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
My Very First Short Story!
People are surprised when I tell them I didn't start out publishing short stories before "graduating" to novels. I wrote stories all through grade school and into college, but I never tried to publish anything. It was fun; it was good practice. And truth be told, the prospect of submitting a short story to a literary journal or magazine scared the pants off me.Crazy, right? How could writing and submitting a novel be LESS scary than submitting a short story? I have no answer for that. I just know that I dove into my practice novel in early 2002, and gave no thought to short stories for a long time afterward. Then during the M.A. my fiction prof, Mike McCormack, would often compare short story writing to keyhole surgery. (Writing a novel, on the other hand, was like getting dusty and exhausted down deep in a stone quarry.) Mike encouraged me as I wrote Mary Modern, and that went swimmingly of course, but in the background a dark little thought took shape. Sure, you're a storyteller, but you don't have a surgeon's hand. Maybe you aren't meant to write short stories.The ideas kept coming though, and in early 2007 (a few months before Mary Modern came out) I decided to write a few. I showed the drafts to my agent. "Write another novel," she said.That does it, I thought. I really can't write short fiction.For five years I held onto that limiting belief. Then Danel Olson, editor of the Exotic Gothic anthology series, emailed to say he'd enjoyed my novels and wondered if I'd like to contribute a story to volume 5, which is coming out in 2013.I was so tired of thinking I couldn't write short stories. I was ready to let go of all that! So I said I'd be delighted even though it scared me. I finished a story I'd started at Yaddo in 2010, and sent it to Danel—and what do you know, he accepted it!I couldn't have asked for a better first-publication story. I was invited to submit (when does that ever happen?!), I'm getting paid a nice sum, and I get to see my work in a beautifully produced anthology. (I borrowed the header above from PS Publishing. Insanely gorgeous cover art! I can't wait to see what they come up with for EG5. By the way, you can pick up a copy of Exotic Gothic 4 here.)Plus, Danel is so much kinder, funnier, and more accessible than I thought any magazine or anthology editor could be. Our email exchanges have been an absolute joy. I'm so grateful to him for helping me get over my hangup (even if I didn't actually tell him about all that 'til after he'd accepted the story. Hey, I'm a professional.)As for the story itself, it's called "The Coroner's Bride" and it's set in Philadelphia in the 1870s. It's an old-fashioned ghost story with a strong heroine, and I'm quite proud of it.I'll write more about Exotic Gothic 5 as we approach the publication date, but for now I just wanted to tell you about how I finally got rid of a limiting belief, and how amazing it feels!(Oh, and I have a second piece of awesome news to share, but I'll save it for next time.)Natural Silence
I made a new friend on the walk home from the library.Since I got back from Squam I've been feeling really connected with nature--even more so than usual. I picked up this hammock in Colombia (thank you, thank you, Sierra, for nudging me to buy it), and while it took me way too long to put it up, I've been making up for lost time on these sunny autumn afternoons.
I'm reading Tiziano Terzani's A Fortune-Teller Told Me, which I highly recommend. Here's one of my favorite passages, from a Buddhist meditation retreat in Thailand:
This silence was a great discovery. Without the foreground of other people's words, I realized that the glorious beauty of nature was in its silence. I looked at the stars and heard their silence; the moon made no sound; the sun rose and set without a whisper. In the end even the noise of the waterfall, the birdcalls, the rustle of the wind in the trees, seemed part of a stupendous, living, cosmic silence which I loved and in which I found peace. It seemed that this silence was a natural right of every man, and that this right had been taken from us. I thought with horror of how for so much of our lives we are pounded by the cacophony we have invented, imagining that it pleases us, or keeps us company. Everyone, now and then, should reaffirm this right to silence and allow himself a pause, some days of silence in which to feel himself again, to reflect and regain a degree of health.
Personally, I think we'd all be a great deal happier if we looked for that silence not just "now and then," but on a daily basis. I've been meditating regularly, and it really is changing my life.
I love watching the shadows of the trees dancing along the stripes.
You can probably tell I'm still not feeling the blogging, but I think that might change soon. There are exciting things in the works!
Fall Squam, part 2
The table o' writing prompts, before my workshop began.(Fall Squam, part 1; recap on the official Squam blog.)This week I've been feeling wonky in a good way, if that makes sense. Marie Manuchehri's Squam workshop changed my life, but not at all in the way I expected it to. Looking back, I went into it Friday morning all blithe and giddy, like la la la, she will give me lots of pretty, shiny insights! (In case you would rather read on than follow Marie's link first, she's a psychic medium and energy healer in the Seattle area--and a tremendously kind and generous human being.)Silly grasshopper. Insights don't always make you feel good—at least not right away—and truly, it isn't much of an insight if it doesn't yank you out of the confines (emotional or otherwise) you've laid out for yourself. Sometimes you have to deal with the ugly stuff first, and the really amazing thing is that once you stop avoiding the ugly stuff and take a good hard look, it doesn't seem so ugly anymore. Fear makes everything look dark and scary.I know I'm being vague here, but you know I'm doing it on purpose, because this is private stuff. Let me just say this: you can always, always be more honest with yourself. Maybe it's time to be brave, or maybe you're not quite there yet, but either way you'll eventually get your hands dirty digging for truth. I made "fortune cards" for my Saturday morning writing workshop, putting them face down on the table, and Crissy (who was in Marie's workshop with me) chose my favorite Flannery O'Connor quote (thank you, Ann Napolitano): The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. In other words: it is what it is, so you might as well face it.Thank you to everyone in that class—you were so patient with me, and helped me in the most surprising ways. And thanks most of all to Elizabeth, who I strongly suspect knew I needed to be there. Elizabeth is magical like that.
