Word Strumpet

Writing Notebooks

Or do you call them writing journals?  Writing diaries?  Whatever you call them, they are essential.  I've recently been asked to do a presentation in Nashville at the Path and Pen conference and I'm going to do a workshop on Writing Abundance.  This will essentially cover a whole lot of ways that I've discovered to keep the writing flow going. 

And one of the pillars of writing abundance is what I like to call collecting.  You have to gather source material in order to have something to write about.  In truth, all the source material you ever need is inside of you, but some of us need external reminders of this.    These external reminders are what I call mental ephemera--notes about things you've observed over the course of the day, a snippet of dialogue you've heard, the description of someone you've seen.  They can be articles you've torn out of a newspaper or printed off the internet.  Or they can be images--pictures that appeal to you for whatever reason or photos of places you might want to write about.

It if all sounds like a lot of effort, it is.  But it is worthy effort because it establishes a pattern of observation and seeking inspiration.  You may never even look back through your writer's journal but the simple act of writing it down cements it in your mind.

Upon occasion, more rarely than I'd like, I venture into making art.  These ventures most often take the form of collaged pages (such as altered journals) or needlework.  I deeply desire to design my own needlework and yet I find myself staring at the blank canvas, without a clue what I want to do on it.  But recently I read a book which explained how to create collages and use other source material for ideas.  And today I heard Kaffe Fassett speak (at the OCAC graduation) and he showed slides of what were essentially garbage dumps in India and the amazing knitted coat that came of it.  So I'm starting to get a better idea of how visual artists work, and they work by collecting source material.

I've been putting myself back in the mind of the panicked beginner, staring at a blank canvas these days as I develop this workshop (and I will be putting an online version as well as an ebook of it up soon).  It helps me to remember that feeling of utterly blanking out as one faces the canvas or the page or whatever. And my best advice for facing it down on this hot, hot night is to start a writer's notebook.  Or journal. Or diary.  Call it whatever you like, just do it.

Birdsong

There's nothing better than sleeping with the windows open, and last night was one of the first nights that's been possible here. 

This morning I woke at 5:30 to the sound of birdsong.  This is without a doubt the best possible way to wake up in the world, even if it was half an hour earlier than I wanted to get up.  I lay in bed and listened to the birds singing and I remembered a quote that I read somewhere or heard someone say. 

The gist of it was that birds sing just because that's what they do.  They don't worry if their song sounds right, or if its any good.  They don't worry about what the other birds think. And they for sure don't give a rip what humans think of their bird songs.

They just sing.

Birds don't worry about if they'll get paid for singing or not, or if they look okay while they are singing.  They don't think about how the other birds might get jealous of how good there song is, or perhaps make fun of their song because its stupid.

Birds don't worry about taking too much time to sing.  Or giving up their household chores to sing.

They just sing.  All the time, from the crack of dawn until dusk.  I can hear one outside my window at this very moment.

You know where I'm going with this.  So many times we shun our creativity for all of the above reasons, which are really silly when you look at them through the eyes of a bird.  One of my favorite insights from the Artist's Way is Julia Cameron's bit about how the Creator created us, and thus we are most in his or her image when we are creating.  That's always made a long of sense to me, and I'm pretty sure it makes sense to the birds, too, except they don't even have to think about it because they are too busy singing.

Write Three Pages a Day and You'll Be Happy

I am not the first person to say this, and I won't be the last.   And, you won't be the first person to ignore this stellar advice, nor the last.  But ignore it at your own peril, because it is the key to happiness, to writing success, to world peace, um....maybe even to natural disasters. No, scratch that last bit.   But well and truly, the practice I am about to recommend is, for a writing, the key to everything. 

What is this miraculous practice?

Writing three pages a day.

It is that simple and that complicated. 

All you have to do is just write.  Get out of the way of your ego and your complaints and your ideas about why you can't write and just go do it. 

