Bum Glue: the true secret of writing

The Night Circus

2012-01-23T17:02:00.000-08:00

In THE NIGHT CIRCUS which is set in the late 1800's to the early 1900's, two children who will grow up to be magicians are bound to each other in a challenge placed upon them by a pair of elderly gentlemen. The two contestants do not meet or even know their opponent's identity until they are adults, but their entire childhoods are geared toward the inevitable meeting. The challenge plays out at a mysterious black and white circus that is only open at night, hence the title. The book is filled with colorful characters and, well, magic! And the circus, whoa. I cannot begin to do it justice. The author's imagination and attention to detail left me breathless at times.

I waited to read the reviews until I finished the book because I had my suspicious about how they would read. I was right. Readers are divided into two camps: those who loved the book's world and those who hated the book's plot. I'm in the first category. I've often heard writers cautioned aginst falling too in love with the world they create, especially in science fiction and fantsy. I must admit that Ms. Morgenstern is very much in love with the world of this book, but I don't fault her. I'm in love with it too.

This was not a book I would have normally picked up. A librarian friend suggested this book at a NaNoWriMo Write-in. The author wrote it during National Novel Writing Month and it is her first published novel. While the plot left a bit to be desired and I can see where the critics find it lacking in resolution and conflict, I loved it and did not need to know any more than was told. Besides, I was smitten by the world she'd fashioned! Also, it's a love story, really, and I'm a sucker for a love story. Read it and draw your own conclusions!!!

An Accidental Athlete

2012-01-21T16:16:00.000-08:00

"I have released myself from a life of sedentary confinement," John Bingham explains in his easy-to-read, short-chaptered, motivational/inspirational memoir, AN ACCIDENTAL ATHLETE.

Bingham has something of a cult following among slow runners like myself. A self-proclaimed, "Penguin," a term he coined in a previous book to capture what he actually looked like when he saw himself in a store window while he was running down a city street, Bingham previously published a column in Runner's World and now is a regular contributor to Competitor. He didn't take up running until he was 43, but when he did, he fell completely in love. In this book he explains how his "adult-onset athleticism," allowed him to make up for being a poor athlete as a child and claim his place in the running world.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this quick read, I was sad to see that he recycled some of the stories he'd told in his previous books. The incidents make excellent points, but I wanted something new. He did deliver that in other chapters, especially regarding the undeniable fact that there will come a day when you realize your best running days are behind you. And, if you really love running, you will continue to run anyway. I needed to hear that!

Summer at Tiffany

2012-01-18T16:37:00.000-08:00

SUMMER AT TIFFANY is a sweet, easy read about the self-proclaimed "best summer" of Marjorie Hart's life. If you adore clothes, jewels and movie stars, you'll love this book. These details were mostly lost on me, but I appreciated being transported to 1945 Manhattan and the Tiffany store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. The author's descriptions of the city and the characters that inhabited it at that time held my attention even if the story line didn't. While I enjoyed the way the author took me back to being a young woman trying to figure out her life, with World War II as the backdrop, the decisions Marjorie faced seemed less important than they might have during some other period in history. Maybe my own life has been marred by too many dark events, but I kept waiting for something bad to happen.

Marjorie, writing this memoir when she was in her 70s, captured the voice of her college self. I could feel the bubbly excitement of the two University of Iowa sorority sisters as they began their adventure and could almost taste the chocolate milk and toast on which they survived. And I identified with Marjorie's indecisiveness. Thank goodness for her friend and roommate, Marty. Marjorie wouldn't have lasted a minute without her. Once on her feet, however, Marjorie did fine, despite her knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, a skill I also possess.

The book's structure contribues to its readability. Straightforward chapters with few flashbacks and an occasional letter home made the story roll effortlessly from scene to scene. Short spurts of dialogue also move the reader along. The book opens with the girls gawking at buildings on Fifth Avenue as they ride a city bus headed for Lord & Taylor where they hope to find jobs. The sense of adventure is there from the first few paragraphs. After a few false starts and with some good connections, they land work at Tiffany & Company. After a few dates, they find midshipmen who take them drinking and dancing on a regular basis. This is their life as war rages and atomic bombs are being dropped in the Pacific. In short chapters Marjorie captures the glamour and excitement of she and Marty being Iowa girls in the big city. Several unpleasant events do happen to them and their loved ones and Marjorie is faced with an opportunity that presents her with a difficult choice, but these barley seem to dampen the girls' desire for distracting news of the latest fashions and the stars that wore them. I can't fault them. If I'd lived through these difficult times, I too might have needed these escapes.

Overall, I enjoyed the read even if I was disappointed by its lack of depth. Marjorie Hart had a beautiful summer and I'm glad she shared it with us all.

Good Behavior

2012-01-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

For my next book in the FiftyFifty.Me challenge, I read GOOD BEHAVIOR, a memoir, by Nathan L. Henry, the story of his year in jail for armed robbery. This was an adult jail but Nate was only sixteen. He was no stranger to trouble and in this memoir, he alternates chapters among his year in jail, the year leading up to his crime, and scenes from earlier in his childhood that somewhat explain how a boy from a one stop-light town in rural Indiana finds himself in this predicament. It is gritty, graphic, and often disturbing. I found parts of it nearly impossible to read, but was drawn through it by the hope that he would find a way out. I won't spoil it, but let's just say that the jail librarian is instrumental.

What I took from this book, more than the story itself, was the way in which it was told. He maintained a primarily chronological structure in the alternating chapters so although the book jumps back and forth in time, the reader always knows where she is because he tells the different stories in a "this happened then this happened" order. Within this framework, there were a few flashbacks, but the story was carried forward by the passage of time. We knew he'd either get out of jail or be sent to prison. We knew he'd eventually be arrested and go to jail. We knew he grew to at least the age of sixteen. All of this pulls the reader along. We are also pulled along by the question of "what exactly happened?" since he teases us by referring to the day he set the school on fire and the night the police chased down he and his friend Phillip before he actually tells the events.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it's definitely worth the read.

Writing is Hard

2012-01-14T10:25:00.000-08:00

This just in from Brevity. "Writing is hard, even for Dorothy Parker."

The Leisure Seeker

2012-01-09T17:18:00.000-08:00

In The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian, an elderly couple, Ella with cancer and her husband John with Alzheimer's, set off from Detroit in their RV, a 1978 Leisure Seeker, headed down Route 66 to the Pacific Ocean and Disneyland against the wishes of their worried adult children. It's a perilous journey with many mini-adventures along the way, but for a couple deeply in love despite all life can throw at them, what they believe to be their last trip is truly the trip of a lifetime.

The book is structured as a simple roadtrip. Each chapter bears the name of a state through which they travel. Told from Ella's point of view, the story includes few flashbacks, and except for those and the slides the couple views most nights when they stop at an RV park, the story is told in the present and has the immediacy and familiarity of one told by a friend as you sit in an armchair listening.

I fell in love with Ella and John quickly and despite having an inkling of how it all might end, I had trouble putting the book down. A friend who knows Mr. Zadoorian told me that the book was gleaned from Zadoorian's experiences with his aging parents and was written as a way to deal with those losses. The book is fiction, but if his parents were anything like Ella and John, I sure wish I could have met them.

This was book number one of the fifty books I plan to read this year as part of the fiftyfifty.me challenge in which I and a slew of other folks attempt to read fifty books and watch fifty movies during 2012. join us, will you?

Resolution #2

2012-01-04T15:08:00.000-08:00

Toward the end of last year I looked on my dresser at the numerous pairs of earrings, many never worn. Were they actually beckoning? It seemed as much. And so, my second challenge for 2012 is to wear a pair of earrings every day. "Just what does this have to do with writing?" you might ask. Well, let's just say that my attire is not always presentable. I have been known to drive through McDonald's in my pajamas and I sometimes appear quite rumpled when I sit down to write at a coffeehouse. And sometimes, people recognize me.

Back in the day when writers were more anonymous, when they didn't need Twitter accounts or blogs for their books to sell, it didn't matter what a writer looked like on a day to day basis. On the occasion of a reading, the writer who had spent every day writing in his pajamas, could head to Lazarus (it was a now defunct department store) to pick a few new threads off the sale rack, stop by the barber shop for a trim, and no one was the wiser.

But today, it's not uncommon to be waved at in the drive-through line. Despite being the 15th largest metropolitan area in the United States, Columbus is still a small town. And so, I decided to spruce myself up a bit - at least my earlobes. If you see me in public without earrings, please do not hesitate to remind me of the challenge. And if you see me in my pajamas in the drive-through, please just move along. There's nothing to see here.

Resolution #1

2012-01-03T11:38:00.001-08:00

"Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." - Mark Twain

I don't typically make resolutions, but I do accept challenges. This year I have accepted the challenge to read 50 books and watch 50 movies. You too can join at http://www.fiftyfifty.me/ It will be a stretch. According to goodreads.com, I read 27 books last year. According to my increasingly shoddy memory, I watched about 12 movies. Time to crank up the volume.

The folks at fiftyfifty.me encourage us to create majors and minors by choosing lists of books in different categories. I chose two groups: books for fun and books to study for writing.

In the "books for fun" category, I began New Year's Day by listening to part of The Night Circus on CD. It's steampunk full of magical realism and not my usual fare, but it was written during National Novel Writing Month a few years ago and came highly recommended by some of my best writer friends. So far I'm enjoying it. With a second-person prologue, it can't be all bad!

As the first book in the "books to study for writing" category, I chose The Leisure Seeker: A Novel which was recommended by a friend who's a former editor. Zadoorian wrote the novel as a way to harness the material provided by watching his parents age. My friend, now a literary consultant, suggested that the book might give me some insight on how to distance myself when writing about similar experiences with my parents. Only 59 pages in, I can see how Zadoorian mined what he knew to shape the characters.

What about you? Any writing-related resolutions on your agenda for 2012? As always, I'd love to hear about them.

Lessons from NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-12-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

"Never underestimate the strength of a woman. Never mess with one who runs 13.1 miles just for fun." - Judi Welsh

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2011 is history. As I wrote last month, I chose to write a novel instead of memoir. It wasn't my first novel, but it was the most difficult NaNoWriMo of the five I've done. I did no planning and I fought for the story every word of the way. In doing so, I learned a few things:

1. Plotting isn't all bad: I'm a professed panster and yet, plotless this month, I was at my wits' end to make the story move forward. While I didn't consciously plan any of my previous books, I've always known where each was headed and I knew a few things that would (or did) happen along the way. Going in completely cold was terrifying and threatened to derail me.

2. I am not easily derailed: I did not give up even though I hated the story for almost the entire month and felt like I was wasting my time.

And, most importantly, 3. I was not wasting my time: I know this because I fell back in love with writing. Somewhere in the last year, I'd lost the passion. Writing had become a chore I'd considered giving up. Some of that I attribute to depression, but some of it was just the reality of being a writer. Writing, much like any other work, without passion is drudgery. But this month, doing NaNoWriMo, despite feeling lost and frustrated most of the month, I rediscovered the joy of putting words on the page all the while knowing they were in the wrong order or, more likely, weren't the right words at all. And that was worth much more than 30 days of agony.

I'll leave you with my own version of Judi's quote:

"Never underestimate the strength of a writer. Never mess with one who writes 50,000 words in 30 days just because she can!"

Fiction! What a novel idea!

2011-11-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

"Indecision may or may not be my problem." - Jimmy Buffett

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us. For several months, I planned to be a NaNoRebel and write From My Bed to the Half Marathon (titles aren't my thing) a memoir about my journey into athleticism. I had made a list of possible topics and scenes to show my transformation from a woman who has trouble getting out of bed most mornings due to chronic depression to a woman who still has trouble getting out of bed many mornings, but who gets out of bed anyway so she can go run with her dog.

With this memoir in mind, I went to the NaNoColumbus kick-off party on Sunday, October 30th. Forty or fifty Wrimo's (that's what the people who sign on for this literary adventure call themselves) showed up at the Karl Road library meeting room to eat snacks, drink coffee and talk about what we were planning to begin writing a mere 48 hours from then. The energy was palpable with laughter, squealing and lots of stickers. Anne and Carrie, our municipal liaisons facilitated discussions, brought food, and offered clay for the making of little totems to carry us through the month.

As the Wrimos writing fiction enthusiastically discussed their novels, I grew melancholy. They were so excited about their characters and their plots and the traveling shovel of death (this is a mythical shovel that magically appears in novels and kills off one of the characters). I felt jealous. They intended to liberally apply ninjas to any scene that wasn't working or, if a character wasn’t cooperating, to simply end their world in a cataclysmic event and then have the main character wake up the next day to say it was only a dream. I wanted in on this wacky world of creative abandon, but I put it out of my mind and resolved not to change gears so few hours before the start.

I spent Halloween day working on the newsletter only half aware that my subconscious was developing an idea for a novel. As I was posting the November writing events to my website, it dawned on me that I could still write about running. I could write about fictional characters in a running group. I began to get excited. Instead of shoving the ideas aside as I had when I was locked into my decision to write memoir, I let the thoughts come. One of the runners could have a dog. Two of the runners could fall in love. One of the runners could be a middle-aged woman just figuring it all out as she goes along. One of the runners could be murdered on the trail by a ninja with a shovel. The options were endless. My enthusiasm exploded and I stayed up until midnight and beginning writing the novel Love on the Trail (I warned you titles weren't my thing) at 12:01AM November 1st.

I will allow myself to write a very bad first draft since this is, after all, NaNoWriMo and not the National Book Awards. If I can step out of the way, it will write itself. At least that's what I'm counting on.

What are you working on this month? Did you sign up for NaNoWriMo? If not, what kind of structure do you use to get the work done?

NaNoWriMo Helpful Stuff

2011-09-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

National Novel Writing Month is less than six weeks away!!! Here's some helpful NaNo preparation information:

YOUR GOAL:

To write 50,000 words of fiction* during the 30 days of November

FIRST:

Sign up! Visit: http://www.nanowrimo.org

“Friend” Nita a.k.a. willwrite4chocolate

HELPFUL BOOKS:

No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty (founder of NaNoWriMo)

NaNo for the New and Insane by Lazette Gifford – (free e-book)
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/84837

Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass

Workbook by the same title

The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall

First Draft in 30 Days by Karen Wiesner

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

HELPFUL SOFTWARE and WEBSITES:

yWriter - http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html (works best on PCs) Free!!!

Scrivener - http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php (works best on MACS) $45

The Snowflake Method - http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

*Members of the NaNoWriMo group known as the NaNo Rebels write nonfiction and poetry. Willwrite4chocolate is a two-time NaNo Rebel and overall four-time NaNo winner.

Success through Sitting and Staring

2011-09-01T10:51:00.001-07:00

“If you want to write and can’t figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.” ~ Ann Patchett

----------------------

That whooping and hollering you heard Sunday, August 28th? It was me. It was my 50th birthday, but that's not what I was celebrating.

