I’m reading Martha Beck’s “Finding Your Own North Star” (again) and am struck by her thought that we humans operate, in essence, from two distinct points of view: our essential self and our social self.

When our essential selves–that part of us tht lives from passion and seeks out the pure joy in the experience of life, the self that wants to do big and amazing and grand things–and our social selves–the skils and actions and behaviors we assume to get us moving in the direction of achieiving the dreams of our essential selves–are in alignment, we can’t be stopped.  When the connection between the two is clear, strong and working as one, life is beyond good.

But what about when they’re not? What if your social self keeps you chained to a job that you hate just for the paycheck? Or your essential self stays hidden beneath a pile of meaningless to-do work that you find little, if any, excitement in? This disconnect can wreak major havoc and lead to somethink akin to sleep-walking through life.

I’m interested in this idea (an idea I fully support) from the perspective of the writer. So often, we find ourselves feeling mentally challenged and sometimes even reluctant to face the page, to get words down, to send out our work, to make pitch appointments, and that can disrupt our forward motion toward our goals of becoming published at whatever level we decide equates to success for us. Is this disconnect because our essential selves don’t move toward writing or because our social selves are going about the writing process in the wrong way? Are we feeling creatively empty because the social self has an expectation to publish books–a social representation of our work–a product–or because we would rather be writing nonfiction or memoir or fantasy or mysteries instead of the genre we’re in? Do we blame writer’s block for our inability to put words onto paper because our social self has heard that excuse umpteen times, or do we attempt to write out our frustrations instead of working on our novels because we know that we can uncover a glimmer of excitement if we just weed out the negativity?

The question, then, becomes more “where are you writing from” rather than a “why are you writing”? When you’re feeling frustrated with writing, is it the process or the product impeding your progress? Is it a disconnect between your actions and your true, essential desires? More importantly, how do you get back to writing from your true, essential self when the social self causes problems?

Are you writing from your essential self or your social self? And what does your essential self *really* want from your writing actions? I’d love to know.

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”

I’m always and forever telling you about my collages and story vision boards, but it struck me that I haven’t really ever *shown* them to you (at least not that I recall, and I’m not going back over 5 years of blog posts to find out LOL).

So I thought I’d give you a little treat today for putting up with me: a picture (via my camera phone–pretty good if I say so myself) of the collage I’m working on for my current WIP–the food memoir. I originally started this a year or so ago at a writing retreat but had only a smattering of photos. Yesterday I pulled out my stack of magazines and just leafed through. I need some energy and focus in my work on this book and visuals tend to motivate and energize me.

Each one of these pictures is significant and linked almost instantly to a childhood food memory for me. Pretty cool how that happens. The ice cream reminded me of my aunt who let us eat junk food on the weekends at her house while watching TV mom never let us watch. The berries are all reminiscent of picking summer fruits with grandma along fence rows in the country. The chili is one of mom’s specialties, the veggies have stories all their own from our garden…I could go on but I’ll save it.

I’m excited by this. So excited that some of the structural problems I’m having with the book itself worked themselves out after working on the collage, and I just feel excited to see these photos when I walk in my writing room. It’s not done (the collage) yet–my plan is to add to it in bits and pieces as photos strike me with essay ideas. I like the dynamic nature of it all.

Do you collage or do story/vision boards for your WIPs? I’d love to hear about them…

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• Filed in BethWorld, Writer's Life

…but if you try sometimes you just might find…you get what you need…

Be glad I’m not really singing my Rolling Stone-pilfered lyrics. It sounds prettier in your head, trust me.

Two weeks ago, sitting at my desk while my middle school darlings watched the movie version of the book they’d just finished, I practically drooled with anticipation over the upcoming Christmas break. For two whole weeks, I’d not have to cram all my writing time into that glorious 4:30-6:15 am time slot. Instead, I’d have the chance to write–much more–at a more leisurely pace. Never mind the fact that I’d finishes Nano in November and managed an average of 1500 a day, the majority of those in the morning. I had an idea playing in my brain for a new writing project, one that I’d been thinking about for upwards of two years since the seed had been planted in my creativity during graduate school in 2006.

I had everything ready to go: notebooks, pen, laptop, coffee. Nothing could stop me.

Except the lack of words. For the first few days, I struggled to write at all. Struggled to even get myself into my chair in the mornings. I felt nothing where words should be bubbling, an emptiness where ideas had excited me before. After a few days, I forced myself into my seat and began writing not on my sparkly new project but on the reasons that I wasn’t writing.

