Guerrilla writing … or how to get back into the habit

Until recently, I’d posted nothing here for months—all of the last 6 months of 2012, really. My pets column hit an all-time low for posts per week, month and year from spring through summer. And I’d done nearly no new work on fiction writing during the whole of 2012. I flogged myself to produce enough verbiage to fill a newsletter for my husband’s law firm every month, though not always in the target week.

I began to wonder whether I really deserved to call myself a writer after all. The word-drought had started with two of our 4 ferrets succumbing to old age early in the year (January and March). Losing our elderly dog, Crystal, in September did not help, either.

The problem with getting out of the habit of writing? All the things that move in to fill up the time you used to use for writing during the days/weeks/months you haven’t been writing.

So what can you do to get back into writing if you’ve had a hiatus, however short or long? One approach that works for me is to trick myself into it. I may not think I have time to just write, but I can usually steal ten minutes here, five minutes there, at least enough to jot down a sentence or two at a time.

Belonging to a writers group has also helped me. Getting together with friends twice a month to talk about writing keeps me accountable in the gentlest possible way. But the one or two short writing exercises we do every meeting also kept me stringing words together in a small way even when I wrote next to nothing on my own.

When I decided to start fostering rescue dogs, the excitement of dealing with new dogs helped bring my pet writing back to life. I still didn’t always manage daily (or even weekly) posts if life got busy, and there have still been gaps, but more posts appeared during the past four months than during the preceding eight.

And over time, as I get back into the groove of writing for one venue, I find myself thinking about writing in general more often. I’ve restarted posting here occasionally, and may even get back to my children’s novels soon.

Conflict can be a good thing

In real life, I think of myself as preferring to avoid conflict when I can, but conflict is the engine that drives story. As a writer, I need conflict—and if you write, you do too.

The thing is, I say “conflict” and you think action film shootout or chick flick heated argument over relationships—and then say, “but my story isn’t about that sort of brawling or whining.” So let’s look at what conflict can be, beyond the fistfight or name-calling.

At its core, conflict explores the gap between expectation or desire and reality. Even the most unsubtle mayhem in suspense novels can be understood as bridging the gap between how one character expects or wants his or her opponents to act versus how those other actually respond. But conflict can come from something as non-personal as a late April snowstorm in Illinois, weather that flies in the face of what one would expect for that time of year. Drama, romance, comedy—they all depend on conflict to give the characters reason to act.

Conflict, defined as the tension or gap between the expected or desired and the actual, plays important roles in other artistic endeavors also. The impact of many striking photographs depends on some subversion of what you’d expect to see. In music, the clash of dissonance sets up a tension that leaves listeners waiting in expectation of an eventual resolution. Fiber art, sculpture and illustrations in many media all crate interest through the tensions generated by using unexpected imagery or unusual juxtapositions.

In fact, that sort of conflict plays a valuable role in making factual as well as fiction writing more compelling. If you write up a press release for a product or service, or text for a company website and realize it lacks appeal, you may need to find a conflict that can bring this information to life. For publicity to announce a commercial venture, try using some variation on the sequence: expected condition, undesirable reality, solution offered. When writing up special events for nonprofit groups, I’ve often set up a common expectation that I can contrast with the activity or attitudes of the group and its members.

If you’ve been paying attention here, you’ll have noticed that I set up a conflict right at the opening of this essay by announcing that I think of myself as avoiding conflict but I need it as a writer. I put a second level of conflict in play immediately after, by introducing the idea that conflict in writing may not be what we think of when we hear about conflict in real life.

Writing challenge: Can you identify the conflicts in the last thing you’ve written? Did you recognize these as important when you were writing? Can you think of different conflict(s) that might work better—or other layers of conflict that would add depth?

The Missing Dwarven Phaser

I also blog on a shared blog, The Missing Dwarven Phaser. The name reflects the origin of the project: a writers group that wants to push its members to share their writings and begin to build a platform for future publication of novel-length works. The name reflects the interests of the group’s members: suspense, fantasy and science fiction.

This week, we committed to doing something we’d talked about for a while: posting the results of one of our writing prompts and the writing resulting from that challenge. I just posted mine; others should be following soon.

Too many projects?

Oh the irony: I write a post about scheduling writing time so as not to feel guilty about writing … and then spend a couple of months doing just about anything except updating this blog! And, while I have two other blog-type projects (my column with Examiner.com and my occasional posts as a participant in The Missing Dwarven Phaser), they weren’t getting the love, either.