As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, I've been suffering from the dread "two documents with the same name" disease. For several months, I had unknowingly been alternately editing two documents in two different software programs thinking they were the same. Since that newsletter essay, I discovered a third document with the same name. One was an RTF file I had saved to email to a friend, another was a Word document, and a third was in Open Office. All three documents were titled, "Memorial 11.3." All three had various chapters recently edited. All three were different.

Last weekend a few other writing friends and I rented a space where we could write without family, friend, Facebook or other f-word interruptions. The facility was none of our homes. We shut off our phones. And, we did not have Wi-Fi. This was crucial. These conditions forced me to stare at those expletive deleted documents for 12 hours on Saturday and 12 hours on Sunday until I figured it out. That was the celebrating you heard. I FIGURED IT OUT!!! I went through all three documents chapter by chapter using Word's document compare function (don't even get me started on how much I miss WordPerfect) and cobbled together a new, clean document, "Memorial 11.4," containing the correct bits and pieces from all prior versions.

I'm telling you this tale because this problem seemed insurmountable. I was ready to give up. I had sort of given up in August when I went on sabbatical to celebrate my birthday for the entire month, but I knew I'd get back to it. And I did! So I wanted to share my success.

I bet I'm not the only one who's overcome a seemingly impossible writing problem. I'd love to hear your biggest battle and how you worked it through.

Time Out

2011-08-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

"The world comes first; it's older, tougher, more subtle and more magnificent that anything made from language. So when I go wandering from the desk, I'm not avoiding work, as it might appear; I'm stitching my work to the earth." - Scott Russell Sanders

I've put myself on summer vacation. I haven't been writing anyway. Instead of fretting about it, I'm embracing it by running, swimming, socializing and shopping. And I don't feel guilty. Really. I don't. Well, that's what I tell myself and anyone who asks. Truth is, my books in progress don't agree. They're like three-year olds tugging at my sleeve when I'm trying to take a phone call. They gnaw at me even though I told myself (and them) this is a rest period. I chose this time off. But they're in their folders, on the computer, in boxes on the floor, in piles on the shelf whining, "When are you coming baa-aack?" I'll be back (I tell us all). But it's still summer. I've given myself until the last weekend of August when I have a writing retreat scheduled. That's the end of summer. Coincidentally, it will also be the end of my 40's. What a great way to celebrate, right? Write!

Do you take intentional breaks from writing? I'd love to hear how you handle "vacations." Please leave a comment.

Ready to Teach?

2011-07-03T08:55:00.001-07:00

"We make sacred pact. I promise teach karate to you. You promise learn. I say. You do. No questions." - Mr. Miyagi from "The Karate Kid"

Are you ready to share what you know about writing? Upper Arlington's Lifelong Learning Program (UALL) is looking for new writing instructors. But you'll have to hurry. The deadline is July 11th. They want to include any new courses in their Fall catalogue.

I've been teaching there since 2001, shortly after I moved back from New Mexico. They make teaching easy. They enroll the students and do most of the advertising. I post flyers around town for my own courses and include all of their classes on my website. They rent the facility and collect the money. I show up and teach. Their courses are marketed to folks who want to enhance their lives. The participants are eager to be there. Most are adults although I do teach the occasional mature teen.

When I was getting ready to move back from New Mexico, Natalie suggested I teach. "Pass on what you know," she said. In order to teach something, I have to really understand it myself. So now, my writing has become a two-fold activity. While part of me writes, a second part of me thinks, "How could I teach this to my students?" It makes for a fuller writing experience.

If you've ever thought about passing on your writing skills, here's an opportunity. UALL is especially looking for folks to teach fiction or methods for making money blogging. But they're always open to new ideas, especially during the Fall session when they try out new classes. To apply send a resume and brief class outline to dmosely@uaoh.net.

Washing The Elephant

2011-06-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

"Writing a book is like washing an elephant. There's no good place to begin or end and it's hard to keep track of what you've already covered." - Unknown

I've used Word Perfect since 1987, but the world seems to have left me behind. When I bought a new computer last year, I had it loaded with Microsoft Word. I began to learn it and then a friend told me about Open Office. I downloaded that and began to use it as well. Unfortunately, I didn't realize I was alternating between the two programs. They were both unfamiliar in similar ways and I accidentally saved two different versions of the memoir about my father with the same name, one in each program. Not realizing my error, I continued working in both documents, at times one, at times another, for about nine months before I realized my error. Luckily, those were some of the least productive writing months I'd had in years and so I didn't make many changes. The Word compare function tells me there are ONLY 1,724 differences between the two documents. Still.

Like many problems, this one shouldn't have happened. I'm rather compulsive about recording changes. I number the documents sequentially the same way we did when I was an attorney: Version 1. Version 1.1. Version 1.2, etc. Then I update a document called "Version List" in which I, allegedly, track the changes I've made. Notwithstanding all my tracking, I now have two documents which need to be combined. Did I mention that these are 82,000 word documents? That's approximately 260 double spaced pages. Sigh.

I'm still stewing about the most efficient way to solve this problem and, in the process, wasting valuable time. Bottom line, we all make mistakes. It's time for me to accept reality, compare each document with the version before it, and start cutting and pasting to make a brand new document. Can I see this as an opportunity? Can I wind up with a version better than any of the versions before? The only way to know is to do the work. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Have you ever blundered in your writing process and lived to tell about it? I'd love to hear how you handled it.

What I know.

2011-05-03T10:27:00.001-07:00

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." - Coach John Wooden

I'm a skimmer. My natural inclination is to read the headlines and not the story. I gather information in broad brush strokes and then think I know a lot more than I actually do. For example, I know there's a casino being built on the west side of Columbus. I know that the royals wed on Friday morning. I know that Osama Bin Laden was killed Sunday night. But that's all I know.

Writing takes more than that. It requires me to sink deeply into the details. I have to push against my natural tendency to skim the surface of things, summarzie things, and make broad sweeping statements. I need to inhabit my life. That's what makes meditation an excellent practice for a writer. In meditation, I sink into the experience. I sink into the body sensations, the smells, the tastes. I sink into the thoughts by watching them arise and pass away. In this way, I experience the tightness in my gut when I think about the casino, the warm glow in my chest when I saw Will and Kate kiss, and the blank, empty, shocked space in my head when my husband told me Bin Laden was dead. And then I can write about these things in a way that allows the reader to experience them with me.

How do you sink into your world? How do you capture the details in your writing? If you like, tell us about it by posting a comment below.

Dare Yourself

2011-04-03T15:28:00.001-07:00

"There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet." - William Frederick Halsey, Jr.

I love a challenge. I'm preparing for a 6.55 mile race on May 7th. I also love structure. I follow a training plan that tells me what distance and how fast to run on what days, what days to rest, what days to cross train and what days to lift weights. I do what it says and I listen to my body. On race day, a friend is racing too so we have the added benefit of camaraderie to push us along.

I love a writing challenge as well. This month two different writing challenges provide the kind of structure, motivation and fellowship around writing that I'm getting for running from training for my race.

In Script Frenzy, writers attempt to write a play or screenplay script during the month of April. There are on-line forums, local groups, technical assistance and lots of encouragement. To find the central Ohio group, go here.

For National Poetry Writing Month (aka NaPoWriMo), writers attempt to write one poem each day for 30 days. This challenge has had several different homes, but is currently hosted as a fundraiser in honor of National Poetry Month by the Academy of American Poets.

And, don't forget there are only seven months until November which is National Novel Writing Month. If you haven't started plotting your novel, go here for help.

What do you need? Structure? Challenge? Camaraderie? It's all waiting for you if you choose it.

Are you up for a challenge this month? If you like, tell us about it by posting a comment below.

Plot? What's a plot?

2011-04-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

Whether you're writing fiction or nonfiction, your story needs a plot.

The plot is what pulls the reader through the story. In fiction, you make up the events of the story based on the motivations of your characters and lay them out in an order that makes the reader want to know what happens next. In nonfiction, you detail the events and examine the motivations of the real people about whom you're writing to come up with a story that makes the reader want to turn the page. I have shelves filled with books on plot and have used several different methods to come up with the plots in the books and short stories I've written.

Recently, I took Holly Lisle's Plot Outline Course and found it very helpful.

Go here to read more about the other Holly Lisle courses I've taken.

Finding a Community

2011-03-04T10:26:00.000-08:00

“A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” - Henrik Ibsen quotes (Major Norwegian playwright of the late 19th century, 1828-1906)

When I teach, students ask about writing groups. I invite them to stay after the class if they are interested in forming one. Invariably a few folks hang out afterward to swap information and get something started. One of the groups that formed after one of my classes has been writing together for at least five years.

I first joined a writing group the day after I arrived back in Columbus from my first Natalie Goldberg writing workshop in Taos, New Mexico. I walked into Stauf's coffeehouse, a place I'd written nearly every day for months, and spotted two women I hadn't seen before sitting at a table. One woman listened intently as the other read aloud from a spiral notebook. On the floor beneath one of the chairs sat Natalie Goldberg's first book, Writing Down the Bones. I waited until they were done reading to each other, introduced myself, and asked if they were doing writing practice. They were. I told them I'd just returned from Taos and one of Natalie's workshops and they invited me to join them. The three of us wrote together for a year and a half until I moved to New Mexico to work with Natalie.

This experience proved to me, if you're open to forming a writing group, the opportunity will appear. When I moved to New Mexico, I was more assertive. I posted a flyer at coffeehouses and the library. I was very specific telling prospective members what kind of group it would be and when it would meet. The flyer read, "Writer seeks other writers to do Natalie Goldberg style writing practice weekday hours." Over the next few months, six people responded and we formed a group that met for nearly three years. Many of us are still in touch.

There is also a list of more than thirty central Ohio writing groups on my website at http://www.nitasweeney.com/newsletter/ongoing-writing-groups/

If you're looking for a group of writers to share the journey, it's out there. You might have to create it, but other folks want to be found. They're just waiting for you to get it started.

Do you belong to a writing group? If so, how did it start?

Unplugged

2011-02-03T16:06:00.000-08:00

"Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it." - Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

About five years ago, I started reading writing advice blogs, websites and newsletters. I learned much about the publishing industry, how to get an agent, and the craft of writing. Over the years, the amount of on-line writing advice has exploded. Where there were ten, there are now hundreds. As I read these over a period of years, the information began to get repetitive. There are only so many things to say about character motivation and, despite the changes in the publishing industry, the basic components of the query letter remain the same.

Lately as I scanned these entries, I felt depressed. Did I really need to hear one more iota of advice? I tend toward melancholy anyway, and I decided to pay attention to the way these posts triggered an automatic downward spiral in my mood. I was on overload. It was time to unplug.

On January 14, 2011, I systematically unsubscribed from almost every blog feed and newsletter that had been making its way to my inbox. I kept my subscription only to those that seemed to feed my desire to write. Over the next few days, a few I'd forgotten showed up and I unsubscribed from those as well. By January 17, my task was complete. I opened my email inbox to find no one telling me the 5 ways to build conflict, the 12 things I need to know about e-books, or the one thing every writer needs to know to get a book contract. Whew! What a relief! I could feel the space opening between my ribs as I took a deep breath.

As a writer in an information age like none we've seen before, it is up to each of us to find balance. For now, the writing advice input switch on my inbox is turned firmly to the "off" position. Yours may be taped to the "on" setting. I'd love to hear how you manage the input and what you find helpful.

Relax and Lean

2011-01-03T14:58:00.001-08:00

"May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions. ~Joey Adams

“Relax and lean.” That’s the main thing I remember from the ChiRunning class I took with marathoner Doug Dapo last summer. I took up running again last March after a fifteen-year hiatus. Since my body is more “mature” now, I researched ways to make running easier on the joints and found ChiRunning, a technique created by Danny Dreyer, an ultrarunner and student of Tai Chi.

“When you relax and lean,” Dapo said during the class, “You go faster without as much effort." He asked us to try it while we ran back and forth along a section of bike path in a small park near Westerville where he held the class. “When you pull yourself along with your legs, you’re working against gravity. If you relax and lean, gravity does the work for you.” I was skeptical, but interested. As I ran, I leaned slightly forward and relaxed my body into that position. It worked! I immediately began moving faster without as much effort. I continue to use the “relax and lean” philosophy in my running and I’ve improved my time with each race.

As 2010 turned into 2011, I began to wonder if “relax and lean” would work for writing. I don't make New Year's resolutions, but this year, I'm going to do my best to “relax and lean” around writing. By relaxing, I hope to ease the tension I unconsciously hold in my body when I write, as well as the mental pressure I put on myself around publishing. Meanwhile, I'll lean by showing up at the page. I’ll put in the time, but without the type of pushing and pulling that's made me crazy in the past. This is an experiment. I hope this balance of “relax and lean” will improve my productivity. I'll let you know how it goes.

Have you tried any new techniques in your writing? Please share them with us.

After NaNoWriMo, What's Next?

2010-12-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

I finished National Novel Writing Month with 75,000 words of a first draft. Now I have options. Since there's more story to tell, December could be NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month) in which, despite the holidays, novelers attempt to write an additional 30,000 words. Or, I could partcipate in De-PlotWriMo - December Plot Writing Month and refine the plot arc of my first draft. Come March, there's NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) in which folks pledge to log 50 hours of editing. And, if I just can't wait until November to take another book writing challenge, I could join JulNoWriMo (July Novel Writing Month).

Fiction isn't the only genre with a NaNoWriMo type event. Want to write a screenplay? There's Script Frenzy. A picture book? National Picture Book Writing Week. The poets have RePoWriMo (National Refrigerator Poetry Writing Month) in April and NEPMo (National Epic Poetry Month) in May. And the songwriters have FAWM (February Album Writing Month) in which they attempt to write fourteen original songs in twenty-eight days.

These challenges create a structure and a supportive environment in which to set aside the inner critic and get the work done. Sure, I can slog it out at home alone in front of the computer with the faithful yellow labrador beside me, but it's more fun to be in a group of people who are all up against the same challenge. We gather on-line and in person. We toss around ideas. We grouse. We celebrate small victories. We go a little nuts.

No matter your preference, there's a writing challenge for you. I've only mentioned a few. For a complete list, go here and scroll down to "NaNoWriMo-style Events On The Horizon." Which challenge will you take?

NaNoWriMo Yet Again!!!

2010-10-31T15:19:00.000-07:00

November is "National Novel Writing Month" and NaNoWriMo provides the perfect structure with which to banish the inner critic and get a whole bunch of words on the page in a short period of time. 50,000 words in 30 days to be precise.

If you've already signed up, drafted your outline, completed your character sketches, and filled your cupboards with easy-to-prepare foodstuffs, way to go! You're light years ahead of me. If, on the other hand, you haven't given NaNoWriMo a thought until this very moment, never fear. The first year I did NaNoWriMo, in 2004, I didn't hear about it until November 6th and still managed to pound out 50,000 words by midnight on the 30th of November. It can be done!

