IWSG: Writing and a creative life

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to the IWSG page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! If it links to Google+, be sure your blog is listed there. Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

November's awesome co-hosts:   Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Ann V. Friend, JQ Rose, and Elizabeth Seckman

And this month's optional question: How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing?


I like the question, so here goes a shot at an answer.

First off, I have been writing off and on all my life, so in some ways there is no "before." But for far too many years it was more "off" than "on," and the periods between bouts of working on a project were far too long; I'll count those years as "before." 

My more serious writing goes back far enough that it's hard to remember what life was like before. A little research on my computer suggests I wrote the first Ninja Librarian story about March of 2010. I published the book at the end of 2011 or January 2012, IIRC, and some point in between is where I started writing seriously and doing it regularly. 

This evolution into being a writer came at the end of the period when raising my boys was a 100% sort of job. They were both out of grade school, and suddenly I had a lot more time for myself. So in some ways, I don't know if the changes were as much about writing as about shifts in other parts of my life. But this I know: I became a lot happier and more focused when I finally became what I'd always wanted to be. 

I think that during those years with two little kids at home I had pretty much quit everything creative in my life. I stopped doing much music--my oldest son, especially, didn't like me to play the piano, and I had no time to join any musical groups, as I had done before the boys were born. So music fell out of my life (and, sadly, has mostly stayed that way, though I occasionally turn to the piano for fun). I was learning photography, but doing it with the kids along played into my own lack of patience so nothing amazing was happening there. Somewhere in there I starting putzing around with watercolors, too. That has remained a happy outlet for creativity without judgement, since my paintings are, in a word, crappy, and show little sign of ever being anything else. Sometimes it's good to have no expectations.

But writing... a story turns out to be a great retreat, and the more I wrote, the more ideas came pouring in. I tell kids when I talk at schools that I think the imagination is a muscle, and like all muscles, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. I firmly believe that. That's why it's harder to get going after a long period of not-writing, as I've had this year. Ignoring the ideas and sparks discourages them and they go away until you work out the muscle (the imagination muscle? surely not the imaginary muscle!) and it starts firing again. 

So, the short answer:  writing makes me a more creative person, and that makes me a happier person.

Can you remember a time before you were a writer? Do you think being creative makes you more creative? Leave a comment and let me know!

Hey! I'm also posting today on the IWSG Anthologies blog, so drop over there and say hi! 

Writing Book Review: Spilling Ink

 

Title: Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook

Authors: Anne Mazer & Ellen Potter; illustrated by Matt Phelan

Publisher: Roaring Book Press, 2010

Source: Library

Summary:

Just as it sounds, this is a book of advice and almost instruction for grade-school aged kids who want to write, with illustrations that will make you smile.

Review:

So why am I reviewing a book of writing advice for kids on one of my usually adult-book days?  You guessed it--because the advice in this book works for writers of any age, and it's written in a fun way to boot.  There is the standard advice about giving yourself permission to write messy first drafts--and then putting in the effort to revise them.  But there are also less conventional ways of thinking about things, and examples for a kid's life.

One of my favorite bits is the chapter on characters.  The authors suggest having a sleep-over with your character, so you can learn all his or her deep dark secrets.  Since the instructions for doing this begin with "grab some cookies from the kitchen," they got my attention right away.  I am a firm believer in cookies (alas).  All kidding aside, however, the questions they suggest asking your character are spot on, including things like "what are you afraid of?" (a sure trigger for something you'll do to the poor soul) and of course including what is their heart's desire.  When you know what your character most wants and most fears, you have a story.

Mixed in among the discussion are "dares"--assignments, we might call them, if that weren't a dirty word.  These dares are great prompts or exercises, and I'll be trying some (use a boring everyday thing as the subject of a suspenseful story?  I'm on it!).

In short, this is a fun, light-hearted, but useful book on many aspects of writing, from getting ideas to honing your prose and revising your MS.  