Okay, we're done with the woo woo stuff. I don't generally do a play-by-play of everything that happened at the retreat, but there are a few fun things I want to share. I also wanted to tell you that I really lucked out with my travel buddy: Alisha and I met on the Squam Community Board, and we drove up and back together, stopping at a hotel in Merrimack on Tuesday night. She is one of my new very favorite people, and I'm bummed we didn't pause for a photo together. (On the upside, I can see her pretty much any time we like!)
On Thursday I went into Kayte Terry's Color and Composition with zero expectations besides playing around with paper and fabric and having a lot of fun doing it--and I did. Kayte isn't into rules and theory, and that suited me really well; I made friends with my exacto knife, and experimented with echoes and negative space and painting on pages torn out of an old dictionary. I'll be posting a "part three" once I've had a chance to finish the projects I started in her class.
(That's a pic of me and Kayte that Julia took with her nifty neo-Polaroid camera.)
First game of Cards Against Humanity with fellow Squammies - so wrong it's right. #fb-- Kathleen Sweeney (@Sweeneybird) September 14, 2012
I went over to Long House after Thursday evening's entertainment (Maya Stein and Jonatha Brooke) to see if Kath (a.k.a. Sweeneybird) wanted to play some Scrabble. I found her with a bunch of people I didn't know yet playing Cards Against Humanity, and I joined in. It's like Apples to Apples, except completely perverted. (Kelly would have loved it.)
Some of the tamer cards in my hand.I used to be one of those people who is way too easily offended, so now I find myself getting even bigger laughs out of stuff like this to make up for all the time I wasted being prudish. This is no judgment on anyone who finds this game to be in poor taste; I totally see why you feel that way. But I had a LOT of fun.
Easterleigh, where I stayed this time.Friday night Amiee, Jen, Karen and I went for a 'swim' off this dock--I use quotes because we just stood in the water, chatted, and looked up at the stars. That was one of my favorite moments.
The writing prompt table, happily picked over.We only had an hour and fifteen minutes for the Saturday morning writing workshop, so I just gave everyone who showed up a little pep talk (make a beginning! any beginning! it doesn't matter if you're only talking about writing right now; I've been there!), then I showed them my collections of words and images and asked them to run with whichever they felt drawn to.
I also talked a little bit about the "mind mapping" technique and put my examples on display. You can read more about that in my Ideas, Part 2 post.
The lovely lady on the left chose my grandparents' wedding photo outtake (my grandfather's hand is hiding his face and my grandmother has this really odd expression on hers, which I've always found intriguing) and the shadow picture of me and Seanan in the Cotswolds. My photo and art postcard collection feels extremely personal, so I loved seeing which pictures the writers connected with on their own terms. (My friend and cabin-mate Julia, on the right, had just come from a Thai massage. I think we were all a little envious.)
Above and below are Amiee and Jen scribbling away--I feel so blessed they were in my cabin, and that we had plenty of opportunities to support and talk each other through the changes we're looking to make in our lives.
By the way, if you took the workshop on Saturday but forgot to add yourself to my email list (or if you weren't there, but are interested), leave me a comment and I'll forward you the email of fun inspirational links I sent out this morning.On Saturday afternoon, after Marie's book talk, I walked up Rattlesnake on my own. I needed to burn off some excess energy and sit in solitude for a little while. What a view, eh?
I had a mission at the art fair Saturday night--to buy $20 worth of raffle tickets for a Squammie who couldn't be there in person. Guess what? She won! (Third prize, a lovely vase from Gleena.) You know that if I'd bought those tickets for myself, I wouldn't have won--and I say that as in 'isn't that marvelous?,' not 'wishing I were luckier.' I already know I'm very, very lucky.
After the art fair I played Scrabble by the fire with Kath and Karen. I did not, however, get a photo with Karen. Next time!Alisha and I had a great deal to talk about and 'process' aloud on the seven-hour ride home, so much so that we never once stopped talking apart from the occasional navigational stuff.
Slightly disconcerting, no? (The truck cab was being towed.)Thank you to everyone this past week who smiled at me, listened to me, and let me listen. I'm so grateful!
