Charlotte Rains Dixon

Loft-y Tennessee

I am in beautiful Springfield, Tennessee, where there are rolling green fields and the air feels totally different than it does in beautiful Portland, Oregon--mostly because it is warm.  I'm staying at the home of Terry Price, and we are theoretically working on the Loft.

No, we are really working on it--we have been chatting all morning about it and millions of other things, while also eating Monkey Bread, monitoring the process of the log cabin which is being built in the backyard, and listening to Van Morrison.

I'm here for the opening semester of the Loft, at least the opening semester with Terry and me at the helm.  This is only the beginning, folks, and we are very excited about our five hardy students.  The program has actually been up and running for five years but it had fallen on hard times before Terry and I, who have both been with the program since the beginning, decided to petition to take it over.   

Next fall we'll have an official orientation weekend, complete with opening reception and other exciting events, so stay tuned.  And though the Loft is centered around Nashville, TN, please keep in mind that we are also working on plans for true distance learning. 

Go the Loft page at MTSU here, or read about it on the page I wrote.

Literary North Carolina: Carl Sandburg

This is a photo of Carl Sandburg's home, Connemara, in Flat Rock, North Carolina, which is south (I think) of Asheville, not too far, and is apparently now a retirement community.  I can see why--it is quite beautiful and peaceful and charming.

I never knew that much about Carl Sandburg, except for the "fog creeping in on little cat feet" poem, and, of course, he was pretty much a household name when I was growing up.  But he was a social activist all his life, and a musician and a poet and biographer of Lincoln.  He won two Pulitzer Prizes.

He married his wife Paula in the 1920s and she could well have become a typical wife of the era, not doing much except supporting her husband in his endeavors.  However, she became interested in raising goats and she was the one who instigated the family's move from Michigan to North Carolina, because she wanted more room to raise goats.  And I love this--she became a world-renowned expert on goats.  The farm today still raises goats.

The Sandburgs had three daughters, only one of whom married and had children.  The other two lived with their parents all their lives.  One of them had epilepsy back in the day when nobody knew how to deal with it, and the other was mildly retarded from being hit by a car. 

But what a place to live--the house perches at the top of a green hill that flows down to a pond and Sandburg loved to hike the trails around the house.  On his 87th birthday he partook of his favorite kind of exercise besides walking--lifting an Adirondack chair above his head multiple times.  The house is full of books--thousands of volumes--which are all being painstakingly taken care of, down to preserving his bookmarks in them.    Sandburg's other love was music, and that is much in evidence in the house also, with his grand piano and guitars.  Also many stacks of old magazines.  My kind of place!

Connemara is well worth a visit if you are in the area.

Literary Asheville: Thomas Wolfe

This is a photograph of Thomas Wolfe's grave, which is in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina, where I happen to find myself today.  Turns out that North Carolina is a state with an amazing literary heritage, claiming authors as diverse as Wolfe, Carl Sandburg (more on him later), O Henry, and tons of others. 

But Thomas Wolfe grew up in town, and wrote about it in Look Homeward, Angel, and You Can't Go Home Again.  His work was all autobiographical and people familiar with Look Homeward, Angel, will recall the boarding house in the novel.  It was based on the house he grew up in.  (Do I have any photos of it?  No, of course not, because I forgot to take any.  I still can't get used to having my camera with me.)  But you can see the website here.

Its a pretty snazzy spot, complete with visitor's center that has exhibits and a movie and lots of books you can buy.  The only way you can get into the house is to take a guided tour, but at $1 it won't break you.  However, the annoying tour guide might.    Could we have a little bit of humor, people?  And not be quite so certain that the miscreants you have to guide about the house are going to touch the precious Wolfe artifacts?

Anyway, Tom was 6'4" and when he first wrote about Asheville everyone hated him and was royally pissed.  But then, eight years later, he returned and because he was famous everyone fawned over him.  He was quite a handsome man, but he never married because he was in love with an older married woman, Aline Bernstein.  And alas, our Tom died young, at age 38 from brain tuberculosis.  He was actually on a tour of the west and spent time in Portland before falling quite ill in Seattle.  And then--get this--he had to be taken back home via train, a journey which took 4 days, much of which he spent unconscious or delirious.  He died a short time later in Baltimore.

I am really fascinated with Tom's mother, Julia, who ran the boarding house he grew up in.  Because Asheville was a resort town, the boarding house was really more like the B and B's of today.

Julia was quite the business woman, and because she grew up poor, once she got a taste of making money, she just wanted to earn more.  She sort of turned her back on poor Tom, the last of her brood, because she was busy waiting on her clients and plotting ways to make more money.  She added on rooms to the house willy-nilly in order to have more to rent out and worked the boarding house until her death in 1945, eight years after Tom.

Today the house is surrounded by downtown Asheville, with a Renaissance hotel looming in front of it and some sort of huge building under construction to the north.  It reminds me of a short story I once wrote in which an artist starts adding on rooms to her house because she believes the carpenter she hires is magical and makes good things happen in her life.  Many years in the future, the house is a tourist attraction along the lines of the Winchester Mystery House and the entire city has grown up around it.

The other place we visited was Carl Sandburg's house, but I'm too tired to write about it tonight.  Oh, and the cemetery where Wolfe is buried is very close to the grounds of the Highland Hospital, where Zelda Fitzgerald lived while F. Scott was out in California, writing screen plays.  She died there in the fire that destroyed the hospital.  The way they identified her body was by the single slipper of hers that remained under the bed. 

And on that cheery note I will end this post. 

Best of Wordstrumpet: Power Writing and Creativity

Welcome to a new series on creativity and how to unleash it in your writing. Today I’ll be presenting the 15 crucial keys to consistently accessing your creativity.

First, though, I want to talk about creativity in general. I consider it to be one branch of the Three-Fold Writer’s Path, and in many ways, it is the most crucial. You can be the most talented writer in the world, but if you are not sitting down and using that talent, what use is it? If you don’t develop ways to convince yourself to return to the computer, over and over, on bad days and good, your talent will lay fallow, never to see the light of day.

