This week I wrote a guest post for dear friend Ellar Cooper entitled "False Lift."
Please check it out at:
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
False Lift
Hello my faithful readers:
This week I wrote a guest post for dear friend Ellar Cooper entitled "False Lift."
Please check it out at:
This week I wrote a guest post for dear friend Ellar Cooper entitled "False Lift."
Please check it out at:
Monday, October 20, 2014
Writing and the Art of Self-Trust
Wow, so it's been too long since my last post. It was an incredibly busy summer and fall for me, and I expect for many of you as well. In between celebrations and vacations I've been editing a manuscript, sending it out into the world and trying to coax my brain back into the free and creative head-space necessary to start something new. Sometimes I just stare at a blank page and feel an overwhelming sense of inequity. I can't put a single word down on the page.
One of the phrases I've been mulling over for months now has been one I heard from a dear friend. "Trust the Process." As writers, we've all probably heard this a time or two. I've heard it, thought "brilliant!" but what exactly was so brilliant about it? It sounds really good, but what does it mean?
What is "the process?"
For me, the process is the way I go about relaying a story from my imagination into words and images for others to read. That process in longhand is as follows:
I make a cup of tea. I read some poetry. I listen to some music. I might even take a walk if I'm still not ready to write. Once I'm feeling the itch to sit down and start, I get comfy in my writing space, open my laptop and...
I start to procrastinate, but I call it "just checking in" on the world before starting to write. I do that for about 20 to 30 minutes. Next I pull up a blank document and...
I stare at it for waaaay tooo long...I stare at it so long it starts to swim like water before my eyes.
I stare as though brilliant words will start to pour out any second...wait for it...
And no, no brilliant words...sigh. I guess I'll just have to write something...anything...anything...anything...anything...
Anything you can do I can do better...lalalala....okay so typing the lyrics to a song doesn't count as writing does it?
Eventually I might get something going, a short paragraph or two on what a character looks like or what their bedroom looks like or who their best friend is. Eventually this pre-writing starts to build up and a story emerges. It's slow, for me. Painstakingly slow. Perhaps that is why I don't update my blog all that often? I don't know, but I know that I do have a process, however painstaking and teeth-pulling it may be.
So, what does it mean to trust that process?
Well, if I have a process, I have to own it. It's MY process. Me...I'm the process, sort of. So if I'm the process, what does it mean to trust it? It means I have to trust...
I have to trust myself.
I'm getting dangerously close to therapy territory here and I must quote my dear friend again who says that every MFA degree in creative writing should come with a voucher for therapy.
Writing is like taking a journey into yourself.
In order to write, you must first know your characters, in order to know your characters, you must understand people, in order to understand people you have to start with yourself. Understand yourself, understand others, understand your characters and why they do what they do. Sounds like a stint in therapy doesn't it?
We put ourselves into our writing, and we can't do that without an understanding of who that person is. In order to trust the process, we must first trust the person from whom the process originates. I have to trust myself, trust what I've learned, trust my intuition and instincts, trust my imagination.
We trust whom we are comfortable with. You have to be comfortable with you. I have to be comfortable with myself. Trust me, none of this come easily to most people.
It certainly doesn't come easily to me, but writing does present itself as a sort of therapy, forcing you to dig deeper into your own interior world to understand your characters and their world.
Learning to trust the process = learning to trust myself...
I had to stop beating myself up when I wasn't writing. Time away from writing can be valuable, especially if you are doing things that stimulate your creative soul. I had to start trusting that my process would work if I let it. I had to stop trying to force myself outside of my process to get the words on the page.
What works for you? Do you need to sit down and set a timer? Then do it. Do you need to wander around the house aimlessly for an hour before the words start to flow? Then do it, and don't beat yourself up about it. Sometimes, trusting your process is learning to go gently and to have compassion for the muse that waits. Sometimes it means discipline and turning off the internet, sometimes it means giving yourself a limit on internet time.
I trust that my process will eventually lead me to a story...as long as I continue to follow my process and learn to be gentle on myself... and as long as I don't give up...
which leads me to my topic for next week...
Writing and the Art of Perseverance.
One of the phrases I've been mulling over for months now has been one I heard from a dear friend. "Trust the Process." As writers, we've all probably heard this a time or two. I've heard it, thought "brilliant!" but what exactly was so brilliant about it? It sounds really good, but what does it mean?
What is "the process?"
For me, the process is the way I go about relaying a story from my imagination into words and images for others to read. That process in longhand is as follows:
I make a cup of tea. I read some poetry. I listen to some music. I might even take a walk if I'm still not ready to write. Once I'm feeling the itch to sit down and start, I get comfy in my writing space, open my laptop and...
I start to procrastinate, but I call it "just checking in" on the world before starting to write. I do that for about 20 to 30 minutes. Next I pull up a blank document and...
I stare at it for waaaay tooo long...I stare at it so long it starts to swim like water before my eyes.
I stare as though brilliant words will start to pour out any second...wait for it...
And no, no brilliant words...sigh. I guess I'll just have to write something...anything...anything...anything...anything...
