I’m over at Word Whores this morning, where the word of the week is “crisp” and I’m talking about what happens when the creative well has dried up.
On the Perils of Creativity
//Tag: creativity
//At What Point Do You Dig In to Protect Your Writing Process?
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A shot from Los Angeles last week and lunch with the delightful Lynda Ryba (@fishwithsticks). She’s going to be helping out with my Facebook Author Page, so we should see VAST improvements in that! (Really, it couldn’t get worse…)
What with it being NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, if you live under a rock – basically you commit to writing 50,000 new words during November), I’ve been thinking a lot about the writing process. Quite a few people wanted me to participate in NaNoWriMo. I could, because I’m seriously drafting book 3 in Covenant of Thorns right now. (I think it will be called Rogue’s Paradise.) I’m almost 20K into it and will almost certainly write at least 50K during this month. And I’d like to be supportive – I really would. Some of the newbie writers in my local chapter are doing it and I can see it would be helpful of me to join in. I like being supportive that way.
Except I said no.
Why? Because I *have* to turn in this book – complete and polished – by December 31, according to my contract. Worse, my editor is going on this long trip to New Zealand (yes, we hate her) and really wants the manuscript by December 25, so she can take it with her. Really a week doesn’t make that much difference, but it makes the deadline ever so slightly tighter. I cannot miss this deadline.
But Jeffe, you say – isn’t that all the more reason to do NaNo, to crank on getting those words down?
See, it’s really not.
Over the past several years, I’ve put a lot of effort and concentration into learning and refining my writing process. I say “learning” because I really believe we all have an organic process that we have to discover and love. It’s rough to go against that. I’ve now written six novels and novellas according to the method I’m using now. I know how much I can do each day (right now, about 2,250 words in 2-3 hours) and how long it will take me to complete the draft and then to revise. Being able to reliably create on a schedule is crucial for being a professional writer. This process is delivering for me. That makes it precious.
Which means I’m not going to mess with it.
No way.
Call me superstitious, but I’m not changing a thing.
I’m feeling much the same about workshops and classes. Now, I’m a huge believer in continuing education, lifelong learning – all that stuff. I was the girl in college who took 21 credits every semester, just because there were so many interesting classes to take. That said, I don’t have a writing degree of any sort – no English major, no MFA. I’ve taken tons of writing workshops, etc., over the years, but for the time being, I’m feeling like I want to stay away from them.
This isn’t the hip thing to say these days. Particularly not in the romance-writing community. (In fact, I don’t recall seeing this perspective much at all in the literary community. Those writers are much more apt to be protective of their process and to be vocal about it.) People love to point out when established writers come to workshops. They say things like “I’m never done learning!” and “not taking workshops can lead to stagnation.”
In fact, someone said that last to me just the other day. I threw the question out to Twitter (of course). I framed the question carefully, asking if any of the writers – especially well-established ones – found themselves staying away from classes and workshops, to protect their method. I tried to phrase it to weed out the happy “I love to take classes!” answers. Even so, I still received those responses.
@jeffekennedy Yes. I get very “I’ll do what I want!!!” about it. I always hated writing for school.
— Victoria Dahl (@VictoriaDahl) November 3, 2013
and
@jeffekennedy Definitely. It’s taken me a long time to get my process right, and I’m not messing with it now after 20 books!
— Zoe Archer (@Zoe_Archer) November 3, 2013
Another author, who preferred to remain anonymous, told me about an experience early in her writing career about “you can’t do that” that stopped her flat. She didn’t write for almost a year.
I think if I cast my net wider, I’d hear more of this kind of feedback. Because it sounds better to be enthusiastic about learning and growing, those writers who feel protective of their process might be less likely to speak up. But, I think it’s an important point – and speaks to the gal who said that not learning could lead to stagnation, a very common view – to remember that growing isn’t necessarily derived from taking workshops. There are thousands of ways to learn and grow as a writer, not the least of which is reading!
It’s certainly a fine line to walk. And it’s not that I think my process or my art is perfect. I do feel, however, that it’s working for me. I’m continuing to improve as a writer and that’s important to me.
More, I’m protective of it.
One Cure for Writer’s Block
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Jackson will take treats from my hand like this. He puts his paws on me to steady himself, then plucks the shrimp, or ham, or turkey, or salmon, or beef, or really any kind of meat at all, with his teeth. I’ve never had a cat that would do like this before.
