November 30, 2009

Hallelujah! I felt the breeze on my face as I crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line half an hour ago. Getting the words to validate took three tries, but it finally clocked in at 50,093 words. Phew!

It was a good month for writing, but like many of you NaNo writers, it had its bumps and interruptions. In the second week, I had a personal setback and got sick, and by the time I was better, I was nearly 10,000 words behind. It was catch-up the rest of the month.

Challenges

Like you, we had Thanksgiving last week. Although we had five people staying with us for three days, I got up early each day and wrote. “Luckily” I woke up by 4 a.m. each time and was done writing before our guests were up for the day. (And they were so easy to have around–that made a huge difference.)

The only real glitch came on Thanksgiving Day. I went to boot up my desktop PC where I prefer to write–and nothing. I stared. I prayed. I looked to see if I’d turned off the power accidentally. I fiddled with it. No luck. It was dead and fried, and a tech person assured me it would cost more to fix than it would to get a new PC.  So I finished NaNo on my laptop, and I have the backache to prove it.

I would never venture to a mall on Black Friday, but we found a great deal on Saturday, so this weekend I also set up the new computer and started learning Windows 7 and the Microsoft 2007 Office programs. Thank heavens for online tutorials!!!!! I’m sure I’ll love it in a couple weeks, but right now it’s like playing hide ‘n’ seek. (My favorite commands are hiding and I’m seeking.)

Flexibility Required!

This month, in order to write NaNoWriMo’s 50,000+ words, I typed in my office, in the car, in the living room, in my closet, in bed, in the library, at my granddaughter’s house, and once in a coffee shop, just for fun. The name of the game is flexibility. My novel isn’t quite finished, but I will continue to work on it at a slower pace until the rough draft is done.

How did you other NaNoWriMo writers end up? How was your experience? Are you glad you did it? Will you do anything differently next year? I know you still have twelve hours to write, but after you finish, share! Share!

November 27, 2009

How do I journal? Let me count the ways.

Recently I  gathered all my beautiful journals (eight of them) and saw that in each one I had filled about twenty pages before I quit. And I LOVE journaling! So what was up with that?

In the December 2009 Writer Magazine an article called “Stay on track with 6 types of journals” caught my eye. I realized as I read the article that here was the answer to my problem with journals over the years.

Do you ever do this? You receive a neat journal for your birthday or Christmas–something really pretty chosen just for you, the writer. You write meaningful insights there, uplifting passages, maybe some goals. But then the day comes when you’re upset or depressed or stuck, and you don’t want to dump that drivel into your beautiful journal full of inspiring stuff, so you don’t journal. After a while, the book gets stuck on a shelf and forgotten.

What’s the Purpose?

The author of the journaling article (Ann Edwards Cannon) suggests keeping different journals for different purposes. Her six types are the free-write journal, the idea journal, the dream journal, the quotation journal, the submissions journal, and the what-I-wrote-today-and-how-I-felt-about-it journal. I do have a quotation journal and idea journal, but not the others.

But I gathered my stack of mostly empty journals and read through them, deciding what “theme” each one represented, and decided to entitle them as such. Then, depending on my need and mood, I will get out the appropriate journal.

Divide and Conquer                                       

My six journals include five spiral bound ones and one on the computer:

• LifeJournal computer software: This is my password protected journal for ”dump and flush” sessions. This is where I write the nasty letters that I never send, where I process something hurtful said or done to me, or process personal problems I wouldn’t want others to find and read about. There’s also a special LifeJournal for Writers you might want to check out. (Put it on your Christmas list!) This is also where I keep the “wild reactions” I wrote about here.
• Work Journal (with typewriter on front): This is where I talk about what I’m working on, troubles I’m having with a project, ruminations on getting another form rejection from an editor or agent [yes, I get them too, as do most writers], and keep track of hours or words written. I count words when doing a rough draft–I count hours when revising and editing.                                 
• Simplicity Journal (with Jane Austen picture and quotes): When feeling frazzled by time pressures and To Do lists longer than the hours in the day, I know I need to simplify. Here I make plans to declutter my life (physical environment, emotional baggage, etc.)
• Gratitude/Prayer Journal: spiritual insights and quotes, answers to prayer, spiritual struggles, quotes from favorite authors, prayer requests from other people.
• Idea Journal: This is where I make notes to myself of that brilliant idea I had in the shower for a series, the weird dream that woke me up, the funny thing my grandson said that would make a great story, etc. Just remember to go back and thumb through your ideas from time to time, if it’s going to be of any use to you.
• Quotation Journal: Since I read a lot, I come across quotes I love and want to remember. I need to get into the habit of reading with my quotation journal right there as well. If I don’t write down the quote when I first see it, I rarely go back and capture it later.
• Before/During/After Journal: for mental, physical, or emotional “addictive” behaviors. For example, when I’m tired or feeling neglected, I want comfort food. When I’m happy and want to celebrate, I want chocolate. When I reward myself after a long writing stint, I gravitate to food. When I’m really exhausted, I want to pick a fight or not write at all that day. My healthy side knows that none of that is a good idea. By journaling how I feel before I do the behavior, how I feel during the behavior (either pigging out or using self-control), and how I feel afterward, I see the patterns. I can read previous entries and remind myself how I felt after indulging in certain behaviors. Often that’s enough to propel me to make the right choice.                                                                                                   

If you like to journal, try having different journals for different purposes, and see if you find that helpful. Or have a three-ring binder with colored tabs for each separate section. Whatever works for you!

November 25, 2009

For the last four months, besides working full-time as a writer and instructor, I’ve been heavily involved in running two community groups and serving on the board of another. The biggest commitment finishes just before Christmas, and frankly, it’s just in time. I’m pooped!

I have been reading a great book called The Worn Out Woman: When Your Life is Full and Your Spirit is Empty by Dr. Steve Stephens and Alice  Gray. There is a lot of wisdom in this book. (And as I’ve talked with men who juggle a day job, a family, and writing, I’ve come to believe the following is not gender specific.)

How Did I Get Here?

“Most worn-out women struggle with expectations. Everyone seems to want more and more. They want you to do things better and bigger and quicker, all the while with a smile on your face. Everywhere you turn, there’s another expectation…until you’re exhausted just thinking about it,” say the authors. “Your family, your friends, your work, your neighbors, and even your church have expectations for you. You have expectations for yourself as well. It’s too much. Yet the shoulds and oughts don’t stop. As they grow, you can feel the arms of the octopus wrapping tighter.”

And what do Stephens and Gray say is the answer? “The only way to stop the octopus from dragging you down is to starve it.” If you take away the three foods it thrives on, the octopus will lose its power. The three foods are comparison, people pleasing, and perfectionism.

Know Thyself

Only you know where the three “foods” show up in your life. Are you a perfectionist housekeeper who won’t allow anyone to help you–even your family members–because they don’t clean up to your standards? Do you compare your flower beds to your neighbors and then spend your precious writing time weeding and watering? Are you afraid to displease your mother-in-law when she requests your presence on the Saturday you planned to write at the library?

Take a good look at the behaviors that are wearing you out and robbing you of your writing time. Plans on how to get rid of them would make some good new year’s resolutions!

November 23, 2009

Winston Churchill once said, “Continuous effort–not strength or intelligence–is the key to unlocking our potential.” I believe he’s right. Over the years, the writers I’ve seen succeed were the ones who refused to give up.

I’ve been surprised sometimes too. Some of my most brilliant students gave up after a rejection or two and never were published. But I have books on my shelf from medium-talented students who refused to give up on their dreams–books published by large New York publishers.

Plugging Away

I’ve been remembering that principle this month during NaNoWriMo when I was either sick or gone or interrupted. Many days, I felt weak and the novel sounded silly and self-serving, but I kept plugging away. Last week I was about 8,000 words behind. Today I am almost caught up–only by doggedly plugging away.

