Writing With a Naked Soul

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Robyn LaRue | 1 Comment

There are some pretty standard writing cliches out there that I always thought I agreed with. On the surface, I do. Some are just so much more profound than others.

Example: Write what you know. Yes. and no. Write what interests you. Write what you’re willing to research. Write what makes you excited to get to the page. Write what you want to read.

Example: Stick to one genre. I was never a fan of this one. If you are establishing your career by traditional or indie publishing, by all means, it’s very sound advice. I can’t do it. Haven’t done it except when two characters kept feeding me words until I had enough for four or five books. I admire those who can stick to a genre. It’s smart if you want to publish. I do, and plan to, and have to accept that my publishing career will look very different from someone who builds their name in one place to find an audience.

Then there’s the advice to put yourself into your work. I used to think that mostly meant the emotions we lend our characters and the recycling of our own life experiences.

Now I know the best advice I could give a new writer is to write naked. Soul naked. Give your characters your insecurities, your failures, your personal flaws, and more. I’ve been so filled with uncertainty, pain, loss, and overwhelm at various points of my life. Every artist–writer, actor, painter, song writer, and more–should find a way to channel those things into their work. It’s authentic. Raw. Real. Sometimes it’s cathartic or eye-opening. It resonates.

I think there’s a reason plenty of successful actors, writers, and song-writers were bullied or outcasts or something other than the popular kids who lived in one house in one town while growing up. How can you give voice to an outcast character if you’ve never been there? How can you give words to deep loss if you’ve never lost something? Not just in general terms, but really specific, personal ways. How does my character explain to her ex, as they are trying to get back together, that she will never go to Paris with him because she had dreamed of them going together and discovering together, and he went without her, just ten days before she could have gone, too. How does she try to explain the pain of his calling her from the Eiffel Tower or sending her photos of sidewalk cafes and the Sacre Coeur, and her horrified frustration as he cheerfully offers to see these places again as soon as she arrives?

How does she explain to him the heart ache, the loss, and the destruction of a dream, to try to get him to understand she might one day go to Paris alone, but it would be far too painful to go with him, and that it had nothing to do with forgiveness? That’s personal. Not Paris, but the emotion behind her circumstances…it’s deeply personal, the way I still feel that loss decades later.

That’s one really cool aspect of being a writer, though. I can take a dream my mother, grandmother, and I shared, and translate the fallout to my character. Likewise, I can take the experience of relationships that don’t last and “I’ll be here” as a meaningless phrase in the wake of the unexpected and tragic, and give that inner knowing to a character. Let it cause problems in his or her life.

We all have moments like that in our lives. Often painful and not something we want to revisit, those are powerful things to put into our writing. They absolutely do not need to be like for like. I have a relative who asked if it was easier to write about grief after my husband died. The answer is no, not really, because I’ve experienced grief before. It’s a nearly universal emotion. Loss of any kind, and the feelings it engenders, can be translated to loss of a specific kind in the lives of our characters. What did become easier, between his loss and the later fire, was writing about rebuilding and all the attendant losses that come with it as well as some of the good.

As creative people, we can leverage a broken toe into a broken leg, the uncertainty of career change into uncertainty of the fate of life as our characters know it, the pain of the smallest crisis in our own past into the dark night of a character’s soul. Take the fear of a child’s very high fever, add other experiences, and give your character the terror of something national or global. While it can be like for like, it doesn’t, and often isn’t, have to be. The fear of a child’s fever might simply translate into the fear of illness in your character.

All we have to do is let ourselves feel it when the character needs it, and then be brave enough to write it while vulnerable and naked, bathing in it.

I know, it sounds dramatic. it’s been on my mind as I read passages from other writers that pull tears to my eyes because I recognize that, identify with that…the experience and emotion given to the character. It’s been on my mind when I feel tears or rage or utter frustration as my characters draw on my own emotional repertoire. I’m probably writing this for myself more than anything, to remind myself of the quote by Robert Frost: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

This kind of vulnerability is also polarizing to talk about, especially on line. You’ll understand, or you won’t. I’m too reflective/emotional, or I’m explaining a truth that can be damn hard to get across. Whatever you decide, if you are a writer or other type of creator, I hope you remember this post when you look up from your own work and realize just how naked you are within it…

…and decide that’s just the way it should be.