Recommendation:

Add it to your collection of books on writing, whether you are 8 or 80.   We can all learn something here, and have a few chuckles in the process (and you know I'm a fan of humor in all places, appropriate or not). 

Full Disclosure: I checked  Spilling Ink  out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Obligatory NaNo Update and musings.

I didn't originally plan to do this.  I wasn't going to write a nano-post.  I just meant to quietly do my writing and see what came of it.  But. . . it's kind of all-absorbing, and I am learning a bunch about myself and my writing, so of course I want to talk about it.  That's the problem with us writer types.  Words, words, words.

So, my plan going into this was to do what I needed to do first, and start when I was ready to start, and keep my focus on writing every day rather than word count.  On the eve of NaNo, that still looked like my plan.  My outline was a bit dim in my mind, I wasn't done with the edits on the previous book (to which my NaNo novel is a sequel), and there was that whole election thing.

Then everyone started talking about it.  People were queuing up to start writing at midnight (not me.  Never me.  I am no night owl).  So I kicked it into high gear, got the edits done mid-morning on the first, re-read my outline and decided it was probably adequate (way more than I've ever worked from before), wrote the one-page synopses of both books, and made a start.  By the time I knocked off to have lunch and a swim, I'd written several hundred words.  A nice start.

But something else happened.  I have always pretty much stuck to writing by myself in a room, often when I'm the only one in the house.  I certainly couldn't write when my youngest son was sitting at the computer across the desk from me.  Or when I'm tired from a long day and a lot of exercise.  Only, that night I wanted to write some more, so after my swim and an hour or two precinct walking, and making dinner and all, I sat down, ignored the teen, and wrote.

By the end of Day one I had learned a couple of things about myself that will make me a more productive writer, and possibly a better one:
1. I CAN sit and edit my own stuff for long periods of time.  It gets easier, too.  At some point you can be professional about it, at least a little bit, and work at it as though it was a job, not some dripping, bleeding bit of yourself that you've just hacked out of your heart.
2. I don't have to have total solitude and perfect conditions to write.  The funny thing is, I KNEW this.  For years I've taken my writing to coffee shops when I want to bribe myself.  What I had to prove was that I could ignore family as well as I ignore strangers, and ignore my own mess like I ignore the dishes some jerk left on the next table at Starbucks.

By the time the weekend was over, I was averaging about 2300 words a day, and had proven/learned a few more things:
3.  The more I write the more I want to write.
4.  An outline really does help.
5.  Writing every day and in large chunks makes it really easy to keep the story in mind.  Much more efficient than writing a bit every few weeks or months.
6.  I can write in 600-1000 word sessions, and still get the chores done. 
7.  That pain in my wrist isn't going away.

I could go on.  Maybe.  The pain in the wrist hasn't gone away, so I have to be careful.  But if the idea of NaNo was to find out if I could write like it's my job (which was the point, for me), I've already found out.  And knowing that, I know I can keep going, and that the end of November won't change much.  I'll write until the draft is done.  Then I'll edit like it's my job (on some other work; this one will need to steep for a while in its own filth), and write some more. . . because once you prove you can, there's no point in saying "I can't."

Wherever you are, just write!

I have to address a couple of common doubts/criticisms of NaNo before I quit.
1.  Writing so fast makes for really bad writing.  Want to know a secret?  Writing really slowly made for some bad writing, too.  Squeezing out little bits here and there, rather than working on it like it's what I'm working on, never made a good first draft.  It's a first draft.  It's not going to be good no matter how I write it.  Yes, if people think that their work is done on Dec. 1, they will have nothing but bad drafts, and probably not even complete ones. But if a writer understands that, there's nothing wrong with writing. . . at a pace that many if not most professional writers consider normal.

2.  NaNo has too many rules.  So ignore them.  I've gone back and changed things.  I'm here to be a writer, not to follow rules.  So I do what needs to be done to write the book.  Sometimes that means going back and adjusting the early part to make the later part work.  You can leave that to December if you want.  I don't trust my memory and want to fix it now.  It's all good.

