being a writer

Nightmares

I just woke up from a horrible nightmare. I haven’t had one so horribly disturbing in a very long time.

Now it’s 5:30am on a Sunday and I can’t sleep.

Hmm. This might be great fodder for a horror website’s new short fiction contest….

Isn’t it great to be a writer?

On Writing: Organization

Do you write chronologically? I don’t. Sometimes I wish I could. But you can’t argue when the muse just hands you the middle of an article or story or chapter and it’s up to you to figure out what to do with it.

I once woke up with the entire plot of a book in my head. That was over Thanksgiving weekend back in 2003. It is as vivid now as it was then, but I haven’t put it to paper just yet. I like to think it’s marinating in my brain.

But, I digress.

Every now and then I create an outline.  Sometimes I write the end before the beginning. I used to do the same thing in college. I never wrote introductions first. I wrote the thesis and then I moved forward, and at the end I circled back and did the intro. It just worked better that way.

In my fiction writing, sometimes I create detailed character profiles. My favorite characters aren’t profiled at all.

Do you organize your writing? Or do you let it flow and work with whatever manifests itself?

If Only…Wishing 2014 Technoloy Existed in 1994

I was born in the 80s and I was 14 in 1994. You can do the math on my age now.  (If you can even do math…we Gen X/Y people didn’t get Common Core math…thank goodness…math was already bad enough….) 

I grew up writing.  I used steno notebooks to draft a 50 page story set in the magical world created by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  For birthdays and Christmas I asked for pens and notebooks.  No one thought I was serious about that until the realized I was indeed serious about it.  I have boxes full of writing I’ve done over the years.

To this day, while writing my book, I prefer longhand to writing drafts on the computer, though I edit only once I have everything typed up. Fiction is easier for me to write on a computer, but drafting articles and materials for my nonfiction book are better left to pen and paper.  To that end, I carry my netbook, a pink Mead notebook, and pink pens with me at all times so I can be ready to write at the drop of a hat.

That said, I wish I had the tools I have now back in 1994. I could have written so much with a super fast netbook, and done so much research with Google, and been inspired by all of the Book and Writing blogs on WordPress.

I have to wonder what life would be like if I’d had those tools all along.  Would that stifle or enrich my creativity? (Be sure to read an earlier post I wrote about the demise of cursive and civilization…) 

My beloved grandfather bought me a Toshiba Satellite laptop in 1996. I still have it.  In fact, I did a ton of writing on it and now that writing is stick there until I can figure out how to extract it.  I remember that laptop as a turning point for me, and even though it didn’t connect to the internet it still opened up a new world for me.  Until that point, most of my computer experience was from dying over and over again from snake bites and “The Fever” when we were allowed to play Oregon Trail on the school computer lab’s ancient Apple IIEs.

What would I have blogged about in 1994? Today, even 8 year olds text.  For a teen in 1994, I’m not sure what would have been important.  Carson Daly on MTV’s Total Request Live, perhaps? That was back when MTV was on the verge of phasing out the M in its moniker. Yes, MTV used to play these things called “music videos” all the time.

Regardless, I have to think that technology came at the right time.  But it still makes me wonder….What if?

On Writing: The Headache at the Base of My Skull

I have a headache. It’s at the base of my skull and the pain is radiating down my spine.  My shoulders ache.

The cause? Stress. 

Stress from what, you might ask.

The answer is pretty simple, really.  I have a zillion things I want to do, and want to be doing at this very moment, but I can’t do them for a variety of reasons. 

How many of us have our creativity stifled by the dreary minutiae of everyday life? Like work.  Work (if it isn’t your dream job) is the pinnacle of the dreary minutiae of which I speak.

The solution? Persistence. Keep your nose to the grindstone and keep pushing through until you get where you want to be.  In my case, I write every moment I can so that I can be where I want to be.

So I keep going.  And I keep writing.  And using my lunch break to write is just the catharsis I need to rid myself of this headache….

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword, But Social Media Is A Killer

I have a conundrum. 

