Flashwrite #10: Make Your Own Ecstasy

The most accurate (and inspiring) definition of the word "ecstasy"...

ecstasy = ek + stasis = 'standing outside oneself'

...snow and more snow, and a bit of reflection on our four-week residency at beautiful Hawthornden Castle with my new friend Tendai Huchu, author of The Hairdresser of Harare. I read a short excerpt from The Essential Donne (now out of print), edited by Amy Clampitt. Proper entry on my Hawthornden experience coming soon!* * *(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #9: Who Cares?

Notes:This week's episode is about telling a story that matters. I don't have much in the way of notes for this one, although I did touch on something tangential in this blog post: Be Remarkable.Where does memoir fit in to all this? A good memoir, too, is bigger than the one who writes it. You know I'm a huge fan of Bird By Bird, which is the absolute best example I can think of; there's a ton of personal experience in that book (no holds barred, as they say--Anne Lamott even tells you she snorted cocaine like an anteater), but it's all in service of the greater point. Through memoir, the author helps people develop their own writing practice...and get comfortable with their writerly neuroses (as she herself so clearly has).* * *Transcript:The first thing I ask myself when I come up with a new story idea is, "Who cares?" Is this story bigger than I am? Will I be able to tap into something universal, or am I just indulging myself?By now you know that I believe everyone should write; however, not all writing is art. Some writing is catharsis, and that's a beautiful thing, a necessary thing; and some writing we can classify as "a good start"; and some writing, frankly, is not going to amount to much more than it already is, and that's fine too. But it's not art.I want to talk a little bit about the universal cliché of writing, which is "write what you know." What I'm saying is, you can write what you know, but don't write it exactly [as] you know it. It's got to go through the crucible. Take all of your raw material and put it through the metaphorical crucible, and what comes out will be so much bigger than the initial vision that you had for your story.So that's the question I'd like you to ask yourself this week--"who cares?" And I don't mean that in a scoffing or negative way; if you ask yourself this question, hopefully your mind will explode afterward with really wonderful tangential ideas, and you're going to start fleshing things out, and that's great. But if you get the little nagging feeling that maybe this story falls into the navel-gazing category, it's a good question to ask yourself because then you'll know. I have met several writers who are working on manuscripts that are probably never going to be published (in fact, they're definitely never going to be published) because they're writing things that haven't been through the crucible. They haven't translated this story into something that is bigger than themselves.By now you're probably wondering if I have an example I can give you. I want to talk to you again a little bit about my first novel, Mary Modern, which came out in 2007. The thing about this book is that I wouldn't have written it if my grandmother hadn't died, and the book is about a scientist who clones her grandmother. So I could have (and I'm sure I did) sat down and wrote a story about a girl who loses her grandmother, and cries and cries, and feels really rotten, et cetera. That's not art, that's catharsis. What I was able to do with this book--or hope I was able to do--is turn my private grief into something [more], so that anyone can read this book and feel what these characters are feeling. And that is art. So that's what I'm talking about.For this week, I'd like you to build on Flashwrite #7, the mind-mapping exercise. Why not try this with a particular story idea, and apply the question of "who cares?" See where that takes you. Keep asking yourself these kind of "tough love" questions, because your story will be so much richer for it, and so much more worth writing and more worth reading.* * *(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #8: Getting Great Ideas

Notes:Better views of the Mary Modern cover and my great-grandparents' engagement portrait:

(The paperback edition includes an essay on how I came to write the novel.)Check out my Ideas series from last year, part 1 in particular:

--Ideas, part 1: Fill 'er Up--Ideas, part 2: Keeping Organized--Ideas, part 3: Using Them

And as I wrote in Said and Unsaid, perfect strangers can unwittingly give you priceless bits of dialogue. Keep your eyes and ears open at all times!

"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people." Hell yes, Leo Burnett.-- Sarah P. Miller (@SarahPMiller) November 16, 2012

