Listening to a podcast by Eric Maisel this morning, I was struck by a statement he made that the act of choosing almost always provokes anxiety. His example was choosing a bagel over oatmeal and all of our mental ideas about which is healthier, more fattening, etc. I resonated both with the example and the idea of choosing as anxiety-provoker and I thought about how much anxiety there is around choosing to write or do other creative endeavors.
When we think about sitting down to write, to choose to do that, anxiety gets provoked in many of us. Is this the best use of my time? Is it a frivolous use of my time? What if I don't produce anything good? What if I don't have any ideas? Something potentially quite pleasurable becomes a source of tremendous discomfort.
This anxiety gets eliminated if you write every day. If you have a commitment to sit down and write something, there is no choosing, hence no anxiety. There may still be judgement about what you write, but there isn't any anxiety about doing it. You just do it.
So consider whether a solid commitment and practice of writing or other creative endeavor might reduce anxiety for you.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
books that stay with you
For the last week, I've been spending my early morning writing time on a new project while my novel chills so I can get some distance from it before I start a rewrite/edit. I've had an idea in my mind for a good while on a couple of nonfiction books: one on sugar addiction and one on creativity. But I've not had a good idea for how to begin.
I was sitting at my computer last Sunday, just thinking about this, and I remembered a book I read sometime in my early 20s. It was a book of ruminations by John Fowles. I had been a Fowles fan for some time, reading The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Collection, Daniel Martin, and bought this smaller volume because I so liked his style. It was called The Aristos, and it was a series of short entries, thoughts, ideas, about the meaning of life. I don't remember any particular ideas although I remember resonating with many of the entries. What came back to me last week was this format.
Rather than having to have well-thought-out essays or an outline, I could just start with some ideas, a couple of paragraphs in length and then move on. It seemed a very appropriate and intriguing way to get my thoughts moving. And so all this past week, I've been doing that. I'm not writing quickly, one or two entries a day, but I'm started. And that's the main thing. My thanks to John Fowles.
I was sitting at my computer last Sunday, just thinking about this, and I remembered a book I read sometime in my early 20s. It was a book of ruminations by John Fowles. I had been a Fowles fan for some time, reading The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Collection, Daniel Martin, and bought this smaller volume because I so liked his style. It was called The Aristos, and it was a series of short entries, thoughts, ideas, about the meaning of life. I don't remember any particular ideas although I remember resonating with many of the entries. What came back to me last week was this format.
Rather than having to have well-thought-out essays or an outline, I could just start with some ideas, a couple of paragraphs in length and then move on. It seemed a very appropriate and intriguing way to get my thoughts moving. And so all this past week, I've been doing that. I'm not writing quickly, one or two entries a day, but I'm started. And that's the main thing. My thanks to John Fowles.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Letting your manuscript chill!
Today or tomorrow I will draft the last scene of the novel I am currently working on. I wrote for almost two hours this morning, then stopped to go to the gym. I could take the time to finish it today or I could wait until my early morning writing tomorrow to do it. I will probably do the latter. There is something wonderfully sacred about writing first thing in the morning and since much of this novel has been written in that sacred time, it seems fitting to draft those last couple of pages then.
Once that scene is completed and I've created a few bits of transition that I know need doing, I will put the manuscript away for at least a couple of weeks and let it chill--maybe until the end of the month. There are times in the process where I need to let things cook: scenes that are problematic, characters I don't know how to develop, too many possibilities for the next part of the plot. I spend time thinking about them, writing about them, doodling about them. I walk and consider, I shower and consider. I let them cook.
But when the draft is complete, I need cool distance, I need space between me and the narrative arc, me and the details of the characters. I need to not think about it for a while so that I can come back with fresh eyes and find what needs to be added and what needs to be pared away. So in my writing refrigerator, I'm making room for this new dish to chill for a while.
Once that scene is completed and I've created a few bits of transition that I know need doing, I will put the manuscript away for at least a couple of weeks and let it chill--maybe until the end of the month. There are times in the process where I need to let things cook: scenes that are problematic, characters I don't know how to develop, too many possibilities for the next part of the plot. I spend time thinking about them, writing about them, doodling about them. I walk and consider, I shower and consider. I let them cook.