Fall Squam, part 1
The ice house. (The iceboxes in the cabins use ice cut from the lake.)I know I say it every time, but this time it's extra-specially true: Squam changed my life, yet again--thanks to Marie Manuchehri (whose workshop I took on Friday) and a whole crew of wonderful friends, new and old.I also facilitated a really fun writing workshop. Eighteen people showed up and scribbled furiously for a good while. It was great.
No-stress story-telling with @pettymagic @squamlove instagr.am/p/Pmd0FPtCT7/-- Finch (Alexandra) (@LittlestFinch) September 15, 2012
For inspiration.
Exercise #1 in Color and Composition (still in process) with Kayte Terry.
The dock at Easterleigh, 7:30am.More soon.
The White Forest: a Q&A with Adam McOmber
Last year I was having lunch with Sally Kim (my beloved Mary Modern editor), and she told me about the first really exciting deal she'd made as the new editorial director of Touchstone at Simon & Schuster. The book was The White Forest, and she said the author told her he wanted to work with her after reading Mary Modern. You can just imagine how AMAZING that made me feel! So I checked out Adam McOmber's website and ordered his newly published story collection, This New & Poisonous Air.Of course I enjoy the books I read (I don't bother finishing them otherwise), but for me Adam's work reaches that level of enjoyment with emphasis on the J-O-Y. There is this sense of delighted recognition--that 'yes, yes, you may not have known it but you wrote this book especially for me.' That's the feeling I get when I read my favorite writers, like Le Fanu, Philip Pullman or Angela Carter. It's the sort of fiction I can wish I'd written myself--and in fact, I admitted as much on the back cover.We haven't met in person yet, but I can tell you that Adam is really nice and humble and approachable, and I'm thrilled that he agreed to answer my nerdy questions about his books and his writing process. Plus, you'll have a chance to win a signed copy of The White Forest for your very own. Enjoy!
I know it's the first thing everybody wants to ask, but I love origin stories: what inspired The White Forest? You deal with similar themes and use the same elegant, pleasingly antiquated prose style in This New & Poisonous Air, so would you say the novel grew naturally out of your story collection?The White Forest was inspired, initially, by an image that came to me one day, seemingly out of nowhere, of a woman in walking across the dark landscape of Hampstead Heath. I could tell that she was troubled, but more than that she was dangerous. I think I had the sense that she might also be a kind of "Victorian Superhero"--one with powers she could not understand. This vision would eventually become the main character of the novel, Jane Silverlake.The White Forest did grow out of This New & Poisonous Air as well, in a sense. While writing the short stories, I realized that historical settings could act in a manner very similar to fantasy settings. I could invent all sorts of intricate things to populate my versions of Victorian London and Medieval Europe. My versions of the past are fabricated--like Ariston Day's theater in the novel. I think, on some level, I realize that such fantasies are dangerous--it might be better to think and write about that things that are "real." But I'm not going to do that. I'd rather get lost in something strange.Although I see your point about the antiquated prose style, I can't really say where that came from. I didn't have that voice in school or in the years I spent practicing my writing afterward. The voice came about fairly recently, and it seems like it gives the kind of wild stories that I want to tell an air of authenticity. I think, in part, the voice came from finding the right literature to read, pieces that would guide me. Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft guide me, as well as Isak Dinesen and Angela Carter. Rereading Poe as an adult was a revelation; he also became a guide. Both your novel and story collection are deliciously gothic, and you've mentioned Poe, Angela Carter, and Isak Dinesen as influences. Were you drawn to scary stories as a child? (I imagine you must've had some pretty crazy nightmares either way!)As a child, I thought scary stories were the only kinds of stories worth reading. I was generally a happy kid, but I put an inordinate amount of stock in the macabre. In part, I think that's because I felt myself to be an outsider in the small Ohio town where I grew up. The Gothic stories I read were full of interesting outsiders. I related to those characters, and their worlds were more interesting and fulfilling to me than the cornfields and country roads that made up the landscape of my childhood.The part of your question about fear is very interesting to me. I do remember often being frightened as a child. I don't know that I really believed in ghosts or anything of that nature (H.P. Lovecraft himself was afraid of visitors called "Night Gaunts" as a child, but thankfully I didn't interact with any such apparitions). I often had an overwhelming sense, though, that something bad was going to happen--I would become permanently lost or there would be some terrible accident. I think in my writing now, I employ elements that would traditionally be frightening in order to reach a kind of transcendence. That happens in life too. I look toward things that are strange or out of ordinary to find meaning and solace. I take great pleasure in doing research for my novels, so I'd love to hear about how you planned and organized your historical and occult reading. Did you spend much time in London? Read up on Aleister Crowley? Attend any late-night "secret society" meetings in a back-alley pub? Do you seek out places you know will furnish you with interesting or creepy details?Late night secret societies? I'm afraid of them, Camille! I avoided any sort of hands-on research for that aspect of the book. I did, however, do a great deal of other types of research for The White Forest. I have a dozen composition notebooks with color-coded labels attached to each page that correspond to research for various settings, characters and events in the novel. I read texts on nineteenth-century mysticism as well as works of comparative mythology (James Frazer's The Golden Bough is a favorite of mine, a book that I return to again and again, no matter what I'm writing). I also read many collections of Victorian ghost stories as I was writing. The ghost stories helped me to capture my main character's haunted and, hopefully, haunting voice.I have spent time in London, yes, and certainly those experiences helped to flesh out the world of The White Forest, but most of my settings come from my own imagination. They may bear the names of actual places, but beware of using them as road maps. I'm partial to looking at art for inspiration as well, especially work by the Pre-Raphaelites and Gustave Dore. All of my settings tend to be mythic or symbolic in some way, so I usually "construct" them rather than using actual locations. What does a typical work day look like? Do you find it challenging to balance writing and teaching?Sometimes finding a balance is challenging, yes. I try to set aside at least two or three hours to write every day. If I don't teach on a given day, I'll write longer. I've been working on a new manuscript recently, and there are days when I will write eight to ten hours. This can be exhausting, but I think it causes the barrier between writer and story to become very thin. When I write for an extended amount of time, I feel myself getting closer and closer to the characters. I generally start my writing day by generating new material and then end with the revising of something. Do you have any particular writerly rituals or superstitions?I don't really know that I have too many writerly rituals. I write all the time and everywhere. I've even been known to pause while walking down the street, pull a notebook out of my bag, and start writing while standing on the sidewalk if an idea takes me. When beginning a novel or short story, I generally write longhand in a composition notebook (the kind with the black and white marble cover). I start collecting images and bits of voice. When the story begins to take shape, that's when I move to my computer and start typing. I guess one other ritual would be reading aloud. Every sentence that I write gets read out loud many times. I really care about the music of the language, so I think it's important to hear it spoken. Give us your desert-island reading list!1. The Golden Bough, James George Frazer2. London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd3. The Stand, Stephen King4. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore5. The Omnibus of Crime, ed. Dorothy L. Sayers* * *Thanks, Adam!To enter to win an autographed copy of The White Forest, leave a comment with the name of a novel or short story that scared the bejeezus out of you. (Believe me, once you read the climax scene you'll see why I'm asking.) Then read the first chapter on The Nervous Breakdown, visit Adam on the web here, and follow him on Twitter at @adammcomber! (Oh, and you'll get extra entries if you RT or share on Twitter or Facebook. Tag me, or just mention it in your comment.)You can also check out the official Simon & Schuster book page, which has a video clip of Adam talking about the book.Contest closes 5pm ET Friday, September 14th!* * *EDIT: I used the random number generator, and Laura Kay wins! Thanks to everyone who took the time to tell me about a book or story that frightened them.
The All-Star Bookshelf
Inspired by Nova's post from this morning, here's a shelf of some of my very favorite books along with my favorite movies on DVD (not exhaustive, mind! There are a bunch more favorite books scattered on other shelves. There will have to be an All-Star Bookshelf, part 2.)
Out to Lunch
Yup. Still here. Good things are happening, and one not-good thing happened, but I can't talk (or don't feel like talking) about any of it just yet. Let's say I'm doing everything I can right now to meet fate halfway.
I've been writing and revising and researching, plus sorting through my master note pile--some of these bits of paper go back to my NYU days. (Notice that quote from The Summer of '42. Every time I read it I think of the GOP.)
I think this bookmark is from 2001. (I may have been reading Woman: An Intimate Geography. Natalie Angier has the most formidable vocabulary I have ever encountered.)I've got to get my blogging mojo back, because my Q&A with Adam McOmber and The White Forest giveaway goes up on Tuesday bright and early. I'm so, so excited for that! In the meantime, read this lovely profile in the Chicago Sun-Times, and check out my endorsement:
It's such an honor to have my name on the back cover of this marvelous novel. Until Tuesday!
Squam 2012, part 3
(Me, stitching. Photo by Jessica Marquez, who has a book coming out soon!)
I leave for Squam again in a little more than three weeks. I've heard the "vibe" at the September session is quite different than the gleeful fiber-fest that is June, which is just one of many reasons I'm looking forward to the experience. The September session has painting and mixed media classes, jewelry making, and some rather "woo woo" stuff as well. I must say, I'm very excited for the "woo woo."Most exciting of all, though, is the writing workshop I will be facilitating on Saturday morning. I'll tell you more about it afterward, but here's a peek at my prep:
The workshop is called "No-Stress Storytelling." I'll be building on some of the exercises we tried out in my library sessions to get everyone creatively limbered up. Of course, they'll be coming off two full days of art workshops, so some people will be ready to go, but others will need a bit more encouragement. The prospect of a blank page can be paralyzing, especially when you have a nasty little voice in your head telling you you're not a writer, who do you think you are, blah blah blah. The beginning is a tender spot, and I want to honor that. So: there's no pressure. No one else is going to read what you write, unless you choose to share it. You are a writer--a writer is someone who writes, not just someone who has published a book or gets regular bylines. And so forth.Squam is usually on the surface of my thoughts, no doubt because I've been working on my embroidery from Rebecca's class:
Bonnie put this photo of me (with Rebecca and Jeanne) on her blog, and it made me laugh. (See why below.)