Transcript:Where do great story ideas come from? Now, this is always going to be a mysterious process to a great extent, because your subconscious mind is doing most of the heavy lifting here. But I think we can boil it down to two factors, and it will help if we focus on these two: curiosity and time. As a writer, you must be a master observer of human nature, and of nature in general. So you must develop an insatiable curiosity about the world around you. It's absolutely essential.Play the "what if?" game with yourself. That's a very basic technique that you can use. I actually want to talk to you a little bit about how I used the "what if?" game, and how that worked out for me. I was working on what would become my first published novel, and I looked at this picture--this is the engagement portrait of my great-grandparents--and I played the "what if?" game. I said to myself, "What if Anna and I could sit down and have a cup of tea together, and have a conversation for an hour or so. What would we have to say to each other?" And this book is what came out of it--this is my first novel, it's called Mary Modern, and it all came out of this picture. So you see the "what if?" game is pretty powerful stuff if you keep following the breadcrumb trail, as it were.The next thing I have to say about curiosity is that art inspires art. Go to museums. Go out into the world. Find beautiful things--and maybe not-beautiful things!--things that interest you, things that fascinate you, things that make you enthusiastic about life, and write it down. As I said in Flashwrite #1, your journal should be your constant companion. Observe, record, ponder, and let it marinate. Give your subconscious mind lots and lots of good stuff to work with. This is filling up.And this is where time comes in. You need to give your subconscious mind time to process everything. I'm thinking of an analogy here: if food is your observations, then your mind is the stove. So if you're going to cook dinner, you just need to get your ingredients and put them in the pot, and let it simmer. It's going to take time. Please don't get upset if you haven't come up with your one brilliant idea that's going to set the world on fire. You may very well come up with that brilliant idea that's going to set the world on fire, but you can't rush the process. You have to go easy on yourself. Be gentle. Don't feel like you have to rush, and come up with this great idea with your conscious mind, because it's not going to happen with your conscious mind. This is such a subconscious process. Have fun with it. As I said, fun is everything. We wouldn't do this if it weren't fun.Your suggested exercise: you've got your journal, right? Without leaving the room in which you're watching this video, I want you to find an object somewhere in the room and play the "what if?" game with it. Think about where it came from, think about who made it. If it's a picture on the wall, imagine a conversation. Think about the possibilities. Spend five or ten minutes writing in your journal. "What if such-and-such happened?" What if I met my great-grandmother for tea? What would we say to each other? It's really, really fun. So enjoy the process.* * *Next week's episode: telling a story that matters.(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #7: Mapping the Mind

Notes:Ecosystem notebooks, an alternative to the Moleskine notebooks I recommend in Flashwrite #1. I forgot to mention they're also made from recycled paper! What's not to love? Thank you, Amiee!A bit more on mind mapping in Ideas, part 2.If you're interested in any of the things I riffed on in my mind map, here are some links:

• "Improbable Frequency" here and here.
• Harry Clarke here and here and here.
• The Kerry Way.
• Mike McCormack's "The Stained Glass Violations" is part of his story collection, Getting It In the Head. Also, his Facebook page.
• Lord Dunsany.
• A haunted Irish castle.
• The Midnight Court by Brian Merriman.