And in my book there are few things sadder. Well, war and starving children in Africa, but you know what I mean. In developed countries, I’m convinced that the cause of much of our contemporary angst stems from people not exercising their creativity. Unexpressed creativity starts as a longing and turns into depression, or worse, perhaps, rage.

It is hard to be creative on a regular basis. Creativity is active. It requires us to think, to do, to act, to, well, create. These days, there are so many wonderful passive activities available to us that do not require action—surfing the internet, watching one of 500 available channels on TV, to name only a couple—that creating is practically a radical act.

Which makes it all the more important to do it regularly.

Creativity is a muscle. It gets stronger as you use it. When you go to the gym regularly and lift weights you build your physical muscles. So, too, with creativity. When you express yourself regularly, it becomes easier and more comfortable. The words flow and you develop a facility with them. The paint glides across the canvas. It doesn’t take you hours to find all your supplies. Ideas come as if by magic.

The opposite is true, too. Once you get away from the habit of creativity, it becomes ever more difficult to return. You have no idea where your drawing pencils are. You can’t, for the life of you, recall where you intended to go next in your novel. And what on earth were you trying to evoke with that mess of color on the canvas?

It only gets harder. And that longing inside you will grow and grow…until it becomes something else, something you probably really don’t want to allow to fester. So why not take the path that seems harder at first but is actually the easiest?

It is ultimately the easiest path because it leads you home to your heart and your soul and the very essence of your being. Which, in the end, is really all there is.

So here, ta-da, are the fifteen keys:

1. Be A Beginner.

The Zen Buddhists talk a lot about beginner's mind. I am a buddhism slacker, but this concept is called Shoshin, and it is a good one. The idea of it is to be eager. Be open. Don’t have expectations. Don’t think, do. Have a sense of wonder. This is an especially vital key for the professional, who may develop a mind-set that everything he does must be perfect the first time out. Banish those thoughts. A beginner wouldn’t expect to be perfect. Nor should you—no matter where you fall on the beginner to expert scale.

2. There Are No Rules (but make some for yourself if it makes you feel better).

Who says you can't write a novel in 100 viewpoints? The result may not work, and it may not be particularly publishable, but it might lead to something that is. Forget everything you know about the rules (see #1) and just go for it. See what happens. Sometimes this key is a bit much for people. The lack of rules is scary. So make some up for yourself--like, every sentence must start with a word that is capitalized. There, does that make you feel better?

3. Do It Badly.

The idea that everything has to be perfect is a huge creativity killer. So, go for the opposite. Write one bad page. Draw one crappy sketch. Sing a song off-key. The world didn't stop, did it? And go back and take a look at that dreadful page you just wrote. Hmmm, might you not be able to use that first sentence? With a few changes, does the third paragraph work fairly well for the opening? I thought so. Writing badly is an entry point into your work. Put something, anything, down on the page. Then you have words to work with. And that is a wonderful thing.

4. Just Do It.

This goes hand in hand with Key #3: Do It Badly. The truth of the matter is, you gotta just do it. And do it again and again. It is that simple and that difficult. Sometimes just doing it is the easiest thing in the world, and sometimes it is the hardest. I do not know why this is so. Sometimes I wring my hands and emote and pace and get down on my hands and knees and scrub the floor, all in an attempt to not just do it. And then when I finally get around to doing it, I wonder why on earth I whined and moaned for so long. Because once I'm in the middle of doing it, I love it more than anything on earth. So why I have to re-convince myself to go back to it over and over again, I do not know. If this happens to you, take heart and know that it is normal, at least in the realm of writer normal. Which, I have to say is not the same as normal normal, if you know what I mean.

5. Process, Not Product

When my daughter was getting her post-bacc certificate in photography, which was close to getting a MFA, this was one of her mantras. It has always been one of my mantras, too, and I have the hand-painted pillow to prove it. I actually wrote about this in another post recently, but it is such a bedrock tenet of creativity that I have to mention it again. Just remind yourself that it is not about the finished product, it is about the process of doing it. It really is. Trust me. Ironically, by focusing on the process, you'll end up with a much better product. It's another one of those mysterious creativity things. I don't pretend to understand them, I just obey them.

6. Do The Work, Don't Judge It

Goes along with #5. If you are focused on product while you are in the process of writing, you are likely to be judging it. Don't do that. Just do the work. It is akin to learning to be in the moment. I will confess here that I am a meditation slacker (I know, I know, I've got a slacker list a mile long--Buddhism and yoga and meditation being tops on it. What does that say about me?). But when it comes to writing, there's nothing I love better than kicking into that flow and being so in the moment that time passes without me even noticing it. That is only possible, my friends, when you are in the moment, one with the words, and Not Judging them. Judging is for later. Its hell when its judging time, but we are not talking about that now.

7. Small Steps

Rome wasn't built in a day. Rome really wasn't built in a day, and your creative projects won't be either. Don't get so caught up in the big picture that you forget to take the small, repeated steps. Make them as small as possible. Don't think about the entire novel, think about the next scene. Don't obsess about the entire canvas, focus on the next color of paint. Break things down into their smallest components. This seems so obvious--and yet I have to remind myself of it again and again.

8. Make It A Habit

The self-help experts say it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Thus, if you make a date with yourself to write your novel or plan that garden, or work on that song you're writing, and keep the date every day for 21 days, at the end of it you'll have established a new habit. Don't know if the 21 day thing is true or not, as I always forget to keep track, but I do know that consistency and the dreaded D word, discipline, are actually bedrock elements of creativity. This is counter-intuitive, but true. As I've said (over and over, to the point of causing retching) creativity is active. You've got to just do it. And the more you just do it, the easiest it gets.

9. Use the Power of Momentum

The really cool thing is that once you are consistently using your creativity, critical mass kicks in and you get momentum on your side. Momentum is what happens when you get the perfect idea for chapter ten when you're in the middle of writing chapter nine. It's what happens when you "hear" the perfect line of dialogue for your screenplay while you are writing the description for the scene. Once your mind is engaged with the work on a regular basis, it will help you by sending you messages and ideas. Apparently, the mind likes to be kept busy. The flip side of this is familiar to anyone who has set aside a creative project--it takes awhile to get back into it. You have to go back and re-read the entire novel in order to remember what you wrote, or you have to go back and review all the instructions on that sweater you are knitting. It is ever so much easier to just stick to it.