The Future of Physical Writing

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Robyn LaRue | Leave a comment

I know, It’s a dramatic image, isn’t it?

I’ve had my grandson since April, and I’ve taken charge of the homeschooling his district is doing through the COVID closures. He is eight years old and in advanced programs for math and reading.

It breaks my heart to say this, but he hates writing. He hates the physical act of holding a pencil and putting marks on the paper. He’s come close to hating composition, and that was entirely unacceptable in my house.

He’s composing on the computer, now, knowing he has to copy it all to paper when he’s done, and his attitude has improved slightly. He’s a bit too eager to write down my examples rather than use them to create his own prose. We’re getting there, with his teacher’s support.

If you took literature in college, you might have had to learn to read Middle or Old English. People do it because we wanted to read works in the original (or appease our professors). Five years ago, I had a conversation with my nephew, in which he informed me they were no longer being taught cursive writing. I asked him how he would read the constitution or the letters of historical figures if he couldn’t read cursive. His response was to tell me if it wasn’t printed, he’d have to learn. He was eight then and could read cursive from both his grandmother and myself. I had hope.

My grandson cannot. In just five years, kids can no longer do that much. How long before cursive writing is something people consider must be translated?

Oh, they will be fine. I know this. the Digital Natives prefer to compose on keyboards. I do probably seventy-five percent of my composing on a keyboard these days when in flow. The kid will learn to do the same and he’ll be fine. It still makes me sad, though. The thought that he might not be able to read letters between his great-grandparents or any of the genealogy files makes me sad. That I have to print for him makes me sad and frustrated.

I can’t recall another moment in history that moved us away from writing by hand. The printing press merely prevented us having to copy ad nauseum. Steel nibs meant more geese got to keep their feathers. We still had to write…put pen to page.

Times change. We evolve. Those of us meant to write will still write, just without a pen or a pencil. As for those who want to read history in its original form, well, I guess there will be classes or segments of classes in the future to teach kids how to read cursive. After school programs, perhaps? Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll learn to read and write cursive, and it will not be lost to history.

Well, that’s the hope of this grandmother. Perhaps in my seventies, I’ll teach community classes on the subject, teaching this very thing. Then again, I’m still hoping I won’t have to.

The Journey Creates New Words

Posted on May 23, 2020 by Robyn LaRue | 4 Comments

It’s amazing how life can be somewhat peaceful and then turn you on your head. I’ll give you the basic run down, but the chaos of the last 2 1/2 years is not the topic of this post.

In January, 2018, my husband died. In May, I developed a pulmonary embolism. In November, the building attached to mine burned to the ground, taking the water main, the electrical, and my car with it (totaled…the building fell on it). My condo is fine and the photo is from the actual fire. However, my adult son and I ended up sharing a hotel room for fifteen months. Not how I would recommend for anyone to spend time, trust me. To be trapped in a small space with a talkative extrovert tested my sanity at times. 🙂 In March, 2020, just over two years after all this began, I’m finally back home, a bittersweet thing as there were leaks and my kitchen needs to be ripped out.

I didn’t write after my husband died. In fact, though I journaled, I didn’t write fiction for a year. The confidence with which I used to approach posts here was gone, too. I had coaching training, but no clients, I’d lost the one editor I trusted absolutely, and I wasn’t sure I was cut out to publish any more. The dark night of the writer’s soul, I suppose.

In January, 2019, I was exasperated, not sure what I was supposed to be doing as other paths had opened up, and very much felt like Jacob, ready to wrestle the angel. I got angry, shook my fist in the air and demanded to know where my focus should be. For a week, I did nothing but go down each path in my imagination, trying to imagine life in the future. One thing that became clear…the only thing I had endless patience with and energy for was writing.

The dam broke loose January 19th. I sat down at the computer, found myself opening up Scrivener for the first time in recent memory, and more than nine thousand words poured out of me that day. Within a week, I had a routine and was actually producing stories.

It was like going from a hose that dripped once a day to a fire hose in my face. I’m still shocked when I look at my daily averages and word count for 2019. Where did it come from?

I thought a lot about this event, and I think there are insights useful for all writers. The first is the truth that, as writers, we watch ourselves when we go through painful things. We remember those emotions and lend them to our characters. The best scenes are the ones that bring tears to your own eyes as you write them. My ability to write three-dimensional characters has expanded hugely. My willingness to be vulnerable on the page and take chances as a writer have stretched.