Mind mapping at Yaddo, April 2010.Transcript:Hello! You're strapped to my dining room chandelier!Before I get started with the mind mapping technique, I want to tell you about this alternative to the Moleskine journal--it looks like a Moleskine, but it's produced by a company called Ecosystem (a trademark of Sterling Publishing Company, which I think is affiliated with Barnes & Noble--?), and you can get this at Barnes & Noble for a dollar less than the Moleskine. It's got all of the same cool features, but it's made in the USA with soy inks. It's the perfect alternative [as I mentioned in Flashwrite #1, Moleskine journals are manufactured in China.] This was a birthday gift from my lovely friend Amiee. Thank you so much for this, Amiee--it's a great idea.Now I'm ready to talk about the mind mapping technique! I'll briefly show you some examples here--I use them for fleshing out story ideas. I begin in the center with my tentative title, and then I splash out and start to connect my ideas. It's a wonderful story development technique. I use newsprint, 18 by 24 inches--the bigger the piece of paper, the better. You don't need to spend ten bucks on a newsprint pad; you can use an old piece of posterboard left over from middle school art projects, any kind of scrap paper, it just has to be a big piece of paper. Don't try to do this on a regular piece of looseleaf paper because you're not going to be able to splash out the way you ideally would with a larger piece of paper.I'm going to show you a story idea I'm fleshing out myself for the first time, in real time, so you can see for yourself just what a marvelous technique this is. It's so versatile--you can actually ask yourself a question, if you're feeling confused (it doesn't have to be "about" anything), you can write yourself a question and then sprout out from there, and answer the question for yourself, and you'll be amazed at what kind of answers you come up with. It's a really surprising and versatile technique. I recommend it for any time you need to get answers, whether it's about a particular story you're trying to flesh out, or just general life confusion-existential crisis-et cetera, et cetera. It's pretty awesome. (It has worked for me in that capacity, so I can vouch for that.)In general, when your ideas start to take shape and connect with each other, this wonderful feeling happens: you start to see that your mind is this gorgeously intricate tapestry of ideas. The chaos becomes art. That's what I love best about this--that's what I'm getting at here.So I'm going to set my alarm for four minutes, because I think I can give you a good sense of how this technique works in only four minutes. Here we go. So this story is actually not a novel this time, it's a travelogue--an Ireland travelogue. The point of this is that I'm getting away from the Lucky Charms, the golf courses, the Guinness Brewery, the Blarney Stone yada yada. There's so much more to Irish culture than what people in America (and elsewhere in the world) see it as; for me this is encapsulated by this line, Where the f*** is Glocca Morra?, from this musical called Improbable Frequency that I just love. So that's where I'm starting off with this.The first thing I can think of, the first essay, is about stained glass. Specifically the stained glass of Harry Clarke. I need to make some notes for myself: I need to go to the Crawford Gallery in Cork and the National Library in Dublin. So those are some research notes. I also want to make reference to my old teacher, Mike McCormack, who is an amazing writer. I might use his story, "The Stained Glass Violations," for an epigraph. (In that story, a woman literally eats stained glass.) What else? I want to write about "obscure" Irish writers. See? I'm making this connection. [Mike is] not obscure, but what I'm saying is, anyone who is not Yeats or Joyce or Wilde.Oh! I will be doing some sort of long-distance walking trip. Possibly the Kerry Way.Ooh! Here's one. Lord Dunsany. [Connecting line to 'obscure Irish writers.'] I want to read him, I haven't read him yet. Ooh! And here's another thing: I want to do a tour of haunted Irish castles. I don't know if Lord Dunsany's castle is haunted [connecting line between 'haunted castles' and 'Lord Dunsany'], but I can definitely visit, and we'll see what happens.What else? I can talk about the Irish language. Here's a note: Padraig, my teacher at NYU in my Irish Studies course--go to the Donegal summer school where he teaches? We can connect this [Irish language] with this [obscure Irish writers.] Oh! The Midnight Court, I might want to touch on that, for an epigraph or otherwise. That is an Irish-language poem by Brian Merriman. So this is a really good start, actually. [Four-minute alarm goes off.] Perfect timing.So you can see how I begin--and I'll start fleshing it in after this. But this is where it begins. Obviously I took down a few notes [beforehand] in my regular journal, but it makes all the difference to see it spread out like a map. This is your road map for your project, and it becomes a sacred document. It's beautiful. It's a really inspiring technique. It fires you up to write whatever it is you're fleshing out here.Our exercise for this time is, of course, do your own mind map! I would love to see your results. If you want to leave me a comment and let me know how this worked for you, what kind of paper you used (did you take a big piece of brown paper that came in a package from the post office, or did you use a big piece of posterboard left over from middle school art class, whatever), and tell me how this worked for you. Tell me how you felt when you started to see these connections being made. I hope I've sufficiently communicated my enthusiasm for this technique!--and I hope you enjoy it. As you can see, I love this. I absolutely love this.Thank you so much for watching, and let me know if you have any comments or questions.[A brief clip from "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" The version I used is Jeannie Carson's on The Irish Album.]

@pettymagic the product of time spent in your saturday class - thanks to it, i may actually finish Nanowrimo this year twitter.com/LittlestFinch/...-- Finch (Alexandra) (@LittlestFinch) October 26, 2012

(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #6: Advice for Young Writers

Notes:I had plenty more to say on each of these points, but I thought I'd keep it short and sweet. Here's a beloved book that has "mentored" me, and I'll be blogging more soon about my own formative adventures. This episode was inspired by Brian's blog post for his son Ty on the occasion of his departure for college (you can see the seeds of this video in the comment I left), Ellie and Maddy (whom I had the great privilege of knowing in my library writing workshop), and the boys at St. Lawrence (especially Kaspar, who took the time to drop me a note last week).Write an email to your future self at Futureme.org. It will be delivered to your inbox at whatever point in time you choose.* * *Transcript:
I'd like to offer some advice for young writers (and by "young writers," I mean writers of all ages, but this advice is especially for teens and college students).1.  It's pretty obvious, but I think it warrants repeating: read voraciously! Let your favorite books be your greatest teachers. Find out who your favorite authors are, and consider them your mentors.2.  Go out into the world and have as many adventures as you can, as early as you can. Conquer your fear and do it anyway. Getting out of your comfort zone is huge (and it's a big part of growing up in general). The great thing about going out and having adventures is, not only are you having that wonderful experience and enjoying yourself tremendously, but as a writer, you'll be accumulating a rich store of experience that you can draw from later on.3.  This is the most important. Don't listen to anyone who tells you to be realistic. Don't listen to them! Something happens in the course of some people's lives, where they look at other people who are going after their dreams, and they get petty, they get jealous—because you, as someone who is going after your dream, are reminding them that they're not going after theirs. Obviously that's their problem, not yours. So be brave! Go after it. Do it. Don't worry about what anybody says. Don't listen to the naysayers. Don't listen to anyone who would really prefer that you kept yourself small so that they don't have to feel bad for not going after their dreams.For this time, I have a really fun exercise: if you go to Futureme.org, you can write a letter to your future self, and it will be emailed to you at any point in the future that you designate. It could be a year, or up to fifty or (I think) sixty years. So go there, write yourself an email, and talk about your dreams. Ask your future self, have I achieved this? Think about all of the things that you might not even conceive of right now, wonderful things that will happen in your future. I think that you will be amazed when that email comes back to you in ten years' time, twenty years' time (or whatever amount of time you designate)—I think you'll be surprised at how many of your dreams have come true. It's pretty awesome. (I haven't tried it yet, but I'm really excited to do it.) That tip came to me from my friend Elizabeth: Futureme.org, your suggested exercise for this week.So go for it, be brave, and thank you for watching!* * *Next week I'll be showing you how to "mind map." Really jazzed for that one!(All Flashwrite entries here.)

