September in Stories

My creativity is – finally! - creeping back into the light, showing itself cautiously, slowly, much like Larry did after his very first visit to the vet. 

 

Unfortunately, the results are less than stellar. Unlike a tortoise, my creativity cannot be coaxed out of its shell with basil. None of the stories I worked on are submission-worthy so I have to let various contests and open submission windows pass on by. Sure, I'm disappointed, but I'm also reminded of something incredibly important – 

 

"When you're writing, no matter how hard it is, 

you are more truly yourself than at any other time." 

(Julie Duffy)

 

YES! That's exactly how it felt. 

 

So, to keep up that momentum, I signed up for Story A Day September. (I participated in Story A Day May years ago and enjoyed the challenge.) All the information is at the Story A Day site, but the gist is to write a story every day in September. Now "every day" is open to interpretation, so I'm aiming for a story every day Monday through Friday for a total of 22 stories. The only strict rule is you have to FINISH the story. It doesn't have to be pretty, but it has to be done.  (Much like every art project I've ever undertaken.)

 

So, here's hoping for a September full of stories. Wish me luck!

 

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Any plans for September, writing or otherwise? What are you looking forward to this fall?

 

You Are Not a Bulldozer

Every once in awhile, my writing life starts to feel like an assembly line, like my stories are widgets I'm just churning out. This happens when I stop paying attention – attention to the craft, to creativity, to passion and to purpose. And, to my regret, I haven't been paying attention for longer than I care to admit. 

But this past summer, I found my way back to myself and to my writing, and earlier this month I read an excellent blog post by Annie Neugebauer over at Writer Unboxed - "Advice to Writers Who Are In It" - that reinforced a lot of what I recently realized. Here are a few highlights that struck me: 

On working harder – "What matters is that you do your best work as often as you can without burning out. When you're mid-project, you need to be deep, deep in your high-effort zone every work day for a good chunk of time. It's not about what other people are doing or can do; it's about what you can do."

On thinking more deeply – "Thinking is valuable. I'm not trying to sound condescending, but we often forget that. In a society that tells us we have to be proving concrete output to be productive, it's easy to bypass that nothing-to-show-for-it part of the process where we stop and really think. Think hard. Think deep. Think for a long time, if you need to. It's what ultimately makes your work great. Thought. Don't let the word count bogies convince you you don't have time for it."

On not barreling through – "Sometimes we need to "power through," yes . . . But for the love of all things literary, stop barreling through. You're not a bulldozer; you're a writer. Writing isn't always a thing you can muscle. Willpower, maybe, but not the craft . . . Sometimes slow is faster in the end."

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How's your writing life? Are you working harder, thinking more deeply? Or have you been barreling through? Can you guess what the tortoises' favorite part of this post is? 

You Can't Handle the Truth!

Or so says Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessep in the movie A Few Good Men. Oh, but I disagree Col. J! I think we writers can handle the truth just fine, thank you very much.

Hmm, okay, maybe not. But at least we can handle these "25 Truths About the Work of Writing" written by Greer Macallister over at Writer Unboxed.

Like the first two:

1. Writing is the easiest work you'll ever do, more joy than labor, a flurry of words pouring from your fingers onto the page so beautifully and smoothly you're more witness than worker. Some days.

2. On the other days, it's so hard and slow and, yes, laborious, that you feel you must be doing it wrong because if it's this hard how could anyone possibly force themselves to do it?

My favorites:

16. Everyone works differently. You don't have to write every day or write what you know or stick to any other particular process that happens to work for other people. Even if it works for a lot of other people. All that matters is whether it works for you.

22. How you feel about the work of writing will change over time because you change over time. Don't be afraid to change your process or your goals. Something that worked for you 10 years ago may not work anymore. Explore. 

But the truest truth of them all?

7. It's work and it's magic and it's a mad alchemy.

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Do any of these truths - or others from the full post - ring true for you? (I'm smack in the middle of Number 22 myself. This is one of the reasons I'm now keeping a looser blogging schedule.) How is your writing - or other creative work - going?

Writing News and High Wire Walking

Here are a few writing notes and two fun videos I thought you all might enjoy... 

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Author and former literary agent, Nathan Bransford, is planning to self publish a guide to writing a novel. He's going to blog about the self publishing process along the way. I can't wait to read both the guide and the posts!

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Here's another wonderful Robin LaFevers post, The Play's the Thing, from over at Writer UnBoxed. It's all about the need for play in our writing. She includes some excellent examples of what she does, like making collages and writing travel journals in a character's voice.

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About a month ago, Nik Wallenda did a high wire walk over downtown Sarasota. He was about 200 feet up, walking on a wire the width of a nickel , with wind gusts of about 25-30 MPH. No net. No tether. My husband went to watch - along with about 10,000 other people! 

But, for all of us who weren't there, check out the following two videos.The first one shows what the walk looked like from the audience. The second one shows what it looked like from Nik's point of view! He had cameras on the pole he carried. Plus, you can hear the conversation between Nik and his father and team as Nik walks.

Shifting Gears

I've been writing a long time. A very long time, if you count all through high school and college. I've seen publishers' "mid-lists" disappear, along with the typewriter and the word processor. I read recently that Michael Connelly's newest Harry Bosch novel (the 18th or 19th!) is coming out soon - and it's been twenty years since the first one debuted.

I look back over those same twenty years and wonder...while Connelly was writing all those Bosch novels, what was I doing? Was I working hard enough, smart enough? Where was my energy, my effort, going? Was it misplaced, misguided? I don't know. 

What I do know is that I need to make some changes. While novels will always be my first love, I am shifting gears - at least for the beginning of the year - to stories - micro, flash, novellas. The short form has always pulled at me but I tended to push it in the background, let the novel writing bask in the spotlight. 