10. Use Your Subconscious

Put your subconscious mind to work for you. Think about your project or read a few pages from it right before you go to sleep--then prepare to pay attention to your dreams when you wake up. Command your subconscious (you won't hurt its feelings, promise, it likes to work for you) to figure out the details of the next scene you have to write. Once you get in the habit of allowing your subconscious to work for you, you'll be amazed at how helpful it can be. I wrote an earlier post that goes into this in much more detail. You can read that here.

11. Don't Talk About It, Do It

Too many people talk about the novel they are going to write, or the art they are going to produce. Too many people relate the whole damn story of the screenplay they play to get down on paper. But I believe talking about it too much is a big mistake. It dissipates the energy of the project, takes the air out of it. So don't talk about it. Do it.

12. Refill the Well

This is especially important when you are finishing a long project. Working on an extended creative piece takes not only time but energy. Have you ever had the experience of intensely focusing on your writing for a few hours and suddenly realizing you are starving? That's because using your brain burns calories. It takes energy. You need to keep yourself going by constantly refilling the well. Julia Cameron advises taking Artist's Dates, which are scheduled times when you consciously do something that pleases and replenishes you. When I'm writing a lot, I like to read a lot--words out, words in. Its as if I need to replenish the supply. It is vitally important that you figure out what nourishes you and commit to doing it often. Its not selfish, because it is paving the way for you to bring your creative gifts to the world.

13. Keep going.

I know. Duh. But it is depressingly easy to quit when a block arises or a rejection comes in the mail or someone says something mean about your work. But don't let the bastards get you down--writing all the time is the best revenge. Not writing well, or publishing well. Just writing. So keep at it. You'll break through that block, the next letter will be an acceptance to a prestigious publication and the mean person will get hit by a car--not injured, because we can't wish ill on people. Just shaken up enough so that they are no longer mean.

14. Take a break.

Just the wee-est bit contradictory today, aren't I? Well creativity is a contradictory activity, too. While you must commit to keeping going in the face of all odds, you must also learn to take breaks once in awhile. Let the work compost. Don't force it. Sometimes walking away for a few minutes or even a whole day (see Anne Wayman's post on taking time off here) can be the pause that refreshes. Just don't let a break turn into procrastination.

15. Let it go.

Ah, how good it feels to finish a piece of work, know that you've done all that you can do, and then release it out to the world with no attachments or expectations. At least that is the ideal. Doesn't always happen that way, but we can continue to try. It is all too easy to hang on to a creative project and not let it take its rightful journey into the world--whether it is a novel seeking a publisher, an essay needing a home in a magazine, or a blog post. It is all too easy to find yourself slowing down as you near the end of the project, or for blocks to suddenly appear when all was smooth sailing before. Sometimes this can happen because of a reluctance to let the pages go. But what good are they going to do the world locked away on your computer, or in a drawer where nobody can find them? Send your babies out and let them find their homes. The energy of that will come back to you in surprising ways.

Letting go is a suitable stopping point for this series on creativity. And now that you know everything there is to know about creativity, go forth and do it.

Best of Wordstrumpet: Planet of Unwritten Novels

A new idea for a novel is forming in my brain.

I have to be very, very careful with it. I've still got a draft and a half of the current novel to finish, so I can't do anything with this new idea yet. And, one thing I've learned is that I can't even pay too much attention to it.

That might sound odd, but I've over planned novels and ruined them before. Gotten enthusiastic about an idea, and been afraid I would forget it if I didn't write it down. Then I start planning, and writing down ideas for scenes and characters and I get all enthusiastic and then when the time comes to actually write it, the air has gone out of it.

Which is why I have numerous stories that now reside on the Planet of Unwritten Novels. It is a planet without enough oxygen to sustain life, all the air having been sucked away by premature enthusiasm. (Not to be confused with premature ejaculation, there's another planet for that.)

I've long since learned not to talk about ideas or stories for novels--that's a sure way to dissipate the energy.

But I'm also learning that I need to be judicious about how involved I get in the note-taking and planning.
Best to just tease it along--give it enough attention to keep it happy, without overdoing it, sort of like the way men sometimes treat women.

Best of Wordstrumpet: Writing in Coffeeshops

I used to love to write in coffeeshops. Now, not so much.

But lately I've been thinking I need to get back in the habit of going to Starbucks or an equivalent to write.

We've got the most fabulous coffeeshop/cafe right down the street called the Daily, and I always see people in there working on their computers.

The thing is, I've been spending way too much time at my desk, writing, and I feel like it might be good for me to get out more. But I've been thinking this for a month and haven't done it. One reason is that my computer is going through this odd stage where it doesn't like to open files after its been turned off. Sometimes this happens even after its just been asleep.

I prefer to think this is a temporary hissy fit on the part of my computer and will be fixed, all on its own, soon.
Meanwhile, I remain chained to my desk.

Remember Natalie Goldberg's book,Writing Down the Bones? In it, she was forever nipping off to some charming coffeshop in Taos (one of the best places in the world) to write with friends. Ah, how romantic it sounded. That was back in the day before we were all wedded to our computers.

However, today I have Things To Do That Do Not Require a Computer. And so I am off to Starbucks with file folders and writing pads in hand.

It helps that I have a fierce craving for a frappucino.

Update: My computer is working great these days, thanks to the wonderful people at Friendly Computers, and I still spend far too much time chained to my desk and not out in the world. But the good news is that Starbucks smells like coffee again.

Earth Day

It's Earth Day and I'm in an airplane winging my way across the country, wasting resources, specifically, very expensive jet fuel.  Guess they haven't yet figured out how to make airplanes run on bio-diesel.  I'd buy carbon offsets but I just read that they are pretty much b.s. 

Anyway, having written a long ebook on Global Warming last year about this time, I take environmental issues very seriously.  Besides I live in Portland, the greenest city in the country, where it is a law that every citizen take environmental issues very seriously.

Not really, but we all do recycle.  You do too, don't you?

Actually, I made myself feel so guilty I just went and signed up for a monthly carbon offset of 5 tons at Carbonfund.org.  I don't care if its b.s., at least it made me feel better.  (Now if I could just solve all those problems in Africa.....)