Anything you can do I can do better...lalalala....okay so typing the lyrics to a song doesn't count as writing does it?
Eventually I might get something going, a short paragraph or two on what a character looks like or what their bedroom looks like or who their best friend is. Eventually this pre-writing starts to build up and a story emerges. It's slow, for me. Painstakingly slow. Perhaps that is why I don't update my blog all that often? I don't know, but I know that I do have a process, however painstaking and teeth-pulling it may be.
So, what does it mean to trust that process?
Well, if I have a process, I have to own it. It's MY process. Me...I'm the process, sort of. So if I'm the process, what does it mean to trust it? It means I have to trust...
I have to trust myself.
I'm getting dangerously close to therapy territory here and I must quote my dear friend again who says that every MFA degree in creative writing should come with a voucher for therapy.
Writing is like taking a journey into yourself.
In order to write, you must first know your characters, in order to know your characters, you must understand people, in order to understand people you have to start with yourself. Understand yourself, understand others, understand your characters and why they do what they do. Sounds like a stint in therapy doesn't it?
We put ourselves into our writing, and we can't do that without an understanding of who that person is. In order to trust the process, we must first trust the person from whom the process originates. I have to trust myself, trust what I've learned, trust my intuition and instincts, trust my imagination.
We trust whom we are comfortable with. You have to be comfortable with you. I have to be comfortable with myself. Trust me, none of this come easily to most people.
It certainly doesn't come easily to me, but writing does present itself as a sort of therapy, forcing you to dig deeper into your own interior world to understand your characters and their world.
Learning to trust the process = learning to trust myself...
I had to stop beating myself up when I wasn't writing. Time away from writing can be valuable, especially if you are doing things that stimulate your creative soul. I had to start trusting that my process would work if I let it. I had to stop trying to force myself outside of my process to get the words on the page.
What works for you? Do you need to sit down and set a timer? Then do it. Do you need to wander around the house aimlessly for an hour before the words start to flow? Then do it, and don't beat yourself up about it. Sometimes, trusting your process is learning to go gently and to have compassion for the muse that waits. Sometimes it means discipline and turning off the internet, sometimes it means giving yourself a limit on internet time.
I trust that my process will eventually lead me to a story...as long as I continue to follow my process and learn to be gentle on myself... and as long as I don't give up...
which leads me to my topic for next week...
Writing and the Art of Perseverance.
Monday, April 28, 2014
On Winter’s End: Daily Haiku Practice for a Writer's Soul
Hope
Words like pearls,
Tucked into a story,
Found in a bottle.
I started a haiku-a-day practice while I was in my master’s
program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was an activity bent on keeping
me writing every day, creating something, even if it was a small something. I
loved the activity, finding subjects, searching for the right words, the
feeling when all the words were at last in the right place and the picture came
together with a sigh of contentment.
I did that for several weeks, forgot for a few more weeks,
moved into my final semester, graduated and released the practice with receipt
of diploma.
Recently, I’ve been working on reviving the practice along
with, or in addendum to, my practice of calm and stillness. There is something
about the simplicity of a haiku, its simple structure and rhythm; that soothes
my soul and enters into the stillness like a small flower blooming quietly on a
table.
I missed it. I didn’t know I had, but when I took up my
pencil a few days ago and a tiny word picture emerged it felt like a minor
miracle. I wrote another one today and again, had the sense of accomplishment
in a few square inches of white paper space.
It’s easy to get bogged down with the writing of an ENTIRE
novel. It’s easy to forget the heart of your story amidst the commas and
semi-colons, the rising action and falling action, the denouement and three-act
structure. During the Mobius strip editing process, a novel can feel like
nothing but wreckage. Amidst the wreckage and detritus, I lose the basic feeling
of accomplishment and instead of a creator I feel like a destroyer. It takes a toll and in order to keep going I
have to refresh my mind and soul and creative spirit.
So, I started writing my haiku a day and added “while on a
walk” to it. The weather is only just beginning to show Spring in it, shaking
off its winter layers and blooming with color and birdsong. It’s lovely to be
outside again, stretching my body and mind and letting go of the Mobius strip
for a while, letting my mind play with words, pictures and sounds. It’s remembering
all over again why I like writing as much as I do.
It’s as though I’ve been hibernating over the winter along
with my creativity and my stories. After weeks of not writing, I gave myself
permission to NOT WRITE then somehow revoked the permission and had a small
meltdown about NOT WRITING (how lazy are you? Seemed to be my internal running
commentary) from which emerged a blog post about letting go of the noise of the
world, read: *publishing process,* negative self-talk and fears, and letting
your story live and breathe. (For that post check out the link to my guest post
on http://ellaroutloud.wordpress.com/)
After the meltdown and subsequent blog post I started to
slowly uncurl my fists, the ones I curled up and pounded on the wall in front
of me crying out “I WILL finish this edit!” and which did no good at all…I
started to uncurl my heart, which I had been protecting, and look for my
characters again, look for their hearts and their struggles and I started to
care again for them, deeply and passionately care about what happens to them.
