Charlotte Rains Dixon

Techniques for Writing Flow

The Big, Scary Beast and the Ancient, Frail Feline are both asleep (in separate rooms, I might add) and so I have a moment to ponder techniques to keep access to the muse alive and well.  This is on my mind because at the recent Loft orientation, my fellow mentor and old friend Betsy Woods gave me the details on a new-to-me technique.

It is called a Weather Journal, and its a bit like writing morning pages, only more so.  With Morning Pages, you write down a stream of consciousness account of anything and everything, just to get it out on the page.  A Weather Journal is more crafted, more reactive, more of the moment.  With the Weather Journal, you start from where you are at the moment you sit down, and you write about that place, every blessed bit of it, starting with the things you are experiencing through your senses.

This invariably leads to more writing, perhaps an account of something that happened to you the day before, or an inquiry into an emotional upset.  The Weather Journal is very Zen in that it starts in the present moment and assumes that the entire universe exists in that moment.  And, well, every writer knows that its all in the details.   Keeping a Weather Journal is an excellent way to begin noting the details.  I've noticed this magical effect of the Weather Journal, which is that when you start by noting the details of the present moment, it is much easier to put on the page details of the scene that happened to you the day before when you were at the coffee shop and the barista with the red hair gave you a Frappucino with whipped cream on it instead of your usual grande latte.

While I'm at it, I'm going to run down a list of my Top Techniques for Writing Flow.  So here goes:

1.  Weather Journal--see above.  And let me know if you come up with a better name for it, would you please?

2.  Morning Pages--I did these faithfully for years.  They are the brainchild of Julia Cameron, who advocates their use in her book, The Artist's Way.  To do Morning Pages, often called MPs by devotees, you get up, grab your coffee or tea, and sit down with paper and pen in hand.  And then you write three pages, no more, no less, and get your ya-yas out so you can get on with the real business of life.  MPs are also a great way to track the desires of your true self.  So, if over the course of a month you realize you've written, I want to move to Africa and be a missionary, 5 times, it might be time to start checking airfare to Rwanda.  My problem with MPs is that they tend to devolve into a laundry list of things to do, and thus they end up feeding an obsessive thinking trait I'm trying to end.

3.  Free Writing--Sit down with your journal, set a timer for 20 minutes, choose a prompt and write until the timer goes off.  No lifting the pen from the page, no stopping, even if you are writing I hate free writing over and over again.  There is no shortage of books chock-full of prompts for free writing.  Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones,is probably the most famous advocate of this type of journaling.  The problem with free writing is that it is easy to get lost in it and end up with a bunch of useless writing that goes nowhere.  One way to get around this is to take prompts from your own current writing project.  This can be a great technique for solving thorny plot or character issues.

4. Lists--The lazy writer's way to keep a journal.  Not surprisingly, I love this one.  Say you find yourself on vacation in the Yucatan in Mexico and everything is exotic and different.  But you're on vacation and you end up spending most of it on the beach, drinking Pina Coladas from the beach-side bar.  Who has time to write in their journal in such a situation?  Especially when there are silly floor shows to attend every night?  And more Pina Coladas? Should you find yourself in such a jam, remember the benefits of writing a list.  It can be words or phrases, or whatever you want it to be, related or unrelated.  The key is to just get down descriptive words that you can later go back to and write from.  (And can I just say that I'm glad I visited Chichen Itza, back in the day, not so long ago, when you could still climb to the top of the ruins, even if I did only get halfway up before my fear or heights kicked in.)

That's it.  That's all I got on techniques for writing flow, and I think you'll find all of them useful in different situations.  If anybody has any other good ones, leave a comment so we can all steal it and use it!

John Updike, 1932-2009

John Updike has died, of lung cancer.  You can read the New York Times obit here. 

I'm sad.  I didn't even know he was ill.  The obituary is one of those that has been on file for awhile and so doesn't talk a lot about the circumstances of his death.

Love him or hate him, he was a huge literary figure and he published over 50 books throughout his career.  The Times referred to him as "prolific, even compulsive." 

Not a bad epitaph, considering that so many of us struggle to even get words on the page.

(And, for those of you who thought I had gone to the same place as Updike, I assure you I'm still here.  I've got four, count 'em, four posts, written out to put up.  Circumstances in my life has been a bit, um, overwhelming shall we say.  My mother in a nursing home, my daughter deciding to get married in less than a month, a trip to Chicago for AWP to moderate a panel in a couple weeks and three ghostwriting projects.  Oh, and I just adopted my Mom's ancient, frail cat, who thinks the blind pug is a big scary beast out to eat her for breakfast when the truth is I'm not even sure he knows she exists.)