I think another reason this torrent happened is because I said no to other paths, acknowledged that I was a writer before almost anything else, even to the point of understanding I’d rather write than have a steady relationship that took time away from the words. Believe me, that was a revelation that caused a few tears. I’ve always imagined myself to be writer and many other things. I coach. I encourage. I teach a very little. Whatever else I may do, I am a writer. That’s who I am, that’s my primary focus and priority, and there is no conflict as to my lifestyle. Words rule. If I do nothing but put words on a page for the rest of my life, I’ll be content.

Here’s another. Stop worrying about what you write and just let it come. Of course we want to be focused and produce to our goals, yet there is a time and place to open a new document and just type. It may be something totally outside what you usually write. It might provide adhesive to your current work. I’m an advocate of free-writing about stories and characters. I am no longer surprised when the free-write becomes something all on its own. It’s okay. No guilt. Just creative process. I’ve now written in genres that scared or intimidated me. And I liked it.

Though I believe writers write and do not advocate putting my hand to my forehead to declare it’s just not there today, I have discovered there are times it’s okay if the writing dries up for a bit. If you make a living writing, you’ll find a way to break through it if you can. If not, if you have the time and space, as I did during the initial recovery from the embolism, just sit with it. I still wrote in my journal every day, but lost all fiction. At some point, I think you just decide to give yourself a break and let it be. Relaxing about it and taking the pressure off probably had a lot more to do with the flood being so productive when it arrived. Regardless, not beating myself up as hard as I would have the year prior helped me to be open to whatever would come word-wise.

There’s a good chance this post seems egotistical or woe-is-me. That’s not where I’m at. I think, in a way, I’ve finally found my feet. So many losses in the past three years. Losses, disruptions, and more. Yet my word count is no longer an issue. My willingness to sit down and compose isn’t something I think about. I do it first thing. Would I have all this if I hadn’t dried up for a year? Would I have all this if I hadn’t lost my closest friends, my husband, and for a time, my mobility and health? I have finished several first drafts that I actually like. It’s been a while.

For writers, no life experience is wasted. We grow. Our capacity to write well and with deeper meaning grows. Our characters have new opportunities to grow.

If you’re in the midst of something that hurts right now, you have my empathy. Keep your notebook close. Take notes on phrases, feelings, observations. Let yourself really feel and describe it. Then put the notebook away and simply sit with life until you’re ready to write.

Take Responsibility for Your Writing Life

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Robyn LaRue | 3 Comments

Well. I’m a little red-faced today. The crime scene series will continue. As soon as I find it. Don’t worry, I have backups of backups. I just transferred everything to a new computer this week and apparently missed a few files. Embarrassing! And entirely my fault.

But it got me to thinking.

I like excuses. They seem to provide lubricant for slipping out of situations in which I am at fault. However, I try hard not to make excuses because, really, who cares? They don’t change the failure, right? They can’t undo a missing post, a lost opportunity, or a broken promise. Excuses might appease and reduce the fallout, but doesn’t let us own our mistakes and face them.

For that, we need to take responsibility.

As writers, aren’t excuses just easier?

I was too busy to write today.
The boss needed me so I couldn’t write.
The kids are sick so I was too tired to write.
I just wasn’t feeling it today. Maybe tomorrow.

Who are we appeasing? Ourselves, of course. We don’t want to acknowledge our failure or our lack of commitment. It’s easier to excuse ourselves to ourselves than admit we blew it.

What would it look like if we take responsibility instead?

I chose to spend my time elsewhere.
I elected to focus on something else.
I decided not to write while the kids napped.
I didn’t care enough to sit down and start.

It might sound a little harsh, but it’s honest, right? And it also requires us to own up to our choices rather than hide behind circumstances or other people.

Life does sometimes get in the way. That’s just a fact. But taking responsibility rather than making excuses gives a much better picture of our writing life and a much better gauge of our resistance.

Do you make excuses for not writing? I still do, even as I want to take responsibility instead. How do you feel after you tell yourself an excuse? A little relieved? A little dirty? I do, and ashamed besides.

