Fiction - 4/13 - Write to Done

Why You’re Only 1/4 of A Writer And How to Make You Whole Again

A guest post by Ollin Morales of Courage 2 Create

About a year ago, when I decided to sit down and write my first novel, my biggest problem with the writing process wasn’t that I was a bad “proofreader,” or a bad “goal-setter,” or a bad “blog monetizer.” No, my biggest problem with the writing process was… my life.

About a year ago, I had already come out of the long and arduous process of trying to get into a Graduate School for Creative Writing. After giving my graduate application my all, and after turning it in, a few months later, I received a response in the mail. I unfolded the letter and then folded it back up again as soon as I saw the word: “Unfortunately” in the second sentence.

About a year ago, I had been let go from my job as an English Tutor because the company I was working for had gone bankrupt after the recession hit. The company loved me, but they could no longer pay me. My mind sort of checked out as soon as my boss shifted the conversation and started with the word: “Unfortunately…”

About a year ago, I had come out of my fourth failed relationship, and for anyone who has ever had a heart-broken more than once, you’ll agree that a consistently broken heart is a vastly underrated phenomenon. It can get the best of you, if you let it. I think I went into shock when my ex-boyfriend pulled over his car and began to say: “You’re a really great guy, but unfortunately…”

Finally, a year ago, someone close to me, who I love very dearly, and who I had been taking care of for two years, fell into another bout of her Depression. For those of you who don’t know, Depression takes over the body of the person you love until you find yourself living with the disease itself. Living with Depression is like coming home and discovering a black hole of grief and sorrow greeting you at the door. The best–and only thing–you can do in that situation is to orbit the edge of this black hole, spin frantically like a lesser version of Mars, and try not to be torn out of orbit and swung into the dark abyss.

That was it. That was the last straw for me. I was no longer in an “unfortunate” situation. I was in a crisis.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had to become wise, and I had to become wise fast.

Why? Because I knew that if I didn’t gain the wisdom I needed to survive in that moment, I would end up drowning in my own ignorance.

Now, the only way I was going to gain that wisdom was to take the steps necessary to vastly transform the way I approached my life.

These were the necessary steps I took in order to go from being 1/4 of a writer to becoming whole again:

I began meeting regularly with a therapist to learn how to deal with my emotions
I trained for a 5K to learn how to deal with my body
I kept a daily journal to learn how to sort through my heavy thoughts and clear the way for the lightness of my truth
I developed a daily meditation routine, hiked in the mountains, and began to pray so that I could learn how to reconnect with the universal, sky-bound spirit that unites us all.
Most importantly, I reached out to friends and family, wrapped my arms around them, and allowed myself to burst open with the greasy showers of pain, letting all that was broken slice through me, until the release of life’s vicious shrapnel lubricated my blackened, rusted heart. It was this “reaching-out” that taught me how important it was to be part of a larger community.

It was all of this work, and this work only, that allowed me to continue my writing, and helped me survive a very challenging year.

So, Then What Happened?

Don’t worry. You’ll be happy to know that at the end of that tumultuous year, not only did I finish the first draft of my novel, despite everything that stood in my way, but I wrote a blog chronicling this journey that went on to become one of The Top Ten Blogs for Writers.

Oh, um—what’s the word for when something good happens, unexpectedly?

Ah, that’s right. Fortunate. Haven’t heard that word in a while. Nice to hear it again.

What does this have to do with my writing?

“I’m really happy for you Ollin, but, what’s the point? I mean, what does this story have to do with me being a writer?”

Fair enough. Here’s the point:

After everything I went through, the most surprising thing I learned was that being a writer requires MORE than just your mind.

Why? Because you don’t write with only your mind. You write with your heart. You write with your spirit. You write with your body. You write as a member of a community.

Now, you can ignore all these aspects of your being, sure, but then you would only be about 1/4th of a writer.

On the other hand, if, every now and then, you listen to the intelligence of your heart, or to the intelligence of your spirit, or to the intelligence of your body, you might find the solutions to about 75% of your writing problems—problems that your mind told you were impossible to solve.