To find out what the fuss is about, head over to NaNoWriMo.org. Visit "What is Nano?" for a full explanation of the contest. Then go to the search box and type willwrite4chocolate. That's me. Friend me and I'll friend you back. That's what NaNo is about. We're all in this together.

Try, try again.

2010-10-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

“The road to Wisdom? Well, it's plain. And simple to express. Err and err, and err, again but less and less, and less." - Piet Hein

Last month, in preparation for our trip to Montréal, I polished my rusty high school and college French. I drove the streets of Columbus listening to French speakers inflect perfect sentences and attempted to repeat them. She said, "Bonjour." I said, "Bunnjerrr" with my loose, midwestern lips. While I especially hope to be understood when I want to know "Ou sont les toilettes?" I may never sound like a native speaker. I'm doing my best. I'm making the attempt.

Writing is like that too. The mind is vivid. The images are crisp and clear; the ideas coherent and logical. And then we take out the paper and the pen and it all goes to hell. My attempts may never capture the essence of my thoughts. With practice, however, I might come close. I must make the attempt.

The word "essay" comes from the French essai which means attempt or trial. That's what we do every time we put pen to page. We attempt to convey what's in our minds. We try to capture the character we've imagined. Whether it's the exquisite nutiness of a savory crepe or the way sound reverberates in La basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal, we can only attempt to get it right. What else is there to do but practice? In that way, we continue the attempt.

Clackety Clack Clack Clack

2010-09-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

“What I don’t write is as important as what I write.” – Jamaica Kincaid

The first chapter of the memoir I’ve been working on for several years has never pleased me. I set out to revise it, but none of the usual techniques worked. Several people read it and made suggestions which I tried to implement to no avail. I reread the chapter and realized I was still too close to it. I let it sit awhile, but when I picked it up again, it still felt too close. I tried reading it aloud. Still too close. Then I remembered a technique I learned in journalism school in the early 1980's.

In Professor Norman Dohn’s news reporting class, if a story wouldn’t cooperate, he told us to “run it back through the typewriter.” What he meant was, retype it from the beginning. In those days you actually used a typewriter. Since I haven't owned such a machine in more than a decade, I decided retyping it on my laptop would have to do. I printed the first chapter, set up my typing stand, opened a blank document and began retyping the chapter as if it were someone else’s work.

As I typed, Professor Dohn’s advice paid off. If a sentence didn't flow from the one before it, my fingers became unwilling to type it. But here’s the real magic. My fingers wanted to type something else – something better. Of course I could have forced myself to retype the annoying sentence, but I didn't. I let my fingers move as they wished. Also, if a paragraph or sentence seemed out of place, as I typed, I made a note to move it. As I continued typing, the correct place for this bit of text became apparent. In retyping, my fingers found vivid images, lively dialogue, and improved structure. I was revising, just not in the usual way. The chapter still needs work, but I'm making progress.

Do you use any uncommon revision techniques? I'd love to hear what's working for you.

One Space or Two?

2010-08-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

There's a discussion over at the ywriter forums about whether to use one period or two after a sentence.

IMHO, one space is correct for manuscripts. The two spaces came from a previous era when we used typewriters and dot matrix printers and nonproportional fonts and two spaces after a period made the documents much easier to read. Nowadays proportional fonts will adjust the space after the period anyway, making it unnecessary to use two spaces. While wikipedia isn't the definitive authority, it does explain it well here.

And here's the MLA ruling on the issue - one space. http://www.mla.org/style_faq3

Having said that, there is still some controversy over the issue. A recent poll by literary agent Nathan Bransford found only a slight majority of his readers in the one space camp:

In a minority view, the APA publication manual blog wants two spaces, but it recognizes that:

. . .the usual convention for published works remains one space after each period, and indeed the decision regarding whether to include one space or two rests, in the end, with the publication designer. . . .

So, I'm in the one space camp.

If you've put two spaces in, it's easy to do a universal find and replace. Just search for ".[space][space]" and replace it with ".[space]" It might take a little while, however for those of you (like myself) who learned to automatically hit the space bar twice after a period, to retrain yourselves to only hit it once. It did me anyway.

Do You Read Writing Blogs?

2010-08-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard." - Daphne Du Maurier

In 2006, about the time I began writing this blog, I started reading the blogs of other writers. There weren't many. Today, due in part to the increased responsbility for authors to promote their work, thousands of writing blogs exist. You could spend every moment just reading about writing and doing that reading only on the internet.

My current favorites include Nathan Bransford, Rachel Gardner, Query Tracker, and Guide to Literary Agents Editor's Blog. These blogs focus on literary agents and the publishing industry. For a wider variety, see this list published by the directory of universities and colleges of the 2010 Top 100 Writing Blogs.

The bottom line is that we should all spend much more time working on our projects than reading these blogs. The bloggers, if they're worth their salt, would agree. Still, our desire to read about writing persists.

Do you read writing blogs? If so, which ones do you find helpful?

Summer!

2010-07-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

"Three rules for literary success: 1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more. 4. Write a lot more." - Robert Silverberg

What if, each September, you still had to write that essay about what you did on your summer vacation? Not taking a vacation? How about an essay on how you spent your summer months? What would you want your essay to include? I'd want mine filled with reading, writing, and revision.

On my summer vacation I'm bringing two projects: Imperfect Endings, a memoir I want to map to see how the author structured the story, and my spiral notebook for writing practice about new ideas on my own memoir. Whether on vacation or at home, I find it helpful to choose specific tasks. If I have a fuzzy intention to "get some writing done," chances are I won't. And, since I'll want to tour and lounge and do other vacationish things besides reading, writing and revision, I'm limiting what I take.

What about you? It's nearly July. How are you going to spend the rest of the summer? If you like, please post a comment below.

Taking a Class; Not Taking a Class

2010-06-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

“Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you.” - Kent Nerburn

Write Now Newsletter offers classes, writing groups and other opportunities to learn from and commune with writers. But when is it time to take a class and when is it time to stay home and write? When do we need to hear something new or to hear someone remind us of things we had forgotten? When do we need silence, long walks with the dog, and each of our own voices telling us where to push forward and when to pull back? I ask myself these questions often.

The rhythm of my class taking and time spent with other writers varies. I've enjoyed attending classes with many instructors. It's a pleasure to meet new writers and share time with a professional who's living the life I hope to live. At other times I don't need yet another voice telling me how to write or giving me tips on how to get the writing done. It's a balance. I look inside and see. Is it time to be inspired by someone else or do I need to inspire myself?

Right now I'm taking two on-line classes. I download the self-paced lessons and read them. I post questions on-line for others to answer. And, I do the work. When I’m finished, I go back on-line and let everyone know how I’m doing. Because these courses require actual work on the manuscript, it feels like I’m splitting the difference.

How do you balance taking classes with the pen to paper or fingers to keyboard work of putting words on the page? If you'd like, please leave a comment below.

Who's on the Cutting Edge?

2010-05-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

"When screen technology progresses sufficiently, the idea of using paper will become a total anachronism. Paper won’t record and store your notes or annotations; screens will." - Mike Shatzkin from his April 27, 2010 blog post "What I Would Have Said in London, Part 2"

Who's got a kindle? A Nook? A Sony e-reader? A Kobo? Oh, and there's that new thing from Apple everyone's tweeting about. The one with the unfortunate name. Just thought I'd check and see who's on the cutting edge.

Ed got a Nook for his birthday. The other night when he and I headed out for our hot date to a coffeehouse, I packed a few books and my novel manuscript into my backpack and hauled it to the car. When Ed climbed in, he wasn't carrying anything. "No book?" I asked. He said nothing. With a sly grin, he slowly opened his jacket to reveal his Nook tucked in the inside pocket.

When we went to a bed and breakfast a few weeks ago, I piled books and the novel manuscript into my book bag and lugged it to the car with my suitcase. Ed needed only a suitcase. No book bag. At breakfast, Ed took his Nook. He'd been reading a book (on his Nook) but decided he wanted to read a paper. He got up and looked around, but the owner explained that they didn't get the weekly paper. Ed sat back down, picked up his Nook and pushed a few buttons. "There," he said. In less than 30 seconds and for 99 cents he was reading the Wall Street Journal. The owner had to see it. Ed handed him the little machine and pointed out how the screen looks just like the newspaper or the book he's reading. The screen isn't backlit so, while you can't read in the dark without a book light, it's easier on the eyes than a computer. It keeps your place in the book and has a search function in case you want to go back and find something you missed.

I don't own one of these devices -- yet. I still read the old fashioned way. Books. You remember. The smell of paper. The feel of a hardcover in your hand. The sound of pages turning. Some people say they're on the way out. Relics. Antiques. A fad like 8-track tapes or VHS. I'm not quite ready to give it over to the new generation -- yet. Maybe next week.

Raise a hand if you've joined the e-reader clan. How's it working for you? And for the rest of us, what do you think? Will you be joining the e-reader generation anytime soon?

April Means Script Frenzy!!!

2010-04-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

"I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going." - Michael Lewis

As any of you who've read my newsletter essays for long know, I'm a big fan of National Novel Writing Month. But did you know there's a corollary for playwrights, screenwriters, and graphic novelists? It's called ScriptFrenzy and, like NaNoWriMo, it's a month-long slog to the finish. In this free, website supported contest, crazy writers from all over the world attempt the nearly impossible. They have 30 days to write 100 scripted pages of a screenplay, stage play, TV show, short film, or graphic novel. If you're worried about the wacky formatting required of the form, never fear, software can be found here! There are also instructions in formatting and a forum of other writers who can help when you get stuck.

While I'm still deep in the revision of last year's NaNo novel and so won't be participating, I'll be cheering on the Scripters. If you plan to give Script Frenzy a try, let me know by a leaving a comment below.

Holly Lisle Courses Now Open!

2010-03-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

I don't write much about the two courses I'm taking from novelist Holly Lisle because, until today, they were closed. But now THEY'RE OPEN!!!

Holly's course "How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers" is nothing if not comprehensive. It starts by examining our limiting beliefs as writers and continues through writing a book and on to the marketing phases. This includes how to generate ideas, how to narrow those ideas to the ones that are most marketable, how to outline a book, how to write a book, how to revise a book (it includes a very streamlined version of her other course "How to Revise Your Novel"), and includes how to market a book. At present there are 26 chapters and you can either sign up to receive the lessons weekly or every other week. If you want more information, here's my affiliate link for How To Think Sideways.

Additionally, "How To Revise Your Novel" is opening too. Admission is limited to those people who have a completed first draft of a novel and the class usually fills quickly. It's only offered a few times a year. It runs twenty-one weeks (five months). Although, I warn you, it is taking me much longer to do this thorough of a revision. And that's okay. Many others are moving slowly through it with me. This class is so much more in depth than any work I've done so far, even in MFA school. Craft is the focus, but that's what I needed. If you're interested in getting more information about this course, here's my affiliate link for How to Revise Your Novel.

Please note that these courses assume a lot of responsibility on the part of the student. You are left to do the work on your own. It's like being a "real" writer!!! You get the lessons that she's written based on her many years of novel writing and you get the forums. She has published at least 30 novels - mostly fantasy and romance. While you get minimal direct attention from Holly herself, you get attention from the moderators on the forums who are students Holly has chosen to assist her. And you get the wisdom of all the other writers who are doing the course at the same time. Every question I've had has been answered on the forums. It's sort of like MFA school without the cost and with most folks writing genre novels. There's interesting discussions on and off-topic and helpful feedback on your work and on the lessons. It has been exactly what I needed to continue what I started at Goddard.

If you decide to take either course, I'll see you in the forums.

Regardless, continued good luck with your writing!

When All Else Fails

2010-03-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

"Well, I don't know exactly how it's done. I let it alone a good deal." - Saul Bellow

It happened again this month. I spent two days gathering, organizing, html-ing, and posting events to the website. I updated the mailing list to prune all the spammers and bouncers and that guy named John who keeps signing up six or seven times a month each time using a different fake email address. I'd even finished crafting this month's "Paranoid Ex-Lawyer's Release." This left only one thing to do. The essay. The fun part, right? You'd think so. But this is usually when Miss Muse decides to go on vacation. This month was no different.

So, following Jack London's writing advice, I pulled out my club and prepared to beat Inspiration into submission. I did several rounds of writing practice. I surfed the internet for ideas. I skimmed several books. I whined to my dog and, when he didn't respond, I whined to my husband. And, Ta-Da! I got, you guessed it. Nothing! Zippo. Nada. Zilch. Not so much as a dribble from the rusty faucet of creativity.

It was late and I had no choice. There was nothing left to do but call in the cavalry, the cannons, the stealth fighters. I summoned the only resource that works when all else fails. I went to bed.

Any mother of a three-year-old knows the syndrome. Little Elphaba sits quietly before her Dr. Hammer workbench enthusiastically pounding nails into a board. Mommy thinks, "I'll just give Galinda a call while she's busy." She dials. The phone rings. Before Galinda can answer, tiny Elphaba is at Mommy's side tugging at her capris. "Mommy! Mommy! Come play with me." Fortunately, Her Majesty the Muse is also a three-year-old. If I turn my back on her, she's sure to come.

I don't understand this phenomenon. I'm sure there's some scientific explanation, but in those moments before sleep and in those moments before waking, magical things happen. They also happen on slow walks with the dog and sometimes in the shower, often, unfortunately, when I don't have a pen. But they do happen. I only need to engage the part of my mind that wants so badly to come up with an answer in some other, non-writing activity. I'm reminded of something Natalie Goldberg said often. "Let the world come home to you."

Do you let your writing alone? What you do when all else fails? If you'd like, please leave a comment below.

Do you (book) journal?

2010-02-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talk about writing or themselves. - Lillian Hellman

When you're working on a book, do you keep a journal of your progress? On one of the forums I follow, the topic of book journals decidedly divided the audience. I'm in the pro-journal camp. I keep a separate journal for each book. (Currently three, or is it four?) Each journal consists of loose blank paper kept in a two-pocket folder. I hand number the pages and write what I did each day. When the journal gets too big for the two-pocket folder, the older portion goes into a three-ring binder.

The entires are concise. For the memoir, which has evolved over six years, I record which version I'm working from and what changes I've made to that draft. On the novel, I'm using worksheets and index cards as I revise so I write down how many worksheets I've done that day or what page I'm on or how many index cards I've done. Whatever the project, when I'm stuck, I do timed writing practice or mind-mapping on the issue. I usually do that in a separate place and often on my computer. In the journal for that day I write, "Mind-mapped sub-plot about Sarah's parents moving to WA. See file '2010-01-31 Sarah's Parents'" to reference the computer file.