David says I was talking in my sleep a lot last night. That should come as no surprise, since I’m getting heavily back into drafting this novel. The big fantasy novels seem to do it to me much more than the shorter, erotic romance works. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe because it’s more complex storytelling. Maybe because I’m constructing an entire world along with the story itself.
At any rate, it makes me aware of how much my mind works on this kind of thing. I also find I begrudge distractions more. It’s like I already have so many conversations going on in my head that I can’t bear to listen to any new ones. At times like this I understand the writers who lock themselves away in a cabin for a few weeks or a month, to focus only on the book. I try to keep my life as normal as possible, evenly moving along, but sometimes I envy that model.
Quiet is just so crucial.
A few weeks ago, I flew to Ohio to meet up with some CPs and go to a conference. It was a fairly long flight there – about 3 hours – and I happily found a window seat to ensconce myself in. I exchanged hello’s with the gal on the aisle and set about staging my supplies for the flight. I knew the week ahead would be busy enough that I wouldn’t get tons of writing work done and I hoped for some solid writing time during the flight. As the plane filled, another gal took the middle seat. She and the woman on the aisle kept going after the initial greetings. And going. And going.
I even tweeted, before they shut the plane doors, that I really hoped they wouldn’t talk the entire flight.
They did.
Non-stop.
Some helpful Tweeters predicted this and suggested I go for ear buds early. Fortunately I could. I plugged in the music, opened my laptop and worked away. Every now and again – like when I removed my ear buds to talk to the flight attendant about what lovely drink she could bring me – I became aware that the conversation continued apace.
No, I have no idea what they found to talk about for that long.
But they had gone from total strangers to BFFs within minutes. At the end of the flight, once they stood, they reverted to strangers, as airline passengers do. We all wait, sitting, standing, half-stooped because the overhead bins are in the way, not making eye contact, pretending we aren’t Hugely Impatient to get off the stinking plane already. They went their separate ways without another word.
The new found connection was apparently just to pass the time.
I notice that, the deeper into creating I am, the less I want to talk. It’s like I have energy for the one thing or the other. I think that’s worth exploring. I rarely have good advice when people ask me about solving writer’s block or increasing productivity or enhancing creativity, but there’s something.
Try talking less.
It might feel weird at first. Maybe lonely. Maybe TOO quiet. But I do believe that, once you create that silence in your mind, other things will come to fill it.
Ideas.
Images.
Stories and characters and worlds.
Shh…
Hear that?
Does Writing Faster Mean Cutting Out the Art?
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During my travels last week, I stayed with a friend of many years, Kristine Krantz (aka KAK). She blogs on the Word Whores with me and also writes fantasy. We met via the RWA online chapter FF&P, sometime back in the vicinity of 2009. We became critique partners and friends.
At that time, we were both in the same place – shopping these fantasy novels we’d written and hoped to sandwich into some pre-cut genre somewhere. Though my path was hardly a straight-line – no A-ticket Cinderella ride for me – mine has gone faster than hers. She’s still “pre-pubbed” or whatever euphemism you’d like to slap onto that vicious purgatory of waiting for the market to catch up to your genius. I know this is a hard place to be, because I’ve been there. Another friend and sister Word Whore, Allison Pang, who I met at the same time and in the same way, also shopping a like novel, did manage to pull the A-ticket and full Cinderella ride.
(The moral of our three paths, by the way, is that none is strewn with rose petals and nobody, so far as I know, has received a sparkle pony life companion.)
At any rate, (I’m sure by now KAK has scanned ahead to find out just what the hell I plan to say about her) KAK invited me to stay at her house while I attended the Lori Foster Reader & Author Get Together. This turned out to be an unexpected delight because we spent many hours on her delicious screened back porch, overlooking her park-like back yard, while we worked on writerly things and talked.
There’s something truly restorative about rambling conversations on writing and publishing with like-minded friend who’s as keenly interested in the minutiae as you are. Though we see each other on IM, the conversations only go so far. I also realized, as we talked, that I haven’t been updating her regularly on all of my “business.” It’s a funny thing – as you get into dealing with Published Author World, you tend to talk most to people in the same tangle. I don’t *think* I ditched my pre-pub buddy, but we’ve been working on really different things. And, as you faithful readers know, my life has been moving really fast lately.