What I'm advocating here is not morning pages or journaling, though those are both worthy endeavors which I recommend.  What I'm advocating is committing to write three pages a day on whatever your current creative project is.   It could be a novel, or a short story, or a memoir, or a screenplay.  Doesn't matter. 

Whatever it is, write three pages.  Go do it right now and then come back.  Honestly, I believe that we make it way harder than it really is. 

If you are a Type A, high achiever, you'll probably be thinking, but three pages a day is nothing, not even worth my time.  To the contrary.   If you write three pages a day, at the end of the month you have 90 pages, unless my math is wrong.  90 pages!  That is one-third of a book!  It's huge.

Now, granted, I'm not expecting these three pages to be  in finished draft, worthy of publication shape.  You're going to be writing, and if you're like me, you're going to be writing fast so that you can say you've done it and move on. 

But I'm willing to bet that in that fast three pages you'll end up keeping quite a bit of it.  Oh, there will be successive drafts, to be sure.  But what writing this way gives you is direct access to your inner source, which is, of course, directly connected to the outer source, or creator, or God, or goddess, or the universe--call it whatever you like.  And it is from this direct access that voice and style and all the good stuff that makes you unique comes from.

It won't be hard.  It will be exhilarating and exciting and wonderful.  Trust me.  Its as good as a spiritual practice.  In truth it is a spiritual practice.

True Confessions, No Not the Magazine

Though I have written about True Confessions, the magazine, that it not what this post is about.  Oh no, it is an embarrassing personal confession instead, since they are the best kind, of course.

Today I was driving down busy Sandy Boulevard and came to a stop at the traffic signal.  A scruffy homeless man crossed the street in front of me and when he neared my car (I was in the lane closest to the sidewalk) he leaned towards it and bent down.  It looked a bit like he was lunging toward my vehicle and I glanced quickly over to make sure I had all the doors locked, panicking a little. 

But then this man stood, holding a piece of litter and deposited it in the garbage bin on the street.  And then he picked up another piece of paper and did the same.

Damn preconceptions about people. 

I started to roll my window down to call out a thank you but the light changed and I had to move, so I thought it instead. 

I think that sometimes creating characters for fiction kind of falls into the same category or preconceptions.  You are completely and totally convinced that your character is not the sort of person who would leave her husband until she does it. 

I've been fooling around with some new writing projects lately.  Nothing specific yet, just allowing myself to write and see what happens (get out of the way and let the story come through).  And I've noticed that sometimes it takes me awhile to get to know a character.  I think I know her and then it turns out (if I get out of the way and let her talk) that she's different than I thought.

This is sort of like getting to know a new friend.  You start out thinking one thing and then you have a conversation and see him in a completely new light.   And it truly is just as fun to get to know a character on paper as it is in person.  Maybe even more fun, because if they do something really crappy you have the power to make them be quiet for as long as you want.

The moral of the story is to do your best to, yes, you guessed it, get out of the way and let the character come to life on the page.

A head's up for the future: if any of y'all are going to be in Nashville on the weekend of September 5th and 6th, I'm going to be presenting a workshop at the Path and Pen spiritual writing conference at Scarritt-Bennett.  I'm really excited; its going to be very fun.

Writing Inspiration From an Unlikely Source

You never know where you will find inspiration for writing.

Last night I went to a knitting lecture by Fiona Ellis at my LYS (local yarn store, for you non-knitters), Twisted, which is my new favorite place.

I love knitting and stitching and sewing and anything to do with textiles or fiber arts.  Throughout my young adult years (does that mean I'm now an old adult? apparently so) it was always a toss up as to which way my career would go--towards writing or some sort of designing with textiles.   While I've always written, I've also always done needlework in one form or another.  I sold children's clothing that I designed and sewed for awhile and after that I thought maybe I'd combine my loves and be a craft writer.   While that never panned out, I did eventually begin my free-lance career by writing about art.   