Flashwrite #5: Typing or Longhand?

Notes:My blog post on outlining and "prewriting" includes a screenshot of a "chapter flow" I composed longhand and finessed on the computer. I wrote a bit about how I use my favorite word processing and organizational program, Scrivener, here. More about Scrivener soon.Longhand love:

Process, part 1.Process, part 2.Scribbling Away in Cartagena.The Story of a Notebook (which I finished a few weeks ago—end of an era!)

Transcript:Today I want to talk about an age-old question, and that is: typing or longhand? My answer to that is, why not typing and longhand? I'm a best-of-both kind of writer for sure. I think there's this notion that many of us have that writing longhand is a more organic, more authentic, more "writerly" process. And it's true that if you look back over your own handwriting, all the notes that you've made and the connections you've made on paper, you've got a record of it--it is a much more intimate process in that respect. On the other hand, I know that—if you think back on all of the great writers of the past, had they had this technology available to them, if Shakespeare could have written on a laptop, do you think he would have? I think he would have! And it's true that a lot of us can type a lot faster than we can write, right?So I don't think it's an either-or proposition. I think you need to experiment and see what works best for you. For me personally, I like to do my prewriting and my planning, I like that to be a solely longhand process. Then when I've got to the point where I have my outline and I'm ready to go, I will transition to the laptop. I use a word processing program called Scrivener, which I'll talk about in an upcoming episode—how it's worlds, worlds, worlds better than Word. (Don't get me started on Word! Anyway...) I wanted to show you these little composition notebooks that I picked up when I was in Ireland several years ago. On a recent trip to Colombia (well, it was not that recent--it was back in January and February 2012 and I'm recording in November, but anyway) I ended up writing the bulk of my new novel in these notebooks in cafes in Cartagena and elsewhere in Colombia. It was marvelous. It was really, really lovely to feel so connected to my words. Also, there's the benefit of no internet access, no distractions, so that concentrated my mind wonderfully. So this is really cool—I really enjoy writing longhand. But as I said, I can type a lot faster than I can write, and so, when I get into it, I'm really into the typing.So see what works for you. Like I said, don't think it needs to be an either-or proposition. So my suggested exercise for this time is, if you're mostly the kind of writer who types up your notes from the very beginning in a Word document--why not try it longhand? Looseleaf paper, or a notebook, or I like to use index cards and also Rolodex cards (and I can talk about that in an upcoming episode as well). Switch it up. And if you are someone who writes only longhand, in your journal, why not try composing on your laptop for a change? So that's my suggested exercise--five or ten minutes, fifteen minutes, switch it up. See how you feel, see how it makes you feel. I think either way can be a really intuitive process, you can feel "in the zone" either way. So try that, see how it works--typing and longhand, not typing or longhand. So thanks for watching!* * *How about you? Do you like having a handwritten record of your progress, do you prefer the efficiency of your laptop, or do you use both methods? (All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #3: Time and Space