In fact, she FINALLY (hee hee hee) completed a monstrous revision of her epic fantasy novel. “Revision” is probably a misnomer because she really wrote a whole new novel with the same world and characters. I feel quite a bit of guilty responsibility for this since I was the one to give the crit that triggered the massive rewrite.
She says she doesn’t blame me.
But it took her a long time to do this. Meanwhile I’ve been working fast. It’s nice for her to be able to do this, because she has the luxury of time right now. We know you pre-pub authors get sick of hearing this from us – we got sick of hearing it, too – but writing before contract is REALLY different than writing for contract and under deadline. We know it’s not nostalgia-worthy since being in that hem-tugging, please-see-me stage of publication wears on the soul, but having the luxury of time is something we look back on fondly. Also the lack of expectations.
KAK and I had this conversation. She mentioned that she’d noticed me blogging about writing books I sold on spec and how it feels different. I said, yes, that it feels like another kind of writing altogether. For me it means:
- I have to form a plan ahead of time, because selling on spec means I sell the concept and THEN write the book. This is not a natural pattern for me.
- Writing a story you’ve “pre-sold” to an editor creates this lens where I feel like I’m writing FOR the editor. That person is very firmly in my mind, because they are now the primary recipient of my story. I haven’t decided if this is good or bad.
- There is a firm external deadline. I have to plan ahead – by a year or more, in some cases – to ensure I have the time to write and revise the way I want to.
This last is crucial because, as I rambled on the topic, KAK nodded and said, yes, you write faster and cut out the art.
Which I’ve been mulling ever since.
Because I don’t think that’s true. I can totally see why it would seem that way. There is certainly not the time to lovingly tweak and polish every bit. There is, also, a definite sense of creating a product that fits a particular expectation (see #2 above). However, I don’t feel like I’m cutting out the art.
Maybe this is self-delusion, because I really HOPE I’m not cutting out the art.
I definitely have not managed to short-cut the suffering. Writing a book faster is no less painful than writing it slowly. It’s more that I am more efficient about it. Some of this is experience. I know by now where I’m going to bog down and how I’m going to feel about it – and I’m quite a bit more ruthless about pushing through it. I don’t have time to wander for weeks through the Enchanted Forest (see last Friday’s post, if you have no idea what I’m referring to). I’ve BEEN through that stinking forest and now I just take the direct – and sometimes arduous – path straight through to the Fountain of Story.
I think it’s less cutting out some of the art and more knowing how to pack the art in there. Like really experienced travelers can pack for a two-week trip in 30 minutes and not forget a thing. You just get good at it.
Mainly because you have to.
Speaking of which, I have a novella due on Saturday and just shy of 9K to go to finish.
See you on the flip side!
How Not to Be a Neurotic Writer
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I spent the last few days on “writers retreat” with my critique partners Laura Bickle and Marcella Burnard. Laura treated us to a cabin in the Hocking Hills and took us on her favorite hikes to these amazing nooks and grottoes. It was so lovely. There’s something about all that pure water springing through rock crevices that’s magical, too. It felt purifying and inspiring.
The reason I put “writers retreat” in quotation marks is because we are all writers and we did retreat – no cell service or internet – we didn’t actually write all that much.
We talked about it. A lot.
And normally I’m a proponent of the “don’t talk about it, just do it” school of Getting Your Writing Done, but this was a chance for us to hash out all our Thoughts on career, peers and gossip. It was more like a corporate retreat. What have we done and where are we going?
My favorite moment: when Laura referred to my career “strategy.” Yeah. Like I planned this.
Among our topics of gossip were the inevitable rehashes of the various colleagues who’ve flamed out for various reasons. The ones who inexplicably posted highly inadvisable rants to blogs. The ones who burned bridges with publishing houses for no apparently better reason than because they had a barrel of lighter fluid handy. The neurotic divas who threw fits in bookstores or at conventions. Talking about the Great Cautionary Tales is fun, especially while drinking wine in the hot tub while fireflies dart about, but it’s also useful. There’s an unfortunate tendency for writers to be nutbags. Almost like it goes with the job. But I just don’t believe that has to be the case.
Extract the lesson from these tales, please.