Gradually, though, writing won out, which leads us to the current day, where mostly all I do is write.    Lately, it has been a rare day when my hands have held needles of any kind--though I did sew a button back on my shirt when I was in Nashville. 

But lately I've realized that I missed knitting and stitching, and that rather than being a distraction to my writing, it's actually an enhancement.  One form of creativity bleeds into and informs another, and actually bolsters your creative muscle.  We tend to think in an exclusive, dualistic way--if I do this, than I can't do that, when in reality the opposite is true.  The more kinds of creative projects you allow yourself to pursue, the more creative you will be.

So I decided I needed some inspiration and when I heard that Fiona Ellis was speaking on her knitting muses, I made reservations for the lecture and convinced my friend Leigh to attend.

Fiona was great.  She's a Brit living in Canada, and quite an accomplished designer.  She showed us slides of her various inspirations--travel, urban landscapes, nature, museums, the everyday, and so forth.  I was totally content, sitting on a couch at the back of the room, next to a woman knitting socks, who was a knitting soul sister because we both admitted that we never finished our projects.

But Fiona really got me thinking when she answered a question about how to get started designing.  "Start from where you are and move forward," she advised.  "I never sit down thinking this design will the my Sistine chapel."

I love that advice.  And also this:  "Don't spend all your time organizing the files on your desk."  In other words, get to it.  Just do it.  "It's not brain surgery or rocket science.  You don't die from it.  People aren't going to lose their sense of smell (from a botched surgery) if  you have to rip your stitches out."

Same thing with writing.  Nobody's going to suffer or die if the words you put on paper the first time aren't perfect.  Or if, shudder, you have to delete them and start over. 

One of the other things that Fiona said was about how she convinced herself to go to University, as they say across the pond.  She was nearing the age of thirty, and had done her A levels, but gone straight into the working world.  When a friend died of brain cancer, she reassessed her life and made a list of all the things that were obstacles to returning to school--and then she dealt with them, one by one.

Isn't that a great way to approach life?  Do you have obstacles in your way to writing? Make a list of them and then deal with them, one by one. 

Reading and Writing Redux

It has come to my attention that May is Get Caught Reading month, which seems timely since I just did a post on Reading and Writing.

Anything we can do to promote the cause of reading is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, though I don't share the common view that there is less and less reading going on these days.  Look at the statistics--millions, if not billions of people are blogging, resulting in uncountable words being released into cyberspace.  Somebody, somewhere, must be reading all these words.  I know, I know, blogs are not the same as books and never will be, but still.

Speaking of things that aren't the same as books, my partner in the Loft, Terry, had a Kindle.  I must get myself a Kindle. (For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the Kindle is Amazon's new electronic book reader.)  It is the coolest thing I've ever seen, honest.  For someone like me, who feels compelled to never leave home without five books in tow, it would be a lifesaver.  I foresee the day when I won't have to automatically pay a fee for my overweight suitcase. 

Anyway, why not celebrate Get Caught Reading month and go catch yourself reading?  That is exactly what I now intend to go do. 

(And by the way, thanks to Roy Burkhead for this information.)

Reading and Writing

I've been slacking. 

Since arriving home from Nashville late on Saturday night (actually it was early Sunday morning) I've been pretty much Not Writing, which is a specific state of being characterized by a constant awareness that I'm doing everything but writing.   This is because writing is such a stern task mistress that she wants to make damn sure you miss her when she's gone.

Most of the time when I am Not Writing I wring my hands and flop about saying "alas" and sigh heavily a lot.  But for the last couple of days I've been intentionally Not Writing, which is different.  It is taking a break on purpose and without feeling guilty or worrying about it.

This period of Not Writing happened somewhat unintentionally, but once I was in the middle of it, I enjoyed it so much I made it purposeful.  My first day home required a massive dose of house-cleaning energy.   Let's just say the home had seen cleaner and more organized days.  Since my husband got whisked off to Abu Dhabi with two days notice I decided that it would not be politic to blame him and just got to it.

