Word Strumpet

Listening or Waiting to Talk?

One of the best tools a writer can learn is the art of listening.  Actually, learning to listen is a useful tool for any human, period.  I spent the weekend in a workshop with people who had varying degrees of skills in listening, which has had me pondering the subject.

As my good and wise friend (and leader of the workshop) Mary-Suzanne pointed out, most of us spend time waiting to talk instead of actually listening.  I've watched other people do this and I know that I myself do it all the time--and I pride myself in being a good listener.

Instead of actually listening and taking in what the other person is saying, our minds race.  We start formulating what we want to say in return, or cataloging all the similar experiences that we have had so that we can talk about them when the other person shuts up.  Or maybe we worry that we don't have anything to say, or that we'll be expected to have something to say and nothing will come out.  We worry about what we look like or maybe we're even worrying about something we did before the current conversation.

If we're not worrying about ourselves, we may well be judging the person we are supposedly listening to.  We judge the speed of their delivery, or think dire thoughts about the awful outfit they have on.  We judge the funny expressions they make as they talk.  Or the way they are shredding their napkin as they speak.

But all of this is worrying and judging, not listening. 

Why does listening matter to a writer?

Because writers need to observe the world and everything and everyone in it in order to gather material.  Writers need to listen to conversations of others to obtain an ear for dialogue and how people interact with each other.  We need to listen to others in order to understand what it is to be human.  Because, after all, that is what writing is all about--describing the human condition.

So start schooling yourself in the art of listening.  How to do this is a bit harder to describe than telling people they should do this, I will admit.  A quick search of the internet netted mostly descriptions for college students listening to instructors lecture.  But this site seems to have some good advice about interpersonal listening.

The gist of it, of course, is staying present and not letting all your mental chatter distract you, whether that mental chatter is worrying about yourself or judging the speaker.  You might just be surprised what happens when you start listening deeply to the world around you.

Bearing Witness

Life just doesn't turn out the way we think its going to most of the time.  I remember looking at my daughter's high school yearbook the year she graduated.  All of the earnest expressions of hopes and dreams made me feel so bittersweet.  All those beautiful young people thought they had it all dialed in, thought they could do a little hard work and their lives would turn out just the way they planned.

Most of us adults know better by now.

Part of what makes life fun, for sure, is the unexpected twists and turns that it can take.  I've gone down totally unplanned routes in my career as a writer with great results.  Blogging is one such path that I never planned but I'm glad I took. 

But sometimes those unexpected paths can not be quite so awesome.  I'm ruminating on all this because I've been staying at the home of my former writing teacher and now friend who is facing the most incredible obstacle imaginable--caring for a husband disabled by a brutal disease.  Three years ago when I first had lunch in their home, none of us ever would have thought this would be in the future.

I'm humbled and chastised and really at a loss for words to describe the magnitude of what they are going through.  Any concerns that I might have had before--worrying about losing a few pounds, wondering when I'm going to hear from an agent, obsessing over lost connections--seem incredibly trivial now. 

I shared the experience with my very wise friend Deidre.  She said that one of the most important things we can do is bear witness.  As writers, this is fundamentally our job.  This doesn't mean we don't jump in and help a friend caregive, or save people from a burning house, or reach out a hand to someone in need.  But while doing all that we need to bear witness also, to tell the tale, to bring the story home and share it. Bearing witness validates the experience in some very basic way.

I remember very clearly feeling so helpless after 9/11.  The thought occurred to me that it was my job to bear witness.  And yet I felt there was little for me to say.  After all, I was on the opposite coast, far away from New York, physically, mentally and emotionally.  But I felt so compelled to write something, anything. All I could do was write my reaction, how it felt in the little microcosm that is my self.   I began to write and the essay I wrote was ultimately published in a national magazine, which pleased me no end because that enabled me to bear witness.

At the same time bearing witness can feel trivial. Years ago, in the very first creative writing class I ever took, I remember listening to a classmate describing his pleasure in reading a story about a graphic designer.  He loved it because the graphic designer in the story had tools.  (This was back before the days of computer dominance.)  He said that professions that actually needed tools appealed to him so strongly because as a writer, you really don't need much beyond a pen and paper.  Our process is to take words from our brain and transfer them to paper and this can feel very ephemeral, and even unreal.  We don't have tools to ground us to our job, and this can make the work feel unimportant.