That’s often what stories do – they illustrate lessons for us. Often the message speaks to a deeper part of ourselves. In fact, the best stories work that way.
In thinking about the whole concept of “I’m an artist and therefore neurotic” concept, I started thinking about the hero’s journey. There’s the classic tale of journeying to another world to bring back the prize. This “other” place – the underworld, dreamworld, faerie, what have you – is equivalent to the subconscious. Wherever we believe our stories come from, it feels like a journey to get them. We metaphorically travel to this other landscape – not the world of traffic lights and alarm clocks – to connect to the creative principle.
(You can call it the muse or the subconscious or the Great Storyteller or whatever – I don’t think it matters.)
In the stories, the dreamworld follows different rules, but the hero who survives, who triumphs, is the one who is pure of heart. She’s the one who can face herself in the mirror and accept who she truly is. It takes discipline, self-knowledge and brutal clarity to journey to the dreamworld and bring back the prize.
When the hero triumphs, she travels the night-dark sea, returns with the magic elixir, neatly bottled and labeled, turns it into her editor ON TIME and saves the village. Much rejoicing.
The others? They can make it to the dreamworld all right, but return in a shambles. The vial of the elixir she went to obtain is half-full, the hero is drenched with the stuff, the label has fallen off. She’s weeks late and stumbles into the village that burned long ago, wondering what the hell happened.
I explained this idea to Laura and she nodded sagely. “This,” she said, “is why Douglas Adams said the most important tool is a towel. We need the towel to soak up all that extra subconscious water, so we don’t drown in it.”
Very wise, my writer friend.
She’s right. We balance our creative journeys with practicality. Being neurotic or crazy or an unbalanced diva is never okay. Yes – journey to the dreamworld. But keep your objectives in mind. Bottle the elixir, wipe off the bottle and get back to the village in time.
Be your own hero.
Nourishing Creativity – an Ode to Polton Elementary School and My Mother
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With the Phantom book finished, I spent time in the garden this weekend. Most restorative to work with my hands and body, to clear away the old detritus, coax the perennials into shape and plant new flowers. And clean up the gargoyle. She’s watching over the pansies for me.
And, as of yesterday, I started in on developmental edits for Rogue’s Possession. For those who aren’t familiar with the lingo, those are the first round of edits. My editor just sends me an email describing some global changes she’s looking for. Add tension to the beginning, tighten the ending. Here are some suggestions. That sort of thing. Some of you may recall she’d originally asked for April 3 on those (dies laughing), but now we’re trying for April 15. I think I can do that.
My mom complains that I make my childhood sound awful when I reflect on my growing up. I suspect this is because our painful experiences are the ones that really spur us to change – or, at least, that’s how we remember it.
Yesterday one of my crit partners sent me the TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on the creative spark. You might remember it from early 2009, when it was really making the rounds on the internet. My friend, however, must have been under a rock at the time and missed it. The talk really resonated with her – as it did for many of us – and I watched it again, to be able to discuss some of the finer points. Surprising to me: I heard very different things in it this time, after dedicating so much of the last four years to my own writing.
My friend had come across the talk because I’d sent her this one, by Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity. One story he tells is about Gillian Lynne, who was failing out of school at age 8 – until her principal recognized that she was a natural dancer. Her mother sent her to dance school instead, and Gillian became a success instead of an academic failure. My friend asked me if I thought my schooling had killed or nurtured my creativity.
Something I’d never once thought about.
I mean, I’ve mentioned my early schooling from time to time. How I went to an experimental school in the early 70s, with team teaching, no desks and open space classrooms. Mostly I have made fun of it (Magic Circle where we shared our feelings) or criticized it (the famous ordeal of my stepfather having to teach me the multiplication tables because I’d been pulled out into a special program and then plunged back into long division without knowing how to multiply). My stepfather was a vice-principal in a neighboring school district that was not experimental and he often complained about the gaps in my traditional education.
But thinking back now… wow.
That special program that caused me to miss multiplication? (Which, by the way, took less than a week for me to make up.) I spent that third grade year with fourth, fifth and sixth graders, traveling around Colorado and learning about western history. Now I realize how much that year opened my mind to the range of human experience. Women like Baby Doe Tabor and Molly Brown became larger than life to me. That time instilled in me an appreciation for the concept of the frontier, of struggle, of the desire for wealth and success and the crushing effects of defeat.
