500 First

I told myself when I returned from my trip to Italy, I would get my act together. As you may know, I am presently unemployed or, as I like to say, "Job Free." You might think this absence of a labor schedule would avail itself to plenty of writing time. On the other hand, you might actually live on this planet and know that quite the opposite is happening.

Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum created by free time is being devoured by any number of annoyances, not the least of which is the staggering amount of paperwork involved in being unemployed. (Couldn't they make a job out of that? Paper sorter?)

To counter this, I have undertaken a new writing model I call 500 First.

First thing in the morning, before the phone calls, before my letter carrier mutters obscenities for having to lug reams of mail with the WorkForce logo, before Facebook and Twitter can bewitch me, I write no less than 500 words on my WIP. This isn't free writing; this is creative composition. It's no-editing, forward-only blurry eyed typing that is surprising me with its effectiveness. Remember, this is even BEFORE COFFEE!

Best case scenario: it primes my creative pump so that, after all the chaos of the day descends upon me, I can still feel the pulse of my story. Worst case: I can't fight the tide but I can finish my day knowing I got at least five hundreds words farther into my story.

So far, so good. Have you had success with a plan like this?

Blog Link!

Labor shared is labor halved and I am lucky enough to pass this week's blog to my brother-in-ink Daniel Grafton.

Here's the site:

http://danielgrafton.wordpress.com/

Thanks Daniel!

The Most Overlooked Writing Accessory Ever

Every writer knows there are must-haves: a good dictionary, Strunk and White's Elements of Style, reliable research material. The necessity of these and many others goes without saying. Then there are the less formal accessories that vary by writer: the proper pen, the stress ball, the bowl of peanut M&M's. Talking recently with a fellow writer, I was surprised to find that one of my hands-down, deal-breaking must-haves she has never used: the Dump Pad.

THE DUMP PAD

What is it? It's simply the greatest low-tech anti-distraction device ever created. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you. You sit down to write. Your cat bites your foot. You remember you need to buy more cat food or tomorrow she will not stop with a simple bite; she will devour you. You get up and make a shopping list. While standing at the counter, you see in the morning sunlight the ghastly shade of your dishtowels and berate yourself for not doing your laundry. The mail arrives and you remember you forgot to send out the cable bill. Without cable you can't watch the NOVA episode on the Eastern Cougar (or the Bachelor. I don't judge.) It's on tonight, right? Is today Thursday? You were supposed to call your friend about going out tonight…

Sound familiar? Enter the Dump Pad.

I keep it next to my writing station with a working pen. As my brain labors to kick into fiction mode, I stumble across dozens of fleeting thoughts, chores, mental dings that could derail me if I address them at that moment. Instead, I jot them down. They're not forgotten; they're not left behind. They will be dealt with afterwards. Knowing I have a record of them frees my imagination from my responsible mind's grip and creativity can commence.

Don’t lose your dictionaries or character bibles and, in the name of all things holy, don't lose the M&M's. But do yourself a favor – get a Dump Pad. You'll thank me later.

Busted!

Busted! Now the world knows who the real writer is.

Good vs Evil - Getting Unstuck

Sometimes you get stuck. You like the story. You know it's one you can write but every time you tackle it, you seem to get a little more stuck. It's as if the story is on the other side of a thick glass door – you can see it but you're not getting through.

What to do? Should you bail on the whole project? I say only as a last resort. For one thing, throwing out ideas is kind of like breaking promises to yourself. Do it enough and your creativity will become suspicious of your intentions. Stories come to those who welcome them. Turn too many away and they will know you can't be trusted.

Try this instead. If you really believe the story is there and you just can't get a handle on it, try writing out a list of Good and Evil.

On the Good side, list all of the things you want to see in the book. Don't censor yourself. Don't be afraid of being too specific, too general or too juvenile. For example, for my current work-in-progress, my list includes such mastermind desires as "cool con man tricks" and "a really nefarious plot for the bad guys." I know what you're thinking – that's probably exactly what Faulkner and Dostoevsky aimed for too. Hey, this isn't the finished product. It's what you would really love to see in your story. (I have a few things on the list about my main character's inner journey as well, don't worry. I'm not a total mental four year old.)

The wisdom of being broad and optimistic on the Good side reveals itself when you start writing the Evil side. The Evil list contains all the fears, concerns and dreads you worry are keeping your story in the shadows. Don't include any "real world" stuff, like your boss commandeering your time or the prohibitive price of printer ink. This is just story time. My Evil list includes fears that my main character won't prove she has the chops to fight the bad guys; that the aforementioned nefarious plot will be obvious or threadbare; that I won't adequately express the coolness of the con man tricks.

