Writing

Mar 01 2016

Writing Practices

Finding a writing practice can be a challenge for all sorts of reasons. Many of us have full-time jobs, families, other responsibilities that have nothing to do with writing. Sometimes, if our full-time jobs involve writing, we come home “written out” and find it hard to write some more. Some of us are intimidated by a blank page. Some of us think we can only write if we have long blocks of time. Some of us can only write in a certain place. Some of us think that we’ll get to it tomorrow. Some of us suffer from writers’ block. The list of barriers goes on.

Once, I had the privilege of meeting Elmore Leonard. He was a great writer (unfortunately, he died in 2013) and also a complete sweeper-aside of anything that sounded like “b.s.” to him. Which included the list of barriers in paragraph one. When he was the keynote speaker at a writers conference sponsored by the Detroit Women Writers (as it was then known) and held at Oakland University in Rochester Michigan, he gave a speech that was serviceable, but not memorable to me.

What was memorable was what happened in the Q&A after the speech. A young man, possibly a student at the university, asked Mr. Leonard: “What do you do about writers’ block?” At that point, Mr. Leonard trembled with rage. He leaned over the podium towards the student, who shrank back in his seat. “Writers’ block?” shouted Mr. Leonard. “Writers’ block?” He paused. “You either want to write or you don’t.”

This has stuck with me over the years and served me well. While I was certainly glad that I was not the target of Mr. Leonard’s rage, I felt it and I suspect so did every person in the room. Whether it’s about writers’ block or any other issue, his point is absolute. If we want to write, that’s what we should do—write. Let’s do it!

Feb 09 2016

Back in the Land of the Living

I may have been on hiatus for six weeks, but, happily, it’s been for a good cause—writing. I spent the first part of the year preparing extensively for the visit of Jeffrey Levine, founder of Tupelo Press, poet extraordinaire, and mentor to many of us. Jeffrey offers experiences (workshop, conference, other words don’t justice to the process he offers) and I was in a position to immerse myself in three two-day experiences while he was here. Jeffrey has now offered these events for four years and each time I attend, I come away rejuvenated, readier than ever to write, and more able to get at what I truly want/need to say.

Last August (see previous posts), I participated in Tupelo Press’ 30/30 project, which helped me to generate new work at a tremendous pace (30 poems in 30 days). I’ll throw out some of what I created, no doubt, but I have much raw material to work with and have been doing so for the last six months. I also made the decision to spend at least one day a week generating new work rather than creating something and revising it before I moved on to the next thing. The brain needs a mix of generation and revision, I learned—an invaluable lesson for my creative life.

Of course, after he left, I had to catch up on the rest of my life, but I seem to be coming up for air now and am working to get into a new writing routine that balances generation and revision more equitably. I also find I enjoy writing even more in my new routine and that feeds into better work. I’m enjoying the upswing and will participate in Tupelo’s May conference to keep me going.

Image credit: http://www.commongoodbooks.com/event/poems-progress, accessed 9 Feb 2016.

Dec 22 2015

Coming Up for Air

Just as everything else goes crazy at the holidays, so does writing and everything connected to it—or so I’ve found. I’ve always been determined to write every day or, at least, six days out of seven. Preparation for the holidays usually means I write less, but I still chug out something every day, good or bad. I’ve also noticed that deadlines come in spurts and December 31 is one of them. I hope to get ahead of “submit by” dates, but, often, I fail. One of my annual New Year’s resolutions is submit earlier. I expect I’ll resolve to do that again in 2016 and only succeed one or two times.

The other aspect of today’s writing is marketing, which consumes—or should I say, subsumes—me. Dickens never had to do this. Why do I? Pointless question, but it nags at me. I am a very poor self-promoter, but I need to spend more time on that, too.

As the hustle of Christmas and bustle of New Year loom large, I hope all my online readers have a wonderful season, but still manage to keep writing. After all, fellow NaNoWriMo writers, we managed to write 50,000 words in a month. We can make it through the holidays.

Photo credit: http://www.propertymanager.com/2010/10/preparing-property-management-office-years-end/

Nov 30 2015

Whew! NaNoWriMo ends

I emerge after a month of clacking computer keys and realize that, while I wrote 50,000 words, I still haven’t finished my novel draft. No matter—I’m “over the hump” and am confident that I’ll finish by the end of December. It’s been a whirlwind ride, but if I hadn’t leveraged NaNoWriMo in November, I’d be much further behind, so thank you NNWM. I hope others in the NNWM frenzy have had good experiences, too.

I also did something I didn’t expect—I signed up for two NNWM online groups, one locally, but one that gathers in my original home town—Dundee, Scotland. I suddenly got curious about how another place in another country managed the month-long process. They were fantastic. There were tons of tips for everything from keeping writing to avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome. The organizers were terrific. As for my local online group, they were far less active, but I was also more involved with other writers face-to-face here, so perhaps I missed something. Regardless, it’s been an interesting experience. I don’t know if I’ll do it every year, but I’ll certainly do it again when I need to create a lengthy draft. As many others have found, I got swept up in the camaraderie of it all, the deadline, the word count, the whole experience. May all our drafts be good ones.

Image Credit: http://sevenels.net/typewriters/rems.htm

Note on the image: This is a picture of the make-and-model typewriter that my Dad was given during the war and had to carry with him wherever he went, usually on the back of a motorcycle. He kept it well into the 1980s. The platen was so narrow, he had to fold a business-sized envelope to fit into the typewriter if he wanted to type an address.

Nov 09 2015

Writing En Masse

Talk about writing alone in a group—that’s NaNoWriMo. We’re 9 days into the process and people’s fingers are flying. For fun, I signed up both in my current geographic region and in the region where I was born. Of course, I won’t join them in person—I’m basically a “lurker”—but it’s interesting to see how another region handles itself. My own region (SF Bay Area) is pretty silent online. I haven’t received too many emails and I’m certainly not sending any. My original region (Dundee, Angus, Scotland) is going great guns with emails on everything from logistics to preventing repetitive stress syndrome. I’ve shared a few of their “links” with my two “buddies.” That’s another part of the process: buddies. I have two and have refrained from acquiring more on the grounds that I’ll just get distracted. This post is a lull for me between work, NaNoWriMo, poetry, sleep, and eating, although I tend to eat at my computer while I’m carrying on with work or writing of some sort. This past August, I focused on generating poetry in the 30/30 project with Tupelo Press. This month, I’m focused on my novel, again generating material. What August taught me and November’s reminding me is that it’s critical to generate work, even as revision, revision, revision is essential for quality results. Come December, I’m going to try to allot an appropriate balance of time between the two.
Image credit: theadventurouswriter.com