Finally, for some of the blogs about NaNo that are keeping me entertained (not necessarily suited to young people):
M.L. Swift on what we'll have when we're done.
Gus Sanchez's Nano Survival Kit.  Check out the posts either side of it, too.
And, of course, Chuck Wendig's NaNo Dialogs, of which there have been many already.  My favorite is this  (warning: crude, crass, rude and hilarious).

Writer's Update

Vacation Dreaming

As part of the Progressive Book Club, I have started reading The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron.  Now, this isn't a book meant just to read, but a guidebook or workbook meant to be used to help a person find or recover their creativity.  So I admit I'm coming to it from a weird place: I don't feel the least "blocked," and I've embraced my creative self like never before.  That makes it a little unclear what I'm hoping to get from it.  I'll be up front, too: I'm not real comfortable with the religious aspects of the book.  Yeah, I know Cameron says that if you don't believe in God, just ignore the use of that word or substitute "the great creative force" or whatever.  Thing is, any of that requires a belief in some kind of divine force.  Not sure I'm there.

Okay, so I'm trying to see what I can do with this.  In the first week, the two primary tasks are set out: the Artist's Date and Morning Pages.  Okay, I kind of get these.  The Artist's Date is taking a set time each week to do something that nurtures your inner artist.  Trouble is, some of the things she suggests don't interest me much (and she does say this should feel more indulgent than like a duty).  Other things I already do.  I don't need to take my inner artist for a walk on the beach, because I've probably already taken it (along with all the rest of me) for a run on the beach.  I'm thinking that my exercise obsession (especially the strong outdoor component) is keeping me more on track this way.  So this one, maybe I find something that makes sense for me, maybe not.  Working out or working in my garden restores me pretty well.

Morning Pages.  Meant to be three pages of free-writing every morning, sort of a core-dump to get everything out and both clear the head and (I think) prime the pump for writing.  Okay, this one is looking good for me.  But after a little experimentation, I think it's going to be Evening Pages.  See, the biggest issue I have in this area is not starting the day with too many things on my mind, but ending it that way.  Then thinking about them instead of sleeping.  So clearing the head, clearing the slate, getting it out (and maybe making a list for the next day) might help me sleep.  And that would certainly help my creativity.

Now I look at Week One, and the big thing here is Affirmations.  You know, say good things about yourself, and then listen to, the negative voices in your head--what she calls "blurts."  Then crush them.

Here's where it gets really tricky.  Okay, I can't really say "I am a brilliant writer," because that would be pretentious and patently untrue (I know of only a handful of writers I consider "brilliant").  But I can say that I am a darned good writer who writes some good reading.  And I'm not hearing much in the way of blurts.  Oh, there's the "so why aren't you selling more?" kind of thing.  But the answer to that so clearly has nothing to do with me as a writing.  Yeah, I suck at marketing.  Lot to learn there.  But writing?  I'm on it.  I don't mean to imply that I know everything there is to know about writing, just that I'm doing it, and learning every day.

So what the heck is wrong with me?  Why am I not an insecure writer?  And will it last?  Don't get me wrong--I have days when I can't sit down and write, days when I look at what I have written and groan.  But somewhere in the last year or two things have changed.  I'm not groaning "God, I suck as a writer, why am I even trying?"  I'm just groaning because editing is my least favorite part of the job and there's a lot to do.  But more and more I'm looking at my stuff and saying, "yeah, I can do this.  I sat down and wrote my obligatory crappy first draft [thank you Anne Lamott] and now I know how to get to work on making it good."

And more often than not, that's what I do.  And that's why I probably won't go on with the program, though I'm going to read at least one more week's worth.  Feels like jinxing myself when all is going well.

Please don't hate me for it. 

Meanwhile, I'm looking at the usual summer impediments: the kids are or soon will be out of school (one of each), which means I lose my solitary mornings for writing.  Plus, lots of vacation.  Okay, I don't mind about that.  But my challenge this summer is to keep working.  Just that: keep writing, finish the edits on Return to Skunk Corners, and put out that short story each week, at least.  At the same time as I figure out ways to get those teens out of the house (between vacation trips).  If I do all that, I'll be patting myself on the back.