I want to write a fully researched op-ed piece for the newspaper. If I landed the interview I want I could submit it to the NY Times or LA Times. 

Sounds great, right?

But I’m not going to do it.  I was voted most outspoken in school.  And yet I feel like my voice has been silenced.  Why? Because I know that voicing an opinion that goes against the “popular” opinion (as suggested by CNN, of course) means accepting that I am opening myself up to criticism.  It’s not the criticism I worry about, though.  That’s to be expected.  It’s the vicious attacks that come on social media from uninformed people who like to speak their minds without knowing what they’re talking about.

I don’t mind discussing ideas with people.  I double majored in political science and history.  I like discussions and debates.  But the old adage is true–you can’t argue with stupid. And trying to stand up for your opinion while fending off idiocy is downright draining.

Maybe I’m not writing the piece because I’m lazy. Maybe that’s what it boils down to.  Having to be on the defensive to fend off attacks on social media is just too much of an energy drain.

So for now I’ll remain content just venting to my readers.  I’ll keep pondering this conundrum until the answer presents itself.

To be continued….

On Writing: Hold that Thought!

Last night I started writing the intro to the third chapter of my book.  Then I got interrupted and wasn’t able to come back to it.  There was a 50/50 chance, I knew, that I might forget what I was working on.  Fortunately, it seems to have stuck with me.

Don’t you hate it when you have an idea and you can’t write it down, and then you lose it?  I’m serious when I say I’ve probably written dozens of books over the years…in my head.  I have to work on the “writing it down” part.

I actually dreamed the entire plot of a novel back in 2003.  It was Thanksgiving weekend and I woke up with the entire thing in my head, from start to finish.  And oddly enough, I’ve never forgotten the plot.  It’s as fresh today as it was back then.  One of these days I’m going to write it out and publish it.

One of these days….

On Writing: That Spark of Inspiration

I confessed to my coach last week that I was frustrated with my book’s outline.  I need to prepare the first four chapters to submit to a agent.  From my perspective, the first four chapters are the least interesting, and yet they’re absolutely critical.  

My coach stepped in and pointed out that by subtly changing my viewpoint, I can make those dull chapters more interesting.  It was almost too simple.  All of a sudden I looked at my outline with a new set of eyes.  I didn’t need to rewrite the outline or change things around in the book–I just needed a new approach.  

And just like that, I was back on track.

Thanks, Coach!

Reading to Help the Writing

I ordered a book last week and it arrived on Thursday.  I’m almost done with it, and so last night I ordered another one so that I have a new book to start when I finish this one.  They’re both business books by Alan Weiss and Marshall Goldsmith.  (This is the third book I’ve read by Weiss and the 4th is due to arrive next week)  The book I’m writing is nonfiction, and it centers around a philosophy I developed. Reading their books helps me to get my own book done.

I don’t think reading falls into my procrastination trap.  I think this is more like research.  However, I do find that I get lost in the books, to the extent that I’ve devoured several hundred pages in a few weeks. (I can read fiction much faster; nonfiction requires a different area of my brain, which is why I developed my own personal writing process)

On the one hand, I have tons of new ideas floating around my head.  On the other hand, I haven’t done as much writing as I should have.

Again, this is why it’s a process for me!

On a Roll…The Words Are Pouring Forth

It’s funny how much writing I’ve done today.  I laugh only because I am writing a little bit of everything.  I have a solid outline that is my backbone, so I find myself writing a little bit here and a little bit there.  I suppose that after a while, I’ll have everything done and none of it will have been done chronologically.

Is there any harm in this?  I’m going to say no.  

While it’s true that I eventually have to transfer all of these random pieces into the computer in some semblance of order, I’ll consider that part of the editing process.  Indeed, I think that this will allow me to tighten up certain areas because I’ll throw some of it out and add new material into it as I go along.

Again, this is all part of the process.  My process.  As long as it’s working, why would I change anything? (That’s rhetorical…there are tons of things I could change about this nonsensical process of mine…I’m just not going to do it!)