Now check out my art club yearbook pictures:
(That's also me in the top left, holding my "Birth of Violet.")I like to think I've grown a great deal since Mr. Heusser took those photos in 1998/1999, but it's comforting to see that the best parts of me--that passion, that single-mindedness--those I get to keep forever.(Squam, part 1; Squam, part 2; Anne's post on Squam 2012.)
The Story of a Notebook
(Note: comments are up and running again! Huzzah!)
During my happy semester in Florence back in the spring of 2002, I found a very special notebook at a stationery shop in the shadow of the Duomo. It had images from a medieval tarot on it, and I have always had a thing for the tarot.
I couldn't write in it right away. It was too perfect. So for two years the notebook bided its time.
Its early pages are covered with very rough scenes from Mary Modern......
Notes from plays attended as part of my M.A. coursework......
And funny things Diarmuid said on a field trip to the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2004.
The notebook saw me through my M.A. year. Then I shelved it, even though it was only half used.
Years later, I pulled it out and made a few crafty sketches.
I knew I had to use up the rest of the pages. As Evelyn says, "it has always been our credo that the things we love best should not be squirreled away for the enjoyment of no one." (That said, not a word of Petty Magic appears in this particular notebook.)
Now, ten years after I first picked it up, I am back to writing in it every day. Right now I'm watching Joseph Campbell & the Power of Myth, which is fantastic. I'm taking plenty of notes.
It is the faithful receptacle of notes on four different novel projects (counting Mary Modern)—as well as a short story to be published next year. (More on that soon.)
Ahhhh, the potential of the blank page.
The Little Woods winner!
Spotted in the teen section at the Barnes & Noble at 82nd and Broadway. Thanks to everyone who entered The Little Woods giveaway last week! I picked a number, and Jenn wins. Enjoy!And stay tuned for another Q&A-giveaway in early September, this time with Adam McOmber, author of The White Forest! (I loved it so much I even blurbed it.)
The Little Woods: a Q&A with McCormick Templeman
Part of me would always hear a string of chords just beyond the range of sound, a leitmotif that ran through my life, whispering that the truth of what had happened that night was someone else's secret.
Twitter has gifted me with some of the most rewarding friendships of my life (and of course it still counts as friendship before you've met in person). I'm pretty sure it was Nova who first put me in touch with McCormick Templeman (you can read Nova's YA Debut Interview with McCormick here; and you might also remember her very smart tweets, which I appropriated for a recent post on productivity), but what I find amusingly not-as-random-as-it-seems is that Corm and I have the same literary agent. We were tweeting to each other for months before I realized this.Her debut YA novel, The Little Woods, went on sale July 10th, and that morning I picked it up at the Barnes & Noble at Union Station and devoured it in a day. Here's the jacket copy:
When Cally Wood starts at St. Bede's halfway through her junior year, she's suddenly thrust into a world of privilege and prestige, and in no time flat, she learns to navigate the complex social world of the upper echelon. But amid the illicit romances and weekend-long parties, Cally discovers that a brilliant but troubled girl named Iris disappeared from St. Bede's just a few months ago. Most people assume she ran away, but the police still haven't found her. And Iris wouldn't be the first girl to go missing from the school. Ten years ago, Cally's sister was visiting a friend from camp at St. Bede's when both girls vanished from their beds.
As Cally tries to unravel the mystery surrounding Iris—one she can't help but link to her own sister's disappearance--she discovers that beneath the surface of this elite school and its perfect students lies a web of secrets where rumors are indistinguishable from truths and it seems everyone has something to hide.