Notes:I mention the Bram Stoker panel I attended at NY Comic Con on October 13th. (This isn't the same datebook Dacre Stoker talked about in his lecture, but here's a fun article in the Guardian.)Here's Charles Bukowski's poem "air and light and time and space." Read it, print it, post it above your desk.How did you create space for yourself this week?* * *Transcript:(I was going to wait until this guy who's using his leaf blower down the street finally puts it away and gets a beer, because, y'know, it's a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. But I might be waiting for another hour, and I'm ready to record now. So maybe we'll get some silence and birdsong toward the end of this. Anyway!)I want to talk about time and space. I think a hammock in the backyard is the perfect place to talk about time and space. On Twitter recently, someone was saying how irritating it is when she tells people she's written a book, and they say, "Oh, I wish I had time to write a book." Yeah. The thing is, no one is going to give you the time, and no one is going to give you the space. You have to take it for yourself. Yes, I know we all have responsibilities, but you work around those responsibilities. And like I was saying before, you don't have to carve out an hour and make it your perfect writing practice, because you might never begin if you set such exacting standards for yourself--right? So you need to carve it out however you can find it, and I mean literally: if you need to lock yourself in the bathroom and pretend that you are on the potty, just do it, because usually people will leave you alone if they think you're using the bathroom. Lock yourself in and do what you need to do (with your journal, I mean).So I was at New York Comic Con last weekend, which was really insanely fun. They have all different kinds of events and panels there, and one of the panels was about Bram Stoker. It was led by Dacre Stoker, who is Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, and he was showing us pictures of his journal--his datebook. What was really interesting was that he had not only scheduled everything he had to do with his actors--because he was the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, so obviously he was a very busy man, and he would take the company on tour, and he was working out all the logistics, I'm sure--so he had that going on in his datebook, but he also had his characters' movements along with his own in the real world, which is just absolutely fascinating. And so he was saying, "Okay, Harker's in Romania, and Lucy and Mina are in Whitby," and whatever, along with his own appointments, which I thought was really cool. So the point of this is, Bram Stoker was really, really busy. He was not a man of leisure, a gentleman poet who had all the time in the world to sit on his country estate and write. He was not one of those. He was a very busy man, but he got it done.At this point, we start making excuses--why we can't find the time, why we can't make the space--and the best thing I have ever found for lighting a fire under my own tushie, to make the time and create the space, is Charles Bukowski's poem, "air and light and time and space." I'm not a huge fan of Bukowski ordinarily, but this poem is amazing, and it will light a fire under your tush. So guess what? I have it, and I'm going to read it for you right now.[I read the poem.]Whoever was using that leaf blower is done, and I hope he grabbed himself a beer. (Or she! I hope she grabbed herself a beer.) So what should we do? I think the easiest thing to do is, right now, turn off your computer and lock yourself in the bathroom (unless of course you have a hammock in the backyard, and you can fold yourself up like this and pretend that there's no one in here). Hide! Hide yourself, however you have to do it, hide, and take five minutes, just five minutes--you can clock yourself, time yourself--and write. Just do it. If you need an idea, write about a place inside your imagination where you feel free, and there's no one making demands on your time or attention. It can be by the ocean, or it can be in outer space. Just describe this place. What do you see around you? What are the smells? What does it feel like? Is there sand underfoot? What does it feel like? Is it wet sand? Are there animals? Are there bird sounds? Anything. Whatever. Anything. Just take five minutes and do it. (And I'm going to do the same--right here!)* * *Flashwrite #1: Make a Beginning.Flashwrite #2: Loosen Up.Next episode:Flashwrite #4: So Long, Inner Critic.(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #2: Loosen Up