My teachers were good to me at that school. They let me read in class when I was bored with the assignment. They gave me special projects to work on. Instead of smacking me down for being a smart ass (because, oh yes, I was one even then), they encouraged me to channel that energy. I found it funny, often, that they were always concerned that I not get bored, but now I see – I was never bored. My teachers found ways to challenge, stimulate and open my mind.
And my creativity.
I sometimes joke that I have such an eclectic approach to life. In college I double-majored in biology and religious studies, with enough credits to minor in theater. I ended up in grad school for neurophysiology, work as an environmental consultant and now write fantasy and romance novels.
I’m realizing now that this is their gift to me. That my early schooling did nourish my creativity. My mom bought a house near this school so I could go there and it made an amazing difference for me.
What a wonderful gift this was.
I Don’t F**cking Care If You Like It
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If you look closely, that thermometer reads 9.3 degrees F. Brr! But then the sun rose high enough, it warmed up, and all the fairy frost disappeared.
Last Friday I posted about something I learned about writing from reading Tina Fey’s Bossypants. I extracted so many great nuggets of wisdom from that book, I just have to share (at least) one more.
Amy Poehler was new to SNL and we were all crowded into the seventeenth-floor writers’ room, waiting for the Wednesday read-through to start. There were always a lot of noisy “comedy bits” going on in that room. Amy was in the middle of some such nonsense with Seth Meyers across the table, and she did something vulgar as a joke. I can’t remember what it was exactly, except it was dirty and loud and “unladylike.”
Jimmy Fallon, who was arguably the star of the show at the time, turned to her and in a faux-squeamish voice said, “Stop that! It’s not cute! I don’t like it.”
Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him. “I don’t fucking care if you like it.” Jimmy was visibly startled. Amy went right back to enjoying her ridiculous bit. (I should make it clear that Jimmy and Amy are very good friends and there was never any real beef between them. Insert penis joke here.)
With that exchange, a cosmic shift took place. Amy made it clear that she wasn’t there to be cute. She wasn’t there to play wives and girlfriends in the boys’ scenes. She was there to do what she wanted to do and she did not fucking care if you like it.
I was so happy. Weirdly, I remember thinking, “My friend is here! My friend is here!” Even though things had been going great for me at the show, with Amy there, I felt less alone.
(Fey, Tina (2011-04-05). Bossypants (Kindle Locations 1436-1441). Reagan Arthur Books. Kindle Edition.)
That chapter is subtitled “One in a series of love letters to Amy Poehler.” Now, I’ve long loved Amy Poehler’s comedy, too, but this made me adore her just that much more.
I think this makes a good mantra for writers. I’m going to take an extra step and say particularly for female writers. I know the guys suffer much of the same stuff we do – the critics, the rejections, the uncertainty. But I really do believe that, as females, we are strongly programmed by society to be likable. Women who are judged unlikable (Hillary Clinton, for example) are excoriated for it – a judgment that overshadows their other accomplishments. We learn very early that we are meant to be pretty, polite and affectionate. We might enjoy being those things, but feeling the pressure to be that – with little room for anything else – can really get to you over time.
Especially when you’re an artist. It’s hard (maybe impossible?) to make good art when you’re worried about people liking it. You might have to think about that stuff when it comes to marketing, but there’s no place for it when you’re creating. And, I think, it’s really hard for women to get away from that consideration.
So, this is a liberating thing.
Say it with me, kids.
I don’t fucking care if you like it!
I knew you could.
How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating and Cheerfully Meet Deadlines with Room to Spare
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We brought home this fresh boxwood wreath to hang on the front door and Jackson immediately inserted himself in it. For those keeping score at home, he’s just shy of eight months old now.
He’s going to be a Big Kitty.
I’m looking forward to the holiday season this year. I have ideas for decorating and even a cool homemade gift for people. I take this to mean that I’m feeling rested and the creativity is flowing. Part of this, I’ve suddenly realized, is because I changed some of my fundamental habits. What’s more is, I change a bad, lifelong habit without really realizing it.
Which is just extraordinary to me.