This “well-rounded” approach to writing isn’t always easy. I still struggle to master the skill myself

Take this year for instance. Although the challenges I faced last year are all resolved, this year I am faced with a whole new set of challenges.

Once again, I am being forced to become wise—fast—or risk drowning in my own ignorance.

But this is the journey of life and the writing process, isn’t it? Both require that you have infinite patience. Both require that you fall in love with the painfully slow progression of things. Both require that you face a set of problems one year, master them, then face a whole new set of problems the next year, master those, and keep this going until you’re forced to accept the humble truth: that no matter how much you learn, you will, forever and always, be a novice.

If you want to BE a great writer you need to LIVE a great life

Let me conclude with this thought:

You, as a writer, are FAR more complex than your ability to write flawless grammar.

You, as a writer, have a life to live, and you need to live it well.

Because when you ignore your life, you become like a concert pianist who has been given the best training in the world, the best piano to play, the best musical score to follow, the best audience to bear witness, but who does not show up to his own concert.

On the other hand, when you do pay attention to your life, you not only become the artist who shows up, but the human being who relishes his moment in the spotlight.

much love,

Ollin

Ollin Morales’s blog, {Courage 2 Create}, chronicles the author’s journey as he writes his very first novel. His blog offers writing tips as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. After all, as Ollin’s story unfolds, it becomes more and more clear to him that in order to write a great novel, he must first learn how to live a great life. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
Note: Ollin’s blog, Courage 2 Create is a winner of the Top Ten Blogs for Writers 2011 Contest.

Join Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch in the A-List Blogger Club, and learn to become a top blogger.

Categories: Art of Writing, Fiction

The 7 Secrets of an Indie Editor

A guest post by Victoria Mixon of A. Victoria Mixon, Editor.

Many years ago, when I was a starving writer wrestling day and night with the phenomenal angel of the fiction craft, I got thrown on my back a lot. I’d lie there wheezing until I could breathe again, then I’d gamely hop back up and go at it again.

Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. Up. Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. This went on for a really long time.

So now that I’m a professional indie editor, I know what’s going on at your house. And there are things I’ve learned about this craft that could make this wrestling match a whole lot easier on you. These are my secrets, the things you should know:

1. You need far more discipline and profound human compassion than you think.

You guys. You bring me your precious manuscripts, written in ink from the opening of your own veins, these symbolic versions of the very real and tragic heartbreaks you yourself have survived, and you tell me, “Don’t be gentle. Lay it on me. I can take it.”

Fortunately for you, I’m the wimpiest writer ever in history, so I just ignore you. I know that every mild criticism is a slam to the writer’s solar plexus and every compliment is a faint voice mumbling unintelligibly in the distance.

Only when you’ve gotten a hefty dose of compassion for you, the writer, can you hoist up your suspenders and set about the Herculean task of applying the discipline and ruthlessness your manuscript needs. There are always piles, mountains, avalanches of it. If I simply laid the discipline on you first, you’d be humiliated—silenced.

This is why I’m not just an editor. I’m a writing therapist. Half my job is being really good at handling manuscripts, and the other half is being really good at handling writers.

Writing fiction isn’t expressing yourself, it’s creating an experience for your reader.

And yet we all write because we love it. Right? I’m not sitting here at my desk thinking about you. I’m actually sitting here thinking about me, about the fact that I know something important and I want you to get a kick out of learning it from me.

Which leads me inevitably to admit that the reader is the only one in this relationship who counts. I might very well have something you need, but if you don’t want it I’ve done all this work for nothing. Not only that, but you’re not here just for what I know, you’re here for the experience of learning it, and even more than that you’re here for the indescribable magic that happens when you find yourself sandwiched between what you’re learning and how you feel about learning it.

That’s the magic that changes a reader’s life. And the writer’s job is working that magic.

No one can properly line edit their own writing.