It doesn't take much time and it feels good to be able to look in the journal and know exactly where I am. I'm kind of OCD that way. A friend of mine does her book journal using a database program and tags each entry so she can easily search them. I still like the feel of real paper and haven't been able to give that up yet.

The hazard, of course, is that I will spend more time writing about writing than actually writing. That's why I keep my entries short. What do you think? Who keeps a journal? Who doesn't?

O-H-I-O

2010-01-04T17:12:00.000-08:00

“There’s two things that you don’t listen to: flattery, which can’t help you, and abuse, which can’t hurt you. You have to look at the facts.” - Jim Tressel

Happy 2010! We write hard. We play hard. No essay this month. To learn why, read “The Paranoid Ex-Lawyer’s Release” which you can find at http://www.nitasweeney.com/newsletter/the-fine-print/.

For your convenience, here’s what it says:

PARANOID EX-LAWYER’S RELEASE: This month there was the matter of that little football game in Pasadena. In those moments of Buckeye insanity immediately following the Ohio State/Iowa game, my sister, Amy, and I decided we must go to the Rose Bowl. (Mid-December she whined that I was dragging her there, but now she’s thanking me.) A few weeks after Iowa, my brother scored tickets too. We’re all three Ohio State alums. December became a haze of washing Buckeye garb, buying Buckeye paraphernalia, and figuring out which suitcase was large enough to carry all the Buckeye garb and paraphernalia. On December 30th, we hauled that luggage to our 15th floor hotel room and looked out upon a spectacular view of the city. Then, I glanced down to the parking area. TBDBITL and the OSU cheerleaders were climbing out of their white buses. We were staying in the same hotel!

No matter where we went in LA (and we did a bit of driving on those wacky freeways), if my sister yelled “O-H!” (which she is prone to do at random intervals) someone responded, “I-O!” For a few days LA glowed scarlet and gray. Santa Monica Pier? Scarlet and gray. Universal City? Scarlet and gray. Disneyland? Scarlet and gray. Rose Parade? Scarlet and gray. The game? Well. Having been to both the USC and Iowa games, I didn’t believe we’d won until the clock read 0:59. But our football team turned the Rose Bowl scarlet and gray too! GO BUCKS!

Revision Roundup

2009-12-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

"Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea." - Iris Murdoch

Congrats to everyone who attempted National Novel Writing Month! Whether you wrote 50,000 words or not, you're a winner in my book. I finished with 90,690 words, the second draft of a novel written from scratch without looking at the original work at all. Considering how quickly it was written, this draft may be as bad or worse than the first, but I stumbled upon few good ideas along the way and saw some problems I'll be able to catch the next time through.

In the spirit of the edits that loom ahead, I've rounded up a few blog posts on revision that might help us all. Special thanks to Debbie Ridpath Ohi for her Twitter inkyelbows links to most of these.

Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision: From First Draft to Last in One Cycle

Brian Yansky reminds us not to miss the opportunities when you're editing. Don't get lazy. Make each scene important

Editing tips from Lee Masterson

Nine Tips To Productive Revision from Rory Marinich on Lifehack

Sheila Kelly shares her editing process

An extract from The Writing Book by Kate Grenville tells us not to be in a hurry when we edit

Self-editing tips from Lori Handeland

What's your editing process? If you like, leave a comment below.

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/writenownetwork

Deadlines

2009-11-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

Over the summer, I compiled a "To Do" list of 76 items to revise on the memoir I've been writing for the past few years. I'd hired a freelance editor to suggest changes and a friend read it and offered feedback. I began with the easy ones, slogging through slower than a snail. Late September, 70 items remained. I really wanted to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which begins November 1st each year. I did not, however, want to set the memoir aside. So I gave myself a deadline. Only if I finished the memoir edits by midnight October 31st would I allow myself to plunge into a NaNoWriMo project.

At the beginning of October, I thought I had all the time in the world. Thirty-one full days. The weeks passed. My progress slowed. Each time I fixed one problem, several more appeared. In the last week of October, I still had 37 items on my list. I wouldn't make it. When I complained to my husband, he said, "It's not November yet." I reminded myself of my deadline and trudged ahead.

I had hoped to get done a few days before November 1st in order to plan a strategy for NaNoWriMo, but October 29th, then October 30th came and went. Saturday, October 31st, I was down to four items. One of them involved moving an entire chapter and another required me to thread a theme through the whole book. I didn't see how it was possible, but I had my deadline. I told myself, "Just start and see what happens." At 6:35PM on Saturday night, I crossed "Renumber Chapters," the last item, off the list. HURRAH! That gave me a few hours (thank you time change!) to plan for NaNoWriMo.

Do you set deadlines? How do they work for you? Leave a comment below if you like.

Nita Sweeney
(c)Nita Sweeney, 2009, all rights reserved

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It's October! Time to Plan for NaNoWriMo

2009-10-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

The poet William Stafford wrote:

I believe that the so-called 'writing block' is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance ... one should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing. It's easy to write. You just shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing ... I can imagine a person beginning to feel he's not able to write up to that standard he imagines the world has set for him. But to me that's surrealistic. The only standard I can rationally have is the standard I'm meeting right now ... You should be more willing to forgive yourself. It doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.

One fun way to lower your standards is by participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org). Faced with the daunting task of writing 50,000 words in thirty days, you won't have time to fret about quality. You may write a great novel in the process, but, you won't have time worry about it. And, if Stafford's ideas hold true, you won't have time for writer's block.

Although the NaNoWriMo rules don't permit you to begin the actual writing until 12:01AM of November 1st, you are allowed to plan ahead. You've got the entire month of October to outline, plot, develop characters, and build worlds. When November first rolls around, you'll be ready.

Do you plan to participate in National Novel Writing Month? How will you prepare? If you like, leave a comment and let me know.

The Pen is Your Friend

2009-09-01T03:36:00.000-07:00

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." - Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)

People often ask whether I write by hand or on the computer. I do both. But there was a time when ninety-five percent of what I wrote was by hand. Page after page in a spiral notebook with either a ball point or rollerball pen. I can go for an hour straight without stopping. In my class, when I explain this, invariably someone will say, "That's impossible. My hand is killing me after one round of ten minutes."

In Wild Mind and Writing Down the Bones, best-selling author Natalie Goldberg lists several rules of writing practice: "Keep your hand moving. Don't cross out. Don't think. Go for the jugular. You're free to write the worst junk in America." But there's one rule she didn't mention. The pen is your friend. It is not a dagger. You don't need to grip it as if you were trying to stab someone. And you're not clinging to a life raft even though it might feel that way emotionally.

The idea is to write continuously. It's not a race. Most people find it difficult to keep up with their thoughts, but you don't have to grip the pen tightly to keep it from flying across the room. Slow down. Let the words roll off. Relax your hand and shoulders. Also, try different types of pens. Sometimes the barrel of the pen is too fat or too thin. Switch and see what happens. But for goodness sakes, let the pen go. Try holding it so loosely that it does fly across the room. Calmly pick it up. Sit back down and begin again. Don't worry if you can't read your handwriting.

These techniques work at the keyboard too. If you can sit up relatively straight and relax your neck and shoulders, your fingers can move more quickly. Position your keyboard so that your elbows hang comfortably at your sides with your wrists slightly lower than your elbows so that your wrists do not need to bend. Keeping your shoulders back and your back straight adds to the relaxation. It's like sitting meditation. Posture is important. Your body wants to keep working for you for a very long time. Do what you can to help it along.

The other secret about pain is that sometimes it is simply resistance. The mind creates pain in the body because it is afraid. This type of pain provides a way for the body to work things out at a muscular level. In meditation practice a teacher will ask you to sit through the pain, to observe it with awareness and equanimity. When you get up from the cushion, the pain goes away. This is true in writing as well. Only be alarmed if the pain continues beyond your writing session.

The ex-lawyer in me requires that I tell you I'm not a doctor and that this little essay is not intended as medical advice. I learned these tricks by trial and error. I want you to know that you can do writing practice forever. You can do it under all circumstances. You can do it for an hour. You can build up muscles in your arms and shoulders and can continue even when you are certain you can't.. You can write like a samurai. And you can be kind to you body in the process.

Do you experience pain when you write? If so, how do you deal with it? If you like, leave a comment and let me know.

Lose That Dead Weight

2009-08-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

No. Not the love handles. Lose the extra flab in your manuscript!

Rachel Gardner has an excellent post on the topic: "Tighten Up Your Manuscript."

Here’s a checklist of things to consider cutting:

→ Adverbs, especially those with “ly” endings. Ask yourself if they’re necessary.
→ Adjectives. Often people use two or three when one or none is better.
→ Gerunds. Words that end in “ing.”
→ Passive voice: Over-use of words like “was,” "were" and "that" indicate your writing may be too passive. Reconstruct in active voice.
→ Passages that are overly descriptive.
→ Passages that describe characters' thoughts and feelings in too much detail (i.e. long sections of narrative or interior monologue).
→ Passages that tell the reader what they already know.
→ Unnecessary backstory.

And there's more.

Here’s a list of words to watch for. Carefully consider their necessity and effectiveness:

about, actually, almost, almost, like, appears, approximately, basically, close to, even, eventually, exactly, finally, just, just then, kind of, nearly, practically, really, seems, simply, somehow, somewhat, sort of, suddenly, truly, utterly, were.

What she said.

One True Sentence

2009-08-02T07:01:00.001-07:00

I've been revising the memoir about my father. Some days go better than others. On a not so good day last week, a friend reminded me of this Hemingway bit from A Moveable Feast:

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then, because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone else say.

I might not be in Paris, but I can still look across the suburban lawns of Upper Arlington and think, "Do not worry. Just write one true sentence."

You too can look out from wherever you write and think the same. If you like, leave a comment below and let me know where you're working and how you're doing.

Nose To The Ground

2009-07-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

In Women Who Run With The Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes:

Wolves never look more funny than when they have lost the scent and scrabble to find it again: they hop in the air; they run in circles, they plow up the ground with their noses; they scratch the ground, then run ahead, then back, then stand stock-still. They look as if they have lost their wits. But what they are really doing is picking up all the clues they can find. They're biting them down out of the air, they're filling up their lungs with the smells at ground level and at shoulder level, they are tasting the air to see who has passed through it recently, their ears are rotating like satellite dishes, picking up transmissions from afar. Once they have all these clues in place, they know what to do next.

Writers also lose the scent from time to time. We stare out windows and crane our heads to listen to distant winds. We grab random books off library shelves and sniff the pages for clues. We start a scene only to stop halfway then start a second and a third. We look a bit balmy.

No worries. Stay in the work even if all you do is rub your snout against the pages. Continue collecting data and do not give up hope. Estes explains, "As soon as she processes all the information from the clues she's gathered, she'll begin moving in an intentional manner again." Like the wolf, you will find your way.

Do you ever lose the scent? If so, what do you do?

Hi Ho. Hi Ho. It's Off to School I Go!

2009-05-29T05:33:00.000-07:00

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain

I'm headed for Marydale, Kentucky to the 10-day Writer's Retreat Workshop. It's never too late to learn more about writing. I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I'd love to hear how you'll be spending your time. What will you do with the next 30 days of your writing life?

To See Again

2009-05-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter." - James Michener

Re-vision. To see again. I’m revising the 72,000 word first draft of my novel. The biggest obstacle is self-honesty. To revise, I have to find that place where I can be brutally honest with myself about what’s on the page and whether it works. It’s not as if I consciously lie to myself, but I cannot always see my own work clearly.

One way to gain distance is to physically put my manuscript in the hands of another writer, someone I trust. Preferably someone who’s also writing since I like to read something of hers while she’s reading mine. I hand this friend a list of questions along with the manuscript. At this stage I’m especially interested in the main character. Are her actions and words consistent? Are they plausible? Does she change by the end of the book? Is this change believable?

I also ask the friend to mark those places where she wanted to skim or stop reading altogether. I don't expect her to fix the errors. I just want to know where she popped out of the story. And, I’m not interested in grammar and punctuation, but rather getting the story straight and creating characters. It’s a trap to begin tweaking individual sentences when the big picture isn't right.

If such a friend isn’t handy, I must find the distance within myself. I may have to step away from the manuscript for a bit or imagine that it’s my friend’s work. Sol Stein, in Stein On Writing, suggests rewriting the title page and inserting someone else’s name as the author. We’re less likely to be misguided about someone else’s work. I have to do whatever it takes to find the self-honesty necessary to see the words clearly on the page.

I'd love to hear what you do to gain the necessary distance to revise.

Reality Check

2009-04-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it. I'm a daydreamer. Some days, when I don't feel like writing, I imagine what it would be like to have a book hit the New York Times best-seller list. This is rarely productive. A blog post I read today effectively snapped me out of the dream.

In a full disclosure attempt to dispel the illusions surrounding mass market bestsellers, New York Times best-selling author Lynn Viehl has posted the first royalty statement for her book Twilight Fall on the blog GenReality with an explanation of the numbers and comments about what made her book a best-seller.

Take away point? While hitting the best-seller list is an awesome feat (Congrats Lynn), it's not like winning the lottery.

Of having a best-selling book, Viehl writes, "I’ll tell you exactly why [the book] got there: my readers put it there."

Now that's reality!

Oh Those Social Agents

2009-04-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

You on Facebook yet? Do you Tweet? How about LinkedIn? MySpace? There are many good reasons for authors to have a presence on social networking sites. Some literary agents also Tweet and spend time on Facebook, and there's been a lot of kvetching around the 'net about that issue. I'm sidestepping that landmine. I think it's more important for writers to remember that befriending an agent on a social networking site is very different from being on-line friends with the folks you go out with on Friday nights. As a writer, it benefits you to make a multitude of friends and keep them up-to-date on your latest writing projects. Social networking sites are a great way to do that. But it behooves us to remember who's watching those sites before we post photos of last weekend's debacle.

Agents feel the same way. They are careful who they choose to friend on Facebook and other sites. Twitter is a little different because agents can choose who to follow while anyone can follow them. But don't be surprised if an agent ignores your request to friend them on MySpace or Facebook. And, in general, agents don't want to be queried on these sites. Follow the submission guidelines on the agent's website instead.

Chuck Sambuchino covers this nicely in a post at the Guide to Literary Agents Blog.

I'm on most of the social networking sites. I tend to keep my Facebook page for friends, family and a few others, but I'm happy to be followed on Twitter. I most often Tweet about procrastination, walking my dog, and procrastinating by walking my dog. I don't Tweet about weekend debacles. Feel free to follow me if you wish.

Blurry

2009-03-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

"Books are never finished, they are merely abandoned." - Oscar Wilde

When the writing is slow, I fear I’ve forgotten everything I know about how to write a book. Everything I learned in all my years with best-selling author Natalie Goldberg. Everything I learned in MFA school. Everything I have read in writing books. Everything I’ve gleaned from reading the books that I love. Everything. This might be a good thing. Perhaps I have to start from ground zero with each book and learn all over again how to write. Each book has its own rules.