The Sinner's Guide to Confession: Blog Stop

The Sinner's Guide to Confession
By Phyllis Schieber

Today I have the pleasure of hosting a blog stop on Phyllis Schieber's virtual book tour.

Wouldn't it be refreshing for an author to pay attention to women of a certain age (especially if you are a woman of a certain age)?  Well, Phyllis Schieber has!Her novel has been called chick-lit for boomers. The characters--Barbara, Kaye, and Ellen--are best friends in their 50s, all smart, gutsy women who face challenges that are universal to all females, no matter the age. 

In an interview at the blog, Bookshipper, Shieber said, "The women in Sinner's certainly have some of the same problems that women have in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, but these women have far more serious issues to contend with in their late forties and early fifties than the problems that drive 'chick lit'."

What follows is a bit more information about the book.  Be sure to scroll down to find out how to win a free copy.  Nothing better than a free book!

About Sinner’s Guide to Confession: Kaye and Barbara are longtime friends, now in their fifties. Ellen, who is several years younger, develops a friendship with the other two women years later, solidifying this close-knit group. The three women are inseparable, yet each nurtures a secret that she keeps from the others.

About Author Phyllis Schieber (in her own words): The first great irony of my life was that I was born in a Catholic hospital. My parents, survivors of the Holocaust, had settled in the South Bronx among other new immigrants. In the mid-fifties, my family moved to Washington Heights. The area offered scenic views of the Hudson River and the Palisades, as well as access to Fort Tryon Park and the mysteries of the Cloisters. I graduated from George Washington High School. I graduated from high school at sixteen, went on to Bronx Community College, transferred to and graduated from Herbert H. Lehman College with a B.A. in English and a New York State license to teach English. I earned my M.A. in Literature from New York University and later my M.S. as a developmental specialist from Yeshiva University. I have worked as a high school English teacher and as a learning disabilities specialist.

My first novel , Strictly Personal, for young adults, was published by Fawcett-Juniper. Willing Spirits was published by William Morrow. My most recent novel, The Sinner’s Guide to Confession, was released by Berkley Putnam. In March 2009, Berkley Putnam will issue the first paperback publication of Willing Spirits.

Win A Free Book from Phyllis Schieber – It's very easy to be entered in a drawing for a FREE book by Phyllis Schieber. Post comments on any blogs during the virtual tour and you will have a chance to win a book from Phyllis. One random person will win – but we are also asking visitors to share a secret and one secret will also win a free book. As a bonus the blog owner that hosted the winning comments will also win a book. Share some interesting stories and questions with Phyllis Schieber during her tour – and have a chance to win a book.

For full details about Phyllis Schieber’s virtual tour, visit her tour home page -  http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2008/12/sinners-guide-to-confession-by-phyllis.html

Order Your Copy here - http://tr.im/2x1g

You can visit Phyllis Schieber at www.thesinnersguidetoconfession.com or www.phyllisschieber.blogspot.com

A New World, Where Nothing is Impossible

I'm home from Nashville.  I actually got home Monday night, but I went right from being picked up at the airport to see my Mom, and came home exhausted.  Its a long drag across the country.  I know, I know, people fly much longer distances all the time now, but I don't care, it is still a long flight to me.  Despite being exhausted, I awoke at 5 AM, which seems to be my new default time at the moment.  Its actually fun to be up so early, and boy oh boy, does it give me a lot of time to write. 

Yesterday it was great to be awake at 5 AM, because it was a GREAT DAY.  I set up two TV trays in the family room, which is lacking in tables, and placed my laptop on one, and my journal and pen and the remotes (for some odd reason it takes two to operate our TV) on the other.  And then I sat in front of the television all morning--that is, when I wasn't running to the bathroom to grab kleenex because I was crying so much.

Obama and Michelle pulled up at the White House, Michelle with gift in hand, I started crying.  The limousine taking them to the ceremony pulled onto the crowd-lined streets, I was crying.  Hilary was introduced, I cried again.  And so on throughout the day.   It was really an amazing day.

A note about that present Michelle gave Laura Bush: rumor (or NBC) has it that the gift was a journal and pen for Mrs. Bush to begin her memoirs.  Here's what really interests me: it is said that ole Laura did not keep a journal for the entire eight years Georgie was in office.

She did not keep a journal.

Can you even imagine such a thing? Of course you can't because you are a writer and writers process everything through writing.  But so do people who are living through extraordinary times or events, and Laura qualifies there.  I can't understand how she would not have felt even a slight impulse to write something, anything, down.