The Little Woods is smart and creepy and full of memorable characters, the best of whom will no doubt linger in my thoughts for months. I love it when an author manages to create a character I really, really wish were a real-life person.I want to share this delicious novel with you, so enjoy the Q&A with McCormick and then enter to win a signed copy of The Little Woods!* * *You mentioned in your interview with Nova that the idea for The Little Woods came to you while reading the case studies of a 19th-century medical examiner, and corpses figure prominently in both this novel and The Glass Casket (which Delacorte will publish in 2014). Have you always been interested in gothic subject matter? Did you read a lot of scary stories and fairy tales as a child?I was obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe when I was little. I used to read his stories, and get so scared that I would run out of the room and go hide from the book. This was when I was really young, like when I hadn't even started reading middle grade books yet. Once I had those Poe foundations, I started making up my own stories, and they were always scary. I don't know if my tastes were strictly gothic, though. I also lapped up slasher movies by the bucket when I was a kid, and I was pretty non-discerning with some of those. Fairy tales were strange for me. I mostly enjoyed them before I could read. I knew the stories from having had them read to me, but I would stare at the illustrations and then kind of change the narratives to what I thought they should be. I would tell myself what I deemed the "real" story. The Glass Casket was born out of that practice. I used to change Snow White pretty dramatically when I looked at the illustrations, and one day I just decided I should try to write the story as I had seen it as a small child.I think a lot of kids who grow up at home are fascinated by the idea of boarding school. (I know I was, and that was before Harry Potter.) From a writer's perspective, the boarding-school set-up gets the parents out of the way so that wild and interesting stuff can actually happen, but did you feel any of that wistfulness growing up?It's funny. When I decided to set it at boarding school, I didn't even think about getting the parents out of the way. I suppose if Cally had stayed at home and had awesome parents, she probably would have had a happy, uneventful junior year of high school, and then there wouldn't have been much of a story to tell. The Year My Mom Made Me Stay Home and Walk The Dog doesn't sound too exciting. Actually, I take that back. I would totally read that book. Originally, though, the book was set in a small town at the turn of the 20th century, and I wasn't getting the claustrophobic feeling I wanted from it, so I decided try setting it at boarding school, and it just clicked. As for the wistfulness, I didn't feel wistful at the time, and I definitely don't now. I'm pretty sure Cally won't either.You've led such an interesting life! How did you come to study Chinese medicine, and how has that side of your life affected your writing?I was in my last semester of my MFA program when I became ill. I ended up seeing a doctor who eventually referred me to an acupuncturist from whom I got immediate, and pretty dramatic results. I had never given any credence to alternative medicine, and it pretty much changed everything for me to find out my assumptions had been so totally wrong. I was so blown away that I started reading everything I could about the medicine, and six months later, I was enrolled in acupuncture school. It was a very intense, long program, and I loved everything about it. I've never worked so hard in my life. It changed how I thought about the world, and it helped me not to take myself so seriously as a writer. I still take writing very seriously, but it helped me not to worry so much about external approval and success and stuff like that. Many of the patients I treated as an intern came into the clinic for adjunctive treatment for cancer therapies. It's hard to care too much about whether your story gets published when you're dealing with people who are facing mortality. The philosophy behind the medicine also helped me think about the shapes of narratives differently. I notice that when I'm revising a manuscript, I will often use diagnostic techniques that are inspired by Chinese medical diagnosis. It's about looking at the manuscript as a whole, and viewing it as a kind of organism. It's about balance and circularity, roots, and branches. That sounds weird, but it's helpful for me to think that way.Here's another part of your bio that intrigues me: are you really descended from criminals?Indeed! On my mother's side, I'm descended from a famous Irish revolutionary who was executed in prison. On my father's side I'm descended from an outlaw who rode with Jesse James, and then growing up my mother's family was frequently visited by FBI agents searching for cousins who populated their most wanted list. It should be noted, though, that this information comes from my relatives who are themselves probably criminals and therefore not to be trusted.And now for my pet question: do you have any writerly rituals or superstitions?I don't. I'm kind of boring that way. I enjoy writing, and I can and will do it pretty much anywhere under any circumstances. I had a wonderful teacher in grad school, the writer Keith Abbott, who really demystified the writing process for me. He focused on the nuts and bolts of writing, on rolling up your sleeves, being methodical, and just getting to work. That appeals to me. I also don't have any writing talismans or anything like that. I would lose them immediately. One thing I do, though, is I allow myself to get a fun new notebook when I'm about to seriously commit to a book. I'll fill up random notebooks with notes for months and then when I feel the call to draft, I'll go and get a notebook that seems right for the project and I get so excited about it, I feel like a little kid at an amusement park. Then I spend months trying not to lose the notebook.One more pet question (I always ask this because it's a great way to get book recs): if you were stuck on a desert island, what are the five books you'd want to be reading (over and over and over...)?Ooh! Five? That's exciting. Okay so Journey to The West because it's like a billion pages and explains pretty much everything you need to know. A Manual of Acupuncture because it's awesome. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle because it's my favorite book, and because you can spend a lot of time on each of those sentences. The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy to make me laugh when I get depressed about being trapped on a desert island, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes to keep my deductive muscles primed in case there are any desert island mysteries that need to be solved.* * *Thanks, McCormick! To enter to win a signed copy of The Little Woods, leave a comment and mention a book you've enjoyed this summer. Contest closes 5pm (ET) Friday, and winner will be chosen by random-number-generator-a-bob! In the meantime, you can follow McCormick on Twitter at @mktempleman.
Research is Pleasure
The research is my favorite part. I just love it. It's like I'm setting out on a big adventure, and I don't know what I'm going to find. It truly is like a treasure hunt. And so every way you could think of doing research, I do it.
I guess the most obvious question is, why do you need to research if you're writing fiction? Because facts, my friends, are your tools in creating a believable fictional universe. Even if you're not writing "historical fiction," your characters should have skills and experiences that you know little to nothing of, and it's crucial to your story's integrity that you don't "wing it." You won't be fooling anybody.