To make up for the fact I'm burning jet fuel above your very heads as you read this, I leave you with this cool link:  Connecting A Million Hearts.

Happy Earth Day, y'all!  (I'm on my way to Nashville, in case you hadn't guessed.  It always brings out the y'alls in me.)

In the Department of Odds and Ends: Monday Round-up

Clearing things off my plate, or more to the point, my ongoing list of blogging topics today:

1. Last month's Atlantic had a great article on the paparazzi and how they are changing journalism.  I've mentioned several times on this site that I have a perverse fascination with the paparazzi, even going so far as to watch TMZ on TV at times--and I don't watch anything on TV, except American Idol.  This whole thing started as a time waster, a way to take a break without really getting up from my computer.  But it turns out that the paparrazzi culture has had a serious effect on today's journalism.

David Samuels talks about "the evolution of Hollywood paparazzi from a marginal nuisance to one of the most powerful and lucrative forces in the American news-gathering industry" in the article and it is fascinating.  Did you know, for instance, that on any given night there are 30 to 45 paps covering Britney?  Amazing.

Here's the link:  Shooting Britney.

2.  I am leaving town tomorrow.  Heading first to Asheville for Wordfest, though I'm a little nervous about hanging out with all those poets.   I heard about it from my friend Nave, who runs a writing salon  there and in other points around the world.   Nave and I first met in Taos, when he was running creativity camps for Julia Cameron, and we run into each other in odd places like Chicago and New York, where neither of us live.    Candace and I are driving over there from Nashville in her #$%^ little car, which means I can't take my usual overload of clothes, because she also has some business to attend to surrounding mysterious issues of the place where she grew up.  I can't wait. 

Then I'll be in Nashville for the exciting beginning of the semester of the Writing Loft at MTSU.  My co-director Terry Price and  I are planning a dinner for new students, as well as an evening for mentors and alumni to get together.  We've still got room if you are interested in studying writing in a focused way, with a supportive and helpful mentor.  Read about the program on our website, or on the page I made on this site.

3.  Even though I'm leaving town, my blog will continue through the magic of technology.  I've got a post for Earth Day set up, and for the few days of my absence, as I wander the south looking for a wireless connection, I'm doing a Best of Wordstrumpet series.  Here are the posts you will enjoy for the rest of this week:

Tuesday--Earth Day
Wednesday--Writing in Coffee Shops
Thursday--Planet of Unwritten Novels

And finally, for my favorite post of all time (well it was actually a series, but I'm turning it into one long post):

Friday--Power Writing: 15 Keys to Unleashing your Creativity.

I've got my handy purple Polaroid digital camera, even though I'm angry with the people at Polaroid for discontinuing instant cameras, and I hope to take lots of photos and be able to post a poetry-infused travelogue by Saturday.

Have a good week, everyone, and don't forget to celebrate Earth Day.

Survey Results and Winner Announcement

This is going to be a bit of an American Idol-ish post, as in, I'm going to imitate the annoying Ryan Seacrest and keep you guessing until the very end who won.

As a brief aside, writing that line reminded me of something.  I just heard one of the all-time best Crosby, Stills & Nash songs, Wooden Ships, and it has that line in it:  "Can you tell me, please, who won?"  I think half the cadences in my writing come from all the songs that play in my head.

Anyway, I've been going through the results of my survey, and I want to thank Jen, Jenny, BellaVida, Denise, and Lin for all participating in it.

What I've gotten from going through your comments is that you are confused.  (Me, too.)  You want specifics about writing, such as how to structure a novel, how to know when a story is done, and by the way, what is a story, anyway?  Also ideas on creating story arcs and building momentum.

Momentum is an issue when it comes to creativity as well, with overcoming resistance, finding time to write, and keeping going the number one issues. 

I also asked what potential ebooks people would be most interested in and I'm pleased to report that Set the Words Free, a book about how to get writing and stay writing, came in first.  I'm pleased because it is the book I really want to write!

Second was The Three-Fold Writer's Path, which was, you guessed it, the book I second most wanted to write. 

Elements of Fiction came in third, and, thank you God, Make Money Writing Online came in last.   Other people have written excellent books on the subject, and if my once-in-awhile boss Clark ever gets his butt in gear, I'll be offering his book for sale on this site.

My path is clear:  I'm going to start writing Set the Words Free right away.  I'm also thinking it might be cool to write some shorter mini-ebooks on elements of fictions such as structuring the novel and what constitutes a short story.  But, one thing at a time.

It is very gratifying to read these comments and learn that my readers are so on the same page as I am.  I guess you wouldn't be here if you weren't, but you know what I mean.  So thank you all for being my wonderful readers!

And was there something else I was supposed to do?  Contest?  We're having a contest?  Oh right....I guess I'm not very good at being Ryan Seacrest, am I?  Maybe that's a good thing.  Okay, no more stalling, the winner of a free coaching session is.....

BellaVida, who writes the wonderful blog, For the Love of House Music. 

I am excited about this, because maybe I'll learn something about house music. 

I'm so happy that all of you contributed and I thank you.  Lin--take care of yourself and get well soon.  I'm sending you good thoughts and prayers (and everyone else reading this, should, too).

In The It's-The-End-of-The-World-As-We-Know-It Department

Yes, I know its Sunday and I promised the results of my survey, which I'm not even going to bother to link to because I've hyped it mercilessly already and you've already had your chance to enter. 

But first, I just had to write about this god-awful book I found.  I'm sorry, there is just no other way to describe it.  The book is called, My Beautiful Mommy and it is a picture book that explains to little kids about their mothers having plastic surgery.

Gag me.

The book is by Dr. Michael Salzhauer, who is, of course, a plastic surgeon.  He says he was moved to write the book after many of his patients had "mommy makeovers" (could the term be any more patronizing?) and didn't know what to tell their children.

"It sounds like a joke, but there really is a need to address this issue," Salzhauer told Reuters.

Doesn't sound like a joke to me, it sounds like a nightmare.  Here's the link: Mom's Having Tummy Tuck?  What to Tell the Kids.

Read it and weep.  Or decide to go live in a cave somewhere.  I might come join you.