It’s *hard* to change habits – we all know this. Especially the bad ones. Those junk foods we crave but shouldn’t eat. That wine we shouldn’t drink nearly so much of. The TV shows we waste time on. The internet surfing when we should be working. I imagine each of us could list our top five bad habits – and then write a book on how many times we’ve tried to change them, how and why it ended up not working. (Because if it worked, it wouldn’t still be on the top five list, right?)
So, here’s one of mine: I’m a procrastinator.
Always have been. Back in school, I was the kid who wrote EVERY paper the night before it was due. I never studied until the day before the exam. (Well, the entire weekend in college for brutal classes like organic chemistry.) I once read the Iliad and the Odyssey over a couple of days during reading week before finals. Even with work, I don’t really get going on a deliverable until the deadline was breathing down my neck.
Deadline stress was my eternal motivator.
Which is awful. If you’re like me, you know just how stress-inducing this Very Bad Habit is. The late nights, the great fear that you won’t finish in time or that, if you do finish, the product will sucketh mightily.
I’ve known this about myself pretty much all my life and just hate it. And yet, over and over again, I would fall into the same pattern. Always dealing with the next fire, the next emergency. I always kind of envied the work-ahead people, but never found a way to break this habit.
Until just recently.
You know what worked? I didn’t change that particular habit, I changed other things that just happened to result in me at long last not relying on deadline pressure for motivation.
It’s like I tricked myself into operating differently. Isn’t that amazing?
I’m amazed.
So, what happened is, I had a number of writing deadlines. One was external – my first ever turn-in-your-book-by-this-date publication deadline, which I was determined not to blow – and several internal deadlines, important to me for keeping everything on track.I really, really, really did not want to be finishing that book the night before the deadline. I could not risk that it wouldn’t be as good as I needed it to be. No shortcuts, no crossing fingers, no Hail Mary’s. I wanted lots of time to get it done and get it done right.
So I planned out all my work. I finished another project that I wanted out of the way, to clear time for the one with the external deadline. I planned my dayjob work so that nothing would actually catch on fire enough to divert me. I worked in both measured paces and intense doses, depending on my time and inclination.
This was the amazing part.
I finished both projects early. Like, 7-10 days early. I’ve *never* finished anything early before in my life. Bizarrely, everything else fell into place, too. I’d wanted everything done before Thanksgiving, so I could relax and not worry about ongoing projects. I finished all my day job work by early afternoon Monday – where usually I’m working into the evening before we leave, trying to clear my desk.
At that point, I realized I had nothing on fire. Nothing that I was leaving undone.
It was miraculous.
I’d somehow learned to do my work ahead of time, in an un-stressed, no-deadline-pressure way, all because I’d restructured my other habits.
Now those of you who’ve followed my blog for a while know that I’ve long been a proponent of writing every day. I have my rituals, my good and productive habits. This overall change in my pattern of behavior grew out of that foundation. I suspect that’s key – I didn’t change everything overnight.
But I also think it’s important that I never tried to stop being a procrastinator. I changed the way I work towards a goal.
And that has made all the difference.
(with apologies to Robert Frost)
Directing Creativity – Managing an Infinite Resource in Finite Ways
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So, the big news is, I officially finished the draft of RP2, now officially dubbed “Rogue’s Possession.”
Exciting, yes – but the above pic truly encapsulates how we celebrate around here. Ahhh….
It’s so interesting to me how creativity works. We often talk about it like it’s a well, where the water flows at a certain rate, can be drawn down, needs time to replenish, and – horror of horrors – could maybe run dry. But I wonder if this is really an accurate metaphor? After all, creativity is a kind of energy, but it’s not subject to the physical laws of the universe. It almost belongs to the spiritual realm. My physical body might tire – the brain that translates the story, the hands that type it – but it seems to me the creativity itself should be endless.
Yet, it never feels that way.
Here it is, October 26, and I haven’t put up my Halloween decorations. I *love* Halloween. I have two great big bins of decorations sitting in the garage. I’d thought maybe I’d put them up last weekend, but I spent my time writing 10,000 words on Rogue’s Possession.
I know that’s not my usual thing, but I was experimenting. David was out of town for the weekend and I really wanted to finish Possession so I can get started on Ruby (book 3 in Facets of Passion) which is due to fabulous editor Deb at the end of November. So, I tried writing five 60-minute blocks each day. In between, I walked the dog, cooked meals, did dishes, that sort of thing.
Did not put up decorations.