The fact is, I got a bunch done in those missing-from-my-blogs weeks: I edited a collection of my poetry, submitted both the collection and a bunch of individual poems to a handful of contests, did some reading and editing for friends, and at least thought a lot about the mid-grade novel I’m slowly working on.

I also produced art for the Sunday morning bulletin at my church for two different 7-week sequences, wrote call to worship and prayer text for 3 weeks, designed a summer adult ed sequence for the church, and wrote two sessions for that sequence (one already delivered to great acclaim and one to come next Sunday).

Plus, as weather allowed, puttered in my gardens. What with drought and hot weather, much more of said puttering has involved watering than in previous years, but the yard is looking distinctly not-dead despite everything. I count that as success.

When all else fails, I can recover creativity by taking out the dog and my camera.

So, to answer the question of the title, I’d say yes, I probably have too many projects going at once. But, while any one project may go a long time without progress, I always have something I can switch to if I get stymied by creative block. Maybe too many is a meaningless term and the question I should ask involves not how many but how: How do I balance all the projects so none get forgotten and I feel productive?

What about you? Do you focus on one or a very few related projects, or do you find that having a broader range of creative outlets keeps you … well, more creative?

Giving ourselves permission to dream

How often have you felt guilty about how you were spending your time? I think we all have those moments. But when you start feeling that way most of the time, you should start thinking about why you feel guilty and what you can do about that.

A recent dream about going back to my alma mater got me thinking. For my undergraduate degree, I studied sciences with a sprinkling of liberal arts courses, but my dream had me returning to study for a degree in creative writing. Talk about a wake-up call! So what was my dreaming self trying to tell my waking self?

It only took a few moments to recognize that frustration fueled this dream. My mind had put me back in college because there not only could I write without guilt, but I would be required to write.

Frustration wastes time and energy. Can you afford that? I can’t. So I need to figure out how to stop feeling guilty if I do my creative writing and low-paying freelance work, or frustrated when I spend time doing non-writing chores for my attorney husband.

One strategy I’ve used with some success before: setting schedules. If I know that a specific block of time “belongs” to me, I need feel no guilt for using that time to write what I want to write, or read and edit on spec. At the same time, the block I dedicate to working on GrowthLaw projects needn’t frustrate me because I know how much time I’m giving to these projects.

When setting up your own daily, weekly or monthly schedule, be careful to program in enough time for the running costs of life: household upkeep like cooking and cleaning, or errands such as transporting children or spouse to/from school/work. If you assign more time than you can actually manage for work-time-plus-me-time, you’ll run a deficit in the life tasks and find yourself feeling just as guilty as you do now.

To plan or not to plan …

Perhaps the most frustrating part of writing for me is when I know where I want to go with my essay or proposal or story, but can’t see how to get there. Sometimes, I don’t even know how to start.

Oooh, colors! Sometimes changing to pen and colored ink can be an inspiration in itself, even for a dedicated word-processor.

No clue where to start, even: The seminar proposal for which I just wrote my half of the project would fall into this first category. Luckily, I had a list of what my partner and I had talked about and simply started putting these key phrases into sentences. The sentences fell into a preliminary organization as they formed. And the individual segments of the proposed seminar had a logical order of their own. Once I’d completed a very rough draft, I could rearrange as I re-read what I’d done. The result? A plausible treatment for my part of the work. Finished and coherent enough for emailing off to my partner, anyway.

A start, a goal, and a blank between them: Both my just-needing-final-edit first children’s novel and my almost-2000-word start on a second fit this category. For the first, I had an opening concept: girl meets ferret and has an adventure. So I just stated writing. A couple of chapters into it, when I realized I had at least a novella and not a short story, I thought out a more complete version of what the end point of the story needed to be. But even as I drew in on the end, I never knew ahead of my writing it exactly how I’d get there. In fact, the most essential editorial work still needed on this story involves smoothing out the final resolution. However, my work did close the gap eventually, just by writing on and staying true to the characters and their environment, so I’m not too panicked about the second story. Yet.

A man, a plan, a canal … what? Sorry, got sidetracked into a palindrome when I started to write about writing to a plan. Some people always plan everything out before they start writing. Other people never plan, feeling constrained by even a very loose outline and wanting to be free to follow their creative impulses. As you may have gathered already, I fall somewhere in between these two extremes. I always try to have some sort of outline, however loose, but I also stay open to changes of direction as I start writing if a different approach looks likely to work better than my original plan.