How to Write a Book

Yesterday I finished the final corrections on my most recent ghost-written book, which, I have to say, turned out to be a wonderful project, working with great people who communicated clearly and paid quickly.  Best of all, they have more books they want me to write!

While writing a bio for the Loft today I started counting up how many books I've written and realized it is close to a dozen.  Three of them I can name: Beautiful America's Oregon Coast, Beautiful America's Wyoming, and a forthcoming book on writing successful fundraising letters from Atlantic Publishing.  The rest of them are ghostwritten projects on subjects such as global warming, Voodoo, your digestive system,  public speaking, marketing ebooks , dementia, and more that I can't think of at this moment.

I wrote several of the books in very short periods of time, and I'm not kidding when I say that.  Three of them were 50 pages, single spaced (the web standard, unlike the traditional double spacing on manuscripts), and I wrote each of them in five days.  Yes, five days.  Let me also add that I started cold--with no knowledge of the topic beforehand.

So I've learned a little bit about writing a book along the way. 

These days, everyone needs a book.  If you want to speak to promote your business, you'll find that everyone will ask you if you have a book.  If not, they won't be interested.  A book is a sign of credibility.
So, if you have a non-fiction book you want to write (fiction is a whole different story), here are some tips:

1.  Gather your information.  If it is your information, say, from your business, go find all those scraps of paper and throw them in a box.  If you are working on an assignment, go look around the web or wherever you're getting your info and get your sources lined up. 

2.  Organize it.  I know, duh.  But you'd be surprised how many people launch in before completing this vital step.  I'm a big fan of keeping organization as simple as possible.  If you simply made piles of papers that were all on the same topic and paper-clipped it together, I'd consider you organized.  Don't get bogged down in this step. 

3.  Write an outline.  Come out from under your desk where you are cringing in horror at the thought.  Its not that bad.  Again, it can be a very loose outline.  It actually should be a very loose outline, because it will probably change along the way.  Take a legal pad and write the numbers one through ten (as a rough starting point), leaving room in between, and then beneath each number, the letters A through E.  Now take your piles of paper and assign each one a number, in order if you like but it doesn't have to be.    Now you have 10 topics.  Go through your stacks of paper and organize the info into five sub-topics, which you write in the A through E slots.  Now you have your chapters fleshed out.

4.  Assign research.  Go through your research and make notes as to where it fits on your outline.

5. Write a rough draft.  And when I say rough, I mean rough.  Write fast, and don't worry about writing pretty.  Get the information down on paper.  When you get to the end, stop and then go fix yourself a martini.  Because guess what?  You have a book.  All  that is left to do is....

6. Rewrite it!

Woo-hoo!  You're done.  Wasn't that easy? 

A couple notes:

Please, please, please make careful notes for your research and be sure to cite your resources.  Plagiarism is not cool.  You also need to rephrase and rewrite things.  Don't take anything verbatim unless you have permission.  I know you know all this, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded of it.

If you are having issues getting your book written, even with this stellar run-down, I can help you.  I'm in the process of setting up my coaching website, and one of my packages is going to be a Book Writing Boot Camp.   Email me at the address listed on this blog, or leave a comment.

By the way, stay tuned, because tomorrow I announce the results of my survey and the lucky winner of a free coaching session.

Keyword Research for Writing

In my ongoing attempts to takeover secure a spot for myself in the writing corner of the internet, I've been researching keywords.    This fun little endeavor is part of my effort to find out what y'all want when it comes to writing and writing coaching.

(Brief, but very important aside:  Tomorrow is the LAST day to take part in the survey I posted last week.  Here's the link: Another Contest: What Are Your Writing Problems?  I had a flurry of activity when I first posted the contest, but since then nada.  Zip. Zilch.  Its depressing me, people.  I'm looking for a last minute surge in entries here, so help me out.  The prize is a free coaching session.)

Anybody who has ever done SEO (Search Engine Optimized) writing for the web is familiar with keywords.   You'll get a list of words which are usually very similar, like this:

Kitchen Sink
kitchen sink
Kitchen sinks
Porcelain kitchen sinks
porcelain kitchen sinks
stainless steel kitchen sinks
steel kitchen sink

Usually there would be 10 or more, but enough already, you get the idea.  Note the very subtle differences, for instance, kitchen is sometimes capitalized and sink is sometimes plural.  This is because some intrepid soul has been going through and trying to figure out what the top search terms are for kitchen sinks.

This is a tedious process.  I know because I spent last week doing it (in and around the ghostwriting).  The best place to go for keyword research is Wordtracker. They are pretty cool--they give you a free seven-day trial and they make it really easy to cancel if you don't want to pay them $59 a month to keep the service. 

Amazingly enough, I was not researching kitchen sink words, but writing and coaching words.  After about the 5,000th time I fed a word through I began to see some similar themes, mostly that people put really strange phrases into the search engines. 

For instance, "novel writing priest."  Does this mean anything to anyone?  I actually googled it myself to see if there was some famous novel writing priest that I hadn't heard about.  But not as far as I could tell.  However, "novel writing priest" has a KEI of 200, which is very good.  (The KEI is the number of searches compared to websites the word appears on.  You can get a word that has a ton of searches but also has a ton of websites devoted to it, and then its not a good keyword.  The KEI uses some arcane formula to figure this out.)

Besides getting me mildly upset about the state of knowledge in this country ("tips for writing fiction novels," is one of my favorites--um, last time I checked all novels were fiction) this process also makes me feel like I'm missing out on stuff that everyone else knows.  For instance, "101 very funny short stories," comes up very high.  As does "nifty stories" and "exotic short stories."  Is there some popular short story series that I've missed?

(And do not even get me started on sex stories.  I finally gave up putting anything remotely related to the word story in the search engine because it only returned 50 thousand variations on searches for sex stories.)

But the cool thing about it is that you really can start to get a sense of what kind of information people are looking for.  They seem to be desperate for info on writing feature stories, for instance.  And there is great clamoring for advice on writing outlines for plot.

So, you'll be seeing more basic articles on this blog in the near future, as I attempt to stake out my corner of the writing world. 

I promise, though, I will not write an article about a novel writing priest.  Unless someone wants to introduce me to one.  The phrase has an awfully high KEI.