A friend reminded me that what I know has been absorbed so deeply, I might not remember it. It’s in my bones. I hope she’s right. Currently it feels like I’m taking Polaroid photographs. I want a refined end product, but I want it now. I find it frustrating to wait while the image develops. Each time I go through the work, the characters become clearer, the images brighter. Only in the end will the picture be clear.

With writing, unlike Polaroids, there’s work to be done beyond swinging the thing back and forth or blowing on it hoping it will dry faster. The writer needs to stay in the book. Sometimes this means reading sections and moving things around. Since I’m still working at the macro level, I often find myself rearranging scenes and writing notes. Sometimes it means writing placeholders for scenes that need to be written or simply daydreaming about the next place my main character needs to go in order for the story to move along. The micro-edit will come later. All the while, the details of my characters become more focused.

Writing is not for the faint of heart. When I hear my heart pounding, I worry that it’s a heart attack. But writing is still the thing I love best. The picture will grow sharp if I’m willing to do the work.

Creating Author Websites

2009-03-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

If you're putting together a website for your books, check this out. Here's a great summary of do's and dont's just in from Book Binge from the reader's perspective.

More Query Advice

2009-03-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

More advice on queries found here:

http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2009/03/selling-yourself.html

Show, don't tell. Most of the time.

2009-03-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

Good post over on Query Tracker blog about "show, don't tell."

http://querytracker.blogspot.com/2009/03/showing-vs-telling.html

I especially appreciated the part about when to tell. Telling has its place.

#queryfail Day on Twitter

2009-03-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

Hey Tweeps, in response to a suggestion by literary agent Colleen Lindsay, a number of agents and editors are tweeting their memories of the worst queries they've ever received kicking off Query Fail Day, the first of what will likely become a regular Twitter phenomenon.

Go to: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23queryfail.

My favorite example so far comes from ReneeAtShens:

"P.S. I collect stamps. Should you have any stamp...that is destined for the trash can, [please] stuff them in the enclosed SASE" #queryfail

Uh huh.

Follow-up to QueryFail:

Amazing amount of brouhaha about queryfail. IMHO, the purpose was not to mock writers, but to teach us what not to do in writing a query. For a nice collection of links to articles about how to write great queries and avoid #queryfail, check out this Chico Writer's Group blog post http://ejourn.net/cwg/2009/03/06/how-not-to-be-targeted-by-the-evil-queryfail/.

Ask the Psychologist

2009-03-04T07:25:00.000-08:00

QueryTracker.net blog has been revamped, rebooted, relaunched with several guest bloggers including Columbus author, psychologist Dr. Carolyn Kaufman of Archetype Writing: Psychology for Fiction Writers fame.

Dr. Kaufman's bio explains:

Visitors will find not only articles about psychology tailored to their needs, but they can ask Dr. K their writing/psychology questions. She is often quoted by the media as an expert resource.

Whether you need to know what happens in a therapy session (um, are there really any writers out there who haven't yet had therapy?), you want to make your protagonist a psychologist and need the inside scoop, or you'd like to know your villain's official diagnosis, Dr. K will now take your questions.

Quick! The Rabbit's Napping

2009-03-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." - T.S. Eliot

Taped to the edge of my computer screen is a yellowing newspaper horoscope from September 25, 2003:

Please remember that you are not competing in a sprint. You are running a marathon. Be sure to pace yourself and not be overly concerned about the fast starters who have sped ahead. Clear your beautiful mind of envy and self-doubt as well as the pushy expectations of people who don't know the intricacies of what you are doing. Use your fine mind to figure out how to be motivated by pleasure, not pressure.

Some days I still beat myself about the head and shoulders with the accomplishments of others. Don’t get me wrong. I love to see the people I know succeed. They show me what is possible. But sometimes I forget it’s not a race.

Of meditation practice, Shinzen Young said, "It's not whether you meditate every day, but will you still be meditating when I see you ten years from now?" Natalie Goldberg asks, “Who among you will still be writing in a decade?” I want to be the one who still picks up the pen. I’ve watched some of those who sprinted ahead burn out. Some aren’t writing at all while others have become disillusioned. It's the old tortoise and the hare business. To finish the memoir, I put one word after another, day after day, year after year. To finish this novel, I’ll need to do the same. Meanwhile I send query letters and submit the memoir to contests. Bit by bit it adds up to a writing life.

So let’s notice the scenery as we trudge along. If we miss our lives, we’ll have nothing to write about.

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Google Settlement

2009-03-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

Has Google violated your copyright? If you've published a book in the past several years, Google has probably published it online thereby stepping on your copyright toes.

Participate in the proposed settlement at this link:
http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/r/home

Enter the ISBN of each book and the search engine will find it and fill in the information.

Planner Eating Dog Needs Name

2009-03-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

Columnist and certified laughter leader Pat Snyder needs your help naming the dog that will appear prominently in her upcoming book, The Dog Ate My Planner: Tales and Tips from an Overbooked Life. She's sponsoring a contest to tag the beast. Here are the details:

This mischievous guy will romp through the pages of my soon-to-be-released book, "The Dog Ate My Planner: Tales and Tips from an Overbooked Life." Like the other dogs in our lives that disrupt our plans, his belly's full of planner pages, but he's hungry for one more thing: A Name. Contact Pat with your choice, along with your name, address, phone number and why you chose the name, by March 31. The lucky winner will receive a caricature drawn by book illustrator Michael H. Whiting of the winner's own dog (or cat or other favorite pet), which will be presented at a local book-signing.

Go to her website http://www.patsnyderonline.com/ to see the dog's caricature and enter to name that dog.

Whether You've Got Grandkids or Not, Grand Magazine Wants You!

2009-02-27T07:09:00.000-08:00

Terry Spaeth, Midwest Regional Editor of Grand Magazine sent this call for submissions:

Grand Magazine, an online ezine with a primary demographic of people that are grandparents, is soliciting articles for their upcoming issues. There are no strict submission guidelines. We are looking for articles about people or places that would strike a chord with our readers. Standard features on the site include: long-distance grandparenting, kinship care and grandparents' rights, children's health and development, intergenerational travel and reunions, family money, fun and games to do with your grandchildren, food and family gatherings, fashion, inspirations, grandchildren's photographs and funny sayings. For a free look at the magazine go to: http://www.nxtbook.com/splash/grand2/ or go to www.grandmagazine.com. For more information or to submit an article, please contact the Midwest Regional Editor, Terry Spaeth at tspaeth@columbus.rr.com or 614-917-7435.

Be sure to tell them Nita sent you.

Literary Agent Directories

2009-02-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a writer in possession of an unpublished manuscript, must be in want of an agent.” - Victoria Strauss

I’ve gotten a few questions about directories of literary agents. Check out Victoria Strauss’ blog post on the topic. She’s done an excellent job of detailing the myriad resources.

Best of luck. Persistence is key.

One Thing

2009-01-02T10:07:00.000-08:00

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." ~ Cicero [106 B.C. to 43 B.C.]

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions since I rarely keep them. Instead, I challenge myself to do one thing differently with my writing every new year. Some of these decisions have been ambitious. In 1995, I began sending queries to magazines and my first feature article was published in Dog World. In 1996, I began studying with best-selling author Natalie Goldberg. In 2000, I began teaching. In 2003, Write Now Newsletter was born. In 2006, I went to graduate school to study writing. In 2008, I completed a book manuscript and began sending it to agents.

In other years, my New Year's decision has been more simple. I've chosen to add more time to my writing schedule or adopted a new attitude about my writing. This year I'm joining a group of other Goddard College M.F.A. graduates to study writing informally on-line.

What will you do with the new year? Will you surf over to the recently updated on-going writing groups, and choose one to attend? Will you finish that short story you started in 2004? Or will you move your entire family across the country to study writing?

Whatever you choose, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to post a response by clicking on the word "comments" at the bottom of the article.

Happy 2009 everyone, and happy writing.

(c)Nita Sweeney, 2009, all rights reserved

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Re-Vision

2008-12-03T15:03:00.000-08:00

“I believe more in the scissors than I do
in the pencil.” - Truman Capote

National Novel Writing Month 2008 (NaNoWriMo) ended November 30 leaving me with 66,103 words of a novel which I now must expand and revise. It seems there are as many methods of revision as there are novelists. Some writers make only a single pass through, but a very thorough one. Others revise draft after draft. How do you handle it?

For my first NaNoWriMo in 2004, I simply did writing practice in response to prompts which I had created. My only parameters were that the topic had to relate to golf or my father. I wound up with 50,000 words worth of little essays. No plot. No consistency. I spent the next four years completing it.

I began the revision process by simply printing out all the pieces. I double spaced them, 3-hole punched them, and put them in a three-ring binder in chronological order. Unfortunately this chronology spanned my entire life and reached back into my father’s as well. I took this binder to a coffeehouse and spent three days reading it all the way through. I tried to figure out which pieces were workable the way they were (very few), which bits needed to be chucked (many) and which parts might work with revision (some).

Next, I stepped waaaaay back from the individual written pages to think about the whole story structure. I stepped so far back that I wound up in grad school to study plot and characterization and other aspects of craft. I looked at what and where the climax would be and the different turning points that would lead the characters to the climax. I figured out the story’s timeline and the overall shape of the thing. I chopped the NaNo book into pieces again and, according to where I thought they fit in the timeline and story arc, I rearranged them using tools like yWriter and index cards and lots of weird outline type things to actually move the ideas and the huge wads of text around. I found holes the size of small countries so I spent tons of time writing new scenes to fill them.

Once I felt I had all the pieces in all the right places, I went through and polished, polished, polished correcting grammar and punctuation, tightening the dialogue, and checking for unnecessary repetition of words. When I was through, I had probably read every word in that book four or five times. I wish I could say it was perfect, but every time I pick it up, I can still find a place to tighten and polish, revise and correct.

I would love to hear from folks who have tackled revising a book-length work. How did you approach the revision process? How many passes through do you make? What tools do you use?

For those of you who have a draft to revise, good luck! May the rest of you have one soon.

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November Means NaNo!

2008-11-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

“Normal people can produce extraordinary things by simply refusing to leave a blank page blank." - Chris Baty, creator of NaNoWriMo.org

Ah! November is finally upon us and I've thrown myself into National Novel Writing Month, fondly referred to as NaNoWriMo by the participants. Every November thousands of writers from around the world attempt to write fifty-thousand words of brand spanking new fiction in thirty days. The NaNo website offers camaraderie, support, structure and welcome distractions for writers attempting to write an average of 1667 words a day for one month.

Once I'd set aside the memoir I'd been toying with and began to wrap my mind around writing a novel, I spent much of October preparing for this writing marathon. As part of my preparation, I read the first half of No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty and did the exercises. I came away with with some character descriptions and a few ideas for conflicts in which to throw these unsuspecting victims. Baty intends for the second half of the book to be read week by week during the actual month so I am only now allowed to read that part.

I also zoomed over to NaNo veteran Lazette Gifford's website and read her free NaNo preparatory manual, It's a Jungle Out There: NaNo for the New and Insane. Lazette has written other helpful noveling books as well as a wide assortment of published novels. Her phase outline method provided a simple, helpful way to think of the story in manageable (1667 words a day) chunks.

NaNo preparation would not be complete without surfing the NaNoWriMo forums where the NaNo participants share everything from their methods of character description to their political views. Writers dare other writers to include things in their novels like exploding lipstick while other writers stick to the elements of figuring out the logistics of weekly write-ins where writers gather at a local spot to write together in person. Spending time in the forums was a great way to tick off the October days leading up to the 12:01AM November 1 kick-off time when writers officially began amassing words.

Don't let the fact that we're a day into November discourage you from joining the frenzy. In 2004, I didn't sign up for NaNo until November 6th and I still crossed the fifty-thousand word finish line in time to print off my suitable for framing NaNo certificate. Don't let lack of preparation deter you either. Many participants swear by a complete seat of the pants approach. Either way, at the end of the month, you'll still have written more words than you would have if you hadn't begun at all. I hope you'll join us.

(c)Nita Sweeney, 2008, all rights reserved

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Six Random Things

2008-10-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Nikki, a fellow Goddard student and blogger at More Purple Houses, tagged me to tell you six random things about me and then tag some other bloggers. Here goes:

1. At Starbucks, I order a decaf triple venti soy one sweet-n-low latte.

2. I don't care for onions or cooked spinach although I will eat small amounts of spinach if it is chopped and mixed with something else. Onions I will pick out of everything whether raw or cooked.

3. I currently have braces after having had rapid palatal expansion surgery. I hope the braces will be removed very soon.

4. When I was a teenager, my mother, Ellen Buddelmeyer, was the drive-time radio disc jockey for WCVO, the Christian voice of central Ohio. I did not think this was cool.

5. I began letting my hair grow as the official start of my mid-life crisis. It is now well below my shoulders. I have no plans to cut it anytime soon.

6. When I practiced law, I memorized the punch line of every lawyer joke I could. When someone began to tell the joke, I said the punch line to spoil it. I have forgotten most of them.

There. That wasn't so bad. I'll tag Sea Side Shooter and Mel.

How Do You Begin?

2008-10-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

“I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others.” - Moliere, from The Ridiculous Precieuses

My quest to fall in love with a new book project has made me think about how I stumbled upon the idea for my last one. I've been in an on-line writing practice group since July 1997. On October 24, 2004, I wrote the following opening lines on the topic, "This is What I Know:"

Normal people would have rallied around a bottle of Jack Daniels or resigned themselves to a lifetime of platinum drips to prolong the inevitable. But we were not normal people. My father was not a normal man.

When I reread the full 10-minute piece, I knew it had the makings of a book. Dad’s death. My depression. Our golf. Three topics intertwined. Even though it wouldn't be a novel, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) and used the month-long structure to pull the material out of me. During November 2004, I wrote 50,000 words about my father and golf. Each day I pulled up a memory and wrote 2,000 words not stopping to figure out how the pieces went together. Of that original writing practice, not one complete sentence remains in the book, but it gave me the doorway into the project. That’s what I’m looking for again - an opening.

Now I have two projects, a novel and a memoir, vying for my attention. I alternate working on them. For the novel, I look forward to NaNoWriMo again this November. With the memoir, I’m using the free novel-writing software yWriter. I hadn’t discovered yWriter when I began the last book, but it proved exceedingly helpful to plot the NaNoWriMo mess after I'd written it. This time I’m attempting to plot both books before I begin the writing. I find this awkward. There may indeed be two types of writers: those who plot before they write and those who plot after. Ignoring the strong possibility that I might be an after-the-fact plotter, I’m creating chapters and scene descriptions, trying to make something vaguely resembling a three-act play.

I don’t have a complete answer to the question, “How do you begin?” So I’d love to hear your input. Please let me know how you begin a writing project. I imagine there are as many methods as there are writers.