While we're discussing the inauguration from a writerly point of view, how about that poet?  People on Twitter were making snide comments but honestly? I think the average American (myself included, alas) is just not that familiar with what is good poetry and what is not.   That being said, I liked her.  Her name is Elizabeth Alexander and I thought her poem hit just the right note--balancing the every day concerns that make up the lives of the citizens she addressed with the momentous aspect of the occasion.  Some of the lines I liked:

We encounter each other in words

What if the mightiest word is love?

Love that casts a widening pool of light

Praise-Song for the Day will be published in book form by Graywolf Press and sell for $8.  Oh, and they are printing 100,000 copies of it.  Not too shabby for a poet.

Finally, I leave you with the words of one of the NBC commentators (alas, I didn't catch which one, I don't watch TV often enough to recognize the voices):

"Nothing, now, nothing, is impossible."

Amen.

Twitter: The Art of Writing Tweets

Twitter is, of course, the social networking rage.  Seems like everyone from corporations to small businesses to solopreneurs to politicians are tweeting.  And with good reason, I some people find it addictive.

There are posts galore on how to best use Twitter to promote yourself or your business, how to not waste time on Twitter, (yeah, right), how to save the world using Twitter (I'm making that one up, but Barack Obama did use it to help get himself elected).

But what about the tweet as a creative art form?  A mini-essay?  Yes, I know that it is hard to consider writing something creative in 140 characters or less.   However, once you start using Twitter a lot you begin to mold yourself to its limitations--and find creative ways to work within them.  Ah, of such restraints are genres formed.

I've been thinking about this over the past couple days as I've found myself tweeting a lot.  I'm really a moderate tweeter.  As of this writing, I have only 800 tweets (there are people who have thousands) and about that many followers.  But the more I tweet, the more I get addicted to it into it, and the more I get into it the more I learn about the art of being succinct.

Not only that, but while being succinct, one can also express deep thoughts and tell mini-stories.  Here are my how-tos for the art of writing tweets:

1.  Cut all extraneous words.  So this:  "I went to see my mother tonight and she had what looked like a really bad meal" becomes this: "Saw mother tonight, she had bad meal."  Now I have room to describe the bad meal, or say something of related interest.

2.  Create tweets that stand alone but are part of a larger whole.  I've been experimenting with this one.  Sometimes when I get back from doing something away from the computer (gasp! It does happen upon occasion)I'll write a series of posts about my activities.  Each post links to the other, but each post stands alone and makes sense if that is all you read.

3.  Use good, active verbs.  Amazing how the rules of good writing cut across all genres.  I'm guilty of not paying enough attention to this one.

4.  Express it differently.  We don't want to hear that you just walked in the door to the coffee shop.  We want to learn what is going on in that specific coffee shop at the moment you walk in the door.  I'm probably more interested in your reaction to the painting on the wall then how much you need caffeine.  I've heard the latter a million times, the former can come only from you.

5.  Find the telling detail.  This is, of course, intimately related to #4.  What is the one detail of the coffee shop that brings the whole scene alive?  If you can do it in your creative writing, and I feel certain you can, you can do it on Twitter.  As a matter of fact, writing tweets is probably damn good practice for any kind of writing.

Which gives me an excuse to keep using it as much as I want.

It's Sunday: Do You Know Where Your Niche Is?

I just found mine.

It wasn't really lost, in the sense that it was something I desperately missed.  It was more like it was buried under the multitude of interests and ideas that crowd my sometimes-mushy brain (too much going on in there!) 

It wasn't even something that I felt I needed.  The experts, however, say otherwise.  It took quite a bit of convincing, and reading a book to get me searching for my niche.  And then, as is so often the case, I found it right under my nose.

Are you ready?

My niche is information about creating a writing life while writing your book or waiting for it to sell. Or, in short, creating a life devoted to writing.  That has a nice ring to it.  Right?

I know.  Duh. Like I haven't been writing about just that already.  But you'd be surprised how difficult it can be to decide what it is exactly that I do.  Because, like many writers, I do many different things.  I'm terrible at networking events because my 20-second elevator pitch goes something like this:

"And what do you do?"  (Woman dressed in killer designer suit with beautifully lacquered nails.)

"Um, I'm a writer."  (Me, in my usual writerly outfit of gypsy skirt and lots of jewelry.)

"What do you write?"  (Killer woman.)

"Well, I ghostwrite.  And I teach writing.  And I coach writers.  And I run a writing program.  And I write this blog that talks about writing.  And then there's my own writing, the novels and short stories."