The trick, if you can call it that, to avoid frustrating yourself as you write lies in figuring out what kind of organization helps you most. If you’re a free spirit, don’t plan your story or essay to the last detail—leave yourself a lot of space for expressing the mood of the moment. On the other hand, if you find yourself frustrated by wandering off-topic all the time, you should probably organize your notes or thoughts before starting to type … or picking up your pen or pencil.

I write therefore I comprehend?

This year, despite a calendar full of Advent activities, the Christmas season seemed to spring up unexpectedly, catching me unprepared. My gift-choosing and –making fell sadly behind schedule and I still haven’t made all the cookies I intended to and we’re on the fourth day of Christmas already. I blame a schedule that left too little time for just-me writing.

Anyone who journals knows the difficult balance between not writing enough to capture details you want to remember and being so focused on journaling that you distance yourself from the very events you’re trying to capture. I’ve had that happen with photography as well. Snapping pictures can become an end in itself, keeping you from participating fully in whatever you’re photographing.

But this year’s experience has taught me to value a certain level of detachment form the immediate details of my life. That distance allows me to reflect and appreciate a holy season, not just get caught up in the busy-ness. To recognize the unimportant and cherish the significant parts.

Still waiting (2007)

Advent sees me clean my whole house,
sifting through the year’s detritus
to reach a new beginning. Children grouse,
pets flee or hide, but Christmas hopes unite us:
Hark, do we yet hear angels singing?

Most years, I’ve written at least one poem for Advent or Christmas by December 25.  This year, I’ve written none.

I’ve done some crochet crafts as gifts and some Illustrator work on a text-based title design, but only work-related writing. And not nearly as much editing as I’d hoped (see previous comment regarding craft projects).

Christmas Eve 1997

white stars (cold stars)
falling on the bitter wind
towering drifts, icy roads blocking cars

clearing sky (storm ended)
now unveiling higher stars
over a world with faults snow-mended

But I still have 6 days before the Christmas season ends with Epiphany, so all is not lost. Even though tomorrow is also next year, it’s still this Christmas season. I wonder what I’ll find to say about Christmas this time?

What’s the message of a wordless Word?

Our church picked “Voices of Christmas” as the theme for this year’s Advent-through-Epiphany series of worship services. In Advent, we explored the voices of prophets, Mary, angels, and shepherds. For the second Sunday in Christmas, we will look at Anna and Simeon, and the following Sunday, in honor of Epiphany, the voices discussed will be those of the three wise men from the east. But for Christmas morning, the designated “voice” was that of baby Jesus.

I had prepared a children’s lesson to explore what Jesus-the-baby had to say to us, but no children of suitable age showed up this morning, all having had their Christmas church last night. However, as I listened to the pastor’s message about Jesus as light of the world and Word made flesh, I continued to ponder the concept of the “voice” of the infant Jesus.
Young children need concrete examples and stories. As I would have pointed out to the children, newborn babies don’t talk. They do communicate, but baby Jesus would have used his voice only for gurgles, chuckles and (despite the assertions of songs such as “Away in a Manger”) crying, not words.

And yet, the gospel of John starts out by calling this Jesus the Word of God. John makes quite a point of this Word becoming flesh, being born just as people are born.

Quick aside on the Greek word logos, translated here as “Word”: It is the root of the “-ology” ending that we use in English to denote “study of”: biology = study of life, sociology = study of societies, etc. Translated as word in the first chapter of John, it can in fact also refer to the larger concept of reality, an entire frame of reference. This gives an interesting insight into how the Greek philosophers thought. An early Greek Descartes might have said, I use words, therefore I am real. Or even, without words, how can we know reality?

But back to Christmas and the voice of the baby born in a stable. This baby, this enfleshed Word, newborn Reality, spoke of God’s boundless love for humans by the very fact of his birth as another human. By taking on our humanity, God could, in Jesus, gain our perspective and speak in words we humans might better understand.

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. So even before Jesus grew old enough to speak his first word, his very birth spoke volumes about the lengths God would go to convince us that God’s love and forgiveness can be ours.  Amazing love … our gift at Christmas, if only we remember to claim it.

 

What are you thankful for as a writer?