But when the draft is complete, I need cool distance, I need space between me and the narrative arc, me and the details of the characters. I need to not think about it for a while so that I can come back with fresh eyes and find what needs to be added and what needs to be pared away. So in my writing refrigerator, I'm making room for this new dish to chill for a while.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
selling your book, not your story
I had a great time Friday and Saturday at the Willamette Writers Conference where I volunteered in the free services area. I was part of the Practice-Your-Pitch team and I also did Manuscript ER. People would come in and sit down and we'd spend 15-20 minutes going over the pitch they were going to give to an agent in hopes that the agent would like it and represent them.
I pitched the last two years in a row, the first year unsuccessfully, the second year I got my agent. So I was able to share my experience in a very direct way. Most of the pitches that came to me were a recitation of the story, a synopsis in effect. They often included a lot of extraneous details, a lot of back story, a lot of history. These writers were in essence trying to sell their story. But agents are wanting to represent books that will sell and sell big and the story is only a part of that.
Here's an example. Helen came with a story of the second wave of Oregon pioneers and she launched into a recitation of the story and why the characters moved west and what their problems were. After we talked a bit about what made her book special, she came up with some ideas that would improve her pitch: The book is about commuter marriages in the 1890s (men who work in the city and their wives who are alone on the farm, a day's train ride away); it's about women who have no choices (a child every year for 9 years, the closest female to help in an emergency a half-mile walk away). The husband has an affair with a woman in town. The book has two points of view, two sympathetic characters, the husband and the wife.
Agents are wanting to know what's new about your book, what's distinctive, what's fresh, what's original. I sent Helen off to rewrite her pitch to include some of these intrigues and innovations. I hope she lets me know what happens!
I pitched the last two years in a row, the first year unsuccessfully, the second year I got my agent. So I was able to share my experience in a very direct way. Most of the pitches that came to me were a recitation of the story, a synopsis in effect. They often included a lot of extraneous details, a lot of back story, a lot of history. These writers were in essence trying to sell their story. But agents are wanting to represent books that will sell and sell big and the story is only a part of that.
Here's an example. Helen came with a story of the second wave of Oregon pioneers and she launched into a recitation of the story and why the characters moved west and what their problems were. After we talked a bit about what made her book special, she came up with some ideas that would improve her pitch: The book is about commuter marriages in the 1890s (men who work in the city and their wives who are alone on the farm, a day's train ride away); it's about women who have no choices (a child every year for 9 years, the closest female to help in an emergency a half-mile walk away). The husband has an affair with a woman in town. The book has two points of view, two sympathetic characters, the husband and the wife.
Agents are wanting to know what's new about your book, what's distinctive, what's fresh, what's original. I sent Helen off to rewrite her pitch to include some of these intrigues and innovations. I hope she lets me know what happens!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Claiming and creating your writing time.
A year or so ago, I got a chance to read and comment on an advance copy of Sage Cohen's book, The Productive Writer. It's a great little book of tips and tools for all kinds of writers. And I was reading through it the other day, I came upon this sentence: "It's up to create your writing time, to claim it."
The universe doesn't always open up with scads of time to write or do other creative work. Most of us go on having to make a living, care for our families and ourselves, exercise, do laundry, run errands--all the stuff of life, which most of us know only too well will fill all available time. At the same time, writing is very hard work, often emotionally hard, often terribly emotionally hard, and so it is so easy to find other things that are easier to do or seem more important, especially when others are urging you to do them, expecting you to do them, or wanting to do them with you.
Only we can make writing a priority, and not just a verbalized priority ("Writing is important to me") but a lived priority, finding time most days to write new poems or continue to work on a novel or outline a new screenplay. And the more often we claim the time, the easier it is to create it. What time can you claim today to get into your project?
The universe doesn't always open up with scads of time to write or do other creative work. Most of us go on having to make a living, care for our families and ourselves, exercise, do laundry, run errands--all the stuff of life, which most of us know only too well will fill all available time. At the same time, writing is very hard work, often emotionally hard, often terribly emotionally hard, and so it is so easy to find other things that are easier to do or seem more important, especially when others are urging you to do them, expecting you to do them, or wanting to do them with you.
