?


I think about those conversations this time of year as I reflect on what happened to last year's goals and I set new ones. On retreat last New Year's I set what I thought were outrageous creative goals: among them, to write 100 poems, get back into painting with 10 acrylics and 10 pastels, to finish novel #2 and shop it, to start a third novel, to go on writing retreats, to teach. I put down everything I wanted. And all but one of them was completed (I don't have a good painting yet for the cover of my first novel if I self-publish; I've done a couple of drawings but they're not quite right). Several things really helped me complete this list.

I placed a copy of it in the front of my creative journal/notebook so that it was the first thing I opened to each time I used the journal and I read it through it at least once a month. Second, some of the items were things I could schedule (retreats, painting dates, classes) and for which I could get support and so I did those things early in the year. Third, they were all things I wanted to do. Not a single one was a should. And while around some of them I felt a bit unsure if I had the skill or talent, they were all things I looked forward to doing. Lastly, the only measures were quantity, not quality. 100 poems, not 100 great poems. 10 pastels, not 10 sellable pastels.

The intention behind this was relatively simple to state. I wanted to step more fully into my life as a creative. So I wrote down a whole bunch of things to do that might get me there. I had no requirement on myself that I do them all. I just hoped to do a lot of them. And in having so many, I got motivated to get started early and keep going.

What are your creative goals for the year? What support and scheduling could you manifest to make that happen?

Here's to a wonderful new year of outrageous creativity for us all!

Sitting in the gap

About noon today, I finished the first draft of Lola's story. What had been four pages of story that Lola told her daughter became 65 pages or a whole section of the book. It has been hugely fun to write because I knew where it started and where it ended and amazing ideas and characters happened in between.

Now I am sitting in the gap. Do I move on to Carla's story? Or do I go back to the main plot? I reread some of the main plot today and it's good. It's been several months since I've looked at it and I was pleased that it holds together.

In some ways it seems quite complicated to also do Carla's story (she's Frankie's sister and Lola's other daughter), but she's an important piece of the story so far so what happens to her next will be telling. But I don't know her yet. I don't who she is or what has happened to her.

So I am sitting in the gap, in the white space between the words, in the silence between the notes, in the skin between the eye lashes. I need to show up, stay put, and wait. Wish me luck.

Being specific

He waited a while. Then he left.
He waited 10 or 15 minutes. He wasn't sure as the phone got no reception. Then he walked away.

One of the many distinctions between good writers and beginners is the specificity of their language. Any time you can be more specific in the plot or the description or the dialog, consider it. She had dark hair or she had dark chocolate hair? He wore long pants or he wore tan Dockers? He walked down the road or he walked down the dusty road seeking out the occasional shadow? 

Notice that I say "consider it," not "do it." Because the other side of the issue for beginners is using too much specificity.

He ate his burger with ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomato, and onion. And on his fries, he put extra salt and ketchup. 

This kind of detail doesn't tell me anything special about this character. Of course, if there isn't anything special about him to know, then I don't need any detail. But if there is, how can you show me? Thus, the details can't be specific for their own sake, but to show us or tell us something. Here's another example:

He took the lettuce out of the burger and folded the lettuce so that it was the exact size and shape of the patty. He then cut the burger into 4 quarters. She wondered if he had a secret way to measure them for they seemed exact. Then he took out a towelette, washed his hands, and proceeded to eat the sandwich with his knife and fork. "I'll be you think I'm weird, don't you?" he asked. 

The details here tell us a lot. He's precise, he's fastidious. Just the man she wants to do the job of killing her husband.

You may not want to worry about specificity when you're drafting. Now that I write every morning, I spend the first few minutes reading the paragraphs from the day before. While I'm not editing, I will note a place where I can be specific. This morning I added this detail.

Before: She dried off in front of the window, watching the women in the garden below.
After:  She dried off with the only clean towel in the bathroom, watching the women hoeing in the garden below.

See what comes alive in your writing when you add a few specifics.