This point sucks, but it’s a simple fact, so we might as well all get used to it, the same way we’re used to dentists, freeways, and working for a living. I would far rather be independently wealthy on a chateau patio overlooking the 1920s Mediterranean coast, words like pearls falling in perfect order from my quill, bouncing over my feet and across the worn flagstones.

But that’s simply not going to happen.

Instead, I’m going to write as clearly and succinctly and vividly as I know how, and then I’m going to hand it off to someone else—my writer husband, my writer friend, or the editor of whatever publication or blog I’m writing for—to be line edited. They’ll catch the awkward phrasing and constructs that make a reader stumble over my words. They’ll smooth the rhythm I’ve worked so hard to achieve (and, hopefully, catch most of my typos.)

They’ll see my words the way a reader sees them. And that’s professional polish.

The publishing industry is not Cinderella, and neither are you.

Or, to paraphrase Dylan: they ain’t a-going nowhere.

I know everyone’s breathing down your neck, exhorting you with the authority of wild-eyed fanatics to hustle your fanny out there and get your novel published. I know this is why you ask for blunt criticism and hope to skimp on the line editing, why it’s so daunting to be told this work is, more than anything, about magic.

But honestly. . .what’s going to happen if you don’t get published PDQ? Are the publishers all going to turn into pumpkins at midnight?

No. And neither are you. Novels have been written and published for over four hundred years. They will continue being published a good four hundred years from now. I spent thirty years delving into this craft in the privacy of one cozy little workspace after another, across three states and half a dozen countries, one desk in a closet and another on a minuscule Hawaiian lanai overlooking the endless ocean. You have time to immerse yourself in this craft for a very, very long time indeed before you need to start looking over your shoulder to see if the end is gaining on you.

Seriously.

Your manuscript is in much worse shape than you believe it is, but you have vastly more potential as a brilliant writer than you can imagine.

Now, you may have seen my recent moment of online glory in which I was immortalized in the Huffington Post for being dissed by my agent. That story was absolutely true. Every single manuscript that comes to me is the best, brightest, most word-perfect work of which its author feels capable, and every single one of them has aspects for which an agent with a caustic tongue could get them into the Post.

But that’s okay. I learned how to fix all that stuff.

Even more importantly, every single manuscript that comes to me has its moments of ineffable glory: a facility with words, specific telling details that snap scenes into three dimensions, plot twists and developments that carry me right out of myself, laser-like snippets of dialog and amazing character insights, things that make me sit up, make me laugh, torque my heart exactly the way a reader’s heart needs to be torqued.

These moments are the stuff of which brilliant fiction is made.

Your job is to go beyond the limits of possibility.

Of course, the biggest thing I know that you don’t is that writing fiction is an impossible labor. Great art is never as transcendental as its creator has in mind.

Readers might be happy enough with less than transcendental (but not much). Publishers and agents might be as happy as they’re ever going to get. (It’s hard to tell.) But once you’ve seen your vision and known what it’s like to capture even a fragment of that iridescent substance for your own in words, you will never again be satisfied.

So you keep at it—the impossible. Even though you know it’s impossible. That’s what you, great writers, and immortal protagonists all have in common.

Fiction isn’t really about reading or writing, it’s about living.

Finally, not the biggest thing I know that you don’t, but the most important: there’s no such thing as either “escapist” or “literary” fiction. There is only storytelling to which all of us, readers and writers alike, go over and over again, to find out what life is, learn the basic skills we need to survive it, and discover the unspeakable beauty and subtlety and significance that makes it worth living.

You don’t have to be a writer. You simply do this work because we human beings need it done.

Victoria Mixon spends her time blogging for the vast tribe of aspiring great writers in the blogosphere and editing their work with her suspenders hoisted up. She is the co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators and author of the recently-released The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.

Categories: Art of Writing, Fiction, Freelancing

How to Lift Your Writing to new Heights – in Just 10 Minutes

By Mary Jaksch

Want to Write Better? I mean, a lot better – in just ten minutes. I’m not talking about some kind of writing Voodoo; I want to show you a no-fail way that can improve your writing dramatically in minutes.