And yet stories order the world.  Stories describe the world.  Stories, in some ways, create the world.  Telling the story, bearing witness, can be the most powerful thing a writer can do.  The trick is to find some kind of balance between bearing witness and getting in there and doing whatever you can to help.  Its important not to get so wrapped up in writing about life, that we don't act in life.

And yet, with all these words I've just written, I still feel a bit at a loss about it all.  Which is why I'll be returning to help again soon.

A Big Damn Post on Story

One of the prerequisites to being a writer is curiosity.  Period.  You can't be bored with the world if you want to write.  And the good news is that writing not only forces you to engage with the world but the act of it is so engaging, that as a writer it is a crime to be bored.  Should you find yourself in that unfortunate state of affairs, just pick up your pen and start writing.

But the down side of curiosity is that it can lead you astray.  It can lead you to spend a hot afternoon farting around on the internet rather than attending to the work that awaits.  The up side of that, of course, is the interesting things you run across.  (You wouldn't keep doing it if there weren't interesting things out there, right?)

As a naturally curious writer, I tend also to be a complete slut for informative sites.  I have this terrible habit of signing up for every internet newsletter I stumble across.  In the moment, when I first discover the site or blog, I'm so enthralled with it I'm certain, just certain, that I'll want to read every single word of the author's production.  And then I wonder why my email inbox is so clogged with, well, crap.  I actually spent an afternoon last week deleting things from my inbox and canceling subscriptions to various newsletters (though I do notice that some didn't seem to get the memo and are still arriving in my inbox).

One of the newsletters that I stick with and always read is Early to Rise. Michael Masterson, whose newsletter it is (though others contribute) has made a fortune from copywriting and he always has good ideas and interesting points of view.  I've actually pointed to one of his posts before, in this post.

The post I want to bring to your attention today, however, is written by copywriter John Carlton, whose blog is titled John Carlton's Big Damn Blog (and now you get the title of this blog post.) His post in a recent issue of Early to Rise is an excellent mini-primer on story.  (When you click on the link, scroll down to the post titled, Bring Your Story Home to the Reader.)

Carlton gives a simple outline for a story:  set-up, plot elements, action, and punch line.  He comments in the story that it is most often the punch line that is missing in stories that he sees (and he is talking about sales copy and copy writing here, too).  Once upon a time, when I was a student editor for the Louisville Review, I often found the same thing--a story would grab me and excite me as I continued to read it, only to fall apart or just peter out at the end.

Truth be told, I'd never heard of John Carlton before.  But I thought his advice on story was so good that I investigated him further and this is when I discovered his blog.  I like his blog because he flies in the face of common wisdom and writes long, like me.  (It is thought that in this age of Twitter, nobody will read a post more than a few sentences long.  BS.  I like long posts.  Short ones make me think the author has nothing to say.)He sells some very expensive programs on copywriting which I'd love to buy, too.

So now in this blog post, I've written the set-up, the plot elements, and the actions.  All I need is the punch line.  My blog posts are often devoid of punch lines I fear, but in honor of John, here you go:

John Carlton has lots of great info about story on his blog.  Check him out.

It's Hot in LA

I flew down to LA on Friday and at the moment I'm staying in Pasadena.  It is probably in the mid to high 90s at the moment, but yesterday and Friday, the temps were around 106-107.  Gee-zus.  This is way too hot for an Oregon native like me, especially given that we've not had much of a spring in Portland.  (I know, I know, its now summer.  We kinda went right from winter to summer.)

Even though Suzanne's house is air-conditioned, it still gets hot.  And yesterday my Vaio just couldn't take it, and kept blue-screening on me.   Poor little thing is over three years old, which must be like over 100 in computer years.  And so yesterday I ended up getting nothing done.  Suzanne and I tried to have a yard sale, hauling stuff out front to sell, but nobody came by.  It was too damn hot.

So today I was determined to get some writing done and this morning I got up and worked on the novel.   I did what I always tell people not to do, which was fuss over the beginning.  (I reserve the right to give contradictory advice.  And at least for me, the rest of the piece, no matter what it is, simply won't flow until I've got the beginning right.  I wrote about that somewhere.  Let me see...ah yes, here it is.) 

I fussed over the beginning and then wrote a wee bit more.  By a wee bit more I mean maybe a paragraph or so more.  But it doesn't matter.  Cuz I loved getting up and getting to the novel first thing.  I had a good bit of momentum going on that last week, but what with the need to hop on an airplane, work on a yard sale, and survive the heat wave, I had lost it.  Now its back.