How does it feel different to take responsibility? For me it feels a bit grim, but also honest, like a hard look in the mirror. Sometimes it’s clear there wasn’t much I could do. Most of the time, what’s clear is that I was lazy, uncommitted, or scared. Then I get a little mad. Taking responsibility has gotten me back out of bed to do my daily writing because I don’t want to see myself as a person who can’t fulfill her commitments.

For the next week or two, listen to what you tell yourself. Examine the excuses and rephrase them as taking responsibility. If you need help, call your accountability partner (or get one). Holding myself accountable to another person who wouldn’t accept excuses was how I began to understand the whole subject in the first place.

If you struggle to get your writing done, ditch the excuses, take responsibility, and get a little mad.

Which positive outcomes might we find by moving from excuses to responsibility?

Crime Scenes for Writers: Blood Evidence

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Robyn LaRue | 4 Comments

This type of evidence is often misrepresented on television. How many times have you seen a murder victim lying in a pool of blood on a TV show? These victims are usually in a thick, glossy, bright red liquid pool, right?

Not so much.

Pools of any depth begin to separate. Thin layers of blood tend to dry quickly and become dark brown. These TV victims would realistically be lying in dried, sticky brown stuff or in a sticky mess of separated plasma and browning goo. It may be one of the forensic elements on TV shows that irritates me most, but I’ll get off my soap box now.

Blood is a fascinating substance. It’s three to four times thicker than water. It has a metallic scent and taste. And it’s something we’ve all seen at some point. This “liquid life” also carries with it evidence of poison in many cases, our DNA, information about our health, our blood type, and sometimes our state of mind (adrenaline and cortisol). We’ve used the ABO blood group typing system since about 1930. It was, before DNA, what we used to eliminate possible suspects from crime scenes.

Beyond type and content, how blood is left at the crime scene gives great details about what occurred. For example, blood may be dripped, transferred, or splattered.

Dripped blood is passive, dropped in a round or elliptical pattern depending on whether the bleeding person is standing still, moving slowly, or moving fast. Read by a knowledgeable investigator, direction and rate of movement become clear.

Transfer happens when, say, a hand or sleeve comes in contact with blood and then touches another surface such as a wall or towel. If both parties have been injured (not uncommon in stabbings), their blood may mix before transfer.

Spatter is the sexy part of blood evidence for most people interested in forensics. Spatter comes in three types: low, medium, and high velocity.

Low velocity spatter is often “cast off,” or flung from an object used to strike or stab the victim. Imagine shaking water from your hands to get the idea.

Medium velocity spatter leaves larger patterns, such as arterial spray or blood erupting from the wound when struck.

High velocity spatter is a fine mist and generally caused by bullets.

The pattern of blood spatter, including voids in spatter that may mark the location of the perpetrator, reveals such things as the attacker’s height, left or right handedness, where they were positioned, and possibly how hard the victim was struck. It may also reveal the type of weapon (independent of the wounds), height, strength, and angle of the blows.

Blood is corrosive and really soaks into things. Even with a good scrubbing, traces will remain on most surfaces. It can be painted over, smeared with cleaners, even removed from the naked eye, but it cannot be eradicated completely unless you care to replace every element of the room including those floor joists.

To assist crime scene technicians in uncovering evidence of blood, the traditional method of luminal is used in conjunction with a black light. These days, lasers are used in some cases and a new forensic camera will eventually replace luminal all together.

Beyond walls, carpet, and furniture, blood can end up in the smallest of nooks and crannies: behind unsealed baseboards, the undersides of lamp shades, on the ceiling across the room. In one case blood, absorbed through carpet and subfloor(both of which were replaced), only to be discovered along the floor joist. It’s been found in sink drains and plumbing pipes, in soil and on plants, under furniture, in the tiny screws of eyeglasses, between a cleaned knife’s hilt and blade, and even inside the tiniest cracks of a cell phone.

There’s one more thing blood can accomplish. It can, in court, “prove” murder or death if enough blood is present to show that life could not be sustained.

Blood evidence, to my mind, is fantastic for writers. We can hold the tension of lack of evidence and then reveal a whole crime scene with luminal. We can provide what appear to be inconsistencies for our characters to resolve. If set in history, a brilliant detective might use the budding technique of studying blood evidence to solve a crime that is otherwise unsolvable. And the finding of the tiniest speck of blood in the oddest of places can make a case the reader thought was lost.