Notes:You can see some photos of writers riffing off my picture collection here and here. Links to the pictures I flashed: Harry Clarke, "The Skylark," and Albrecht Durer's self portrait. If anyone's interested in seeing more of my collection so that you can add to yours, let me know and I'll be happy to make scans.(Whatever devotional scene is on my old French postcard, it wouldn't be called a "pattern day." Turns out that's uniquely Irish.)* * *Transcript:So you've made a beginning (which is awesome!)Literally, if you want to write, A writer is one who writes. I am a writer--you've done it, right? Get past that whole thing about not being a writer. If you write, you're a writer, the end.So I want to talk about free writing, which I think is an excellent tool for loosening up. I also want to talk a little bit about surrounding yourself with things, words and images that inspire you. But first I want talk about when to be tough on yourself and when to go easy. I think that the time to be tough on yourself is the time when you glue your butt to the chair. That is the time to be tough on yourself. Once you're in the chair, go easy. Don't judge. Relax. Have fun. This is all about fun. You wouldn't do it otherwise. I wouldn't do it otherwise. (That's why I think I have the best job in the world, because I can build worlds, write about them, and a publisher pays me (which is pretty amazing, right?), and after that the book comes out and lots of people read it and get to live inside that world for 300 or so pages, and hopefully they enjoy it as much as I did writing it.) So cultivate that feeling of joy every time you sit down.When it comes to free writing, the only rule that I impose on myself is--we'll just say ten minutes. So I use my cellphone, I use the countdown timer for ten minutes, and I just go. In the past, when I've done workshops, I will lay out art postcards--anything that I've found inspiring, I figure other people will find inspiring as well. For instance, this is a very old postcard from France (but I picked it up in Lima, I think). So that's pretty cool. It looks like it's some sort of a pattern day, y'know, Roman Catholic something. I also use family photographs, pictures of gorgeous stained glass (that's Harry Clarke), this is just a cool scene in Scotland (Inverness). I've got art postcards--this is a really cool Hungarian painting, this is Albrecht Durer, who is one of my favorites. So I lay all of that out on a table and let people pick the image that speaks to them most, and then they'll use that for their free write. You can do this for yourself. Start collecting images that speak to you somehow, however they speak to you. Whenever you're in a museum, pick up a few of these postcards that strike your fancy, or find stuff online to print out, and collect it, keep it in a folder, so that when you sit down for your writing practice you've got this little trove to draw from.A little bit more about free writing, whether or not you use an image to play off of: ten minutes, even five minutes. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, however long you want to take with it, and make it continuous. Do not stop, do not judge. Don't even cross your Ts and dot your Is. Don't even worry about that. Just keep going. It's going to be nonsense in the beginning. It could be complete garbage--it probably will be complete garbage, and that's totally fine. The point is to get your pen moving. It is a little like running a rusty faucet, because eventually the water comes out clear, and some really surprising and marvelous stuff happens--comes out, and eventually when you start writing essays and stories, whatever is in your heart, whatever you want to write, you can look back on these free writes and you can pull the gems out. Here, even here, I've got bits. This is just nonsense, I mean, it's literally gobbledy gobbledy wibbledy wobbledy, wobbledy gobbledy. That's literally what I wrote, and I'm not judging it, because you know what? I might use it someday. You never know--I might write a children's book. Enjoy it, see what comes out, have fun with it.That is what I'd like you to do for this time. Take out your journal, set an alarm--I think it's good to keep to a set amount of time, because I don't want you to get discouraged. You're more likely to press on with it if you know, okay, ten minutes, I've set the ten minutes for myself, I've made this time for myself. So I think it is important to set a timeframe around it. So that is your "homework": do a free write. I suggest ten minutes, a lot of cool stuff can come out in ten minutes, once the gobbledy gobbledy wibbledy wobbledy is out of the way.I hope you enjoy that, and thanks for watching!* * *Flashwrite #1: Make a Beginning.Next episodes:Flashwrite #3: Time and Space.Flashwrite #4: So Long, Inner Critic.(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #1: Make a Beginning