************

A Is For Alpine is here!  The paperback is now available at Amazon, or order directly from me (use the "Contact me" page) for $8, shipping to US included.

Editing: the next step

So last week I was chugging away at editing Murder in the PTA, and feeling a little sluggish about managing to get through only 20 pages a day.

Turns out that was the fast and easy part.

See, what I was doing last week was working with a print-out of the MS, fussing with words and sentences, but when it came to things that needed big changes or completely rewriting, I would scrawl "fix this!" or "needs rewriting," or my favorite, "UGH!" in the margin and move on.

Now it's payback time.  Sitting in front of the computer, typing in those changes, I'll cruise along pretty well for a page or two (though even when doing simple changes, I read the whole thing as I go to see if anything else wants tweaking, so it's not all that fast).  Then I hit one of those evil marginal notes.  "Fix this?  How?  What the heck am I supposed to do about it?  And how DO I make this plausible?  Can I cut it entirely?" I grind to a halt.  Stare at the screen.  Shuffle through my pages and pages of notes about what needs modifying.  Ask myself again why I even wanted to try to beat this thing into a readable book (the answer, for those who care, is that I love the characters and their home on Pissmawallops Island).

Then I start typing.  And I realize that however hard it is, this is the part of editing that returns me to creativity.

I also realize that sometimes editing 5 pages a day is good progress.

So now I'm going to go all philosophical on you about writing and editing.  We writer-types get a lot of positive feedback from writing rough drafts.  You sit down, take up pen or keyboard (yeah, still undecided about that), and let the words flow. Out come 1000 words, 1500, and you get a cookie for being a good little writer.

Editing is completely different.  Sometimes the greatest progress is represented by the fewest pages completed.  I may hit a chapter that's pretty good as is and I can zip through it, change a word here and a sentence there, and think I'm really cruising.  But I haven't actually done much.  It's when I hit the rough patches, the "fix this!!!" parts, that I have to really write.

Here's the philosophical part.  I used to be a trail-runner (long story about why I don't get to do that any more, never mind).  When running trails, particularly in hilly country, the first thing you have to do is dump your idea of what your pace is.  Yeah, sure, I'm an 8-minute mile runner.  On the flat.  But when grinding up a steep, rough trail, the pace drops.  Twelve-minute, 15-minute miles. . . it's good.  A completely respectable pace, because you're climbing like crazy and gravity is a very powerful force determined to keep you at the bottom of the hill.  So you change your mindset.  You put yourself in a place where a completely different definition of speed holds sway.  Heck, it's a completely different definition of running.  One that says that as long as you are moving forward at all, up that giant, rock-strewn mountain, you're fantastic.

That's what real revision is.  A place where maybe you take all day to make two or three pages work right.  And you are happy, because it took you only one day to turn two or three pages of dreck into sparkling, witty prose (or just readable prose.  Sometimes the goal has to be truly modest.  It can learn to sparkle on another day).  And you stand on your little pile of two or three pages, and you are the winner of the New York Marathon.

********

For those who are wondering, I'm past that stage with Return to Skunk Corners, and hoping soon to get it back from my editors (you reading this, Lisa & Emily?) and put on the final polish.  Hope to have a cover to reveal soon, too!  Meanwhile. . . having fun with a little murder and mayhem, and starting a new kids' book to keep me out of trouble.


********
On another note--jump over to author S. W. Lothian's gorgeous web site to get all the details on the 14-book Middle Grade sampler, Love Middle Grade, Actually, free on Amazon from Feb. 7-11.  Read it and enter to win a Kindle, gift cars, and ebooks!

Staying sane as a writer

Sticking (sort of) with my resolution to work every day on revising my novels has made one thing very clear: all revisions all the time makes Rebecca one crazy lady.  Doing it while laid up with a bum foot probably doesn't help, as my usual approach to regaining sanity is to go out for a ride or a run.  Instead, I have to think about what can be done beside start another game of Words With Friends (not that there's anything wrong with that).