Samuel Johnson said, “Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” In a like vein, Helen Keller (one of the most determined people you’ll ever read about) said, “We can do anything we want to as long as we stick to it long enough.” That’s good news to me! Is it to you?

It’s Your Choice

We may not be the most talented writers. We may not be the most clever or well read. We may not have an MFA in writing or be able to afford expensive writing conferences. BUT we can each choose to persevere, to stick to it till we finish.

Know where you want to go, and map out a clear strategy on how you plan to get there. There are many ways to study and grow, ranging from free online courses and books to expensive MFA programs at pretigious colleges. But in either case, the only person with an advantage is the one who refuses to quit.

Is that YOU?

November 20, 2009

People often tell me that I’m very productive, so it was a shock recently to take a procrastination test and come out in the top 10% of procrastinators!

It said I scored 80 out of 100 possible points and “when it comes to putting things off, you often do so even though you know you shouldn’t… Though you are likely incredibly productive just before a deadline, you might not get all your work done and there is a lot of unwanted stress.”

Hmmm…

I wanted to mutter “stupid test,” but I was aware that certain bad writing habits (dare I call it procrastination?) were affecting the quality of my work. Oh, I got the writing done, but too often lately the quality was less than it could be because I delayed starting. I was submitting writing that was less than my best because it was hurried.

I think I had deluded myself into thinking there was no problem because I was busy all the time. I am never late with student lessons, and usually early. I am never late for my M-W-F blogs or paid critiques. I don’t even procrastinate on writing nonfiction books. Just fiction. Just the “pulling words out of thin air and making up people and whole worlds” kind of writing.

Check Yourself Out

Why is getting started so hard? In a recent magazine article on procrastination  in Children’s Writer, the following quote struck me as true–of me, anyway:

“In many cases, we procrastinate because we are anxious about the work at hand. It seems too difficult or onerous. ‘The hardest part of any task is the first five minutes. It’s like cold water. It’s just getting in that’s the hard part. Once you’re in, the water feels great,’ says Steel [a university professor who studies procrastination]. ‘Usually after procrastinating, once people finally get around to the task, they say, ‘I don’t know why I thought this would be so much worse than it was.’”

That struck me as true, so this week I’ve been starting my NaNoWriMo writing by setting a timer for just five minutes. Then I write furiously for five minutes, with permission to quit if I hate it at the end of five minutes. Have I stopped yet when the timer went off? No. I’m on a roll by then, and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d made it in my mind.

Why do we do this to ourselves over and over? It feels silly to have to “trick” my muse with a kitchen timer. But hey, it works, so I’ll probably keep doing it until I find something that works better!

What about you? What tricks do YOU use to get started?

November 18, 2009

This morning I moaned and groaned at breakfast about how far behind I had fallen on my NaNoWriMo book project. If I had been on track, today’s word count would have been at 29,988. Instead I was dragging at 21,691 words–more than 8,000 words behind.

I’d given two workshops last weekend, ended up sick a couple of days, and fallen behind. And with Thanksgiving coming next week, house guests for three days, and a huge dinner to prepare, I despaired of being able to get caught up. By my calculations, I’d need to write 3,100 words every day that I would have free in order to pass the 50,000 word mark before December 1.

Why Even Try? 

No doubt about it. I felt defeated. What should I do? Admit defeat gracefully now? Like most of you doing NaNo, I have a lot on my calendar that I can’t scratch in order to spend my days just writing fiction. What to do? What to do?

Later, in the margin of my Bible, I found a scribbled quote that grabbed my attention. It said: “The person who will not command his or her thoughts will soon lose command of his or her actions.”

That was me! My thinking had fallen to the level of complaints and “I can never get caught up!” My procrastinating actions were hard on the heels of my thinking, “proving” I couldn’t do it.

Switching Gears

Well, enough of that. I decided to take charge of my stinking thinking. First, I stared at the “13 Key Truths to Maximize Your Talent” taped to my computer. I read them out loud. I made some of them personal.