But then the reading bug took over and all day yesterday I lolled about in my newly clean house reading Isabel Allende's latest book, a memoir called The Sum of Our Days. She writes it as a long letter to her deceased daughter (which was covered in her first memoir, Paula).  One of the reviews I read said that perhaps she told a bit too much and at first as I was reading, I agreed.  But then as I spent the afternoon sinking into the book and Allende's life, I changed my mind.  I loved reading about her nutty family and how they all live close together in the same neighborhood of Marin County, and all of Allende's crazy schemes to marry off her son and otherwise meddle in the lives of those she loved.  Somehow she does all this and still manages to crank out a book about every year or so. 

As a writer, its tough to read anything and put away the critical eye.  I usually feel like I need to learn something when I read--either about a non-fiction topic, or about craft, by reading novels and short stories and looking for technique.  I wrote a post on Reading as a Writer a few months ago. 

The topic has been on my mind again as Terry and I met with new Loft students last week.  We discussed with them in the detail the process of writing an essay about a book they've read.   This essay is a required part of every Loft packet, much as it is in all the MFA programs.   Some students have mistaken the essay for a book review ("I loved this book because...") but that is not the point at all. 

The point is to first choose a book similar to what you want to write yourself.  If you are writing a novel, read every novel you can get your hands on.  If you are writing short stories, read short story collections (drop me an email if you need some suggestions, I just compiled a pretty good list for a new student). 

Next choose to focus on one aspect of the writing.  If you struggle with dialogue, focus on that.  If you write lackluster description, focus on that.  And so on.  The magic of writing an essay is that it forces you to drop down deep into the work you are reading and really look at how the author handled dialogue, or description, or plot.

Obviously, you don't have to write an essay to benefit from reading this way.  Once you start to write seriously you'll find yourself examining every single thing you read for matters of style and technique.  It's inevitable. 

So actually reading the Allende book was a bit of a busman's holiday for me, since I wasn't looking for techniques on how to write a memoir, but simply enjoying it.

It's Off to Home I Go....

I'm heading back to Portland this afternoon, and I am, as always, sorry to leave Nashville.   I am not, however, sorry to leave the weather behind.  Yesterday there were tornado warnings which were relayed to me through a sort of old-fashioned round robin system.  Friends of Sue and Walt's who live up the street called Sue to tell her there were tornado warnings and Sue called me to tell me.  You see, there is no TV here.  Not that I miss it--except in times of weather emergencies.

But the tornadoes landed somewhere else and we were able to muster 14, count 'em, 14 people at the Loft alumni and mentors dinner last night.  The Sunset Grill offered half-price on any full bottles of wine purchases PLUS a lottery ticket and so Terry now has four lottery tickets to check when the winners are announced tonight.  Its all for one and one for all--we're going to split the winnings between the 14 of us. 

Last night there were no tornadoes that I know of, but Lord almighty there were raging thunderstorms all night long.  I mean, all night long.  In Portland, if we get a thunderstorm, which is rare, it might last half an hour and then its gone.  Not here, where they come in one after another.  I've learned that you can see lightning even with your eyes closed and that after a couple hours of thunder, you can actually get so used to it that you'll sleep through it. 

Before I leave I wanted to direct you to this cool post that my Welsh Zen buddy Derek wrote about me.  He and I have been corresponding on for a few months now, on all kinds of topics, but especially Zen, and writing, and our internet interests.  I've mentioned his Zen site before, but here's his writing site, and the post he wrote about me.

Thanks, Derek!

And now I've got to vacuum and shower and say goodbye to Juni before the taxi gets here.  By the way--dogs seem to have no problem sleeping through thunder.  Juni snored through the whole storm.

How to Learn to Write

Reading as a Writer

Last night Terry Price and I hosted a dinner for the new students entering the Loft, and, big surprise, the conversation was all about writing.