Of course, the hell part is that I'm going to lose it again, as tomorrow I'm going down to Laguna Beach to stay with my mentor and friend Julie.  I'm stopping in Silver Lake to pick up another good friend, Deidre.
Together the three of us make up the west coast contingent of the Novel Goddesses, a group which also includes Linda, and two writers who do not yet have websites but will need them soon because Maryann is about to have her first novel published and Katy is working on a kick-ass one.

Losing momentum on the novel is going to be well worth it.  I'll get back to it when I return here on Wednesday. 

By the way, I'm working on the new book review site, which I don't even have a link for yet but will soon, and if you are interested in reviewing, please email me or leave a comment.

Book Review: The Host by Stephenie Myer

So, I spent a bit of time saving western civilization yesterday afternoon.  How?  I got lost in a book.

I've been hearing a bit of the buzz over the last few days about the cover story in this month's Atlantic, titled, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" (Please note:  stupid is spelled that way on the magazine cover, but not on the internet link.  I do know how to spell stupid, really I do!)  The gist of it is that the internet is retraining our brains, just as the advent of the printing press and other technologies did before it.  We are no longer so easily capable of deep reading for prolonged periods of time.  We're no longer capable of getting caught up in a book because our mind's are now trained to read short bits on the monitor and skip to another site via hyperlink when we get bored (or not).

I have to admit that I myself have noticed that suddenly I am struggling to read as much.  Which was why it was such a treat to get lost in the last couple hundred pages of Stephenie Meyer's book, The Host. 

Yes, I had other things I should be doing, lots of them, in fact.  But I couldn't put the book down.  I had to keep reading.  And such is the secret thrill of getting caught up in a book--you know you should be doing other things, but you simply can't.  We don't allow ourselves the simple pleasure of slacking the afternoon away for the sake of reading.

Anyway, back to the book at hand.  The Host is by no means a work of great literature and nor is it meant to be.  Meyer started out writing the Twilight vampire series for young adults.  I'd never heard of her until my son's girlfriend, who at the time worked in a bookstore in Seattle, mentioned that hundreds of people showed up at her readings.  That got my attention.  Meanwhile, they've been filming the movie of Twilight in and around PDX, and its been hysterical to read how some of the vampire groupies have been sneaking onto the set.  But don't get the idea that is rough-housing teens who follow Meyer.  Oh no, its their mothers.  Even though the books are written with the young adult in mind, apparently they have quite a following among adults as well.  Adult women in particular.  (Kinda like my beloved David Cook.)

The Host tells the story of this planet being overtaken by an alien species of "souls" who need parasites to live.  The entire population has had souls implanted in them, but for a small band of earth rebels who hide out in a cave in Arizona.   The narrator of the story is Wanderer, or Wanda, who gets implanted in the body of Melanie.  Funny thing happens, though--Melanie is so strong and her love for the rebel Jared is so powerful that Wanda cannot subdue her.  Melanie continues to exist in Wanda's head and leads her to Jared's hideout.

The book is overlong.  At 600 plus pages, some would say way overlong.  I nearly faltered around page 200.  The descriptions of daily live and conversations get a bit tedious.  But once the plot really gets going, its a page-turner.  Meyer does a pretty amazing job of writing a narrator who is really two people at once.  It never gets confusing.  She sets it up very clearly, which is key, and from then on its easy to follow what's going on.

If the book weren't so damn big and heavy, it would make a great beach or airplane book.  Truth is, though, one of the reasons I allowed myself to sit and read it was so that I wouldn't have to lug it with me to LA tomorrow. 

I guess now I'll have to check out her vampire novels, that is when I finish the 10 other books I'm reading.

PS.  Anybody interested in writing book reviews?  I'm in the planning stages of setting up a book review site and I need writers.  Send me an email if you're interested. 

Character Bios and Feeling Dumb

The other day--last week, actually--I was at a Starbucks in a suburb of PDX, working on stuff for my novel while I waited for an appointment. 

Specifically, I was working on character bios.  I'd printed out the character dossiers I always fill in (which have spaces for things like height, weight, hair color, etc.) and I was filling them out for each of my characters.  Somebody sitting near me glanced over and I found myself covering up the form.

Why?  Because I felt dumb.