• Passion energizes my talent!
• Initiative activates my talent!
• Focus directs my talent!
• Perseverance sustains my talent!
• Responsibility strengthens my talent!

After letting these truths sink deeply into my thinking, I actually felt better! I didn’t feel like quitting anymore–at least, not yet. So I decided to see what I could do in a couple of hours this morning.

I was shocked. Believe it or not, with very little effort and no gnashing of teeth, I wrote 3,513 words in 90 minutes! I never write that fast. But changing my thinking sure changed my performance. You can bet that I’m going to use this technique again tomorrow!

November 16, 2009

I’m not now–nor have I ever been–a party animal. I wear no lampshades on my head, don’t dance on tables, and often dress wrong for the occasion. My general MO is to scan the party crowd, find someone I know, then disappear into a corner and have a good, long, in-depth conversation until it’s time to go home.

I’ve discovered that I am much the same way with social networking.  Has anyone else found this?

Hopping Aboard

Some while back, I added a “professional” Facebook site. (I’d had a private “family only” Facebook page for several years.) On my professional page, I now have 203 friends. I know that’s miniscule compared to most authors, but it’s more than I can keep up with. I discovered that this past weekend.

I owe some of you an apology, and I don’t even know who you are! But I was sick much of the weekend, so I was lying on the couch looking at Facebook. I started scrolling down to older postings, and I discovered with horror that I had missed some important messages. I answered the ones I found, like requests for critiques and news that a former student had sold his first book. But I missed one real-life friend’s news that she was in the hospital for three days. By the time I came across it, she was home.

Please, if you left me an important message or question, email me at the Facebook site so I’m sure to see it (instead of writing on my Wall.) I also adjusted the email settings–which I just discovered today–so that Wall comments will come to my personal email.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Sometimes I still feel overwhelmed. In real life, I have about five close friends. In addition to my family, that’s about all I have time to befriend. I don’t keep tabs on my acquaintances. I wish I had time to read all the Facebook posts of my 203 friends, but I don’t. There aren’t that many free hours in my day. I wonder if I am an anti-social social networker? It’s quite possible.

By the way, I also discovered that my Twitter account had been hacked into. Argh! My apologies to any of you who were sent some silly IQ Test thing. It wasn’t from me! By the time I found the problem and changed the password, I had been reprimanded by a publisher for sending spam. It’s bad enough to be socially inept in your real life. Now you can do it globally without even trying!

How do you handle the social networking you’re involved in? Do you worry about missing important messages in the updates and offending someone? Or does anyone actually have time to read so many posts? I’d be interested to know how you keep up with it all.

November 13, 2009

I’m about 1,000 words behind where I wanted to be on my NaNo project. The first week was pretty easy, and I expect the final week won’t be bad either.

But the MIDDLE!

Pep Talk

A couple of times per week, wonderful cheerleader writers send pep talk emails to keep the flagging NaNoWriMo participants cheered up and cheered on. I’m going to share one from this week written by Maureen Johnson. It will apply to any writer. It’s about getting through the desolate middle of a writing project, after your initial enthusiasm has worn off, but before you’re heading into the home stretch with built-up momentum.

You’re in a wasteland called the middle. Here’s…

The Letter from Maureen

Dear writer,
I have a very good friend who is Australian. I’ve never been to Australia, so she is constantly selling me on the merits of her homeland and setting me straight on things. For example, I have always wanted hold a koala. She informs me that koalas smell and spread disease. What I want instead, she informs me, are flying foxes, sugar bananas, rainbow lorikeets, mangosteens, and Sydney sunrises.

One thing that always impresses me in her descriptions is just how large Australia is-and how empty in the middle. Australia is comparable in size to the continental United States, but almost everyone lives on the coast. So it would be like having Los Angles, and then New York, with almost nothing in between. Nothing except for monsters, that is. Because almost everything that lives out there in the middle of nowhere can kill you. 97% of the snakes in Australia are poisonous. The spiders are the size of washing machines, but it’s the tiny ones you have to watch for. It’s all teeth and venom out there. So just put a huge “here be dragons” in the middle of your mental map and you’ll have a pretty good picture of Australia. The cities are said to be wonderful-paradises of culture and wine and song. It’s just that middle 2,000 miles that you have to watch out for.

