A big list that was fun to make

 If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know I like lists. So when a member of my creativity group, the Monday Muses, sent around her list of ways to rejuvenate her art life, I decided to take on the challenge myself and come up with 50 possible things I could do that would be fun. Here's my list. Anybody want to take on the challenge?

July 29, 2011

1. Do a study of Van Gogh works with the books I have
2. Read in all the writing books I have and discard those that aren’t useful.
3. Write another 100 poems
4. Pick 10 prompts already written and write a short story for each one.
5. Choose one of my drawing exercise books and do the exercises.
6. Draw 15 minutes a day for 100 days.
7. Have a portfolio sale of my art.
8. Work on the third novel.
9. Create a chapbook from the first 100 poems.
10. Do a workshop with Jeanne Carbonetti
11. Enter 10 poetry contests
12. Read and learn about the poetry market
13. Read and learn about the short story market
14. Use some of my less successful pastels in collages
15. Commit to 4 pastels a month or 4 acrylics
16. Learn the color wheel and color theory
17. Read Van Gogh’s letters
18. Read Robert Henri.
19. Send another 20 pitches for novel #1
20. Do a pastel of the fence for the cover of novel #1
21. Collage with the photos of my own art work that Dave did
22. Assemble my easel horse.
23. Read and do the Poet’s Portable Workshop
24. Read Poemcrazy and other books on poetry that I own
25. Read and do Drawing with Children
26. Read and do Drawing on the Artist within
27. Listen to music and paint from within me
28. Work through Maisel’s Book of Creativity
29. Write a creativity manifesto
30. Do 10 artist dates a la Julia Cameron
31. Do the Artist’s Way again, perhaps in a group
32. Make a set of creative soul collages
33. Write a group (a book?) of prayers and meditations for creatives
34. Draw or paint from photos in my family albums
35. Commit to a 90-day creativity program and blog about it every day for the 90 days.
36. Do a study of style using Tufte’s book and Perrine’s book
37. Schedule time for dreaming and doodling a couple of times a week.
38. Schedule a lot of art play dates.
39. Read the Vocabula website 1-2 times a week for a set period of time
40. Listen to music and look at art in my books
41. Learn to use my digital camera well and easily, both shooting and uploading
42. Learn to print and manipulate photos on my printer
43. Ask David for some landscape photos for Christmas to paint from
44. Practice enough to get over my fears about drawing figures and faces.
45. Fool around with water colors
46. Take a poetry workshop
47. Take a short story workshop
48. Develop a comfortable confidence with line
49. Ask Ingrid about getting the Charles Belle book for me
50. Read through my blog posts to see if there’s a book in there

Celebrating 100 prompts written

Last night at Second Thursday Writers, I wrote the 100th prompt in the series I had committed to. I had started it in early May hoping to come up with some good story starts for the next novel, and I did. As I've said in this blog, I've also used the prompt writings to write and learn more about the characters in the new novel, although much of that may never show up in the manuscript. I like having these writing challenges; it helps me keep at my craft and keep creating, and the prompts are really helpful for continuing to hone my skills as a story-teller.

Here's one of my favorites from the 100:

Purple Tulips

When Jake introduce me to the young woman he'd brought to the funeral, I'd have sworn he said her name was Purple Tulips. That wasn't it, of course, but it was Czech or Serbian and had four sylllables and started with P and wasn't something I could pronounce. She said everyone called her Pat but that didn't fit her at all,  so I thought of her all afternoon as Purple Tulips.

Jake was clearly smitten with her and I was a wee bit jealous. Jake and I had been lovers for nearly a year, and we'd had a lovely time until the lust waned. I'd have been happy to see our passion morph into a steadier flame, but Jake got restless and met Anna and I found Paul and he and I married and had four happy years until the cancer won.

Purple Tulips was 10 or more years younger than Jake, which probably suited him. He was a man who loved going more than doing, and I was a sitter, a lounger, a reader. I hoped Purple Tulips liked to hike and travel.

She stood by herself a lot that afternoon, and I wondered if I should go over and speak with her and make her feel welcome, but it didn't seem my place. My old self would have done it, but the widow I was now had a rebel streak that hadn't been available to me before and so I turned away and was done with them both.

good news, more good news, and work to do

My experience at Willamette Writers Conference last weekend was a good one. I've learned to do only one or two workshops a day. That's all the new information I can absorb. I attended two good workshops by Eric Witchey, including a very thought-provoking one on Myth in Story that will linger in my thinking.

I also had three interviews with agents where I was able to pitch my novel. All of the interviews went well. All three agents were intrigued enough by what I told them of the story that they asked me to send pages (10, 50, and the whole thing, respectively). I felt very relaxed in the pitches for two reasons. I know now more than ever that finding an agent or publisher is a crap shoot and I so expected nothing except a chance to practice and I practiced like crazy with every friend I met, every stranger I talked to. I even went to the free pitch practice area and gave it to someone there. So I felt pretty comfortable.

Then on Sunday, when I got home, my friend Ed Goldberg called. He'd finished his read and edit of the manuscript and had comments for me. Some were reassuring (good characters, good dialog, very well written) and some gave me work to do. He suggested some additional scenes and character complications, advised me to beef up the ending, and do some needed police research. While it's hard to give up my idea that the book was done, his suggestions make good sense and won't take more than a couple of weeks to complete.