Survey/Contest Reminder

Quick reminder--Friday, April 18th, is the last day to take part in my survey: What Are Your Writing Problems? I'll enter everyone's name in the hat on Saturday and post the winner over the weekend.  So c'mon, go take the survey (or even a wee part of the survey) and have a chance to win a free coaching session with me.  In case you missed it, you'll find the post here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has already responded!  Your answers are so helpful.

Here's that link again:  Another Contest: What Are Your Writing Problems?

Waiting For Inspiration

I am, at this very moment, guilty of doing what I tell students and clients NOT to do:

Waiting for inspiration.

I've been sitting here, with my hands on the keyboard, which is in my lap, where it is a very un-ergonomic position, waiting.  Once in awhile looking around at some of the latest book news for inspiration.  But I can't even get that steamed up about J.K. Rowling attempting to squash some poor pathetic middle school librarian like a bug (he was sobbing on the witness stand, J.K, lighten up!).  Nor could I even find it in myself to chortle gleefully at the news that those big, nasty drug companies hire ghostwriters, too.  (And now of course, I can't find the link, but never mind, it was really only the first paragraph that was interesting.)  And even the news about the guy who has written 20,000 books failed to outrage me.

Nope, I'm brain dead tonight.  Flat out brain dead, the way you can only get when you've been working full out on a project for weeks or months on end and then suddenly you are done.  I always have all these ideas for things I'm going to do when I'm finished, and then when I actually do finish suddenly none of them have appeal.  And all I am capable of doing is wandering around.

Thank God American Idol is on tonight.  Go, David Cook!

Writers Giving Back

Today is Global Day for Darfur.

You probably haven't even heard about this event.  I hadn't.  And that is because the traditional media is too busy wringing their hands over an economic crisis that supposedly nobody saw coming (um, can you say duh?) and gleefully stoking the battle between Obama and Hilary.  And I've been too busy reading TMZ and A Socialite's Life.  I mean, c'mon, what's important here?

I believe in tithing, but honestly? its more because its supposed to increase one's abundance than anything else.  Oh, I have a bleeding heart, that is for sure, and I can get as upset and outraged about things as the best of them.  But then I just go back to my own little world and click on a gossip blog to see what's going on. It's so much easier to find out what car accident Britney has been in, then learn about what's going on in Africa.

But this week a combination of factors has jolted me out of my complacency.  As I may have mentioned before, I'm a huge American Idol fan.  I know.  It's really embarrassing.  It's actually the only show I watch on TV.  This week, of course, I watched Idol Gives Back.  I swore I wasn't going to sit through the whole damn thing, but of course, I did.

No, I didn't rush to the phone to donate, but it did get me thinking--how do we as writers give back?  Isn't it our job to bear witness, to cover events?  If we are actively involved in them, then how can we be objective?  (Of course, blogging and the internet is drastically changing the reporting of news, which I think is wonderful, and most journalists I know think is terrible.)

Most of the time as a writer, I hang back.  I feel like it is my job to be a witness to events, not take part in them or cover them.  That the best thing I can do is wield the power of the pen.  And, in truth, there is quite a bit of validity to this attitude.  Besides, physics has already proved that merely observing something changes something.  So, simply writing about problems we are concerned about does have an impact.

The other thread in my brain this week has been the brain itself.   For an assignment, I've been writing about brain health and how exercising it can prevent dementia.  The brain loves to learn and learning positively affects it, creating new brain cells and carving out new neural pathways.

So I've realized that reading gossip blogs or the "Most e-Mailed Odd News" on yahoo does not count as new learning, and I've set myself a challenge of learning more about Africa.  I read in a book years ago that all it takes is half an hour a day to become an expert on something.  Of course, I can justify not doing this by claiming that I don't have an extra half hour a day and if I do, I'd just as soon spend it working on my novel, thank you very much.

But there is all that time the small amount of time I spend reading the gossip blogs.  All right, all right, I'm giving it a try.  I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, here are some links I've found already (see, I spent my half hour yesterday reading):

BBC News has excellent resources on Africa.

All Africa is an amazing resource.

Be A Witness: Google Earth Darfur  You can see Darfur on Google Earth!

What's Up on Planet Earth is a very woo-woo look at why Africa matters, but Karen Bishop has collected a lot of good links.

And, in the amazingly wonderful synchronistic way the universe has, this very morning the Oregonian had a review of a book called The Translator, about  Daoud Hari, who served as a translator for journalists in Darfur, and apparently it  tells not only his personal story but gives an excellent rundown of the whole complicated situation.  So, of course, I have to go buy it (and read it in the comfort of my middle-class home).

While we are on the topic of writers giving back, tell me what your ways of giving back are.  Let me know about worthy causes I might not be up on.  I'd love to hear about things related to writing, creativity, or literacy.  But of course, I'd also really love to hear about any of your favorite causes.

Who Are You Writing To?

The question of audience is not one that often arises as a writer writes.  At least, it doesn't for me.  Because I tend to write fairly intuitive first drafts, I'm not consciously thinking about who I am writing to as I write.  If I did stop to think about it, I'd probably freeze up and not be able to write another word.

But this topic has lately been of interest to me because of the book I'm ghostwriting.  I'm the second writer on this project, and I came in when four chapters had already been written.  The people I'm writing for had a sneaking feeling that something just wasn't quite right in these chapters, and asked me to critique them.

They were right--it was a little off.  It wasn't that the writing was bad, particularly, it was just that the tone was wrong.  Instead of sounding like writing for midlife adults, it came off sounding like a book for teenagers.  And then, because she got the audience wrong, the words sounded patronizing and simplistic. 

So figuring out who you write for is vitally important, particularly in non-fiction.  If you are freelancing for magazines, for instance, they are going to want you to understand their demographic and write to it.  More magazine is written for women over 40, whereas Glamour's audience is in their 20s.  Very different demographics, which will require a different tone.

Figuring out your demographic is not so important in fiction, unless you're writing genre, and then you have to follow certain dictates that your audience will expect.  I've heard some novelists say that they have a certain audience in mind and they are aware of this as they write, but I'm just not wired that way.