I'm telling the last part of it to the woman's back--the suit cuts a gorgeous line from the rear, too--because I've lost her.  She is off looking for someone who can tell her succinctly what he can do.

Since I'm not a big fan of networking events anyway, except for one I belong to in LA, I've managed to convince myself I don't really need a niche.  I have now seen the error of my ways and will spend the next year repenting. 

Actually, I'm really happy about this because identifying my niche gives me permission to do more of what I'm already doing.  I'm going to continue writing posts about craft and creativity and how they apply to making a life devoted to writing. 

One of my twitter friends, Mary, asked me to define "writing life" after I proudly tweeted about my niche.   And so here goes.  Creating a life devoted to writing can mean actually making a living writing, supplementing your income with writing, or just learning how to make contacts and attend events relating to writing, even if you don't need to earn a living from it.  A life devoted to writing implies that you make time for it regularly--another thing I talk a lot (some would probably say too much).  Creating a life devoted to writing means that the written word (and you practicing it) is front and center in your life.

So, there you have it, a niche, found.  And now excuse me while I go practice my elevator pitch.

The Writing Process: Digging Deeper on Trees and in Writing

I took down my Christmas tree on Thursday night.

I know I'm a bit late in getting this done, but I've had good reason.

I developed a bit of a system this year.  First, I removed the soft ornaments, home-made stuffed fabric Christmas shapes and gingerbread men, as well as furry bears from various sources.  Those could all be stored in a plastic tub without a lot of wrapping.  And, many of them sat on the tips of the tree's branches.

Then the ornament removal got more complex.  The next round were glass bulbs, which needed to wrapped in tissue and placed in the big ornament crate that had partitions.  Included in this round were the most precious ornaments, funny little things my kids made through the years that never fail to make my heart skip a beat.

After these two rounds I'd  gotten most of the ornaments off the tree.  Or so I thought.  But as I started to walk away from my finished job, I noticed another one hiding amidst the pine needles.  And when I looked harder, I saw another, and then another.  There's something terribly sad about the image of a forlorn ornament getting tossed out with the tree, so I started beating the branches, looking for more.

And throughout all this, I couldn't help but think about writing.  Looking for more ornaments, even when you think you've found them all, is similar to the writing process.

As a refresher, here's the writing process as I see it:

1.  Write a rough draft, also known as a Shitty First Draft (or SFD) in the world of Anne Lamott, or the Glumping it All on the Page Draft (GAPD) in the world of Word Strumpet.

2.  Rewrite the draft.

3.  Rewrite the draft again.

4.  Revise the draft.  (I think of revising as having more to do with removing commas or adding them, fussing with words and so on.  Rewriting is for the big stuff--character arc, plotting, and so on.)

5.  Rewrite and revise the draft one more time.

6.  Read it again, decide it needs another rewrite, finish the revision.

7.  An impatient editor or other pressing deadline such as old age or senility finally forces you to send it off.

So it is easy to see how this endless rigorous writing process is much the same as ornament hunting.  Just when you think you've found the last plot problem, suddenly a light goes on and you realize that Jimmy didn't go to jail but Bobby did, and then the whole story has to change.  Or, after numerous rewrites, it may suddenly occur to you what the theme of your story actually is, a eureka moment if ever there was one.

Have you ever completed a rewrite, certain it was your last, only to discover almost to the end that you have to go through it one more time?  And even though your civilian friends think you are nuts and that you should just submit it already, you know that making the changes will make the book into the book that you see in your mind and feel in your heart.

Writing is, above all else, a process of digging deeper and discovering what lies hidden amidst the branches.  When first we begin writing, we tend to fall in love with our work, just as we fall in love with a newborn baby, and we don't want to do a thing to change that lovely creation we've brought into the world.  (Anne Wayman wrote a great piece on falling in love with your work this week which you can read here.)

But it doesn't usually take long as a writer to start to appreciate the wonders of rewriting.  I know you've heard it a million times--writing is rewriting.  It's true, to the point where many writers begin to prefer the rewriting phase to the hard work of writing a GAPD. 

And then the problem becomes how to get yourself to stop rewriting.  But that is a topic for another post.

Remembering, The Task of a Writer

At the hospital, time flows differently.

It moves slowly during long stretches of waiting for something to happen.  Then, all of a sudden, everything happens at once.  The nurse arrives for a blood pressure check, someone comes in to draw blood, a technician arrives to cart the patient off for a X-ray.