One of the problems with that was while the novel manuscript received the glory - the hours, the work, the majority of my creativity - it also received almost all of the pressure. Novels were going to launch my career, to find me an agent, an editor, a fan base. Hmm, not so much. What happened after awhile was that novels started to feel like work - crushing rocks, hard labor kind of work - and I missed the joy I used to feel long, long ago when I wrote them. 

So, to that end, my current Horror/YA Horror novel ms is relegated to the wings. It now moves around backstage, lurks in the shadows (which is actually appropriate for the horror genre.) And you know what? As soon as I made that decision, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief - and I felt the novel exhale, too, felt it relax and shake loose the bindings I wrapped around it so tightly it couldn't breathe. The novel and I have a new relationship now - one we're both happy and excited about. I can't wait to get back to it. And the stories will now step out, take their turn in the limelight, get a chance to shine.  

How about you all? Anyone else shifting gears? Trying something new or going back to an old way of doing things? 

A Life-Long Exercise

As I keep working on the Write 1 Sub 1 Monthly Challenge, I find myself thinking about how I come to write the stories I do. For all of you who write stories, do you find yourself writing to a particular market - a magazine or an ezine with a first line prompt or a particular theme, etc. - or do you write whatever comes to mind and then find a market for it? Or both?

I tend to do both, but this year I'm trying to let the stories grow and emerge more organically. Don't get me wrong - I love a good prompt or theme and I will continue to utilize those in my writing, especially as jump-starts to the process. It's just that I was starting to feel like my work was becoming rote, like I was on an assembly line churning out stories like widgets. I missed the joy of when snippets of ideas and lines of dialogue appeared in my head. I didn't want to conjure characters; I wanted to meet and greet them.

The nice thing is that there's no right way or wrong way; there's only what works. And, since that can vary from person to person, from project to project, it's like a life-long exercise in creativity and passion. Now, that's my kind of exercise.

Why Can't All Writing Advice Be This Funny?

 
Would you like to read some writing advice that includes:

- a dose of Southern humor?

- this line -  "...possums with the bombs tucked into their marsupial pouches..."  

- references to actor Alan Rickman?

Yeah, me too.  To read some awesome writing advice that includes all three - and then some! - head on over to author Joshilyn Jackson's blog and read this post. 

(Just so you know, Joshilyn Jackson is one of my new favorite writers.  I have one of her older novels still on my shelf but I'm holding off reading it because once I do, I'll have nothing to hold me over until the new one.)

Tort Report

I spend the majority of the day talking to myself, to my characters, and to the tortoises (Larry and Mrs. Larry, for those of you just stopping by.)  I'm sure other writers do something similar, and it makes me wonder how much help their pets are to the writing process.     

I check on Larry and Mrs. Larry during the day, and I usually eat lunch in the same room with them.  But sometimes, when I'm stuck on a scene or I'm just not feeling the story, I plop down in the chair nearby and we have a chat.  Same goes for the nights when it's just me giving them their "soak" - that's when I bounce ideas off the little hard-shelled muses.

Let me set the record straight:  I know they're not going to talk back to me.  I know.  I get it.  But when Mrs. Larry cocks her head and shows me one of her intelligent dark eyes, I do wonder if maybe my solution to a writing problem is a pretty good one after all.  Or when Larry blinks lazily at me, I consider that my idea might actually be as boring as it sounded. 

Hmm, maybe I need to get out more...

Anyway, how, if at all, do your pets play into your writing process?  (Please don't tell me I'm alone here with this!)   

It May Not Look Like I'm Working, But I Am

Yesterday, my husband and I went to a charity event - a lunch and book signing featuring award-winning mystery/thriller writer, Harlan Coben. We had a great time - ate good food, were surrounded by others who love books and reading, and got to listen to a very entertaining talk.

One of the things I love about events like that is getting to hear a well-known author talk about writing. One thing he said really struck me - I'm paraphrasing here, but it was about how the hardest part of his job was explaining his job to others, how it looks like he's just laying on the couch but how he's really working. Boy, did I hear that!

Writing is not a show up to your office, sit at your desk, clock in and clock out, 9-5 job. It's 24-7, anywhere, anytime. It's stopping in the middle of cooking dinner to scribble an idea on the back of the grocery store receipt. It's praying you'll remember the great dialogue you heard in your head as you wipe the shampoo off your face and scrabble for a towel. It's asking your husband to write down a list of words and phrases that make absolutely no sense to him but is now the best plot twist ever in your work-in-progress.

And yes, it is also sitting on the couch, staring out the window, watching not the trees blow in the wind but instead watching a mind movie all your own. And yes, that is working. Just ask Harlan Coben.

How This Blog Got Its Name

I've always loved turtles and tortoises. This past summer, my husband and I brought home two baby Barbados Red Foot tortoises. We named them Larry and Mrs. Larry, and they have since become my little hard shelled muses. They are the perfect symbols for my writing and creative process - slow and steady with a hard shell to hide in when rejection rains down (and believe me, it does, oh it does...)

But, unlike the torts, I can't stay tucked in my shell all the time. And so, this blog. It's a small step, to be sure, in a world where it seems like everyone is tweeting and on Facebook etc. I'm just adding my small, quiet voice to the mix and hope someone hears it, likes it, and maybe learns a little something from it.

Oh, but the name of the blog. Well, my husband and I were watching our tortoises burrow a bit, and Larry in particular was digging away in the corner, as if he was trying to escape (he wasn't, or so we hope!) We were reminded of the Stephen King book/movie (Rita Hayworth and) The Shawshank Redemption. It took about two seconds before we both said, "No, it's The Shellshank Redemption! Ha ha!" And a blog was born...