(c)Nita Sweeney, 2008, all rights reserved

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Unhappiness

2008-09-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

“Blank pages inspire me with terror.” - Margaret Atwood

After listening to me whine, a friend decided to give me a copy of Seven Steps on the Writer's Path: The Journey from Frustration to Fulfillment by Nancy Pickard and Lynn Lott. The authors - a writer and a psychologist - found a patten to the writer’s angst. My friend quickly diagnosed me. I’m at a stopping point on one project, but not ready to launch into something new. “It’s just unhappiness,” she said cheerfully. “That’s the first step on the writer’s path. You’re just circling back to the beginning.”

Unhappiness, huh? This is not news and yet it is somehow helpful. It has a name. Other writers have survived it. I’ve completed my MFA and am shopping my book to agents. I want to push the pen across the page in some meaningful way, but little comes. This is unhappiness.

Unfortunately, my friend has been unable to put her hands on another copy of the book. While I wait for her to locate one, I've asked everyone else what they would do. One author suggested giving myself some space. Sit in a café for three hours and just write for ten minutes. Don't work on anything in particular. Let your mind wander and let something float up. Another recommended writing from the type of writing prompts which call up two stories at the same time. Things like: From where I sat, I could see what they were chasing. My husband, a more practical sort than most of my writer friends, suggested taking care of the things I put off when I was in school - little things like getting new glasses.

I'll take these excellent suggestions. Next week perhaps. In the meantime I'm taking long walks with the dog and trying not to feel as if the floor has fallen out from under me now that I don't have an advisor giving me feedback or deadlines requiring me to send 40 pages out every three weeks. I secretly hope an agent will appear in my future to say my book needs tons of work so I can launch myself on it again.

But just in case I locate a copy of the Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path, I’ll go ahead and get new glasses.

(c)Nita Sweeney, 2008, all rights reserved

If you would like to donate to BumGlue, CLICK HERE.

Pitch Lounge

2008-08-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

Speed dating. That's the best way I can describe the Writers’ League of Texas Agents and Editors Conference I attended in late June. Three hundred writers vied for the attention of 30 agents and editors. The extroverts ruled while the rest of us (the majority of us) did our best to get a word in edgewise.

The goal is to hear the magic words, “I’d like to see some pages.” This gives you the privilege of writing "Requested Material"on the envelope when you send your work and makes your submission rise to the top portion of the slush pile. It also means that the agent or editor, after seeing you in person, is reassured that you can at least carry on a conversation - a plus if they send you on book tour.

The conference planners did their best to accommodate different personality types. I purchased three one-on-one sessions with two agents and an editor all of which went very well. Face to face at a small table with just the editor or agent alone, I was able to speak clearly and ask intelligent questions. By contrast, I failed miserably in the pitch lounge where editors and agents hung out between appointments. Writers filled the four round tables crammed into a small room and whoever opened her mouth first got to bend the agent’s ear for most of the session. I fared just as poorly at the two cocktail parties where I couldn’t seem to force myself to get up from my table and mingle. I did somewhat better at the final session in which each agent or editor was seated at an individual table. The seven writers at each table had a total of fifteen minutes to pitch before a bell rang and the agent or editor moved to the next table.

I also found the pre-conference workshop extremely helpful. An agent gave us pitch pointers and allowed us to practice in front of a small group. I tightened my pitch from three sentences to one and felt much more confident after having tried it out on the other writers.

Bottom line, if you go, be prepared and be brave. Research the agents and editors to find those who work with your genre and make a list to carry as you work the crowd. And remember, they want you to pitch to them. They’re looking for the next big thing and hoping it’s you.

(c)Nita Sweeney, 2008, all rights reserved

If you would like to donate to BumGlue, CLICK HERE.

Fundamental Truth

2008-07-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” - Elmore Leonard

I’ve been in bed for nine days. Hopefully, I’m on the mend, but I don’t have the energy to scare up any brilliant insights. Instead, I’ll leave you with a fundamental truth which my friend Bill says every time he sees me.

“Don’t forget, Nita. Writers write!”

No Conference? No Problem.

2008-06-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

"I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done." - Steven Wright

By now many central Ohio folks have heard that the Columbus Writer's Conference organizers are taking a hiatus. I had hoped to pitch my book this year, but no go. Luckily writers have tons of resources. I found a conference dedicated solely to agent and editor pitch sessions conveniently located in Austin near the home of a writing friend who housed us for four days. Thanks Saundra!

What will you do with the time and resources the conference freed? If you're self-motivated you could spend the weekend generating new material, revising your work, or reading one of the many wonderful writing books available. Filled with exercises and short essays, Natalie Goldberg's latest writing book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, would make a splendid companion.

Need more structure? Grab a few writer friends, snag someone's family room, and create your own impromptu workshop. If you're all working on projects, just dedicate the space to writing. If you're beginning something, ask each person to bring their favorite writing exercise and agree to play along.

Want more? Search the listings in Poet's & Writer's Magazine, Shaw Guides, and the Associated Writing Programs for conferences near and far. You're sure to find something that suits. There's even the Muse On-Line Writer's Conference.

I look forward to hearing about the conferences you've all created!

Self-Sabotage

2008-05-08T13:06:00.001-07:00

"No one can tell you when to start and how to stop, either. And only you can put it off until there are no more tomorrows." - Susan Bono

I'm deep in book revisions. Instead of an essay, this month you get a link. CLICK HERE to read authors from the Erma Bombeck Writers Conference writing about self-sabotage. Special thanks to columnist Pat Snyder for sending the info my way.

Leap!

2008-04-08T12:55:00.001-07:00

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how . . . . We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” - Agnes de Mille, dancer and choreographer

On March 15th I sent my entire book manuscript to my M.F.A. advisors - 229 pages - the whole thing, all the pieces, all together in the same place at the same time. In the weeks prior to the deadline, I had to throw the schoolbook out the window. Oh, it was helpful to have learned about plot trajectories, character development, dialogue, and tension building. All that stuff about Aristotle’s incline came in handy too. But for the most part, it went out the window - right out onto the lawn next to the barely budding crocuses and the daffodil greens that aren’t quite ready to pop.

It had to go under the ground with all the acorns the squirrels planted last autumn and the leftover birdseed that the robins didn’t get this winter. In its place came intuition and raw nerve. I had to leap, leap, leap. I put something down and moved on to the next. Does this piece go here? Don’t think too hard. Just put it down and move on. Piece after piece like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

I’d spent a ton of time sorting which pieces to use. Years deepening the pieces so that they were the right shape and color and just the right pitch in sound. And then all I could do was lay them down. It felt something like what I think dying might feel like. I was convinced it was all wrong and anxious that I would just have to do it over again and I still might. But it fell together. The pieces fell together and at the end, like winning a game of solitaire, I had only a few pieces left and they fit together. The queen of hearts went atop the king of diamonds and I had a draft of the full manuscript sitting on my table, and most importantly, extracted from my mind.

It will need more work. My advisors have read it and while they are impressed with the work I have done, they agree that it needs more work. And someday, hopefully, an editor will read it and she too will say it needs more work. And when that day comes, remind me that I already know how to do it. Remind me that I know how not to be sure, how to guess, and move forward, and how to take leap after leap in the dark.

Leap!

2008-04-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

Family Ties

2008-03-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

“The one thing all nations share is the fear that a member of the family will want to be an artist.” - Robert Frost

My family's fears have come true. An excerpt from Memorial, the book I'm writing about my father, has been published in The Pitkin Review, Goddard College's literary magazine. As excited as I was to have the excerpt accepted, my fear of my family's response outweighed the joy ten to one.

The only way I know to overcome the fear that my family will be unhappy with what I’ve written is to let them know what’s coming. This won’t work for everyone, but I don’t like surprises and I doubt they would either. Some memoirists never show work to family members until after it’s published. Some show the drafts to anyone who appears in the work. Others, like me, have a conversation with family members about the work before it appears in print. My goal is to travel with as much ease as possible balanced by my need to tell the story.

A few members of my family have read the piece and, so far, no one has thrown any stones. Of course, the section published is a rather mild part of the book. But I’m testing the waters and getting my family ready for the more difficult sections to come. When I’m confused about whether to reveal something, I choose to honor the story. The story always wins. I hope it will win my family over as well.

Body Double

2008-02-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

“If we had to say what writing is, we would define it essentially as an act of courage.” - Cynthia Ozick

Even on good days I need little tricks to keep writing. Bribery. Coercion. Threats. And right now I have to pull out all the stops. One trick is what Linda Anderson, an organizational expert, refers to as the body double principle. No. Not like in the movies. No one’s doing a nude scene here.

In writing, a body double is simply another person physically present, usually another writer working away beside me. I’ve been using several friends for this purpose for some time now. I don’t know if they realize they’re being used, but they don’t seem to mind. We meet at a coffeehouse and work on our individual projects at the same time.

But since my mother died, I haven’t wanted to write. I just want to sleep. Yet the fact that my friend would be at the coffeehouse tugged at me. So I joined her. She is disciplined. I am not. I stir and spin. There she sat working away, so I sat next to her. After a few minutes, I got up to get coffee. Then I had to go to the bathroom. Then refill my coffee. I sat again. I sifted through my bag. I pulled out one project, returned it, then drug out another. All the while my friend continued to work. My mind watched her. Sitting near her calmed me and eventually I began to work. Hours passed and I was amazed when I looked at my watch. I only had fifteen minutes before I needed to leave.

According to Anderson, “. . . the body double serves as a physical and emotional anchor for the distracted individual who feels more centered by the presence of another person in their space.”

I don’t know exactly why it works, but it does and I’m going to keep using it.

Mom

2008-01-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

I'm beside myself with grief. My mother, Sarah Ellen Buddelmeyer, died Sunday, December 30, 2007. My family is in mourning. Please keep us in your thoughts.

And please keep writing. Mom would have wanted us all to keep writing.

Go Team!

2007-11-03T03:46:00.000-07:00

“Anybody can become a writer, but the trick is to stay a writer” - Harlan Ellison

One Friday in August,1996, I watched two women sitting across from one another at a table in Stauf’s Coffee Roasters. Each woman, bent over a spiral notebook, steadily moved a pen across the page. After a few minutes, they took turns reading their writing aloud to one another. When one of them looked toward me, I quickly turned away. I’d just returned to Ohio from a workshop with Natalie Goldberg where we spent a week writing and reading aloud to each other. One of these women had Natalie’s bestseller, Writing Down the Bones, beneath her chair.

The question I’m asked most often is, “How do I find a writing group?” I have many long answers, but the simplest is this: know what you need and ask for it. There are many types of writing groups. Some share work and give feedback. Others write and read aloud. Still other groups simply get together to talk about writing. There are as many potential variations as there are writers. The most difficult part for me was asking for what I needed. Here I invoke one of Natalie’s rules of writing practice, “be specific.” If you want to meet weekends, don’t hedge when someone wants to meet on a weeknight. If you’re not ready to have someone else see your work, don’t join a group that’s bent on critiquing everything it reads.

Where shall you find these writers? Start with the list of Ongoing Writing Groups on my website. Take a class to look for prospects. Tell your non-writer friends that you’re looking for a group. Keep your eyes open. We’re everywhere. If you still can’t find a group that suits, don’t be afraid to start your own. A carefully worded flier posted in libraries, coffeehouses, and bookstores works wonders.

In 1996, I’d been writing at Stauf's nearly every day for months, yet I’d never seen those women before. If I hadn’t been tuned in to the many shapes a writing group can take, I might have not noticed them at all. I mustered more courage than a shy person is supposed to have, courage born of desperation, and introduced myself. They invited me to join and the three of us wrote together for a year. That was my first writing group experience. After I moved to New Mexico, they continued writing as I’d found them.

It’s normal for a writer to want connection whether to share work or just talk about the craft and mystery of writing. If you haven’t yet found your “writing tribe,” it’s not too late.

Pass the Pumpkin Pie

2007-10-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

"Action expresses priorities.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Anyone remember the back room at Nickelby's bookstore? I attended a booksigning there one October more than twenty years ago. I hadn't intended to stay, but as I leafed through a Writer's Digest text on magazine articles, a man began reading a poem about a tree he'd cut down by hand. As his voice brought the words to life, I fell into the nearest overstuffed chair and spent the evening sipping mulled cider as he read.

This month there are twenty-three writing-related events listed on the Write Now Newsletter website. As the leaves turn, authors will read from their work, professors will lecture, and writers will conduct workshops on everything from creative journaling to making a living as a writer. Ohio State will host Dave Eggers and Margaret Atwood will trek to Gambier for the Kenyon Review Literary Festival.

We might not be able to sit by the fire at Nickelby's anymore, but we have a bounty of alternatives. We can listen from a plush seat at the King Arts Complex, write at a conference table in the Upper Arlington Municipal Building, or lean forward in a wooden chair in Denny Hall 311. We can still hear an author read aloud, bringing the words to life.

I hope you'll take time away from leaf raking and join me at one of the many upcoming events. The horn of plenty has long been a symbol for Autumn. What better reminder of the wealth of opportunities we still have here in our own backyard.

Yakety Yak

2007-09-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

“James Blish told me I had the worst case of ‘said bookism’ (that is, using every word except said to indicate dialogue). He told me to limit the verbs to said, replied, asked, and answered and only when absolutely necessary.” - Anne McCaffrey

This month Ed and I flew to North Carolina to attend the funeral of one of his former colleagues. We walked out of thick heat into an air conditioned room filled with strangers. I had never met any of the people gathered and Ed had not seen them in more than thirty years. We approached the casket and a woman Ed believed to be the man’s wife shook Ed’s hand. “Thank you for coming.” Her eyes did not engage. She turned to me and Ed said, “This is Nita, my wife.” As the woman heard Ed’s voice, she turned back to him, eyes wide and flooding, “Ed Sweeney! It’s Ed Sweeney.”

She led us through the room, tapping an arm here, touching a shoulder there, and the strangers began to greet us. A man in a russet blazer became Bob, the company’s banker. A silver-haired gentleman in a navy suit turned into John, the engineering expert. And before our very ears, the tall man in the brown suit became Larry, Ed’s beloved former boss from so many years before. After each introduction Ed said, “I didn’t recognize him until he opened his mouth.”

Sadly, last week Ed and I flew to California for yet another funeral, this time for Ed’s father. I watched Ed, his mother, sister and brother make arrangements amid grief and exhaustion. After four days of planning, we found ourselves in the reception hall after the funeral mass. This time we both knew the family, but Ed had difficulty identifying the faces of his parents’ friends. Again, he said. “As soon as they began to speak, I knew them.”

That’s the experience we writers must create for our readers when we write dialogue. Each human voice is distinct, recognized by the listener through tone and inflection. Our readers do not have this luxury. Each writer must make our characters “heard.”