Maybe it is because I get my fill of writing for a certain audience when writing non-fiction and books for ghost writing clients.  Actually, I am remembering one ghost writing project that I had a difficult time with and a huge reason was that I couldn't imagine who was going to what to read it. 

But then, they may have just been me.....

On an unrelated note, I'm getting great comment on the survey and contest I'm running.  If you've not participated, go check it out.  Here's the link:

Another Contest:  What Are Your Writing Problems?

America's Favorite Books

I ran across an interesting story the other day.   The Harris folks did a poll on American's favorite books. 

Number one, across all genders and demographics, was the Bible, big surprise.   I really have to read that book one day.  Since I was one of 10 people in my age group who were actually raised Unitarian (interestingly I met another club member yesterday) I've never read it.  We Unitarians learned about starving children in Africa instead of psalms. 

The choice for the number two book on the list diverged dramatically for men and women. Men chose, not terribly surprisingly, Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.  But it did my heart so much good that women chose Gone with The Wind.  We still read that book!  Reading that book was a rite of passage back in the dark ages when I was in elementary school.  I actually have a scene in my novel where a young girl is reading Gone With the Wind and I hesitated before I wrote it because I wasn't certain young girls still read it.  So, hooray for it still being read.  I actually watched part of the movie on TV a couple months ago--do you know that it is three hours long? 

However, in people aged 18 to 31, the second choice for favorite book was the Harry Potter series.  And for 31 to 42 year-olds it was either The Stand by Stephen King, or Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.  I'm actually a huge fan of The Stand.  I read it avidly years ago, and then sat through the mini-series, too.  But Angels and Demons?  I have to admit I've not read it, but, um, I read the DaVinci Code, and, well, I had to restrain myself from throwing it across the room.  I prefer my characters a bit more realistic, I'll just say, and leave it at that.

Another interesting point was that favorites varied by region.  Southerners and Midwesterners chose Gone With the Wind, while easterners chose Lord of the Rings and westerners chose The Stand (yay for westerners). 

The rest of the top ten including To Kill a Mockingbird, and Atlas Shrugged, and Catcher in the Rye.  It might be fun to re-read, or read in a couple cases, the top ten list.  But then I always start projects like that and abandon them when a glittery new book catches my eye.

Here's a link to the USA Today story:  Bible is America's Favorite Book:  Poll.

By the way, since you've read this far, let me remind you of one more thing--I'm running a survey with a prize drawing a the end.  Check it out here.

Tips For Writing: Overcoming Resistance

I'm taking a quick break from my current ghostwriting project to give you a tip for writing, specifically, overcoming resistance.

But first, I want to remind you to enter my writing contest.  Its easy--all you have to do is answer a few simple questions in the comment area and you'll be entered in a drawing for the prize of a free coaching session.  The post is called  Another Writing Contest: What Are Your Writing Problems? and you can read it here.

Thank you to everyone who has commented so far--I'll be responding to comments soon and I so appreciate y'all taking the time to look at the survey.

Now, onto writing resistance.  This is a tip that I learned from my wonderful coach, Tess Daniel, and like everything that she teaches me, it applies to every aspect of life.   But, like pretty much everything that comes my way, I look at it through the lens of writing.

If you are stuck and can't seem do move yourself forward in your writing project, ask yourself one simple question:

Do I know what the next step is?

Do you know what scene comes next in the novel?  Or what character you need to introduce?  Do you need to rewrite the current chapter before you move forward?  Or do you just need to keep writing and get words on paper? 

The good news is, if you know what the next step is, odds are that you aren't blocked.  You know what to do, you just aren't doing it.  At least you have something to work with!  And one way to get yourself to work again is take pen in hand, number a piece of paper from one to ten, and quickly, write all the reasons you are not taking this next step.

One of two things will happen:  you'll either realize there is a very practical reason that you aren't taking that step, or you'll realize that in truth, you were wrong. 

The practical reason is the easy one.  You don't have a fact you need, or you need to print out the chapter to edit it and you don't have enough ink in the printer.  That kind of thing.  Once it is committed to paper, its easy to see what you need to do and remedy it.  Sometimes we just get so overwhelmed we go into brain fog and we can't see the forest for the trees, or the tree for the forest.

If you uncover reason number two, that you were wrong, that's really not so bad either, because at least now you know.  You might have been laboring under the delusion that your characters needed to go to a funeral, for instance, when in reality that character isn't dead.

Putting things down on paper has a way of uncovering what you need to know.  But what if you asked yourself the above question,  do I know what the next step is?  and the answer was no?

Well, sorry, you're out of luck.  No, I'm just kidding.  The wonderful thing about being creative is that there is always an answer.  While not knowing is the wee-est bit more complicated than knowing, it is also in some ways more freeing.  If you don't know what the answer is, after all, you can make anything up.

And that is what I recommend for not knowing--make it up.    Just pretend you know the answer and write it down.  If you knew what was supposed to happen next in your novel, what would happen?  If that feels like too much pressure, ask yourself what the silliest thing that could possibly happen be?  Write it down.  Go to the thesaurus or dictionary, open it randomly and write down a word.  Now do that two more times and make it into a sentence.  Set your timer for 15 minutes and write.  The idea here is to start writing, in case you hadn't guessed.  Start putting words on paper and see what happens.

This is a gentle way to trick the brain.  No pressure, no worries about figuring what is supposed to happen next in the novel (or your life, for that matter).  All you are doing is playing with words, putting them down on paper.

It may take several of these brain-tricking Not Really Writing Sessions in order for the old brain to start feeling comfortable enough to engage with the novel or short story or article you are trying to write, but eventually it will.

And now that I have given my brain a bit of a break, I'm off to work on the ghosting project again. 

Tips For Writing Fiction: Backstory

Before we get to the subject of tips for writing fiction, and specifically, backstory, let me remind you of the contest I'm running.  All you have to do is answer a wee survey and your name will get put in the hat for a drawing with the wonderful prize of a complimentary coaching session with moi.

Here's the link:  Another Contest:  What Are Your Writing Problems?  You can head on over there really quick and take the survey, I'll wait.  Okay, good, thanks.  Now onto backstory.

I've been reading The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson.  One thing I've noticed is that it has lots of backstory in it.  A lot lot. Maybe even a little too much, because backstory, as we all know, slows the narrative down.   