The end result? By specifically listing the desired elements, I could focus on the fun I want to have writing this story. The Evils were all just fears of "not doing," easily conquered by, well, doing. My story felt stuck because I was holding back on the Good things, doling them out with a stingy hand as if too much of a Good thing would be dangerous.

Good vs Evil – If you're stuck in your story, try breaking it down to the basics. What would be on your list?

7 New Year Resolutions

Who am I to not make New Year's Resolutions?
1. Stay the course. Yeah, my first resolution is an affirmation of the path I have already blazed in my life. (Let's start with the positive, shall we?) If ever there was a year that I stuck to my plan and stuck to my guns, 2010 was it.
2. Remember the lessons learned. Really. Those plans I stuck with? It wasn't easy and it took more than one false start. Don't be afraid to refer back to the writing journal to see where those pitfalls lay. This life is an open-book test.
3. Go another step out. If I pushed myself in 2010 to write better, more often and with more courage, let me take it a step farther in 2011. Maybe I won't up my word count but I can up my daring. I can take bigger chances with my plots and characters.
4. Work on new story ideas. I love to lose myself in a story. Blessedly I'm not afflicted (yet) with the urge to start a new story when my current story gets tough. The other side of that coin, however, is that when one story is done, I don't immediately start my next one. Maybe it's just how I write. But this year, I'm keeping a story file, with clippings and notes and fragments of story ideas so that when my current WIP is completed, I at least have something to poke through.
5. Try at least one new writing outlet. Currently I write novels and a short column for a quarterly magazine. This year I'm going to write something new – short stories, poetry, longer non-fiction. And submit it. Repeatedly, if necessary.
6. Connect with more writers. I love my writing community on Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook, as well as the WV Writers. This year, I'm heading to Matera, Italy for some new brainstorming ground. More writers mean more ideas, more encouragement, more inspiration. Find ways to be helpful.
7. Dare to suck. I'm polishing my Italian, working on my pathetic chess skills, dusting off my paintbrushes. This is just the beginning. It's a big world out there and I don't have to be the best to have the best time. If we only do what we're good at, we'll never know what we're capable of.

There, seven is a good number. I can live with it. How about you? Anything on here ring a bell with you? What would you add?

The Mental Compost Heap

Okay so you might have noticed a slight gap in my posts. I'll give you the five cent tour of events: started a story, changed the story, changed it again, changed it back, started a new one, was told to go back to old one, banged head against wall and chucked it all. Started an entirely new project that roared to life like it was born in jet fuel and consumed three solid months of my life. A happy ending, yes?

Yes and no.

I'm thrilled with the finished manuscript, a thriller titled FLOWERTOWN. (More on that later.) When I had finished the edits, however, I noticed a distinct absence of words in my head. The writers among us know how unnerving that can be. There was no next story chattering, no characters nagging, no plot threads weaving through my now resting mind. The silence was only compounded by the diagnosis of nodules on my vocal cords that required me to stop talking, and therefore working, for two weeks. Now that, my friends, is silence.

What had happened? I looked back over the past months and saw how I had spent four solid months: working, writing, coughing, working, coughing, coughing, writing, working, writing, writing, coughing. And coughing some more.

Notice anything missing? READING.

Somehow amid all the creating and coughing and mundane work I had let the habit of reading slip away. As impossible as it seems, I had used up all my words.

And so, with two quiet uninterrupted weeks (and I won't lie, that didn't suck) I began to read. I read everything I could get my hands on: Steig Lawson, Robert Charles Wilson, Lawrence Block, Harlan Coben, Barbara Kingsolver, recipes for sour cherry chicken, Paris Review, a can of fried onions, CD liner notes. If it was printed I read it. As the stories, facts and delicious serving suggestions went in, I could feel the words, the styles, the phrases, the images, peeling off and piling up in that part of my mind that I mine for inspiration.

I've come to think of it as mental compost, the natural process of breaking down all the organic compounds of the world around us, especially those in the written word, into a thick, loamy fertile pile of goodness into which the next seed of an idea can burrow, sprout and become a living thing. I can already feel the heat and life returning to that overly tapped part of my brain, can feel it being replenished.

Have you ever run out of words? Or worked the words you have so hard that they become dry, sterile things? I've learned a valuable lesson. This garden I call my mind, as bizarre as it can be sometimes, needs a steady supply of mental compost. Now when I let my mind lay fallow for a month or two, I know all this reading is just replenishing the soil.