We can use speech tags (Jane said) but tags alone make the dialogue flat. And some writers rely on adverbs (Jane said excitedly), but adverbs simply inflate the tag and do not add the type of inflection the reader needs to intuit who’s speaking from what is on the page.

In the final chapter of her award-winning novel, Larry’s Party, Carol Shields shows how to write dialogue by capturing the essence of a dinner party: conversation. Shields writes ten consecutive pages (pp. 306-315) with nine characters speaking unattributed dialogue. Amazingly, the reader always knows who is speaking.

Shields uses several techniques to manage this feat. She gives some characters a distinctive pattern of speech such as a unique vocabulary, particular throwaway words and phrases, tight or loose wording, and run-on or staccato sentences. Shields also uses types of speech such as sarcasm, dialect, cynicism, poor grammar, inappropriate modifiers or jargon. And sometimes Shields relies on a particular subject matter to cue the reader into who’s speaking. A golf pro might turn every sentence into a golf analogy while a college professor might recount only experiences involving his students. Once Shields identifies the character’s unique way of speaking it becomes obvious to the reader.

Even in memoir, writers must avoid making all “characters” sound the same. My father, for example, paused between sentences and looked away before finishing. But my words run together, tumbling over each other, sometimes causing him to ask me to repeat myself. If I play up this contrast when I write scenes between my father and I, the reader will easily follow the dialogue.

If your characters were in the dark, could you tell who was speaking? If someone else read your dialogue aloud to a third person, could that other listener easily follow? In revising dialogue, I try to stay awake to the nuances of speech and to hear the voices in my head. I want to do them justice, to bring them alive on the page. What better way than to let them be heard?

“What’s the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.” - Dorothy Allison

2007-08-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

When Dorothy Allison asked our Goddard M.F.A. class "How do you get your writing done?" I should have kept my mouth shut. "I bribe myself with decaf soy lattes," was not the answer she was looking for. She chuckled, shook her long brown hair, and called on the woman to my right. The next reply, "I just force myself to sit down and do it," wasn't the right answer either.

I had the pleasure of being accosted by Ms. Allison, author of best-selling books such as Bastard Out of Carolina and Trash, at our July creative writing residency where she was the visiting writer. Her class, billed as "Character Driven Fiction," displeased many of my classmates who didn't appreciate her uncut style. Perhaps they expected to hear a lecture on the technical aspects of plotting a novel by using character development. But Allison wasn't interested in giving us what we expected. She's out there. Openly lesbian and flamboyantly southern, she uses the "f" word when she talks about sex. She talks about sex frequently, and when she's not talking about sex, she uses the "f" word about everything else she is talking about.

"I'm here to tell you what no one else may ever tell you about writing," she explained to our startled group of students, faculty and staff. She proved more interested in developing our character as writers than in helping us develop the characters in our books.

"What is the book you most want to write?" she asked. We mumbled answers. Her volume increased. "Are you writing THAT book?" A few of us nodded, but most looked down at their spiral notebooks. When Allison's fist hit the table, I jumped. "Why The F**k Not?" she shouted. The room expanded with the silence that followed.

She continued, calmer, confident that she now had our full attention. "What is the one thing you know that it seems the rest of the world doesn't?" This she said is the story we must tell before we die. In a tone that bordered on pleading, she urged us, "Find a character you love and a story you must tell. That is how you write."

Her gritty manner notwithstanding, Allison's class came at exactly the right time for many of us. After six days of listening to our excellent Goddard professors teach the meat and potatoes of the writing craft, Allison's sermon rolled like a salty gale waking us from our exhausted slumber.

Toward the end of her talk, Allison openly discussed her abusive childhood. "If you had a violent past," she said, "make peace with it. You've got to be sane to do the emotional work of writing a book." A quiet life supports the sanity it takes to write. Then she chuckled, pushed her hair back from her face, and said, "Move to the suburbs. It worked for me."

No White Flag

2007-07-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Isaac gave good advice to authors. . . . [H]e sent me his two laws of writing: 1. Thou shall finish what thou startest. 2. Thou shalt not judge thyself.

- Janet Jeppson Asimov, author of Notes for a Memoir on Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing

Some days it feels as if I'm never going to finish this book. It's sitting out everywhere all around me. Bits of it in notebooks. Bits of it on the computer. Bits of it still living vividly in my head. I work on it sporadically and it never feels like enough.

That leads me to the second of Asimov's rules. "Thou shalt not judge thyself." There, I flunk out cold. My mind races with judgment. In 1994, I stepped away from a lucrative job as an attorney with a speciality law firm in Dublin, Ohio. Since 1997, I've worked with many different writing teachers, always asking the same question, "Just how DO you write a book?" Most recently, I began MFA school with the same question. Every last teacher has been a helpful step along the way, but I still don't have a book.

Of course, I'm asking a question only I can answer. I remember a cartoon strip in which a man walks into an editor's office and asks, "Can you help me with my book?" The editor says, "Maybe. Let me read it." In response, the man drops his head, droops his shoulders and groans, "Oh. I was hoping to have it surgically removed." The book is inside me. No one else can write it. Some days I fear it will kill me. I imagine a scene from Alien. I'm innocently eating my oatmeal, talking to Ed about the dog. I begin to feel nauseous. As I reach for a glass of water, the book bursts from my abdomen, ripping my body to shreds.

On better days, I find peace in the daily-ness of writing, the sheer practice of it. If I look back over my shoulder, day by day, the writing gets done. Little by little, I am bringing the book to life. At first I found exhilaration in the sheer number of pages I could churn out. Now that I'm editing, quality counts. And day by day, the pages become bright and shiny. There are huge holes I don't know how to fill and passages I know belong but not where. Regardless, I put my head down and keep pulling the wagon.

On the best days I remember that I always feel this way no matter how big or small the project. In the middle of every essay, short story, graduate school paper, blog post, and even these little newsletter essays, I feel the same hopelessness. I start off blank as a sheet. Then an idea forms. I begin to write. Somewhere in the middle of the piece, it takes a turn I didn't expect. That's when I get scared. I think, There's no way I'm going to finish this thing. I don't know where it's going. But I keep writing anyway, keep following my mind, and something takes form. I print it all out, begin to edit, and the clay begins to shape itself. It comes together. It feels like magic. But it's not magic. It's work.

"Thou shall finish what thou startest. Thou shalt not judge thyself." Perhaps there was a third rule Asimov forgot to mention: "Thou shalt never give up."

Mac Envy

2007-06-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

I learned to word process in 1987 on Word Perfect 4.1 for DOS. PC logic lives deep in my bones. But today, for the first time in twenty years, I felt jealous of a person with a Macintosh laptop. She had a program I wanted and couldn't have, a program just for Macs, a program for which I have yet to find a parallel.

The program, Scrivener, does a lot of what yWriter, the novel writing program I use, does plus a few bits more. And, it has an elegant interface that looks like an actual corkboard. The index cards look like index cards and things move around all WSYWIG and lovely. I was smitten.

Luckily it was just a crush. It passed. I'm not going to go buy a MAC - yet. I still love my IBM thinkpad. But for a few moments today, the earth stood still.

McSweeney's Needs Help Too

2007-06-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

Yikes. More financial difficulty on the literary front. This time McSweeney's needs our help. If you're not familiar with McSweeney's, click here.

The following is an excerpt from McSweeney's June update:

As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.

We are committed to getting through and past this difficult time, and we're hoping you, the readers who have from the start made McSweeney's possible, will help us.

Over the next week or so, we'll be holding an inventory sell-off and rare-item auction, which we hope will make a dent in the losses we sustained.

So if you've had your eye on anything we've produced, now would be a great time to take the plunge. For the next week or so, subscriptions are $5 off, new books are 30 percent off, and all backlist is 50 percent off. Please check out the store and enjoy the astounding savings, while knowing every purchase will help dig us out of a big hole.

Many of our contributors have stepped up and given us original artwork and limited editions to auction off. We've got original artwork from Chris Ware, Marcel Dzama, David Byrne, and Tony Millionaire; a limited-edition music mix from Nick Hornby; rare early issues of the quarterly, direct from Sean Wilsey's closet; and more. We're even auctioning off Dave Eggers's painting of George Bush as a double-amputee, from the cover of Issue 14.

I hate to be alarmist, but, well, I'm alarmed. Think I'll surf over to McSweeney's now and see what I "need."

When All Else Fails . . .

2007-06-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

. . . get more software.

While my attempts to use various types of software to write my book have not been completely productive, according to the recent New York Times article by Rachel Donadio, "Get With the Program," other much more successful writers have had great luck with computer programs. Most of the authors included in the article, however, didn't mention software specifically designed for writing. They credited Excel, Microsoft Project, voice recognition software, Mindjet MindManager, Microsoft OneNote, and even the Logitech io2 pen for their assisting in their success. Only one writer quoted in the article used actual "writing software," Dramatica Pro.

The Times article failed to include, yWriter, the free (yes that's right - free) writing software I mentioned in a previous post. I wish I'd kept working with yWriter when I first test-drove it more than a year ago. yWriter has the features I most want, is easy to use, and like I said, it's free! Simon Haynes, creator of yWriter, and author of a series of humorous sci fi novels featuring Hal Spacejock, has an update in the works which has tempted me to try it again. Simon correctly guessed that I had moved the entire document too quickly to Word Perfect and yWriter2, the version I was using, didn't have an easy way to switch back and forth. In yWriter3, available in beta, Simon has added that and other features. I'll let you know how it goes.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

2007-06-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." - Jerry Seinfeld

Twenty-five percent off everything at Liberty Books and News in the Shops on Lane Avenue!

Okay. I know you're not reading this blog to see advertisements, but one of the few independent bookstores in central Ohio is in trouble. I hate to admit this is no surprise. It seems to be the fate of independent bookstores across the country. And, if recent news is correct, it might be the fate of bookstores in general. I recently read a blog post suggesting that even Barnes & Noble and Borders aren't doing that well. Just the same I'm foregoing this month's essay space to send out a cry for help on behalf of Liberty Books and News.

Located in the Shops at Lane Avenue, Liberty Books & News is a sweet space with free coffee (the sign says they're here to sell books, not coffee) and nice chairs and a lovely table on which to write or study or lounge. They have a wide range of cards, magazines and books with nice people to help you find what you need. The store also offers a venue for author readings and provides the space for Rattlebox Poetry's monthly events.

Again, my apologies if you find this plea offensive. I just can't imagine the day when there are no bookstores left in which to browse. I hope you will swing by the store and spend a few bucks. And if you don't live in central Ohio, find an independent bookseller in your area and go drop a few bucks there. Please!

I'm About Half Done

2007-05-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

This post is for everyone who asks, "How's the book coming." Rather than lie, I will simply ask my future readers to checkout Derek Powazek's blog entry "How to Write a Book in Three Easy Steps and kindly note that I am in the painful middle of Step Two.

All the people you've told about your book will now ask you about it when they see you. . . and every time you will get a new knot in your stomach. You will say one thing, and one thing only, when they ask: "I'm about half done." And every time you will rationalize this to be true.

I have not begun smoking, yet. I have not left my husband nor moved across the country. I moved across the country (and back) once before and I don't recommend it. And I have not gotten any new pets. Powazek promises that this step will last three months. He lies. I'm well into my second year. But really. I'm about half done. Really.

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

2007-05-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

"The important thing [in writing memoir], is not the life, but the meaning extracted from it." - Ellen Boneparth

Hi Writers:

I haven't yet figured out the true secret of writing memoir, but my struggle with this book has clued me into what went wrong in my early personal essays. When I first began crafting essays, I simply culled events from my writing practices and stopped there. I edited each piece down to the details of funny or sad things that had happened to me, my family, our dogs, my friends, the neighbors, etc. While these events were funny or sad, they didn't really have a point. The resulting pages were anecdotes, not essays.

When I began graduate school in creative writing, I made the same error in my critical papers. Recognizing that an author had used a particular technique excited me and so I simply pointed it out. I didn't analyze it, ruminate over it, roll it around in my mind. I didn't explain what it meant or voice my opinion. I didn't go far enough.

Now, when I revise, I reread the pages and question each section: What's the point? Why does the reader need to know this? How does this contribute to the theme I'm presenting? What am I really trying to say?

In the early days, I found these questions daunting. Reticent to let the reader know what I felt or thought about each interaction, I stuck to the facts. As I push toward the third year of work on this project, opining becomes easier and easier. Without this musing aspect, the work is lifeless. My job as a writer is to filter the material and shape it in a way so that the reader knows the point I'm trying to make. I don't hit her over the head, but gently guide her. "Over here," I say. "The point is over here."

If you find that your essays are lifeless and dull, don't throw them out. Just ask some simple questions. What does this mean to me? Why do I think this is important? What do I really want to say? That's what your reader really wants to know.

I'd Like to Buy a Vowel

2007-04-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

"Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win."
- Robert Heinlein, science fiction author (1907 - 1988)

Okay. I want to encourage each of you to enter a contest or submit a piece of work to a market. I often err on the side of encouraging folks to access wild mind and write, write, write. But there's another part of the equation as well. Once we've written our buns off, we need to let the world see what we've done!

There are so many opportunities. Check the back pages of Poets & Writers Magazine. Flip through Writers Digest. Pick up a copy of last year's Writers Market at Half Price Books or splurge and get the current one at Liberty Books & News. And don't forget all the on-line markets popping up. Google "submission guidelines" or "writing guidelines" and see what you get. Double dare your friends to submit something if you do. Send off your best work, forget you sent it, and get back to writing.

This month I vow to send out three things. I know which pieces I'm going to send and where they're going. It's a long shot, but the effort of putting a manuscript in the mail makes me feel even more like a "real" writer. I bet you'll feel the same.

The main tip I can give you is to read the publication and follow the guidelines. If the magazine is filled with short fiction, don't send your poetry. If a contest says no simultaneous submissions, only send your submission to that magazine until you hear otherwise. Chances are you wouldn't get caught, but this is a small world. We need to avoid pissing people off. If a literary publication says it does not accept email submissions, pay the postage and put it in the mail. If a contest limits submissions to 5,000 words, don't send them your 27,538 word novella. Don't even send them 6,000 words. Read the rules. Read the writing guidelines. Follow them.

So send, send, send this month. Let's show the publishers of the world that central Ohio writers are alive and well. And let me know how it's going.

On a final note, thanks to the many who sent condolences concerning the death of my niece. Your support means more than you will ever know. Jamey was in it to play hard and, for the short time she spent on the planet, that's exactly what she did.

Memoir Week at Slate.com

2007-03-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

In a fit of pure procrastination, I surfed over to Slate.com and saw that they're featuring information on memoirs this week. Their critics are reviewing memoirs and memoirists are discussing the writing of and reaction to their memoirs. Authors include Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, and others.