Perhaps this rings a bell right about now, smack in the middle of NaNoWriMo?

Those first few days with your idea… oh, how wonderful they are! How sweetly it goes! And you wander on, past the city limits, into the bush. The signposts disappear, and the creatures come out. You have wandered into The Middle. Thing is, writers spend something like 97% of their time in The Middle. Once you leave those first pages, those first days… you wander into strange land and you stay there for a long, long time.

It took me a little while, probably a few years of full-time writing, to fully accept that that middle bit was where I was going to be spending pretty much all of my time. This is the thing they don’t tell you. When you see portrayals of writers on television or in movies, what are they normally doing? They’re sipping coffee or cocktails, or jetting around to signings, or solving murders for fun. Lies! I mean, these things do happen, but those are the coastal bits.

Most of the time we are deep inland-sitting at home, or at the office, or some shed or underground bunker. We eat what we find and slurp coffee from anything that is sturdier than coffee. Often, we are inappropriately dressed for any human interaction. This is because we are in the middle. And in the middle, things are rough. You make bargains with yourself like, “If I finish this chapter, I can have a shower!” Or, “If I just get this paragraph right, I can eat those stale Oreos!”

Now, I realize in saying this that perhaps I am not selling you on the writing experience. I’m supposed to be cheering you on! You already know that the middle is a hard place to be. Perhaps right about now you are asking yourself, “What, precisely, is wrong with me? Why did I decide that the best way to spend the month of November would be indoors, strapped to a chair, writing thousands of words a day, alone, friendless, and insane? Why didn’t I just agree to come to my desk every day, bang my head on it for a solid ten minutes, and be done with it? That would have been so much faster.”

Here’s the thing, though…if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, you are a reader, because all writers are readers. Which means that you must admire many authors. Your shelves are lined with the works of your heroes and sheroes. Every single one of them has crossed the wild country where you are now. Every single one of them has been a resident of The Middle. The ground you’re treading is full of the remains of their old campsites. And somewhere around you, just out of sight, current authors you admire are making their own way across The Middle. What’s nice about NaNoWriMo is that you are traveling with a posse of thousands, all of you making your way over the mountains, through the valleys, across the creeks. You are fighting off the beasties.

And once you’ve crossed The Middle once or twice and you’re lounging on the other side, you’ll find you miss it. You’ll realize you long to be out there again, under the sky and the stars. The weather changes a lot in the middle. Some days, the skies are dark and it’s hard to find your way forward. Those days are long and little progress is made. Some days, it’s strangely bright and clear, and suddenly you can see the horizon ahead, and dozens of possible paths present themselves to you. But every day is different, and every day there is a new way to go and a new thing to see.

You will be hooked.

November 11, 2009

Any writing day can feel overwhelming if you’re trying to juggle a lot of projects. Right now, I’m 17,869 words into a new novel on NaNoWriMo. I’m revising a different novel for an agent who’s expressed interest. I teach some. I blog. I’m in a study program with a friend. I have a novel critique to do. EEEEEEEEEEEK!

Bouncing Off the Office Walls

My own writer’s personality prefers working on one project at a time. I like to fully immerse myself in the characters and plot, writing and rewriting, rethinking and editing, polishing and submitting. In the early years, before it was my career, I could do it that way. Everything was written and submitted “on spec,” and no one was waiting with toes a-tapping for my prose, so I could take my time–and do one thing at a time.

Just thinking about what needed to be done today put my brain in a cramp. My little neurons short-circuited up there, and the brain waves came to a halt.

What to do?

First, today and every day, I need to accept the fact that (except for the lessons and critique), none of the other things will get finished today. I need to make my “to do” list reflect this, and yet move each project closer to completion. (I’ve tried just working on one thing at a time before, but I found I lost mental contact with my fiction characters and had to keep starting over. Working on the books daily helps me “remember” who everyone is and what comes next.)