One of the things that Terry talked about was how, in the past, some of his students would complain that they didn't have time to read, that trying to write took such a big chunk of their time that there was no time left for reading.

This is a shame.

Actually, it is more than a shame.  It is a crime.  Because, honestly?  If you are a writer, you should be reading.  There's just no two ways about it.  Reading the kinds of books that you want to write immerses you in the tropes and techniques and traditions of that genre, whether that genre is the novel, or the short story, or creative non-fiction.  The only way to figure out where you want to go is to look at where others have gone before you.

MFA programs, particularly brief-residency MFA programs, are based on this very idea, and emphasize the value of writers reading to learn how to write.  We emphasize the same thing in the Loft.

Words In, Words Out

I have this theory that, when I'm writing a lot, I need to replenish those words.  Just as when you exercise a lot, you need to drink a lot of water to replenish what you've lost through sweat, so too, with writing, you must restock your words.

Some writers will tell you that if they don't like to read whatever it is they are writing for fear that reading will somehow influence them.  Um, of course its going to influence you, because that is why we read.

Because you know better than to plagiarize, you are not going to copy an author word for word.  You're just going to absorb the way that author writes, note how he uses dialogue, study how she writes description.  In this way you learn techniques you can apply to your own writing.

No Time to Read?

You make time to watch TV, don't you?  You make time to surf the internet.  When you stop to think about it, you can probably think of several time-suckers that you can rid your life of.  Throw your TV out the window.  Will you really miss it?  You'll have more time to write that way, too.

Inspiration

I started thinking about this post last night, when we were all at dinner, talking about writing and reading.  And thought more about it this morning, because I'm going to have a phone meeting with my new student, Jillyn, who is wonderful not the least of which because she is from Portland.  And then I read Basic Ways to Improve Your Writing (its the April 21st entry, scroll down a little to find it) on the blog of the Mad Hermit and that was the final piece.  (By the way, the Mad Hermit is doing some really interesting things in terms of marrying the technology of the internet with literature--video reviews and video readings of poetry and classics.  Really cool.)

So go read.  And write some, too.

Writing Away From Home

I'm in Nashville, which is beautiful and warm (although pretty much anything is probably warm compared to Portland) and would be perfect in every way except for....the pollen.

Which has me sneezing and my eyes running and itching in a way I've never quite experienced before.  It still does not affect my love for this city, however (just don't tell Nashville that I had a brief fling with Asheville, okay?)

The beginning of the week was full of Loft-related activities, and the past two days I've been at Sue and Walt's, dog sitting the beloved Juni, who sleeps on my bed every night.  She is about twice as big as my pug, so she takes up a bit more of it than I am used to, but I don't mind.  I love having her with me, and she makes the best security system in the world.  (Note to Sue and Walt: the non-canine alarm does seem to be working).

While tonight and tomorrow night are taken up with more Loft-related activities, the past two days have been mine.  And, when not busy corralling four other writers so that I could submit a proposal for a panel for the AWP conference next year, I've been writing.

But it strikes me that writing is different when one is away from home.  I feel like I'm getting a lot done, like I have more time and more freedom.  The truth of the matter is I have just as many things pulling at me here--the AWP proposal, a forced marched into downtown Nashville yesterday to see my friend Suzanne, dinner with Melinda last night, manuscripts to critique and so on and so forth.  And there are dishes and clothes to wash and Juni to walk.  Life is nearly as complicated as it is at home, and yet it doesn't seem so.

For some reason it feels like the day flows easier when I'm away from home.  I eat at different times, and walk at different times, and eat different things and walk different places (of course).  And so the writing seems to flow easier, too.

I suppose this is in part the psychology of a writing retreat--minus the responsibility to do anything but write.  But even being here, still with responsibilities, it feels easier to write.  So I guess the moral of the story is to travel whenever you can--especially if it give you time to write.