Only we can make writing a priority, and not just a verbalized priority ("Writing is important to me") but a lived priority, finding time most days to write new poems or continue to work on a novel or outline a new screenplay. And the more often we claim the time, the easier it is to create it. What time can you claim today to get into your project?
Friday, July 20, 2012
Pivotal moments
Good fiction writing, and I would guess good poetry as well, is based on a rendering of pivotal moments into scenes that move the characters and the reader forward into a new space of knowing and feeling. While I was on writing retreat recently, I read through my current novel again and began charting the pivotal moments. Did I have one in each chapter or segment of a chapter? Did they add up to forward movement (with perhaps an occasional two steps back)? And I saw I had done a pretty good job of that and I saw what I needed to fix.
That experience has helped me in editing a manuscript for a client this week. Some of his chapters have pivotal moments but too many do not. While they are full of information, the information is about two things: pivotal moments that happen off-stage and all the choices and preparations and decisions that get made for the on-stage and off-stage pivotal moments.
Readers can tolerate quite happily a few minor moments that happen off-stage. But after a while, it's unsatisfying, like watching somebody's slides of their trip to Egypt. You can get an idea but you don't experience any of it emotionally. We want to be in the story, not read about the story. This is the old show,don't tell axiom.
In the second instance, informational reporting is just damn tedious. He told me that she told him that the check had been mailed on Friday from a post office in a little town. Such information is only of value if the information links directly to an upcoming pivotal moment. Otherwise, we don't care how the check got there. Only that it did.
That experience has helped me in editing a manuscript for a client this week. Some of his chapters have pivotal moments but too many do not. While they are full of information, the information is about two things: pivotal moments that happen off-stage and all the choices and preparations and decisions that get made for the on-stage and off-stage pivotal moments.
Readers can tolerate quite happily a few minor moments that happen off-stage. But after a while, it's unsatisfying, like watching somebody's slides of their trip to Egypt. You can get an idea but you don't experience any of it emotionally. We want to be in the story, not read about the story. This is the old show,don't tell axiom.
In the second instance, informational reporting is just damn tedious. He told me that she told him that the check had been mailed on Friday from a post office in a little town. Such information is only of value if the information links directly to an upcoming pivotal moment. Otherwise, we don't care how the check got there. Only that it did.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Writing as exorcism
I was on a writing retreat last week and for the first two days I was feeling a bit low. That's unusual for me as I really love the retreat center where I go and the women writers who had come along were all wonderful. Yet I couldn't seem to find any energy for working on my novel even though I had been looking forward to this concentrated time. I'm not a procrastinator by nature and I did want to make progress.
Towards the end of the second day, I realized that I was feeling low because the things I was writing about were sad. The women in this book are not only metaphorically me, they are almost literally me. Frankie's interactions with her mother are not taken from my own life in their circumstances but they are in their emotional tone.
What I had discovered when I got to the retreat was that I needed to write several very painful scenes between mother and daughter. And of course, there was no way around that, only a way through. I did manage to do them both on the fourth morning and was exhausted afterwards and relieved.
Yesterday I was telling my therapistabout this and she said, "What do you want to accomplish in your relationship with your mother through writing this?" It was hard to articulate my answer to her, but today I know that I want freedom. I want the writing of this book to be a sort of exorcism of old demons.
Towards the end of the second day, I realized that I was feeling low because the things I was writing about were sad. The women in this book are not only metaphorically me, they are almost literally me. Frankie's interactions with her mother are not taken from my own life in their circumstances but they are in their emotional tone.
What I had discovered when I got to the retreat was that I needed to write several very painful scenes between mother and daughter. And of course, there was no way around that, only a way through. I did manage to do them both on the fourth morning and was exhausted afterwards and relieved.
Yesterday I was telling my therapistabout this and she said, "What do you want to accomplish in your relationship with your mother through writing this?" It was hard to articulate my answer to her, but today I know that I want freedom. I want the writing of this book to be a sort of exorcism of old demons.
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