Lo and behold, a new, more refined idea came out of this journaling. Nothing publishable but, after a few days, a real, solid, pink-bubbled outline to guide me through the project. At the end of the first week, I was pretty down about not having cranked out 3k words a day (that I’d planned) but very excited by the way the outline of the project had come together.

I wrote on that project for a few days, then realized something I’d forgotten in my push to win Nano: I work best when I have more than one project in the fire at a time. Again, I faced the empty page begging my muse for a spark of inspiration, another shimmery idea to immerse myself in while I worked on project #1. Nothing came out, so I did what I’d done before: journaled.

At first it seemed futile, that I don’t just get an idea on a whim and it just turns into something viable. But the more I typed, the more I started seeing the repetition of an idea that I have more than adequate background on (and so do you, but it’s my little secret ) and can probably write numerous books on. I thought..this was too easy…this idea was too simple, it can’t work. Through more writing/brainstorming on the page, I discovered this is, in fact, the PERFECT project for me at this point in my writing and in the year. My lament was that I didn’t think of it sooner to excite myself to the page over break.

So, as I wrap up 2009 and another Christmas break as well, I realize I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas from my muse. She seriously failed to deliver on that promise of 3k/day in my work. But what she gave me instead–the knowledge that I could write my way through my block to discover what I needed at the time my creativity needed it was a much better present. I might not go back to school with 45K under my belt but I have the road maps for the next several months to get me way past that simplistic notion of success.

When has your muse failed to give you something you wanted but instead given you a gift of what you needed–even if you didn’t know you needed at the time?

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• Filed in BethWorld, Writer's Life

So maybe I spend a little too much time at Twitter (@buckeye_bethm, if you’re interested. Tweet me up!). But in addition to the given time wasters, there’s occasionally a Tweet that really gets me thinking.

Usually, it isn’t from one of the celebs I follow–this time, it was. A few days ago, Rob Kardashian (another guilty secret…I want to be a Kardashian sister. Not for the looks, for the sarcasm. Love Khloe!) got me thinking with a few simple words.

All Rob twitted was: An imperfection is a perfection.

I have no idea what he was referencing, but my writer’s mind, stuck on character, snapped it up and ran with it. We’ve all heard, hundreds of times, that our fictional characters need flaws. No one wants to read about a perfect character with a perfect life. If you’re a reader, you know it’s true. More than once I’ve put down a book because I felt like too many things were going good for the heroine. I want angst.

So, the WIP Tip question of the day for you is: what imperfections define your character? What are her shortcomings? And how, with your authorial magic, are you going to make those a perfection? Or, at the least, a strength?

I love hearing character flaws. Post ‘em here so I can live vicariously through your characters

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Following yesterday’s Story Dump post, as promised, here’s how to use this lump of brain refuse to get yourself back into the story.

It’s pretty simple, actually. First off, let the story dump sit a bit. At least a day, if not more. I usually find I can stay away for a day or two at most. Then, the curiosity gets me back and interested slightly. I don’t know about you, but when I write, (and especially when I let the stream of consciousness take over), I write stuff I don’t remember writing. Lotsa times, that’s the good stuff.

After it’s sat a bit, I take two highlighters (pink and purple, but that’s just my preference) and a black pen (lately it’s been a sharpie thin tip). If I’ve done my story dump on the PC, I print off a copy.

Time to face the music. I reread the SD once, all the way through. If something just jumps out at me this first time, it’s purple-highlighted. Purple (or your color of preference) to me signals “I can and want to write this scene right now”.

The second time through the SD, I use the pink and black in tandem. Either a line gets pink highlighted, meaning it has promise and/or excites me about the book (it may be a bit of knowledge I didn’t know about a character, a new ending for a scene, a story question that needs answered…something truly pertinent to the story), or lined through in black. Black is the true garbage of the SD. Nothing usable. Sometimes in an SD, just to keep writing, I’ll type a question over and over–those are black lined. So is any information I already know or have already written. If it makes no sense to my story, black line.

Following this fun step, I go back through and make a list in order of color: purple sentences/phrases/ideas
pink sentences/phrases/ideas

and use those to get me back into the story.

When you want and need to write, it can be like pulling teeth if your muse doesn’t help. Try the SD approach once and see if you don’t get moving a little bit…

I’d love to know if the SD process works for you. Leave a comment and tell us if it helps you get back into your story

Happy Writing!

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• Filed in Fiction Advice, WIP Tip

Last night while the hubby golfed and the kid watched baseball, I had a few hours alone to myself. On the first night of summer vacation from school, this was quite a coup. No pool party to oversee, no dinner to whip up. Just me, a book I’d been itching to start reading and a beautiful sunset. I’d barely snuggled into the lounge chair–cover still closed on the book–when I heard the voice.