But it got me to thinking and I realized that the novel I'm currently rewriting for the fourth time is the wee-est big lacking in backstory.  As in, it has barely any.  Could this be what one agent meant when she said she loved the novel but wanted it to have a bit more substance?

I think it could.  I believe I came to this place because my last novel, which I like to call my MFA novel, because, amazingly enough, I wrote it during the two years I was getting my MFA, had nothing but backstory.  The novel was one big backstory dump.

So it may not be a big surprise that this current novel has next to no backstory.  But now I think the time has come to add some, and that, and Joshilyn Jackson, have gotten me thinking about it.

Backstory is exactly what it says—it’s the story that happened before the novel opened.  It is what is in your character's backgrounds, their stories that they carry around in their heads, the events that shaped them.  We novelists love backstory because we love our characters and we want to know every tiny bit of everything that ever happened to them.

However, you may love all those bits of fascinating history, but your reader does not.  You reader loves the current story that you signed on to tell.  And backstory is not it. The common rule about backstory is to use it only when the reader needs to know something. 

My take is to consider what the reader wants about what led to the situation as it currently stands.  For instance, the Joshilyn Jackson book is about conflict between sisters.  So we naturally want to know at least a little  about where that conflict started and why.

Providing judicious amounts of backstory helps to illuminate the central question about your character: will she change and why?  If not, why not?  In The Girl who Stopped Swimming, I'm wondering if the two sisters will come to terms with their conflict, ie, grow and change.

Be aware that writing backstory requires a delicate balance.   Too much, and the story bogs down.  Not enough, and your reader won't understand your character's motivations.  It is hard to find this balance, as my own experience attests. 

Put yourself in your reader's shoes and ask: what does she need to know and when? Another guideline for backstory is to be sure to get the story rolling before you drop in chunks of it.  And better yet, do it in little petite batches, instead of the chunk thing, okay?  Think about how you might remember something that happened to you.  Instead of telling yourself the whole story you might remember it in dribs and drabs.  So, too with backstory--feed us a little here, and a teeny bit more over there.

You also don't want to put all your backstory at the end.  However, you might well be withholding a piece of backstory for dramatic effect--perhaps it is some family history that the heroine finally gets the significance of, for instance.   Which brings up another point about backstory--it can be used as a pacing element.  The above-mentioned example is called a reveal, and reveals are excellent for creating cliffhangers and so forth.

Backstory, when used correctly, deepens a character.  Just remember that most of want we want to see is the character acting on her current problems (which are no doubt related to the backstory) in the contemporary story.

Writing Bog #3

I started this series on the Writing Bogs a couple weeks ago and left you with a cliffhanger ending after Bog #2. I know you are all desperate to find our what happens next what the next bog is.  Well, yearn no longer, because here it is.

To recap, the first bog (and please, y'all, in order to save me massive linkage fatigue, I'm creating a master list of links to posts at the end) is getting sidetracked before you even get to the computer. You simply can't make the time for it

The second is, getting sidetracked on the way to the computer.  You've set aside the time, the house is quiet but all of a sudden it is imperative that you do laundry.  Or wax the kitchen floor.  Or trim the dog's toenails.  That kind of thing.

The third bog, and the subject of our post today, is actually making it to the computer--hooray--but no words come.  Everything you write sounds stupid and vacuous.  So you flip on over to TMZ (or worse, watch it on TV), and check out the latest photos of Angelina Jolie's baby bump.

One of the absolute best ways to get yourself out of this bog is to be prepared.  The muse is a way more organized type than she would like to admit, and she really likes it when you are prepared.  Now, I am just as creative and free-spirited as you are, and I hate the idea of preparation, too, because it smacks of discipline and routine and all those things we rebel against because we are creative types.  So when I say preparation, I mean it in the loosest of ways.  You can prepare by reading (or even glancing) over what you wrote during your last session.  Take a few notes if you feel so inclined.  A great time to do this is right before bed--especially if you are going to get up early to write.  Whenever your writing session is scheduled, try to do your prep time at least a few hours before.  This gives the subconscious time to ponder things for you while you are busy doing other things.  And it pleases the muse, because she equates preparation with worshiping her.

Quite by accident, I actually wrote a post related to the subject of being prepared earlier this week, called, Morning Routine.  Be sure to read the comments, too, there are some good ones.  Another related post is, Writing While You Sleep.

Another tip for preventing a lack of focus during your writing time is to take a few moments at the beginning of it, breathe deeply and state your intention.  Ask the universe or God, or the muse for help if you feel so inclined.  State that you are going to be focusing on chapter four of your novel for the next hour and you'd appreciate it if the words flow right through you onto the page.  This little ritual becomes a bridge from the chaos of the day to the calmer state required for writing.  And even if you don't think the universe or the muse pay the least bit of attention to you, it serves as a command for yourself.

Finally, this is a tip I learned from Sena Jeter Naslund.    In my first workshop in the first residency of my MFA studies, I had the privilege of having Sena as my workshop leader, a fact which I love to lord over students who began the program later because Sena got so busy she quit leading workshops after the second residency.  But I digress, and I'm pretty sure the muse does not like name dropping or lording things over other people.  The muse will, however, like this tip.  Sena said that she would sit down and write one word.  Then she would tell herself, "Okay, you've written one word, now write another.  You can do it."  And then she'd get a sentence and she'd tell herself, "Now, you have a sentence, I bet you can write another one."  Like a mother teaching a child, or a caregiver dealing with someone who has dementia. 

Oh, here's a bonus tip--shut down everything on your computer except for the files that have to do with the story you are working on.  Don't have 10 tabs open on your Firefox browser, and do not, under any circumstances, keep your inbox (or inboxes) open.   Lessen distraction as much as possible.  The idea is to write, not to suddenly have to study the latest poll numbers from the New York Times.

Next up, the fourth bog which when you are actually writing, but something doesn't feel right.  The words are inauthentic, the scene doesn't work, it just all feels wrong.  We'll get to this one and finish the series soon, I promise.

Here is the complete list of the posts in this series:

Where Do You Get Bogged Down?

The Writing Bogs

The Writing Bog Addendum

Writing Bog #2