That said, research is absolutely not a chore. Honor your curious impulses and a story will grow out of them naturally. Read up on something that really interests and excites you, and you'll get your reader excited too.
What my characters are wearing. (From John Peacock's 20th Century Fashion.)
Topics I researched in writing Mary Modern:
1. Human genetics and stem cell technology.
2. Military history.
3. Victorian domestic architecture.
4. Male celibacy movements.
5. Everyday life circa 1929.
These were subjects that already fascinated me (well, the military history not so much, although I've always been really interested in my grandfather's personal experiences on a destroyer in the South Pacific. I'll be blogging more on that soon.) Research can lead to inspiration, but you might also say it is the inspiration. If you don't get nerdily, over-the-top excited to dig into a book on particle physics, then maybe you're following the wrong thread.
Talk about fact-checking: James Joyce wrote letters home fromSwitzerland to Dublin to verify street details for "Ulysses."-- Frank Delaney (@FDbytheword) June 16, 2012
There's the "macro" research (general subjects), and then there's the "micro." I try to be as precise as I can, down to the phase of the moon on a particular date (I checked it here). Maybe nobody will bother to verify that there was indeed a full moon, but it matters to me that I have it right, and besides which, other facts may be of greater consequence. The same goes for checking etymologies when writing historical fiction. (For instance, I found I couldn't use the word "allergy" in a story set in 1915. The word hadn't been coined yet.) The copyeditor is paid to pick your nits, but you might as well pick them yourself. She'll find even more you've overlooked.
As for the title, in doing my second, longer, version of the novel I decided I might well use the temperature at which book-paper catches fire.
I telephoned the chemistry department at several universities, and found no one who could tell me the right temperature. I made inquiries, also, of several physics professors.
Then, still ignorant, I slapped my forehead and muttered, Fool! Why not ask the Fire Department!
I called the nearest station.
Just a moment, the Fire Chief said.
A long silence. And then the voice came back on the line: "Book-paper catches fire at 451 degrees Fahrenheit."
"Perfect, oh God, perfect!" I cried.
--Ray Bradbury, from the 1966 introduction to Fahrenheit 451
Upcoming reading for research and inspiration.
Research can feel really daunting at first. So pick away at it, a little at a time.
1. Go to the library.
I like to browse in the general subject area. You might find something there that wouldn't have come up in the online catalog with your particular search terms.
2. Pick up the phone.
Whenever I open a bottle of champagne I think of the anecdote in Bird By Bird in which Anne Lamott calls a winery to ask the name of that wire thingy you have to untwist and remove before you can pop the cork. (It's a wire hood.)
3. Plan a trip.
Like this, and this, and this. Take photos, take video, take a crapload of notes; then relax and soak it in. It's always better to have experienced for yourself a place you'd like to write about.
4. Google the heck out of it.
I didn't know the name of that part of a piano that comes down over the keys when not in use, so I googled "piano anatomy" until I found it. (It's called a fallboard.)
5. Keep your ears open.
A few months ago I had the great pleasure of meeting, in person, two friends who'd started out as fans of my books. Kelly and I met Todd and Bill for dinner at Candle 79 (delicious gourmet vegan! cozy! great service!), and afterward we went back to their apartment for a nightcap. They introduced us to their parrot, Morticia, and mentioned in passing that female birds of her species tend to, um, eat their partners. It was a DING! DING! DING! moment. "That's perfect!" I said. "I'm using that in my new novel!"
(I'm looking forward to the day when I can thank my new friends in print.)
The Great Productivity Experiment, part 2
(The Great Productivity Experiment, part 1: Of Writers and Robots.)Last week I did not write a single word. And I was productive!I'm working on three projects right now, two of which are in the beginning stages, which means I did a lot of mind mapping and reading for research. Let us make the distinction between process-wise productive and product-wise productive. On Wednesday night I jotted down a few notes on the back of a bookmark--I was beside-myself excited--and those scribbles set everything in motion inside a certain fictional universe. But I could show you that little piece of paper and it wouldn't look like much, would it?Things I have learned, or re-learned, this past week:
1. You know those studies that indicate listening to Mozart aids concentration? TRUE!
2. Being a "night person" or a "morning person" is ultimately a matter of choice (by way of discipline--my new favorite word, haha). I have always taken it for granted that I'm the former, but I got up at 7 (that's early for me) a couple of days last week and I liked it. I like feeling a sense of accomplishment earlier in the day. Imagine that!
3. Forgetting my power cord at home is not what I meant by "Mac Freedom." That said, I'm really loving it (the program, I mean). I occasionally get "the twitch"--Wikipedia! HootSuite! Gmaaaaail!--and then I remember I'm cut off, and get back to it.
4. Going for a run first thing in the morning makes me feel awesome, which probably helps my productivity. As they say, exercise is healthy for the brain too.