How would you feel?

Excuse me? I asked my muse, who approached me in the voice of my heroine. Where did that line come from? I sensed the question wasn’t about my reading material, but I played along.

I said–how would you feel?

Feel about what, I questioned.

Feel if you found out what Em told me. How would you feel?

Em is the younger sister of my heroine M. (I abbreviate M. because I’m not sure her name will stay. Em, aka Emily, probably will). In the most crucial scene of my WIP, which at this point was only a single line scratched on an index card (“Em tells M. THE SECRET”), Em reveals a secret that will literally change my heroine’s life and perception of the life she’s lived to this point in time. I really hadn’t been worried about the scene, knowing when it’s time to write it, I have faith that it will flow. I was a little worried a few days ago when I got the scene, the whole axis of the story, that maybe I couldn’t do it emotional justice since I’d never experienced something like it in my own life, but still had faith that I could tell M’s point of view successfully in that crucial scene.

I played the M.’s game. “I’d feel like my whole life was crumbling. Like I’d lived a lie.”Having a sense that the M. was going to give me something good, I set the book down and got up to get a notepad. “But what does that matter,” I questioned. “This story isn’t about me, it’s about you.”

She laughed. Cackled actually. “That’s where you’re wrong, big shot. This story is about you, too.”

“Me? How in the world is a fictional story about [insert black moment scene here] relevant to my life?”

“As I said, how would you feel?”

Up for her challenge (and to make her hush so I could read my book in peace), I grabbed the notepad and pen and wrote her question at the top of my page.

How would I feel?

I assumed it’d be simple and straightforward. Angry. Mad. Deceived. Humiliated. Like I was living a lie. As I wrote, however, I felt myself go through the stages of what it must have/will feel like for M. to find out her sister’s secret. In my logical mind, I could toss out a few words on the subject, all appropriate for index cards. In my subconscious, the one that M. tapped with that simple question, I found chaos. Messiness. Words I wouldn’t have used in a million years. A perspective I could respect but in real life would have no way of knowing or feeling myself.

I also found the point of view of my story. Instead of the default third person limited character M. has been to this point, I found strength in first person. Pain and humility. Humanity and honesty. In six pages, she took me on the emotional journey from discovery to realization that I might never have gotten had I not listened to her.

She gave me the scene (albeit in very rough draft, very bare-boned form) that my entire WIP is leading up to. And a few additional scene ideas that need peppered throughout the first 2/3 of the story.

And she left me exhausted. Good writing will do that to me. That’s how I know I have something valuable. I feel wiped out and like I need a break before I continue.

It’s so easy to pass up the muse’s voice when I’d rather be doing something else, but I’ve chosen to invite this chick in for her ideas. I can’t risk shutting her out and missing a crucial part of the story. As long as she’s not waking me up in the middle of the night–which I know she will, sooner or later….

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• Filed in BethWorld, From Notes to Novel

From Notes to Novel

I want to say I’ve been going to town on the plotting, but I’m not sure what “going to town” implies. If it means I’m excited, curious and coming up with an amazingly multi-dimensional plot that blows me away, then I’m going to town.

Each day when I’ve sat down to write and work on this book, I’ve felt resistance to writing. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a perfection thing. I sit down not having any idea what I’ll be writing about, which is something I hate. Often it deters me from writing if I don’t have anything to say.

But using Holly Lisle’s Create A Plot Clinic gives me a route to follow. No one–and I mean NO ONE–has ever made me think about plot at the level of depth and complexity as Holly does in her amazing book. I’m currently working through the “throwing stuff against the wall” section and literally come up with at least one new plot scene for each card (You’ll have to read it to know what I’m talking about. And I promise it’s worth it.)

I’m about 10 scenes into the novel and I estimate I’ve got 70 or so total scenes to come up with. The difference between this novel and the other 6 I’ve finished is that those ones were always started with only the beginning and ending scenes in mind. I never fully developed my story before starting, considering myself much more a pantser than plotter. Problem was, when I got through about the first 1/3 of the story, I’d hit a wall. Not knowing where I was going to write next turned into my enemy, not my friend.

But I want to try writing this novel differently. Knowing the plot events before I get started makes sense. We’ll see if I continue to feel that way. I don’t feel my creativity is being compromised by “outlining” my fiction. I hope it doesn’t, because at that point, the joy fizzles out of creative writing. We shall see!