I’ve discovered that if I make a “to do” list that says I will write for one hour on each project that needs to be moved along, then I will do that. I set my kitchen timer for one hour, get my project papers out and ready to go, put on blinders, start the timer, and then focus on that one project for an hour.

I don’t get up during that time or think about any of the other projects. I work on the computer that will NOT connect to the Internet, so there is no temptation to check email. I let my answering machine take calls. [NOTE: This is me on a good day like today. The "yesterday" me made the mistake of getting online early in the morning, and it was downhill from there! Will I never learn?]

But just an hour?

Can you get much accomplished in an hour? An amazing amount! I am constantly surprised how much just fifteen minutes of concentrated writing time can produce. At the end of a writing day where I’ve focused one hour on each project, they all have moved along significantly toward the finish line.

Do I like writing this way? Not really. But I’ve discovered that I can write many more hours in a day when I change projects–about eight hours, as long as I stretch a lot. Writing on the same novel, I am fairly burned out in four hours of writing (four hours total, usually a couple of two-hour sessions.) So productivity is higher when I have to work on multiple projects with multiple deadlines.

Maybe–in the end–I’ll enjoy working this way for that very reason. In the meantime, it’s a good way to get the work done. Try it–you might like it too!

November 9, 2009

“10 Habits of a Successful Writer” was the article title in my new writer’s magazine. Same old, same old, I thought, intending to skip over it. After all, I knew the rules by heart: write every day, write what you know, write first in the day, etc.

Then I glanced at the actual list of writing habits, and none of those “rules” were there. Instead I saw things like “the habit of rehearsal,” “the habit of ease,” and “the habit of reacting.”

I was hooked.

The article by Donald M. Murray (writing teacher and Pulitzer Prize winner) was a 1992 article reprinted in the December, 2009 The Writer Magazine. On “the habit of reacting,” he wrote: “I am aware of my reaction to my world, paying attention to what I do not expect, to what is that should not be, to what isn’t that should be. I am a student to my own life, allowing my feelings to ignite my thoughts… I notice my writing habits, and from that grow this article. I see signs for a house tour, feel an unexpected anger at the smugness of those who invite tours into their homes, and end up writing a humorous piece about an imaginary tour through a normally messed-up house, ours. I have taught myself to value my own responses to the world-and to share them with readers. I build on my habit of reacting.”

Value YOUR Reactions

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to curb my reactions. Because of my personality, I tend to react quickly, have strong opinions about everything and everyone, and think I know how to fix everybody and every injustice I see. (”Oh, Kristi, calm down,” was a phrase that always annoyed me.) Obviously, for the sake of my relationships, I’ve had to learn to keep most of my critical opinions to myself and stop trying to fix people and situations, most of which are none of my business.

But try as I might, the inner opinions and reactions don’t stop. Sometimes I think I will pop a cork if I have to keep quiet one more minute. (Literally, I leave the room sometimes to get a grip on my mouth.) While all this is well and good-and necessary for peaceful relationships-I think it’s had a negative effect on my writing.

I was discussing this with a writing friend-the problem I was having infusing enough conflict into my novels lately. Everyone had become so “nice.” Few strong opinions were expressed by my characters anymore, and they mostly kept their feelings hidden. I found them boring and, for the first time in my writing career, I was abandoning projects half-finished.

The Habit of Reacting

My personality type will probably never stop reacting, but after reading this article, I’ve decided to write down all the strong reactions I have to people and things and situations. Instead of biting my tongue till I implode or get a headache, I’m going to make a “reaction journal.” In it I am going to say what I really feel and think about the events of my day.

Later, when appropriate, I’m going to let my characters react! They’re going to say the things I’m thinking behind my bland tolerant smile. They’re going to say the things I no longer feel are right or necessary to say to people inhabiting my real world. It will keep the conflict out of my relationships, but add it to my characters and stories where it will do some good.

As Julia Cameron says, “Keep the drama on the page.”

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