Calling All Angels

2007-03-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." - Robert Frost

As many of you know, my beloved niece Jamey Ax, passed away on February 6, 2007. She was 24. It's no wonder I was having trouble writing last month! Jamey was at the end of her journey and my entire family was deep in the throes of pre-grief. But anticipatory sadness did not diminish the pain I felt when I heard the words, "She's gone."

I'm letting myself grieve. I continue working on the book and reading for school, but I'm also doing lots of pure undirected writing practice as well as spending time with Jamey's mother, other family members, and alone. Just like writing, grieving is a process. It will take its natural course whether I want it to or not.

I hope when something devastating happens in your life that you will allow yourself the time it takes to heal. Life slows down when we're in pain. As a writer, I pay attention, take notes, and let time do its work.

Thanks for your compassion - now, and always.

Nita (calling all angels) Sweeney
©Nita Sweeney, 2007, all rights reserved

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Creative Rehab

2007-02-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in Port Townsend, WA in the computer lab of Goddard College's west coast branch where I'm working on my MFA in creative writing. When I checked my email just now (first time in several days), a friend sent a link to a Salon.com article by a
Carey Tennis about his MFA school experience. Here's the line that jumped out at me:

. . . take care of your writing as you would take care of an animal or a child. Do not send it out into the world to do an adult's job. Just take care of it and, in its own way, it will take care of you.

Over the break between semesters, my inner critic escaped it's gilded cage and nearly ate me for dinner. This was due in part to the death of my dear niece, but also just because I'd let my guard down. By the time I arrived here on Sunday afternoon, I'd mentally eviscerated myself.

I've spent the past few days just pulling myself back together. Every morning and evening I give myself the gift of writing practice ala Natalie Goldberg, timed writing on topics that pop into my mind. I take long walks on the beach down to the lighthouse. I have lunch with a friend when I can. I stare out the window of my second-story room that looks over the water. I walk as slowly as the schedule will allow. And I breathe.

So far so good. I feel better. Surrounded by other writers and a good friend, listening to readings and lectures and water and mountains, I feel renewed. I am grieving and healing from various wounds. Regardless, I will continue.

No Words

2007-02-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

My niece has been sick with cancer for 499 days. On Tuesday, day 500, she died. She was 24 years old. I have no words to express my sadness. It's too fresh. Too raw. Too real. In time, with distance, I'll be able to put words to it all.

For now, I am making notes about what I heard, saw, felt, smelled. Making lists of colors and names. And I am letting myself rest. It's been a long 500 days and yet they went by too quickly. I am so sad, but the written word cannot encompass all I feel. Even these precious words are not enough.

Brain Dumb

2007-02-04T16:07:00.000-08:00

          “Can’t Think
          Brain Dumb
          Inspiration Won’t Come!
          Poor Ink
          Bum Pen
          Best Wishes, Amen.”
                    - Unknown

Hi Writers:

When I was in grade school, I memorized that ditty from one of those little books of quotes intended for writing in yearbooks. Yours Till Niagara Falls or something like that. That’s how I feel today. Can’t Think. Brain Dumb. Inspiration Won’t Come.

I’ve been on a break from graduate school and have been catching up on what I’d put off during the semester. I filed insurance claims, made annual medical appointments, gathered tax documents, fiddled with my website, and booked my trip for the February residency. I’ve been productive, but I haven’t been doing enough writing. And it’s difficult to write about writing when you’re not writing!

For the past few days I’ve been asking everybody I see what I should write in the essay. I asked some friends. I asked the dog. I asked my sister. I sat down and wrote questions to myself. No one, including me, had a half decent idea. Finally, I asked Ed.”Tell them you don’t know what to write,” he suggested. So here I am writing about not being able to think of anything to write. See, you really can write about anything.

That’s my message for you today. It’s sort of like the old adage, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” If your mind surrenders nothing, pour that onto the page. Put it down honestly. Write down the details of how it feels. Explain your emptiness to the world. Get your hand moving and, eventually, something will appear.

Top Ten List of Procrastination Techniques

2007-01-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

I will not rewrite them all here, but you must head over to Libba Bray's livejournal blog and check out her procrastination techniques which so mirror my own and those of nearly every writer I know. The list begins . . .

10. Floss
9. Do Google search for various disease symptoms. Become convinced you have every single one. . .
8. Each chocolate chips straight out of the bag. Use several to make semi-sweet morsel replica of Stonghenge.

Read the rest here. Scroll down to the post for December 6, 2006.

". . . an 'American Idol' for thinking people,"

2007-01-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

That's what Tom Gerace, chief executive of Gather.com called the writing contest sponsored by Touchstone books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Alas! If only I had a novel stashed in the bottom drawer of my desk!

Here's the deal. First-time authors can enter for free by submitting a manuscript for a full-length work of fiction. The first chapter of each submission (hence the contest's name) will be posted on Gather.com. Members of the site will vote on the chapters.

For more information, surf to http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976883192

And I did it MYYYYY WAAAAAAY

2007-01-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

“Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.” - Bernard Malamud, interviewed for The Writer’s Desk by Jill Krementz

What’s your way? I ask myself this question all the time. I don’t think it’s static. I once thought I had no way, that I couldn’t write anything except legal briefs, memoranda, personnel policy manuals and client letters. But I was wrong.

In 1987, I discovered Natalie Goldberg’s writing practice. Setting a timer, moving my pen across the page, not stopping, not crossing out, not thinking, that became my way. I haunted coffeehouses with a spiral notebook and a purple rollerball pen, spewing ink across pages, across years, across several states.

Now I’m learning another way. Editing. It still scares me. In a chapter in Writing Down the Bones entitled, “The Samari,” Natalie wrote, “William Carlos Williams said to Allen Ginsberg, ‘If only one line in the poem has energy, then cut the rest out and leave only that one line.’” Learning to edit is a skill handed down from one writer to another or from an editor to a writer. I’m learning it the same way - by direct transmission. My MFA advisor reads my writing and sends it back to me covered in blue ink. I bristled against this for a decade. Now I am ever thankful for the direction. I want to know what she has to teach.

So what’s your way? Don’t worry if today your way is to simply write lists of writing ideas in the back of your notebook. Keep making those lists. Eventually you will become brave enough to take one of the topics and go. And someday, you’ll be ready for something else.

For Once, It's Good to Be Short!

2006-12-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

According to Ohio State University English Professor, Lee K. Abbott, "You'll need to write as much junk as you are tall before you'll ever produce something that somebody will want to read twice."

I'm 5'6" and shrinking. I've probably written twice my height in junk so perhaps my day is coming.

For more perspectives on the writing life, tune in to interviews with Professor Abbott and many other writers including Alice McDermott, Tim O'Brien, Michael Connelly, Jeanette Walls, Rick Moody and many more on The Kacey Kowars Show.

Long ago . . .

2006-12-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

. . . when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it's called golf.

The memoir I'm writing about my father's last year is set in a golf cart. Dad spent a good portion of it swearing at himself when the little white ball didn't cooperate. Perhaps witchcraft would have been a better use of our time.

It Ain't Over 'til It's Over

2006-12-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

First, the good news. The semester's over. Aimee Liu, my Advisor in the Goddard College low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing, accepted the second draft of my second attempt at a short critical paper (my first attempt she rejected offhand). She also approved the eleven annotations I wrote on the (more than eleven) books I read. I'm allowed to go back to Port Townsend, WA for the next 8-day residency in February. In the meantime, I can relax - sort of.

This leads me to the bad news. The book's not done. And it looks like it's not going to be done for awhile.

I started writing this book during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November of 2004 and hoped to complete it within 9 months. Those initial 50,000 words flowed so effortlessly. I had no doubt the rest of the book would follow in the same manner. But then came the gargantuan task of rereading, editing and expanding those original 50,000 words. Even NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) in March 2005 didn't help.

So I did what every aspiring American writer would do. I took a class. Or rather, I took another class. In fact, I took two more classes before applying to graduate school. In these courses I learned about dramatic tension, pacing, dialogue, characterization, and plot. They showed me how to weave several stories together to make a book have more depth. They gave me a structure and support to help me pull together a complete first draft. And that's what I brought to the MFA program - in the words of Anne LaMott, "a shitty first draft."

From the folks at Goddard (and especially Aimee Liu), I've learned to go deeper and push myself harder. Aimee asked tough questions. "Why should we care?" and "Who are these people?" and "Why did you do what you did?" She poked, prodded and interrogated, not allowing me to gloss over anything. As a result, my second draft is much less "shitty" than before. But it's not done.

The moral of this story (for mustn't all stories have a moral?) is that a book has it's own time line. This is my first book and it will take all the time it takes. I've tried to move it along more quickly, but I can only write at the level where I am. Perhaps I'm lucky an editor isn't (yet) emailing me daily asking for the next draft. This way the book can mature as I do. And when it's done, it will be my best work - the best I can produce at the time.

Nita(read no line before its time)Sweeney
©Nita Sweeney, 2006, all rights reserved

One Down, Three to Go

2006-11-27T05:06:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, I sent my last packet of writing to my Advisor concluding my first semester in Goddard's low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing. It felt anti-climatic. While the book is much further along than it was when I started the semester, it's not done.

The last few weeks I kept myself focused on the non-book reqirements by telling myself that I'd have plenty of time to focus soley on the book once the semester ended. Now that it's over, all I want to do is sleep. I gave myself the weekend to play. Hubby and I drove to Granville to see the Alligator Indian Mound, eat at the Buxton Inn, and hang out at River Road Coffeehouse (one of my all-time favorites). But Monday morning was bound to roll around.

This mood reminds me of childhood. All summer long I bugged my parents to take me to the zoo. "Can we go today?" I cried day after day. In mid-August when the magic day dawned, we'd pack the car for the hour-long drive to Columbus. By the time we arrived, I was tired and cranky. I knew better than to say it, but I thought to myself, "I'm tired. I want some ice cream and I want to go home."

So this morning I'll give that little girl who still lives so vibrantly inside me a pep-talk. We'll head over to Colin's Coffee (formerly Brewster's) and get a large decaf soy extra-foam one-sweet-n-low latte. Then I'll begin to re-read the letters from my MFA Advisor, taking notes on the changes I need to make. Once we get started all will be well.

Time-Out

2006-11-19T03:57:00.000-08:00

I was in New Mexico from November 8 through 15th to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Natalie Goldberg's best-selling book, Writing Down the Bones. Now that I'm back home, I've got to knuckle down again. It's the last week of my first semester in Goddard's MFA program in creative writing and I need to send my fifth packet of material (approximately 40 pages of written work) to my advisor on Friday, November 24th. Perhaps you can tell I'm a little busy. I'll post a full report next week. Until then - let's all just keep writing!

Meditation

2006-11-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

So just what the heck does meditation have to do with writing anyway? I get this question a lot. There's many answers, but here's just one for today. Meditation slows down my mind and helps me recreate characters and action.

In the type of meditation I practice and teach, we set up conditions and perform exercises which slow and focus the mind. We sit still or we move slowly. A still body calms the mind. We focus on one thing - the feeling of the breath or the feeling of our feet as we slowly move across the floor - and we gently bring our minds back again and again to that object in order to develop concentration. We practice experiencing the present moment. We see it, smell it, hear it, and feel the touch of it right now.

In Memorial, the book I'm (still) writing, there's a scene on The Palms golf course in Mesquite, Nevada. My first draft failed to capture the power of the landscape and the mixture of tension and joy I experienced with my father. When I began to edit the scene, I had to close my eyes and become still enough to allow a day more than ten years ago to play out across the screen of my mind. Here are some images that came to me: the heat and dust, the color of the mountains, my father's hands on the club as he set up the shot, the sound of the gasoline engine in the golf cart, my hand on the side of the cart and the breeze in my hair as Dad gunned the engine and we sped down an enormous hill, the sound of his laughter and the feeling of my own laughter as it arose from my chest. By developing a calm, concentrated mind (my mind still wanders as all minds do), I improve my chances of remembering the important details.

This works for fiction too. When I'm working on a short story, I step inside the main character and look out at the world through his or her eyes. What did she see, hear, smell, taste, touch? How did she feel?

Could I learn to do this without meditating? Of course! I can't quite see Hemingway sitting cross-legged on a meditation cushion. But for me, meditation expedited the process.

Analysis Paralysis

2006-11-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

In the continuing saga of my attempts to learn how to write a critical paper of the type required by Goddards' MFA program in creative writing, I went to the main library microfilm room (first time in 20 years) and read twelve reviews of Tobias Wolff's memoir, This Boy’s Life, hoping to ignite a fire. I found little help. Most of the authors compared Tobias’ tale with his brother Geoffrey’s, The Duke of Deception, which I have not yet read.

I realize now that I missed my chance. I was given the golden opportunity of driving Professor Tobias Wolff to the Columbus airport Saturday. Perhaps I should have asked him exactly what he intended when he was choosing scenes for the sub-plot of his relationship with his mother (the subject of my paper). But it was 6:30AM. He looked as if I had woken him. And I was primarily thinking about the dog hair I had forgotten to sweep from the back of my station wagon where his bags were riding. So I did not ask.

But, if I ever contact Wolff for a book jacket blurb, I'll just say, "I'm the woman from Columbus with the dirty car that got dog-hair all over your luggage when I took you to the airport." I'm sure he'll remember.

Would This Be Cheating?

2006-11-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

I used to think of myself as a rather intelligent person. Then I encountered the "critical writing" papers required in graduate school. I feel the same way I did when I first took up golf - frustrated. I repeatedly whacked the ball unskillfully in the wrong direction and, after a bit, gave up. Simply put, I didn't know what I was doing.

Law school trained me to think in a particular way. I studied legal history, learned the language and conventions. When I began to practice, I was able to base my arguments on centuries of case law that I had studied.

Not so with literature. While I have read a great deal, I have not studied it. In studying journalism in undergraduate school, I took one lit course entitled, “The Literature of Men and Women,” in which I learned that male writers (we read mostly Hemingway) are pigs who degrade women. Go figure!

I read many books while studying with Natalie Goldberg, but we were more concerned with sensory detail and the overall way an author structured a book. Natalie liked for us to stay with the author’s own words which she referred to as “the author’s breath.” She didn’t believe in analyzing things. She wanted us to experience them fully. I learned a great deal about how to write, but I didn't learn how to think in the way that graduate school requires.

My MFA Advisor, Aimee Liu, has now bounced both of my attempts at a short critical writing paper back to me. She asks questions I don't understand, suggests comparisons to books I haven't read, and talks in words I've never heard before. I’m not (yet) trained to think that way. I don’t know the canons of literature, haven’t read (not to mention studied) most of the classics, don’t know the lingo, and don’t know how to figure out the literary techniques a writer might use to convey her message.

I'm going to ask if reading either How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster or Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose would help. It feels like cheating, but I don't have time over the December break to go back to undergrad and pick up the literature courses Ohio University didn't require. If all else fails, there’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Critical Reading by Amy Wall.