Surprise! I'm on Youtube!I got tired of telling people how much I want to teach, and decided to make my own opportunity. (In case you are wondering, yes, I did apply to several schools at the beginning of this year. No dice. Which is fine, really—everything happens precisely when it's meant to, and no sooner.)A few weeks ago I arrived home from a lovely weekend with my college friends at Matt's lake cabin in North Jersey (very much like 2009, but with Cards Against Humanity instead of rock climbing) to find two emails from Squam friends in my inbox. The first was from Liz, who told me how much her cabin-mates had enjoyed and benefited from my Saturday morning workshop. (I'd already gotten lots of great feedback, but somehow hearing it secondhand felt like even more of a cosmic tap on the shoulder.) The second was a Youtube link from Elizabeth. I don't know about you, but I find Benjamin Smythe's perspective really refreshing. It's not like he's saying anything all that new or different, but he's delivering it in a way that really resonates for me. I was inspired.Then the two things clicked together: make my own teaching opportunity. Youtube?! Gah! Terrifying!Which is, of course, the best reason to do it.Notes:Moleskine notebooks: the company site; buy online. [Edit, 2013: I now prefer Ecosystem journals since they are made in the U.S. of sustainable materials.]Read more about commonplace books on Wikipedia.Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow is heartbreaking, thought provoking, and gorgeously conceived and executed. If you want to read a novel about interstellar travel, friendships (and not) with other sentient species, and the weightiest questions about who we are and what our existence means, you should definitely get yourself a copy. Emilio is one of my all-time favorite protagonists. (I listened to the audiobook on my Wisconsin road trip last fall, and it's fantastic.)Here are a few good places to find inspiring quotes: Goodreads, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and on Twitter, the novelist Ann Napolitano (@napolitanoann) tweets excellent quotes from luminaries born that day.There can be more than one beginning, of course. Here's an earlier one.I'll be transcribing each of these videos. I know there's a closed-captioning option on Youtube, but it's distractingly inaccurate. "Cultivate a feeling of chile"? What! I said "cultivate a feeling of joy!"Transcript:In the beginning I talked about writing, and I read about writing, and I talked some more about writing, and I read some more about writing. And if I actually wrote, it was in the form of some very angsty journal entries about how I didn't think I was ever going to write anything worth reading. That was right before my beginning. My beginning came in 2001--some things happened, I won't get into it here but you know what I'm talking about--which really caused me to--it just shook me to the core, and I thought, I don't know how much time I have. I might as well do the thing that I'm really passionate about, but really really scared about. So I made a beginning. And I want you to make a beginning too, because we all have to start somewhere. Everything that was ever accomplished by anyone started with a beginning. (Yes, it's tautological, but it's no less profound for all that, right?)So here's the thing. A lot of people say to me, "But I start journaling (as a beginning), and I end up writing down what I ate for breakfast, and maybe about some really boring things that I talked about when I went out with my friends last night, and I read over it and it's useless. Like there's no point in my even writing this." If you are feeling that way--if you're seizing up about making a beginning--don't think about writing a short story right now, don't think about writing a novel, don't think about writing a poem. Begin at the beginning. I want you to find a journal (if you don't already have one). I have used a bunch of different kinds of journals in the past, but my favorite kind to use is a Moleskine (even though they're made in China--not thrilled about that). What's really cool about them is you can use the little file in the back to capture things. I've got photographs in here, phone numbers in here, and I have postcards, and all of this stuff is either useful or inspiring to me somehow.The point of this is that I want you to look at your journal in the beginning as a commonplace book. Commonplace books were sort of a medieval invention, where people would collect everything of value. It could be recipes, or excerpts from scripture. It could be anything that was useful to them somehow that they wanted to save. Maybe there were some journal entries in there too, but it had a lot of really good, useful, practical, inspiring stuff in here. So if you think of your journal as a commonplace book, and begin with quotations that inspire you, I think that's a really good place to start. I think it's totally okay to begin with other people's words, because you're attributing them obviously, but you're kinda loosening up, you're getting your pen moving.So for instance, I like to begin the very first page with quotes that inspire me. In this one, the first one I have is The trouble with illusions, he thought, is that you aren't aware you have any until they're taken from you. That is an excellent quote from Mary Doria Russell, who wrote The Sparrow, which is an amazing amazing amazing book. So began with that, and then I wrote in caps, ALL YOU CAN TAKE WITH YOU IS THAT WHICH YOU'VE GIVEN AWAY, which is from It's a Wonderful Life (which is my favorite movie). And very fittingly--this is my favorite Emily Dickinson quote--Forever is composed of nows.This is the beginning that I want you to make right now. Go get your journal, and I want you to find some quotes that inspire you. Now you probably have been collecting them all along, but if you need any inspiration, there are plenty of different links you can find online. Goodreads is one of my favorites--Goodreads collects lots of good quotes--or you could try Bartleby.com. Just browse thematically--whatever you feel like--and go from there. Write down some quotes, and see how it inspires you, how it gets you to think. I might be writing about my illusions after this!So that's the beginning. I am putting out this video series because I really want to teach, I want to be a writing teacher, and I thought, well, why not make it free and available to everyone--because it would be really fun! So if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, complaints, anything like that, feel free to leave me a comment. Thank you for watching!* * *I hope you find this useful. I also hope you will make suggestions for improvement and ask me questions I can answer in future "episodes." I've put up four videos to begin with, and will be posting new ones once a week. I would also love it if you could take a minute to comment and let me know how the suggested exercises at the end of each video are working out for you.Thank you to my friends who encouraged me to do this. I'm so grateful for your enthusiasm and support!* * *(All Flashwrite episodes here.)