Which was an interesting reaction to ponder.   It was so interesting I actually ended up pondering it rather than working on the character bio.  Why something that is so important to a novel should feel dumb fascinated me.  Because as far as I'm concerned, character is fiction.  Well, there's that little matter of conflict, too, but conflict generally comes from two characters with opposing wants or needs. 

For me, character begins with a fuzzy idea of someone doing something.  Like a dark-haired woman driving through a rain storm, tired of trying to be brave, or a curly-haired blonde annoyed with a baby at a book signing.  But in order for those characters to come to life, I need to learn about them, the details of what they look like, a little about their background, what their internal and external conflicts are, and so on.  One can get incredibly involved in learning about one's characters, though it generally is a better idea to get to it and start writing after you've dealt with the basics.

So because of how vitally important it is to figure out the parameters of every character in a story, it seemed improbably that I would feel dumb at Starbucks.  But I did.  In pondering this,I've come up with several potential reasons why filling out a character bio might make a person feel dumb.

First, it can feel a bit mechanical to be writing down height, weight, eye color and so forth.  But, trust me, you'll be glad you did.  Because, sure as shooting, you'll be on page 150 and for some odd reason you'll need to note the color of your character's eyes and believe me, you will forget this.  But if you've done your character bios, then you'll have a record of it that is easy to check.

Second, it can feel a bit presumptuous, sort of like playing God.  Who am I to create a character who lives and breathes--if only in the imagination?

And, finally, all this stuff takes time.  That is one thing we often don't take into account--writing takes time.  Preparing to write takes time.  We all have this idea that we should be able to sit down and write and have brilliance appear on the page.  But brilliance comes from preparation and discipline.  I am a proponent of writing regularly, three pages a day if possible.  But in doing all this writing, there may come a time when once again you don't know what to write.  And this is when knowing your characters comes in handy.  You should know them well enough that you'll be able to figure out what they will do next.

I know, I know, it isn't always that easy. Oh, do I know that.  But preparation and creating character bios will make it a little easier.  And I, for one, will take any ease I can get.

Pithy Thoughts, or Lack Therof

I have, as always, a multitude of pithy thoughts on the subject of writing to share with you, but all I lack is the time to sit down and write them out.  (I'm telling you, I need an Iphone, then I could share a post from where-ever I happened to find myself.)

I've been out and about in the world, collecting ideas and experiences in order to have something to write about.  And working on student packets.  And finishing up the final edits on the ghostwriting projects.  And attending graduations from here to eternity.  And gardening and yanking weeds and cutting back overgrown, woody stalks of rosemary. 

I've been ignoring all my Blog Catalog friends and haven't posted a tweet or whatever they are called on Twitter in forever. 

But there are posts to come this week.  I shall have thoughts on the occasion of the University of Oregon commencement, and more thoughts on creating characters.  Also on the vast amounts of time that planning a novel takes and how there's not a damn thing you can do except take the time for it.

I'm also going to LA on Friday and for some reason I always seem to post a log when I'm in LA.  So stay tuned.

Collecting Redux

I wrote about Collecting as Fertilizer a couple days ago, the idea being that collecting is the antidote for facing a blank page.  In that post, I focused mainly on the benefits of keeping a writer's journal and noting descriptions, dialogue, or anything you might want to later remember or expound on.

But there are other types of collecting that are important for writers, also, collecting experiences and collecting people. 

Collecting Experience

It has often been noted that college-age students in creative writing classes produce vapid prose (no offense if anyone reading this is a college-age student, I love ya, really, I'm just sayin').   Why is this?  It is because college-age students are desperately young and lacking in experience.  As writers, we need to experience the world for a bit before we have something to say about it.  Which gives you an excellent excuse to get up from your writing desk, right now, and go do something.  Go collect an experience then come home and write about.  Ride a hot air balloon, visit the state fair, ride the bus downtown and back.  You can come up with way more interesting stuff than that.  But whatever you come up with, follow through on it.  We writers tend to be pasty and hunched over from spending too much time at the desk so go forth and live a little.

Collecting People

Along the same lines, we writers also tend to spend many hours alone.  This is a good thing.  A writer needs solitude in which to create.  I have friends and family members who are artists and they can create and talk to me on the phone at the same time, but I have to be able to concentrate on the words.  So solitude is important, yes.  But if you spend your entire life alone, you'll never understand other people.  And if you don't understand other people, than you can't write.  That sounds harsh, but it is true, because I don't care if you are writing a novel, or an essay, or a memoir, it all starts with people.  As people, we are interested in other people.  Just like dogs (except for mine) are interested in other dogs.  And cats are...oh never mind, cats are interested in anything, except maybe tormenting mice and birds.  Go out and talk to people and see what makes them tick.  It does not behoove you as a writer to be shy.