Interestingly, the lunch speaker, a film writer, talked about the three things needed for a successful career: practice, an open mind to criticism and suggestion, and persistence. So I'm taking those on.

Introversion and pitching your book

Two years ago I was gungho to sell my first novel. And I was terrified of pitching it to agents. Not because I didn't believe in my book but because one-on-one experiences with a stranger is my idea of a nightmare. I'd rather get up and ad lib about my sex life to 1000 people than meet a stranger and have to have a conversation.

So tomorrow, when I go to Willamette Writers conference, I'm going with as close to zero expectations as I can get. I'm psyching myself to look for an agent that suits me rather going with proverbial hat in hand and relinquishing all my personal power. I feel comfortable talking about my book and I like this book a lot and am confident it can sell. It would be lovely if one of the three agents I am going to talk to is also interested. But if not, so be it.

I still expect to be nervous but I don't expect to be disappointed and frustrated that way I was two years ago. I'm holding it lightly this time!

Pitching my mystery

This weekend is the Willamette Writers Conference and I've paid to meet with three agents to pitch my mystery novel. Two years ago I did the same thing with my first novel and it was a most discouraging experience. That first novel, which I still think is pretty good, never really got pitched. When I told each of the three women that my protagonist was a man and that my story was aimed at women, they said they weren't interested. Because one woman wasn't the main character, it didn't fit romance, or chick lit, or women's lit and they weren't even interested in taking a look. Two of them were polite about it, one of them wasn't. And for my tender writer's ego, that face-to-face rejection was really difficult.

So why have I signed up to do this torture again? Good question and one that I'm asking myself this morning. Last time, I spent weeks perfecting my pitch. Even went to an expensive workshop to learn how to do it right. But doing it right and having a book that fits a certain expectation are two different experiences. This time I have a book that fits a genre. It's a mystery and it has a woman protagonist. And I think it is a much better book than the first one. I'm pitching to three women who say they are looking for mysteries. So maybe it will go better.

And maybe the fact that I haven't yet written my pitch or my synopsis means that I'm more relaxed about it all. Then again, maybe I'm just as scared.

The goat died of cirrhosis

I've been writing brief prompts since 2002. Some of my writer friends also do prompts and if you spend any amount of time with me, you know that I'm always looking for great prompts to write from. Today at Writing Friday lunch, my friend Eileen announced that she was going to be reading her poems at a goat roast. After the inevitable jokes about saying deprecating remarks about goats, Sue told a story about an alcoholic goat from her past, a goat who loved beer and who died of cirrhosis of the liver. A prompt if I ever heard one.

I'm closing in on completing the 100-prompt challenge I set for myself. Such challenges are usually a do-one-a-day idea to keep us writing. Write a poem a day. Write a chapter a day. Write a prompt a day. But as I have said before, in spite of my rather overdeveloped sense of personal responsibility and discipline, I rebel at the tyranny of once-a-day practices (except brushing my teeth and journaling) so I tend to follow through on these writing ideas in my own fashion. This morning I wrote 6 prompts. Three of them revolved around an interesting new character named Muriel, who was last seen at the bowling alley Friday night (prompt was "last seen"). Then I wrote a personal story about the one night I spent in Montreal and two other fictional bits with new characters. I'm pretty restless today and if it hadn't been Writing Friday and if Pam hadn't wanted to use my computer for a while, I might have been in my office working and pretending to write. As it was, I sat out on terrace in the cool summer quiet and kept asking myself to sit still and I wrote those prompts. I stayed at it long enough to get past the obligation and into the stream of things. So glad I did.

Making revisions

At Writing Friday this past week, I spent the day on my mystery novel, making deeper revisions and considering the suggestions of my early readers. Some of the ideas didn't resonate with me. One reader thought I made too many references to food but when I read all those passages, they seemed okay to me. I hadn't fallen into the amateur's need to describe food in detail and I noticed that most of my food references had to do with smell. "Ellie woke to the sounds of Danny fixing dinner, to the smell of meat and garlic." And I rather like that way of putting readers in touch with the senses.

A second suggestion had to do with using people's names in dialog. In one embarrassingly long interchange, I had my two policemen using each other's names over and over and I could see how stilted it sounded. And I found other places where I had included the name. But even though Story Engineer Larry Brooks, in a recent post, advised against ever using a name in dialog, there were a few places where I decided to leave them. In each case, there was something serious going on and something emphatic. "Listen, Ellie, it's just not going to work." And I realized I would do that naturally in my own speech patterns and so I left them in.

Next, I increased the creepiness factor by inserting my psychopath in two small ways earlier in the book. I'm very pleased with how I resolved this suggestion and think it works well.

That left two more substantial considerations to deal with. First was rewriting the climax so that my tired hero had a bigger place in the rescue of his beloved. No solution immediately came to mind but I have let myself mull it over (I'm a great believer in the work of the unconscious mind to solve problems), and I came up with something that I think is going to work without a complete rearrangement.

Second is rethinking my heroine's relationship with her husband, whom she does not yet love. Can she? Will she? In four or five places in the novel, she has interior dialog about this but for some reason, my readers did not find that enough. Now I need to go back, print out those pages, read them through, and delve deeper into her motivation, her longing, and her reluctance.