Flashwrite #4: So Long, Inner Critic

Notes:The three books I hiiiiiiighly recommend are The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott. I've blogged about Bird By Bird before, and I've also guest posted on how Eckhart Tolle has changed my life over on my friend Nova's blog ("The Laughter of Sanity.") Also, props to my dear Maggie for lending me her copy of The War of Art (though I will eventually buy my own, because that book is SO worth owning.)I didn't suggest an exercise for this episode, but I like the idea of transcribing everything your inner critic is saying on a loose sheet of paper, then crumpling it up and taking a match to it. Symbolic actions are more powerful than we realize. Try it and see how you feel afterward....Then tell me about it! This is a popular and vitally important topic, so if you have any comments or questions I'd really love to hear them. Heck, I'll send an autographed copy of my second novel to the first person who documents the burning of their negative tape!Transcript:I want to talk about silencing your inner critic. Now I know in the beginning stages this may seem like an insurmountable task, and obviously it's something that you're going to keep dealing with on a daily basis every time you sit down and face the blank page. We've all felt it. Anyone who says that they haven't heard you're useless, you cannot write, what do you think you're doing?, anyone who says they haven't heard that garbage running on an endless loop in their heads--anyone who says they haven't heard that, ever, has to be lying. They must be. I have felt it, and I have pretty successfully dealt with it--but I've also been writing seriously for twelve years and professionally for six. So trust me, this is something that if you work on it diligently every day, the voice will eventually go away. I can promise you this because I do not hear it anymore (thank God!), I don't hear it anymore. So I want to give you some strategies for dealing with that voice, so that hopefully you can get to this point where it's not messing you up, it's not crippling your efforts.The first thing I want to ask you is, do you like yourself? Do you appreciate yourself? Do you feel that you have something unique to contribute to the world? Now I know this may sound kind of feel-goody, but I think it will help to look at the problem holistically, and to work on your own sense of self love and self worth. I think ultimately this is a self esteem issue, and so everything that you can do on a daily basis to improve your self esteem--basically just doing whatever brings you joy, whatever makes you happy, whatever gives you a sense of purpose, do it! For instance, I did a yoga video before I sat down to record, because I knew that it would make me feel really good, and it worked. (Obviously I'm not going to sit down here feeling not that great about myself and try to help you feel better about yourself. Obviously that doesn't make any sense.) So that was something that I did today to improve my self esteem and to love and appreciate myself. So I think that's the first thing you need to do: recognize that you have a unique contribution to make, and that you owe it to the rest of us to make it. That's a really lovely notion that I got from Steven Pressfield's The War of Art. I highly recommend that book. It is super inspiring. I cannot recommend it highly enough. So that's number one--your self esteem. Work on it, however it brings you joy. Just do it, whatever you need to do to feel better about yourself.The second thing is, I think it will help to surround yourself with people who are really positive and loving. We all have a tendency to gloss over the positive (when someone is saying good things to you, you're kind of like 'yeah, yeah, okay'), but when someone is being critical, you internalize it, you take it to heart, and it's those voices that start to comprise that negative loop in your head. Another book I highly recommend on dealing with that negative self talk, the tape, the endless loop, is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I highly, highly recommend that book. It will completely change your outlook on life--or at least it did for me. It really helped with the negative self talk for me. So I highly recommend that. But I think that it's important to find people in your life who will love and support you, and who think it's great that you're writing--and who aren't going to sort of have those subtle, insidious little criticisms. Root that out, dig it out. You might end up losing friends over it, but if you have true friendships, these true friends will be completely supportive of you in your work, your purpose, your mission. So I think it's really, really, really important to surround yourself with people who love you and will support and encourage you.The third tip that I have is to recognize that your early efforts will not be any good. It takes a load of pressure off yourself to say, "you know what? I'm going to sit down and write a page of nonsense, and I'm totally fine with that." My early efforts were nothing that I would show to anyone--maybe now, to show you how far I've come. But we all have to make a beginning, as I said at the beginning. We all have to start somewhere. So if you can kind of beat your inner critic to the punch by saying, "you know what? I'm totally fine with writing a page of garbage," your inner critic is going to be [shocked and taken aback]. Like, what do I say now? I have another book to recommend, which I happen to have with me right now: Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott. I've already bookmarked the chapter on "Shitty First Drafts." I highly, highly, highly recommend this book, especially the chapter on shitty first drafts. You will take the pressure off yourself, you will kick your inner critic to the curb by beating him to the punch (or her).The last thing I have for you is patience--patience and perseverance. This is a process. It's not going to happen overnight where one day all of this negative self talk, and you wake up in the morning and it's gone. Obviously this is going to take awhile, and the more chill you can be while you're dealing with that voice, the quicker it will go away. And as I said, I don't hear it anymore, thanks to Eckhart Tolle especially. But even before that, about my work--that's not to say that I don't hear the "inner editor," but there's a world of difference between the inner critic and the inner editor. Because I can read what I've written and objectively, impassively say to myself, I think I can do better than this. It's a completely different voice. It's very calm, matter of fact, it's not trying to get a rise out of you or provoke a negative reaction in you. Again, this is something you can work through by reading The Power of Now. Eckhart Tolle has a lot of great things to say about the ego and how it feeds off of our negativity. You get yourself caught in this endless loop of misery, basically, and life is short. Don't be miserable. Do whatever you need to do to be happy and to feel joy and to get out of your own way, and sit down and do it.So I hope that these tips have been helpful. If you have any kind of reaction, any suggestions, any questions--maybe there's something more specific you'd like me to talk about with regard to the inner critic--please feel free to leave me a comment or an email. Thank you very much for watching!

@pettymagic I really, truly, always believe in you.-- Sarah P. Miller (@SarahPMiller) October 29, 2012

* * *(All Flashwrite episodes here.)