Understanding the World

That's your charge as a writer--understanding the world.  Or, more to the point, understanding your world and the people in it and then bringing everyone else back reports from the front.    What we as readers desire is to see the world through another person's eyes.   We're stuck with ourselves and our own viewpoint for the entire lifetime, and it is through art that we get a glimpse of other people's viewpoints.

So, be a collector.  Your writing will be better for it.

Books, Books, Books...

...and more books, delivered right to my door. 

In the Proof There is a God Department, I recently got on the press release list of a PR firms that deals with authors, or at least their press releases.    The press releases come directly to my inbox, and here's the clincher--at the bottom of the release I am invited to reply with my address for a review copy.

Um, okay.  When the press releases first started coming to me it was difficult to control myself.  I was replying to nearly everything.  But I've gotten a bit more circumspect now, as I really do feel it is my duty to read and review these books, since the publishers or authors are nice enough to send them to me.

Its been interesting to see the differences in how the authors approach publicity.  Most of them (well, two so far) have simply sent me the book.  No letter, no other supporting information, nothing.  Which is all well and good.  They are sending me a book, after all, so I'm not going to complain.

But my favorite author so far is Helen Tse.  She wrote Sweet Mandarin, which is apparently a memoir about her family (her grandmother was the first Chinese woman to open a restaurant in Great Britain) that spans 100 years. 

As if all that is not cool enough, Sweet Mandarin is also a restaurant that recently opened in Great Britain.  But Helen also knows publicity, because no sooner had I sent off the request for a review copy then I got in return a personal enail from her, along with a jpg of the book cover, an interview, and another press release.

So, check it out, as Randy would say, I'm already giving Helen publicity and I don't even have the review copy of the book yet.  As soon as it comes, I'm all over it.  After all, Helen and I are best buds now.  No, seriously, its amazing what goodwill a little personal contact can generate.  I'll put Helen's book to the top of the pile as soon as it comes (I think its on the slow boat from England).

There's a lesson in publicity for all writers here--personal contact, baby, personal contact.

Collecting as Fertilizer

I'm working on a workshop called Writing Abundance that I'll be presenting in September at the Path and Pen conference in Nashville.  It's also going to be an E-book, for sale on this very site. 

Conveniently enough, all the elements of writing abundance fall into categories that all start with C.  How cool is that?  It reminds me of the Portland nurseryman who had seven children and named them all with names that started with the letter D.  Then he named the nursery after his kids--7 Dees Nursery.  The ad in the phone book had photos of every single one of them.  My sister and I thought that was hysterical and we were damn glad our photo didn't appear in the phone book.  Though come to think of it, we were both named names that start with C--Christine and Charlotte.  When I was in college, I actually met one of the 7 Dees at a bar and we ended up at the Rose Test Gardens and I believe he picked one of the roses for me.  He owns the nursery now and its even bigger and more successful than when his father owned it, and I'm sure he'd be very unhappy with me telling how he picked a rose from a public garden.  (Actually, I just read the story of the nursery on the website, and he doesn't own the nursery now, but his brothers do.)

Anyway, the writing abundance Cs are two qualities and four activities, kind of like the game Two Truths and a Lie, but that is yet another story.  The two qualities are commitment and consistency, both of which you gotta have to be a writer.  And the four activities are clearing, connecting, collecting, and creating--the point of it all.

But today I'm writing about collecting, as in gathering ideas and input and snippets of this and that as you go through you daily life.  I always recommend that people who want to write keep a journal, and into this journal should not only go daily reflections but ideas and bits of dialogue you've overheard, a nice description that popped into your head and so on.

As you write more and more, all of these things will become more intuitive and you won't need to be quite so rabid about writing them down, because instead they'll go directly from your brain to whatever story or article or essay you are working on.  But that takes awhile, like years, so I don't advise messing with it.  If you have an idea, write it down.

At first this may seem like overkill.  But ideas need coddling and tending, and if you do that, they'll multiple in this magical way that I don't understand.   As I've mentioned before, energy breeds energy and ideas breed more ideas. 