Let’s start at the beginning. And that means starting with the brain, because that’s the main machine we use for writing. Whether it’s having great ideas, or choosing a structure, or dancing with words – it’s all to do with brainpower. So a simple way to write better is to boost the performance of your brain.

How to boost brainpower in only 10 minutes?

Here’s what made me consider this question: I was recently in Las Vegas at Blogworld where I spent 5 days in canned air with piped muzak. I tried to write – but my imagination was sluggish and my focus scattered.
When I got back home to New Zealand, I inhaled the pure air deep into my lungs. And I got really excited about raising my fitness. After all, as a writer I tend to sit at my desk a lot. Maybe you do too?

I started an 8-week Fitness Challenge and wrote a post, called Want to be Fit, or even Ultra-Fit? Join the 8-Week Challenge People are joining in droves. (Leo Babauta joined too and is super helpful in the Challenge forum).

As soon as I started cranking up my fitness, my creativity flooded back. It’s not only the oxygen that sharpens our skills, what makes a difference is that exercise is a circuit breaker that lifts us out of the writing rut.

Here is how to lift your writing to new heights in 10 minutes

Exercise briskly for 10 minutes
If possible, exercise outside so that you have a change of environment. Once you’re outside, walk briskly or run. If you can’t go outside, use whatever is at hand for exercise. For example, a staircase is a great exercise tool. Run or walk up one flight of stairs. Then take some deep breaths and repeat.
Raise your pulse rate
It’s important to raise your heart rate substantially. When you do that, the mind lets go of worries and preoccupations and focuses on the exercise itself. This means that you can return to writing with a clear mind.
Get out of breath
Being out of breath is good! Use it as your benchmark for brisk exercise. When you are ‘out of breath’ you are gulping huge amounts of oxygen which will refresh your brain.
Be mindful
When you exercise, leave mp3 player and phone behind. Focus on your present experience. Notice the color of the sky, the ground under your feet, and the sounds around you. When we are mindful (which is really a form of meditation), the mind becomes expansive and open.
Drink water
At the end of the 10 minutes exercise, drink a couple of glasses of water. Hydration also helps your brain to function well.

Taking ten minute breaks like this is a great habit. Not only does exercise boost brainpower, it also acts like a circuit breaker. This is especially helpful if you get stuck with the piece you’re writing, or if progress is sluggish.

Once you get back to your desk, remember to sit upright. Good posture helps your mind to focus. That’s why most forms of meditation include instructions for upright posture. When the spine is aligned, random thoughts die down and you are less likely to get caught in endless cycles of ‘what if’ or ‘if only’ thought patterns, and can open up to your full creativity.

Mary Jaksch is Chief Editor of Write to Done. Read more on her blog Goodlife ZEN. Together with Leo Babauta, Mary runs the A-List Blogger Club, an ongoing training for bloggers that members rave about:

Categories: Art of Writing, Blogging, Fiction

What are YOU writing?

By Mary Jaksch

What are you working on right now?

A blog post? A novel? Your best article ever? A poem? A film script? An Ebook?

Maybe you’ve just finished something you’re really proud of? Or you just can’t tell whether it should get a Pulitzer or be thrown into the trash?

Or maybe you’re noticing some barriers that are getting in the way of your creativity?

Here’s your chance to share and discuss with each other what you are writing about. And how it’s going.

Whet our appetite with the opening paragraph of your future bestseller, give us a link to your best article, or tell us what you are writing at the moment.

Who knows, your piece might even attract the notice of a major publishing house!

Here are some guidelines:

A. Writers:

State what aspect you’re working on. For example, you might want to say, “Here’s a link to my article “The Role of Rabbits in Nuclear Science”. I’m currently working on eliminating superfluous words.”

B. Commenters:

When commenting, first list everything you really like about a piece.
Only then offer careful suggestions.
Treat each other with respect, friendliness, care, and honesty.
Remember that we are all still learning.

Now it’s over to you. Take a deep breath. Then jump into the comment section and bring out your treasures!