The patient is my 92-year-old mother, and this is our second foray to the ER in two days, for cellulitis, compounded by a fall which resulted in a hairline hip fracture.

The ER, the hospital, and the world of medicine is a foreign environment to me.  We are not a family of doctors or nurses.  For the most part, we tend to be wonderfully healthy.  So this is a new world for me, one I don't always understand.  I try to keep my eyes open and my attention focused so that I can remember.

Remember what the doctor says so that I can tell my family.

Remember the details of the experience in case I want to write them.

Remember because it seems important.  Through remembering, we exist. 

Remembering is the writer's way of staying present.  By noting the details, committing them to memory in my head or on the page, I'm here now.  I'm not worrying about calling a client or whether or not I'll be able to get to Nashville.

Remembering is one of the most important tasks of the writer. 

Remember, because to not remember dishonors our present.  Remember because others--like my mother--cannot.  Remember because it is important to bear witness.  And sometimes bearing witness is all we've got.

It is enough.  It is more than enough.

Update:  After hip surgery and several days in the hospital, we got my Mom into a nursing home this morning.  She'll be there doing short-term rehab for the next couple of weeks.  After that, its anybody's guess....but we're hoping to find her a nice adult foster care placement.

And The Essentials Are...

Working on the novel, blogging and dealing with client projects. 

My life is stripped down to bare bones minimum at the moment.  My 92-year-old mother is in the hospital, facing surgery for a hairline fracture tomorrow morning.  This, of course, requires much time spent at her bedside, as she is confused and agitated,and even if she weren't I would want to be there.

I got home tonight, had a glass of wine and tried to think of all the things that have gone undone the last few days.  And I realized they fall into three categories: the novel, the blog, and the stray client project.

The, of course, there are the essentials of survival in a situation such as this: family, friends, and internet buddies, and all my peeps on Twitter who have supported me through this.   (There is something strangely soothing about tweeting every aspect of a crisis.) Food is in short supply bedside and rumbling stomachs must be ignored, which is not all bad as it creates an enforced diet.  Wine is at the ready immediately upon crossing the threshold of home.

The bad news is that everyone else in my family is gainfully employed, ie, has a real job, which means the weekday hospital watch falls to me.  The good news is that the hospital has wi-fi.  (Not only that, I just discovered that Providence is one of the top 100 most wired hospitals.  Woo-hoo!) So I can work from Mom's hospital room.  The best news is that we somehow landed in the brand spanking new "tower" of the hospital--private room with a view, all state-of-the-art equipment.  It is posh.   They have a special frosted-glass bathroom door that doubles as a whiteboard.  The nurses come in and write the date and their names on it.  State-of-the-art, I'm telling you.

I have a blog post I wrote in a cool little notebook my sister gave me for Xmas while waiting in the ER yesterday.  If all goes well, I'll get it posted tomorrow, from the state-of-the-art room.  In the meantime, I am going to bed.

And The Essentials Are...

Working on the novel, blogging and dealing with client projects. 

My life is stripped down to bare bones minimum at the moment.  My 92-year-old mother is in the hospital, facing surgery for a hairline fracture tomorrow morning.  This, of course, requires much time spent at her bedside, as she is confused and agitated,and even if she weren't I would want to be there.

I got home tonight, had a glass of wine and tried to think of all the things that have gone undone the last few days.  And I realized they fall into three categories: the novel, the blog, and the stray client project.

The, of course, there are the essentials of survival in a situation such as this: family, friends, and internet buddies, and all my peeps on Twitter who have supported me through this.   (There is something strangely soothing about tweeting every aspect of a crisis.) Food is in short supply bedside and rumbling stomachs must be ignored, which is not all bad as it creates an enforced diet.  Wine is at the ready immediately upon crossing the threshold of home.

The bad news is that everyone else in my family is gainfully employed, ie, has a real job, which means the weekday hospital watch falls to me.  The good news is that the hospital has wi-fi.  (Not only that, I just discovered that Providence is one of the top 100 most wired hospitals.  Woo-hoo!) So I can work from Mom's hospital room.  The best news is that we somehow landed in the brand spanking new "tower" of the hospital--private room with a view, all state-of-the-art equipment.  It is posh.   They have a special frosted-glass bathroom door that doubles as a whiteboard.  The nurses come in and write the date and their names on it.  State-of-the-art, I'm telling you.

I have a blog post I wrote in a cool little notebook my sister gave me for Xmas while waiting in the ER yesterday.  If all goes well, I'll get it posted tomorrow, from the state-of-the-art room.  In the meantime, I am going to bed.