Collecting is the cure for the fear of the blank page.  So many of us open a notebook or turn on the computer and then gasp in shock when we actually have to write something on said blank page.  But if you've been collecting ideas, then you can turn to your journal, read that great description you jotted down, and use it as the basis of a scene.

Years ago, in another life, I used to design and sew children's clothes.  These days, the writing gods have demanded full fealty so I don't do that anymore, but I still like to fancy that I could design something to knit or stitch should the mood strike.  But the mood has struck, and I open a sketchbook and I don't have the least clue what I might want to design.  Why?  Because I've not been open and receptive to ideas.  I've not been collecting.

I've recently heard two fiber artists speak.  Kaffe Fassett (thumbs down--love his work, but he spoke at a graduation, and just metpahorically phoned in a slide show and self-congratulatory speech) and Fiona Ellis (thumbs up, a lovely, gracious, and funny designer) and both of them talked about where they get their inspiration.  They gather and collect it, from nature, from museums, from urbanscapes.  But they actively go out and look for pattern, for color, for design.  Which is what we writers need to be doing, only we're looking for character, for dialogue, for location, for the telling detail.

The Week of the Niece and the Nephew

My niece graduated from high school last night.  She is a dancer and she's been a member of an amazing local high school dance troupe for the past four years.  Read about them here and here.  Describing them as a "high school dance troupe" doesn't really cut it, because in truth their shows are breathtaking and worthy of comparison to any professional dance company.   Lila is now moving on to be an apprentice (I hope I got that term correct) in the Las Vegas Ballet.  She also had offers to dance with the Nashville Ballet (my own particular choice for her) and attend NYU.  And a bunch of other stuff, I can't keep track of it all.  I'm not proud of her or anything.

And today my nephew played his sax and marched in the Junior Rose Festival Parade.  My sister and I entertained ourselves by following along after them as they marched, but Luke didn't think this was very entertaining.  He's in seventh grade and my favorite thing to do is hit him.  It's an aunt thing.

At any rate, between celebrating Lila's graduation, both with a dinner and the actual ceremony, and watching Luke play the sax, this week has been full of niece and nephew events.  Which makes me happy, but does not inspire blog posts about writing.

Fear not, however, because inspiration has struck.

In creating the workshop I'm going to be presenting at the Path and Pen conference, I've been thinking a lot about the keys to limitless writing flow.  I've written some about this (I think, I can never remember what I write about) and I'll no doubt be writing more because it truly is the most important thing you need to master as a writer--developing a consistent writing practice.  All skill, talent, and success at writing flow from that, I am convinced.

One of my keys is connecting.  By this I mean finding a way to establish a regular connection to God, Source, Creator, Goddess, the Universe--whatever you want to call it, him, or her.  You also need to maintain a regular connection to your self, or your true self, or your higher self, or your inner self, whatever you would like to call it.

But the week of the niece and nephew has made me think of connecting in a different way, and that is connecting with people.  We writers do tend to be a solitary bunch, comfortable being alone.  Its a requirement for the job, so if you don't much like being alone, you might want to think about doing something else.  But much as I love my alone time, I'm also a very social creature, as this week proves.

To me, though, this is a good thing (as long as it doesn't get out of hand), because while writing is not a social activity, what we write about is.  We write about people, at least most of the time.  We write about people in conflict with one another and we write to figure people out.  At least I do. 

If we're home sitting in front of the computer all the time, how are we going to learn enough about people to write about them?  Exactly.  We must take up the challenge and go forth and connect. 

I think the trick is to find the balance between going out and connecting with other people, staying in and connecting with yourself and God, and writing.  Oh yeah, that.  The point of it all.

Writing Affirmations

In the course of my research for a ghost-writing project today, I ended up on a couple of sites devoted to positive affirmations.  Buried deep on one of them was a reference to "affirmations for writers."

Hmmm, I thought, and clicked on the link.  Which just so happened to be dead.  But now my curiosity was piqued.  (By the way, that is piqued, not peaked, as many people who know better seem to think.  It's one of my pet peeves, right up there with people spelling the term "Voila" as "Wallah."  Oh lord, no wonder the French hate Americans.)

I was curious as to what lists of affirmation for writers might contain.  I'm kind of a fan of affirmations.  I know a lot of people thing they are silly, trite, and woo-woo.  Worse, lots of people think they don't work.  That's probably because they say them a couple times and when nothing shifts immediately, they decide they don't work and give up.