Mary Jaksch is the Editor in Chief of Write to Done and writes the blog Goodlife ZEN. Together with Leo Babauta, Mary runs a spectacular training environment for bloggers: the A-List Blogger Club.

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Tip: If you’re keen to join the A-List Blogger Club, whip in now. In 7 days we’re going to close the doors until end of December. (People will have to go on to a waitlist during that time.) So, go and check it out here. Join our over 700 motivated and supportive members!

Categories: Art of Writing, Blogging, Fiction

How to Use Vivid Descriptions to Capture Attention

Do you pay attention to detail?

A guest post by N. Strauss from Creative-Writing-Now.com

Have you ever read writing so vivid that you felt as if you were actually experiencing the story first-hand? Would you like to make your own fiction writing that vivid? Here are some tips that will help.

Use specific details.

Let’s play a game. Imagine a room. Before you read on, take a moment to form a mental picture of this room.

Okay, now what if I tell you that the room is a restaurant kitchen? Did your mental picture just change?

What if I tell you that the restaurant’s closed for the night, and the kitchen is dark except for the streetlamp shining in the back window. Did your mental picture just change again?

Using specific details in your writing will guide the reader’s imagination, helping the reader to imagine a scene the way you have imagined it yourself.

But use the right details.

The more details, the better? Not exactly. The key is to choose the right ones.

If you describe the contents of every inch of that restaurant kitchen, it will be information overload. Readers cannot hold an infinite number of details in their mind at the same time.

If you describe every pea in every can of peas in the restaurant pantry, readers will fall asleep.

Which details should you choose? Look for…

Details that differentiate. If you tell me that the man picking the lock on the kitchen door has two eyes, a nose, some hair, and quite a lot of teeth, that is not very informative. If you tell me that he is tall and has wavy hair, that gives me more information. But I still might not be able to pick out this man in a police lineup. If you tell me that he has a long upper lip that gives him a certain resemblance to a camel, this helps me form a picture of the man. It is a detail that distinguishes this man from other people.

Details that suggest a larger picture. If you tell me that the kitchen counter is littered with a mixture of sugar, crumbs, dead ants, and ashes from the pastry chef’s cigar, I understand that this kitchen is not likely to pass a health inspection. Even if you don’t describe other surfaces in the kitchen, I will naturally imagine them as dirty.

Remember your narrative point of view.

The details you should choose will also depend on the narrative viewpoint you are using in the scene.

By narrative viewpoint, I mean the perspective from which the reader experiences it. If the scene were in a film, where would the camera be located? Is the reader observing the scene through a particular character’s eyes — or even from inside that character’s head?

Let’s say you want to write from the point of view of the burglar who is entering the kitchen. You’d describe details that the burglar would notice, especially details that he would find important. You might describe the lock that the burglar was picking. You might describe the butcher knife that the burglar takes from the counter. You wouldn’t describe the burglar’s face (he can’t see his own face) — unless you are describing the way it is reflected in something; for example, in the blade of the knife.

Now, let’s say you’re describing the same scene from the viewpoint of the burglar’s accomplice, who is waiting for him outside. What would you have the reader see? Maybe the light going on in the kitchen window? Does the accomplice creep up to the window to peer inside? Fine, then the reader can see the burglar pick up the knife. However, the reader can’t see the oily fingerprints that the burglar carelessly leaves on the knife handle. They would be too small and faint to be visible from the window.

Make your descriptions work.

Descriptions are more than decoration that you add to your fiction’s surface. They are building blocks in your story.

You can use descriptions in many ways; including all of the following:

to help a reader imagine the sights, sounds, smells and textures of a scene

to focus the reader’s attention on a particular aspect of the scene

to communicate background information

to express a character’s thoughts and emotions

to set a mood

to slow down or speed up reading. For example, you can use a description to slow down the story at a crucial moment in order to increase the tension.

If you choose the right details and use them in the right places, your descriptions can do a lot of work for you, although your reader might be too absorbed in the story to notice.

N. Strauss directs the online creative writing courses program for Creative-Writing-Now.com, an online resource offering writing prompts and education on a variety of creative writing topics.