Without even pausing to think, I would answer the question of what I’m thankful for as a writer with  one word: computers! Of course, I have plenty of other blessings that allow me to write, such as disposable time in which I can write and access to all sorts of reading material from which I’ve learned about good (and not-so-good) writing.

But without computers, I probably would still be limiting myself to the occasional, fairly short, poem. I don’t dictate easily because I work out my story ideas as I write, so a dictation would be full of “umm … no, let’s make that …” And my handwriting is too slow to keep up with a really good flow of ideas. Old-fashioned typewriters are faster but have mechanical limits on how fast they can go without tangling or skipping. And any of these three methods leaves you with physical cut-and-paste to rearrange ideas for better flow. Plus retyping a clean copy. Bleah!

I never would have realized that I enjoy writing if not for computers taking the work out of getting to clean copy. Computers let me type nearly as fast as I think. I can drag or cut-and-paste words sentences, paragraphs … whole chapters … with a couple of keystrokes, and only ever need to retype things i want to change. If I were the sort of person who could dictate, I could get software that would make the computer into my stenographer.

And now that netbooks exist, not to mention tablets and even smart phones, writers have very portable access to the joys of computer-assisted writing. As netbooks have become more popular, they’ve become more affordable… another cause for thanks-giving. I’m writing this 8 hours’ drive away from home, sitting on a sofa in my son’s apartment, working off of 5 hours remaining battery power even after doing a bit of typing in the car yesterday.

And the computer gives me a clearer, more searchable platform on which to store and view my work than the scraps of paper on which my poems always seem to get written. Yes, I write stories and blogs and news posts now, but I still do poetry from time to time … and I revise poetry from years, even decades, before. And sometimes I just enjoy being surprised by how much I still like something I wrote that long ago.

So, as autumn fades into winter and we pause to be thankful for blessings in our lives as writers, I share this poem as my reminder to myself that blessings abound, for me as a writer, but also in the many other aspects of my life. May you all find many blessings in your own lives for which to give thanks!
Harvests

The year has come to fullness, green turned rusty
browns and sun-bleached tow. Gold-leafed trees
frame fields already shorn of grain and dusty
under late-year sun. Migrant geese
now glean through what remains. White wings
flash on high — dove? My mind argues
for urban pigeon strayed but heart clings
to Love’s icon, from whence hope issues.

Nature’s bounty is not claimed in
silos
but scattered abroad. Squirrels
spread nuts,
wind lofts seeds in clouds: milkweed,
aster, thistle. Berries load the
hedgerows.
Nor should we salvation hoard.
What’s
given us is likewise meant as seed.

(c) Susan N.C. Price 2011

 

Not just a novelist

I have friends who’ve reported reaching 25K, 30K, 40K words on their nanowrimo novels already. Well, I’ve got nearly 1.9K now. Up from 1.2K a week ago. Just.

But after taking the latter part of Thursday evening to drive west and stargaze, watching the Leonid meteor shower (about which I wrote yesterday), the truth of a past realization hit me with renewed force: novelist is not my main occupation. Not even in my top three occupations, to be honest.

My roles in keeping the household running (food, laundry,etc,) and the family business organized (invoicing, web updates and other PR for my attorney husband) fully occupy the business parts of my life … and I don’t complain most days. I like cooking, and I find tasks like washing dishes and clothing rewarding for the sense of order and rightness when everything is cleaned and put away.

And then I have the garden times of year: spring garden chores of splitting and moving perennials, replenishing mulch, and cutting back spring-blooming shrubs once the blooms have gone. In autumn, I start next year’s garden, preemptively mulching new areas of grass (sometimes mostly weed) and moving in shrubs or small trees gone dormant for winter. And each year adding a few dozen more bulbs for spring color.

I let housework go and leave my family to make themselves sandwiches at peak garden times. I will even give up reading (for a day or two) to get my gardening done when te time is right. I once hoped my children would join me in the dirt but neither has. So I gardened without them.

I realized then that gardening gave me a creative outlet, related to my love of drawing, writing poetry (this is before I’d started doing stories), sewing, crocheting and cooking. I also realized that I tended to do only one or two creative things at a time.

So here I sit, a part-time novelist. I haven’t written anything on Door to Phoenix in the past two day … but I’ve posted to both my Examiner pet column and this blog both days. The story still percolates in my imagination and I;m hopeful that, when I return to it, the ideas I need will have sprouted from the seeds in what I’v written so far.

Meanwhile, I have editing to do … and crocus and daffodil bulbs to plant.