But to me affirmations work as sort of the back beat of a song, the song being your life.  They drive the energy.  I've noticed that they can drive me to action, and that is perhaps their most useful function.  For instance, if you decide you want to repeat the affirmation, "I am a bestselling novelist" (not that I know anybody who would repeat that affirmation, I'm just sayin') you might then, after a few days, realize that you cannot be a bestselling novelist without a really great agent. 

So then you might start affirming, "I have a high-powered New York literary agent representing me" (again, not that I know anyone who did this).  And then after a few days of repeating that, it might occur to you that perhaps you need to go looking for a high-powered New York literary agent.  Which would then get you out of your funk over your novel and onto the internet to do an agent search.  And then you might even get a couple of them who were willing to read the first three chapters of your novel and you'd then have to write new affirmations as you stayed up all night repeating them while also sacrificing everything that's ever been of any importance to you, first-born children, beloved pugs, your Vaio laptop....okay, maybe not the Vaio.

But I digress. 

Affirmations not only get your butt in gear, but they also can make you believe great things about yourself.  That's what I love best about affirmations.  You don't even have to believe them for them to work.  If you say them often enough, you form new neural pathways in your brain and then you automatically start believing them.  (I learned all this from Louise Hay's new movie.)

And so, all that being said, I thought I'd link to a couple of sites that list affirmations for writers.  Steal them whole hog, or adapt them for your own uses.  I can't get Leanne Banks's site to fully load, but she writes a nice little bit on affirmations and how they have helped her and then features a good list of them, so I'm including it.

This page reminds me of one of those old-school webpages of the sort you rarely see anymore.  They were once all that populated the web, and I miss them.  Anyway, its a good overview of information about affirmations in general.

I suspect there might be some overlap here with Leanne's site, but Robyn Amos has a cool site and another good list of affirmations.

And now, go ye forth and affirm what a wonderful writer you are.  I'm going to do the same.

I Saw a Movie

I know, big whoop.  People all over the planet see movies every day. 

But not me.

For some reason, I've not been to the movies in ages.  Which is surprising when you consider that I love going to the movies.  I love nearly everything about it, from watching a film with a crowd of people to eating movie popcorn.  I love going to the movies so much that it makes me not enjoy watching them at home.  When I'm at home, I always feel like I should be doing something productive so I get antsy. 

But today I remembered why movie-going is such a good thing to do for writers--because you can learn a lot from watching the movies.

I know, duh.  But its been awhile, okay?

I saw Indiana Jones, and while I know its gotten mixed reviews, I enjoyed it.  I'm an easy audience, perhaps.  And the thought occurs that I'm a sucker for a movie, just about any movie, because it is a bit like a Busman's Holiday.  I can watch it and enjoy it without over-analyzing every part, as when I'm reading.

Though I couldn't help but notice a scene near the start of the movie that accomplished several things at once.  Its a scene set in a restaurant, and it is when Shia Le Bouef (lord knows if I spelled that right), who plays Mutt, meets Indy and tells him about how his mother is being held hostage.  The scene could have been just "talking heads" as there's some information that needs to be imparted and this is always a problem.  But its cleverly handled, showing Mutt first dipping his comb in the drink of a person sitting at the table next door.  Then the waitress appears, holding a tray full of bottles of beer for the neighboring table and Mutt grabs a beer not meant for him when the waitress isn't looking.  Just as smoothly, in the next motion, Indy grabs it and sets it back on the tray.

This is a wonderfully orchestrated little set piece that keeps the audience engrossed while the crucial info is being imparted, sets up the characters of both Mutt and Indy, and moves the story forward.  It is also the kind of thing that writers of all kinds of stories can emulate.    You always want every scene to accomplish as much as possible, and if it is only doing one thing at a time, it is probably not pulling enough weight.  For instance, if one whole scene exist only to introduce a character, that's probably not enough.  For every scene, ask yourself this:  what's the point of it?  Scenes that only do one thing either need rewriting so they do more or you must delete them.

I know.  Its a cruel, harsh world.

Next weekend I'm going to see Sex in the City, which, by the way, opened huge at the box office this weekend.

For the second time in this post I am forced to say, duh.  I was so annoyed with all the articles that came out before it opened, saying that it just wasn't possible a film with a bunch of women in it to open big.  Gee-zus, between these articles and the press Hilary has gotten, you really have to wonder what millennium we are in.