5. "A watched pot never boils." This week I wasted time fretting over project #3, a short story for an anthology submission. (Part of the issue is, of course, that I don't really write short stories; people think I am joking when I say writing a novel feels easier than writing a short story. But I was very kindly invited to submit to this anthology, so I'm going to give it my best shot.) Anyway, I never come up with a workable idea by consciously thinking about it--it just has to occur to me. There's no way around that. So I resolved to focus on the other projects, and as I was walking home from the library Thursday night the solution presented itself.
As for the other two projects, one is a nearly-finished YA novel I began a year ago this month, and the other is another children's novel. I need to push myself to finish the draft of the YA novel so I can focus on the new children's novel, which I'm most excited about. The plan is to get a detailed outline ready to go, a la Rachel Aaron, and then we'll see just how (product-wise) productive I can be.In case anyone is wondering: after these two novels are in the can, yes, the project after that will be a novel for grown-ups!
Of Writers and Robots
It seems like all of Twitter (or at least my writerly corner of it) is excited about Rachel Aaron's "How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day." No, that is not a typo.Of course, my first reaction when reading the article was "I'm a writer, not a robot!" I've never liked wordcounts. They may seem like the most concrete measure of productivity, but obsessing over your daily output feels somewhat counterproductive.
@PettyMagic @novaren I think each book is different. Some flood. Some trickle.-- McCormick Templeman (@McTempleman) June 3, 2012
But I don't want to linger on that. Whether we write 500 or 5,000 words, the point is that we've actually focused on our work for the better part of the day. For me (as for most of us, I suspect), the internet is far and away the greatest obstacle to productivity. I know that I get WAY more done when I deny myself WiFi access, and I need to get serious about staying offline while I write. I've seen other writers tweet about Mac Freedom, and I used to scoff at the concept--like you can't just summon the willpower to disconnect?The thing is, I can't. I shut down the web browser and resolve to focus, but then I think about just one teensy thing I can look up really quick, and then I'm done for.Shaming myself into good work habits just got a whole lot more appealing. I'm going to use Mac Freedom as part of a productivity experiment.No Twitter.No gchat.No Firefox.No Gmail notifier.Rather, these things will be limited to short periods in between writing sessions--at the beginning, middle, and end of the day. If I think of something I need to look up, an email I need to send, or whatever, I've got my notebook at my elbow. Fortunately, I haven't forgotten how to use a pen.There's more to this than the distractive power of the internet, though. Rachel Aaron is not a hack; she is a disciplined writer with real-life responsibilities. She makes every second count. I am a not-very-disciplined writer with no kids, no day job and no mortgage. If I first thought of Rachel Aaron as a robot, it was only because it let me off the hook. It's time to stop making excuses.
@novaren I recently wrote a book at a rate of between 7K and 10K per day, and I actually hurt my arms. Fun, but they still hurt!-- McCormick Templeman (@McTempleman) June 3, 2012
So my own productivity experiment means pulling together the gap between what I want to, need to, or "should" do, and what I actually do. That's why I went for a run this morning, and why I spent what felt like too much time cleaning, cooking, and packaging up something I promised myself I'd send to someone who did something awesome for me. It's why I'm going to begin meditating on a daily basis. Steven Pressfield talks a lot about "the resistance" in The War of Art, and man, is he right. You don't want to do something, but you do it anyway, and afterward you feel amazing. (I also love what Victoria Moran said in her lecture at the NYC Veggie Food Fest back in March: whatever you're most likely to skip, whether it's exercise, meditation, or something else, do that thing first. Literally as soon as you wake up.)I want to lean into that resistance. I want to get up and run when the smaller part of me would rather stay in bed. I want to make conscious decisions about how I'm spending my time, so that I can ultimately live a more creative life. Yes, I'm already living a creative life, and it may seem counterintuitive to use discipline as a creative tool, but there is such beautiful, subtle logic in it.Apart from using Mac Freedom to stay offline, I'm going to make a list of what I need to get done each day (I don't routinely do this), and when I'm writing, I'll make a note of my wordcounts by the hour, because the business manager in Sarah convinced me to take the spreadsheet idea seriously. Today, as Rachel suggests, I'm going to plot out the rest of my YA novel in way finer detail than I ever have before. (That's how she's able to write 10,000 words, by the way--I doubt anybody could be that insanely productive without first, as they say, "laying the groundwork.") When I am surfing the internet I will remind myself that I don't have time for virtual rabbit holes. (Or, to be more realistic, I won't indulge in them so often.)And whatever I said before about wordcounts, I would like to kick my own butt and reach for 10k at some point. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it every single day--I feel dazed enough after 2k!--but I think shooting for it once in awhile would be pretty awesome. (And it would be an ideal strategy for a residency!) But I feel good about these changes for now.I'll write about my progress next Monday.
@novaren It was crazy. Felt like automatic writing. You've got a Flaubert thing going on. 500 words, but probably the right ones.-- McCormick Templeman (@McTempleman) June 3, 2012
Read more on Rachel Aaron-inspired writing productivity experiments here:
Nova's The Writing Productivity Experiment of Doom (or Great Success, Depending)