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Writing With a Naked Soul

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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 Journey Creates New Words

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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.

The Writer and–Ooh, Shiny!

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Reminder:   The 50% reduced coaching fees in honor of Int’l coach week end at midnight, Sunday, May 21. To take advantage, be sure to email me before then. More details here.

I was going to title this post the Agony of Choice, but let’s be real. No one wants to talk about agony, right?  And we are all familiar with “Squirrel Syndrome.”

Sometimes a shiny is just a shiny. It attracts our attention and we wander after it as happily as a child chases a butterfly. However, we are soon back with our project, the shiny object now a mere smile on our lips as we forge ahead on our original track. To carry the analogy further, most of us know that catching those butterflies can damage them, so we have learned to wait patiently for them to land on their own.

Sometimes, though, the shiny (or squirrel, depending on your preference) is a mask. It’s not just when we can’t decide between existing options . . . this character or that plot, this project or that. Those moment s of indecisiveness are hard enough when the choices are clear-cut. It’s when we have too many really good ideas worth pursuing to settle on any of them. It’s like being in a field filled with butterflies, mesmerized and still, as they flutter, land on us, flutter again. It’s a beautiful place to be, but man is it hard to pick a favorite, you know?

When so many ideas have so much potential, it feels so impossible to pick just one. So we stand there in the agony of choice.

It’s all well and good when the options are butterflies, beautiful to watch. But, on occasion, those pretty wings turn into a cage (or worse, hail or stinging rain) and we become trapped, frozen,   That’s the agony. That’s the pain of indecision.

If you have ended up there simply because you are afraid you’ll lose all the other ideas if you choose one, there’s good news. As John Steinbeck said, “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” The writer is never short of ideas. They come from everywhere. They land like fairy dust on the pillow, the breakfast table, the conference room. All we have to do is sweep them up. Only the new writers are worried about lack of ideas or losing those they have captured. More ideas will come to us than any of us could write in a lifetime. Grasping this truth leaves us free to pursue one idea, knowing dozens are lining up for our attention later.

If you ended up there due to fear (fear of producing, fear of judgment, fear of choosing), there’s also good news. Either your drive to write will overcome fear long enough for you to get started (and begin negotiations with that fear) or that fear will distract you from writing all together. Either way, you’ll move beyond this point.

The true agony, for me, comes when I’ve developed a couple of ideas enough to see where they are headed and what their potential is. I like them all, the characters are active, the plots creep into my dreams. I would count it a great success if I only had one, or a great one and a good one. The choice is easier then, of course. Once in a while I have even managed to combine two of them into a stronger story. My painful indecision comes when two or three are actively campaigning for my attention.

I think it’s helpful for writers to have a clear idea of their goals at moments like this. If you plan to write only historical romance, or to focus on science fiction, it’s simpler to eliminate all the good ideas that don’t fit. If you are publishing your work, continuing your series probably carries more weight than writing a stand-alone novel. Knowing your goals gives you something by which to judge each idea and concept.

To make the process easier, I’ve developed a list of questions to answer when I am stuck in the agony of choice. I’ll draw columns for each idea and use the questions as rows. My goal is to find out which story has the most meaning for me personally, (which is usually directly correlated to how much it make me uncomfortable), and which seems to have the most “juice.” Some ideas look fantastic when first developed, but not all of them have the juice to carry a full novel.

Every writer develops their own list of questions. I’m sharing a few of mine in case you need a starting point.

  • Which of these stories am I dreaming about?
  • Which of these stories pops into my head most often?
  • Which of these stories feel like they can wait?
  • Which of these stories brings emotions to the surface?
  • Which of these main characters is most/least like me?
  • What is the Truth for each of these stories/characters?
  • Which of these stories or characters makes me most uncomfortable?
  • Which character makes the most profound change in their arc?

You get the idea. I use about 16 questions on average. Generally speaking, it’s worked for me to go through a process like this. What’s most telling (and kind of maddening, in a good way) is when I write a lot about one idea and feel it’s the best option only to throw it all out the window and run after the other idea full speed. I don’t think I’d have found the hidden commitment for it if I hadn’t put it through the process.

Squirrel Syndrome gets us all at one time or another. The Agony of Choice will, too. In both cases, however, we can take control.

How have you resolved your Agony of Choice? If prone to Squirrel Syndrome, how often do you let it pull you off course?

 

 

Take Responsibility for Your Writing Life

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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?

The Writer’s Google Search History

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/86979666@N00/7623744452/Here’s a new twist on an old feature here at The Sarcastic Muse: Inquiring Minds. This time, I want to know.

We writers joke about our Google searches. Though someone in a secret bunker somewhere might raise an eyebrow at some romance genre searches, it’s the thriller and international crime writers that interest me most. My inquiry has several parts.

First, do you think the government is actively watching based on keywords, times visited, or length of time spent on sites for some optics? How active are they? What lands a person on the proverbial watch list?

Second, is anyone actually worried that a government employee might see their search history? (I worry more about my family as I’ve been researching the psychology of killers for years.)

And third, which is probably the heart of my question, do the alphabet agencies care about name, ethnicity, or other profiling data? If my parents immigrated from Serbia or my dad still writes to his cousins in North Korea, Afghanistan, or <insert geopolitical hot spot here>, or my brother took a new name when he converted to Islam, does that make the watchers watch more closely? What about ex-pats living in hot spots around the world? An average middle-class person who doesn’t hold a passport probably doesn’t worry too much.

But what about the rest of the world? Terrorism in all forms has become an increasing part of our lives, and, by extension, our fiction. Whether we need to know the blast radius of a pipe bomb, the epidemiology of an anthrax outbreak, what the FBI play book says about dealing with militia groups, etc, writers turn to Google. How concerned are writers in general? How concerned are writers with even casual ties to people or places the government is watching for?

This inquiring mind wants to know.

Comments are open to everyone. We can’t learn if we don’t ask.