It just felt like too much. Though it would have taken very little time, really.
And I did it! I wrote a little over 5K each day, did not feel exhausted and it let me finish the book early. The ending can be like that for me – I just have to keep going with it, because if I stop, I can lose the threads. Somehow, though, that extra bit of tangential creativity, putting up some decorations, seemed absolutely impossible.
I’ve done this at other times in my life, when things going on just absorbed so much of my personal energy that other stuff just had to be dropped, totally and completely. Shut the door and sever the cord. I used to quilt and loved it, but finally faced that I had to stop and divert that energy into writing. That choice made a huge difference in my writing productivity.
Now that the book is finished, I feel that energy bubbling within. Which is great news for Ruby!
Maybe I’ll get those decorations up this weekend…
Also, if you’re online this weekend, I’ll be participating in Coyote Con – an online free writing conference. I’ll be on a panel for Fantasy Romance, 6-7pm Eastern Time tonight. Tomorrow, 2:30-3:30pm ET, I’ll be on a panel with some fab friends “THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE GIRLY & THE MANLY” and another panel tomorrow night (Saturday 10/27), 9:30-10:30pm ET, on erotica and erotic romance.
Next weekend, I’ll be in Toronto for World Fantasy Con – provided Frankenstorm doesn’t raze the city. And, while I’m in Toronto, I’ll be signing cover flats at the Ellora’s Cave booth at the Everything to Do with Sex Show on Saturday evening, November 3, 7-9 pm.
Ideas as Commodities
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I love how it looks like the ladder-backed woodpecker and the finch are having a conversation over breakfast.
The common wisdom these days is that ideas are cheap and everything is in the execution. Young writers – and by this I mean, new to the game – are frequently advised not to worry about someone stealing their ideas because 1) there are no new ideas, 2) writing is about how you tell the story and 3) you can’t stop them anyway.
This is all true.
It’s also true that ideas are easy to come by. The aforementioned young writers often ask established writers – never Old Writers, please – where they get their ideas. Inevitably the established writers will reply that getting ideas is not a problem. It’s having the time and energy to write them all that’s the problem. Also, I think it’s a flow thing – the more you write, the more stories come to you. In some ways, it’s like the young writers and the established writers are speaking different languages. Which is why the established writers will eventually say, sometimes in frustration, just keep writing and you’ll have ideas.
So, if this is true, that ideas are easily come by, then there’s nothing wrong with giving them away.
Indeed, I see people operating as if this is true. They ask on Twitter for ideas for blog posts. And clearly people suggest those ideas. A common lament among writers is that people will offer them story ideas – often of the person’s incredibly interesting (self-perceived) personal history. Of course, in those cases, the incredibly interesting person will think there’s an intrinsic value in their story idea and will try to negotiate a deal. The writer, knowing ideas are a dime a dozen, will decline.
But – are they really?
See, the other reason that this never works – the, hey, why don’t you write my incredibly interesting story scenario – is because it’s not the idea itself, but the fire behind it. That’s what the writer needs. That burning image. The seed of creativity. The story that’s begging to be told, that unwinds itself in loops in the writer’s brain, crowding out everything else. Those ideas? Those are beyond worth.
It puts me in mind of a quote from Robert Bly: “Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.”
Most people interpret this as, don’t yammer too much about your story idea, or you can lose all the oompf behind it, which is also good advice. But it’s come back to me lately because a writing friend asked me for help. She wanted to incorporate certain things into her new book, dynamics that I happen to write well.
Now, I’m big on giving help. I’m a believer in being generous, in the bounty of the universe, and normally I wouldn’t hesitate. In fact, I help friends all the time with brainstorming or plot difficulties or sorting out these kinds of dynamics. I enjoy it and find it feeds me, too.
But, in this case, she asked for more than I was willing to give. At first I wasn’t sure why – just that I balked internally. Then I realized that she was asking for a big piece of my fire. She wanted me to give her, not just an idea, but a whole story, with all the seeds of magic ready to grow.
I tried to find a way to give her only guidance. Then she needed to move on and I was off the hook.
The whole thing, though, made me think.
In fact, I had to create a whole new batch of tags for this post – which, you know, is something I’m trying not to do – because it’s not something I’ve really mulled over before.
I’m still mulling, coiled like a dragon over my treasure.
Not my usual place to be.