Are you a pantser or plotter? What gives you the most grief in your writing process? What gives you the most pleasure?

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• Filed in BethWorld, From Notes to Novel

Story Behind the Story

Dream or Destiny by Lillie Ammann. Published by GASLight Publishing, LLC

Thanks for joining us today, Lillie. Give us a short synopsis of your story.

Marilee Anderson dreams about a murder and wakes to find it really happened. She and David Nichols, the victim’s brother, become the prime suspects. Though they have their secrets and aren’t sure they can trust each other, Marilee and David team up to find the killer.

Very interesting! I love anything that has to do with dreams, in fiction or real life. What sparked the idea for this story?

I saw a TV documentary about a woman who used psychic dreams to help law enforcement solve crimes. On the show, she led the police to a body buried in a shallow grave on a mountain. She provided enough information about the crime to solve the cold case and lead to the conviction of the killer. Psychic dreams intrigued me, and I decided to write about a woman who dreamed of a murder. The real psychic dreamed about crimes after they happened, but I wondered what would happen if someone dreamed of a murder before it happened.

I’m curious: did the story end up how you initially envisioned it?

I didn’t know how the story was going to turn out. In fact, I was far into the book before I learned who the killer was.

Mysteries for readers are often mysteries for writers, aren’t they? Tell us how you sold this story to the publisher.

I had an agent for a couple of years and ended up with a nothing but a few rejections. I put this book aside and gave up on it for a while, then submitted it and sold it to a small publisher. However, before the book even went into the production cycle, the publisher changed its business model to focus on erotica. My book wouldn’t be a good fit with the rest of the inventory, so I asked to be released from the contract. Though I put the manuscript away in a virtual drawer in my computer, the characters continued to call me. I pulled it out of the drawer to revise and edit periodically for ten years. Not only did I edit to make the writing better, but also I revised because of changes in society and technology. Finally, I submitted it GASLight Publishing, who accepted it.

Ten years. Wow! What a model in perseverance. Good for you in hanging in there. Writing is never a simple, easy business. Anything you’d change in the process of getting this story published?

Probably not. My first reaction is that I would have been more aggressive in submitting through the years, which might have led to publication sooner. However, I have improved as a writer during that time, and the story is far better after the latest revisions. So, no, I don’t think I would change anything.

Aside from the dream/psychic element, what makes this story special?

The characters. I think of myself as a character-driven writer, and these characters really drove me. I didn’t know there would be anything about domestic violence when I started writing, but David told me about the abuse he and his sister suffered. One of my favorite reactions to Dream or Destiny was a question from a reviewer who is also a domestic violence advocate. She asked if I had personal experience with abuse because David’s reactions were so true-to-life, not the stereotyped behavior she’s accustomed to seeing in fiction. Marilee, savvy and strong in business but shy and vulnerable in private life, gets involved in the case even though she’s always tried to avoid ridicule by hiding her psychic gift. Two of the secondary characters will have their stories told in sequels. I’m working on Bonita’s story now, and the book after that will feature Tess, the “crazy lady.”

Any final advice on writing can you share with writers?

Persevere. We hear that advice so often because it is so important. Most writers spend years developing their writing skills and learning the market before they are published. You will certainly fail if you quit; you will probably succeed if you persist.

Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Lillie. Best of luck with the book and your writing.

———–

Bio:

Lillie Ammann is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in helping authors self-publish their books. She blogs at A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye http://lillieammann.com/blog.

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• Filed in Guest Bloggers, WIP Tip, Writer's Life

To too many Americans, Memorial Day is just a Monday off work. I’m guilty of the same thinking at times myself.

But as the granddaughter of a soldier who served in France during WWII, the cousin of a soldier who served in Iraq, the great great great great great…(there may be more) niece of a true Yankee soldier and the daughter of an National Guardsman who watched the Berlin Wall crumble first-hand (and only my brother got a Tshirt!), Memorial Day has a deeper significance for me than “just another Monday off.”

Make a list of all the reasons Memorial Day means so much to so many people. Go beyond the traditional, staid “It means we’re free” stuff. You’re a writer. Get some emotional punch behind it.

I’d love to see your lists.

And to all those who’ve given their time and their lives to bringing freedom to my life, thank you.

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One thing we discussed at great length at our writer’s retreat this weekend was that ideas literally come from everywhere. Get yourself a notebook to carry with you everywhere to jot down random snippets and ideas as the universe gives them to you. You might not remember the witty banter at the coffee shop or the way the sunlight hit the flowers this morning when you settle down to write next week.

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• Filed in WIP Tip