Armed with my haiku and walks and (deep calming breathing) I’m
ready now, ready to get back to the earnest work of being a writer. I’m ready
for my “daily haiku mind stretches” and settling back down into the novel edit.
I’m ready.
Join me!
Post a haiku in the comments section if you
feel like sharing. I’d love to see them!
Friday, April 25, 2014
My Writing Process Blog Tour
Hello to my small, but amazing group of readers. I am writing this blog post as a part of a blog tour and was tagged by Melanie Fishbane fellow writer and friend. Check out her blog here:
Here's the deal: I will answer a few questions about my writing process and send you on to see some more blogs, so here goes:
What are you working on?
I am working on several things right now. I am editing a YA project that is vaguely in the magical realism genre about a teenage girl who is a healer. When I get bogged down with editing, I work on pre-writing and world building for a Dystopian YA novel or maybe it's quasi-near future or something...hence the pre-writing. It's fun to world build and play around with ideas. When I'm pre-writing I often draw the spaces my characters exist in, or take pictures of places that are significant in the story that exist in my real world. I would like to get a cork board to pin them to so I can look at them while I'm working, but I haven't done that yet.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
Hmmm...well, I think I use magical realism a bit differently than it's normally used, it's not exactly magic and it's not exactly magical-realism. I'm being vague, but it's hard to explain without being specific and I don't like to be too specific when I'm still working on a project. I want my readers to feel as though they exist in the world my characters exist in. I hope they can see the colors and feel the textures of the world. I hope my characters feel real to them, real and honest. I put my heart on the page and I hope that shows through.
Why do you write what you do?
I write YA because I remember high school in vivid color and in vivid emotional detail. I remeÿmber what it was like to feel insecure and alone. High School shapes us and changes us. One of my escapes in times of trial was to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. The YA genre was really starting to emerge and develop at the time and has continued to grow. I'm excited to be a part of a genre that meant so much to me in my teen years. I hope that something I write, can one day be a comfort and solace to someone.
For me, I start to get ideas about a story and it tends to just percolate in my brain until a full story emerges. Then I start writing it down and hopefully, eventually it becomes a plot and the characters start to walk and talk like real people. JIt's a different process each time I write something new. Sometimes I have the full story in my head and I know exactly how it will go, other times I know the emotional story better than I know that actual story and it takes time to get it solid in my head before I can get it on the page.
When I sit down to write, I tend to need a lot of time to get into the story. I like to make playlists of music that sets the tone for the book I'm working on, that helps. I don't sit at a desk. I have a small couch in my office and warm comfy blankets. I like to wrap up in one on a cold day and drink hot tea and dive in to the story. On warm sunny days, I like to sit on my deck under an umbrella with iced tea and my laptop. I like to be comfortable and happy when I'm writing. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I need quiet. I used to write at my favorite indie bookstore, but it closed down a few years back and a better substitute has yet to be found.
Now that I have a cozy home office, I prefer to write there, and my puppy likes to snuggle up next to me a take a nap to the sound of the tickety tack of the keyboard.
It sounds lovely doesn't it? Sometimes it is. However there are many days where I can't even look at my laptop without feeling crushing defeat because I have NO idea where my story is going, or I feel inadequate to the task of writing anything worth reading. I turn my head and put my hand up trying not to see my writing space as I happily go about baking a cake or brownies or something really delicious because THAT will help me feel better...right?! Oh well, writing, for me, has its ups and downs. Sometimes it's really hard and sometimes it sings like sparrow. Sometimes I feel brilliant and other times I feel, at best, mediocre. Always, there is the drive to write, the desire to tell a story, the need to share an emotional truth in words. I can't NOT write. So I have learned, and am still learning, to embrace the mess that is the life of a writer all the heights and depths of it.
It sounds lovely doesn't it? Sometimes it is. However there are many days where I can't even look at my laptop without feeling crushing defeat because I have NO idea where my story is going, or I feel inadequate to the task of writing anything worth reading. I turn my head and put my hand up trying not to see my writing space as I happily go about baking a cake or brownies or something really delicious because THAT will help me feel better...right?! Oh well, writing, for me, has its ups and downs. Sometimes it's really hard and sometimes it sings like sparrow. Sometimes I feel brilliant and other times I feel, at best, mediocre. Always, there is the drive to write, the desire to tell a story, the need to share an emotional truth in words. I can't NOT write. So I have learned, and am still learning, to embrace the mess that is the life of a writer all the heights and depths of it.
I want to thank Melanie Fishbane for tagging me in the blog tour! Make sure you check out her blog.
Also here are a few I recommend:
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
http://ellaroutloud.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/dystropian-guest-post-jessica/
For my first post in a really long time...check out my guest post at my dear friend Ellar Cooper's blog! I'll try to have a new post for everyone next week. Everyone who might still be checking my blog, that is...
Love,
Jessica
For my first post in a really long time...check out my guest post at my dear friend Ellar Cooper's blog! I'll try to have a new post for everyone next week. Everyone who might still be checking my blog, that is...
Love,
Jessica
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