The thing is, I notice that all the books and articles on writing talk about needing to sit down and write every day.

None of them seem to address what to do when you've finished a draft, and you need to sit down and revise every day.  Completely different job and different piece of the brain, though utterly essential, (as noted here) and if you can't do this part, no matter how good you are at sitting down and writing every day, you aren't a writer and should get a day job.

So how do I keep sane while doing the hard part?  Here are my two main solutions so far:
1.  Set a modest goal every day.  I'm shooting for 25 pages worked over and annotated for further working over.  That's one to two hours, depending on how awful it is, or how much I've changed my mind about where things are going.  If my head or foot starts to throb before I get there, I cut myself some slack and stop at 20 pages.  Today it took me an hour to do 10 pages.  Since I have a report to finish and some other work, I may stop there.  Maybe I can do more later in the day.  Rules are made to be broken.

2.  What else?  Start a new book.  That short story I posted last week about Halitor the Hero?  Yeah, him.  He's bouncing around in my head asking to get out.  So I'm letting him out.  Finish the revisions for the day, and I get to write a few pages, for an hour or until my hand wears out and I get cramps in my shoulder from writing on the couch with my foot higher than my head (this will improve.  My foot will heal.  My hand will probably never adapt to writing for long periods).

This means I am now working on three projects simultaneously.   Well, I read multiple books at once. Maybe I can also write them that way.

This also means I'm back to struggling with another on-going debate: hand-written vs. drafted on the computer.  That's my next blog post.

NaNoWriMo

What the heck.  Everyone else is talking about it, so I might as well too.  The month is November, and the title stands for National Novel Writing Month.  It's an interesting concept--get together (virtually, of course) with all the people who are always saying they are going to write a novel, and commit to producing a draft (or some 50,000 words, anyway) in one month.  Clear the decks and make it a priority, presumably except when actually stuffing yourself on Thanksgiving turkey.  Have a website where people can log their progress and offer each other support.

So I'm intrigued by the idea, especially as all my novels have been written over the course of not days and weeks, nor even months, but years.  I have always shoehorned a bit of writing in here and there, right up to this year, when I committed to getting the second Ninja Librarian novel out in a year, which means working at it like I mean it, but still has let me take about eight months for a draft, (leaving four for revisions, though some revising has happened as I go, whenever I just don't have a new story in me).  Compressing that into a single month would mean taking a very different approach to my writing--not scheduling it in when other commitments allow, but putting aside other commitments to make writing my primary job.

To be honest, I'm not sure I could do it.  For one thing, some of my commitments are, well, things to which I'm committed.  I can't blow them off for a month.  I could still work around that--many people do NaNoWriMo while working full time.  I can only assume that they blow off commitments to family (if any), exercise, and sleep.  My writing matters to me.  But my family and my health, I cannot deny it, matter more.  I'm not very creative when sleep-deprived anyway.

Then there's the matter of sitting still.  How do they do it?  If I stay at my desk or computer for more than a half hour at a stretch, I get so stiff I'll probably never move again.  I fidget a lot, and I mix writing with housework to avoid petrification.  That works for me, but probably will never allow for 50,000 words in 30 days.  But who knows.  Maybe another year. . . because an awful lot of this sounds like excuses.  I am growing very suspicious of all the reasons why I can't write more.

Still, I won't be participating in NaNoWriMo this year.  I may make November revise-a-novel-in-one-month time, however (a far more painful project).  I'm on track to finish my first draft within a week or so, and will be working hard to beat it into its final form before the New Year is very old.  Given the impact of the December holiday season on my ability to find time to write, November looks like a good month for rewrites.  I have to be sure to give my readers and editors plenty of time, too.  They'll be working on it at the same time I am, but they have lives too.  Then I have to put it all together.  Writing a draft is only the beginning. 

But it's a darn good beginning.

Maybe next year.