The Cheapest Writing Retreat Ever

Since it's October 1st, I spent the day decorating the local public library (where I work in children's and youth services) and my house for Halloween. It was a lot of ladder work to say the least. But the whole time, people were commenting on the new décor. At the library everything looked "spooky", "festive", and "cool" in the children's sections. At home it was "Halloween chic" and "creative".

This new scenery even made me smile after a long day's work. It's something different to look at, something stimulating to my mind. I had to use my imagination to decide where decorations were going, then I had to be tenacious and tactful (and often tall enough) to execute it.

It got me thinking that a change in scenery can be a great thing for the creative muscle we need to use to write. I suddenly understood why so many people went on writer's retreats in faraway places. I wanted to go too. But much like the price tag of the fog machine at the supermarket, I couldn't afford it. Though it'd be cool and awesome and festive and all, I just couldn't make it happen.

Therefore, I decorated my house after decorating at work. It put a new little spring in my step. It's a new piece of scenery to look at, a new visual stimuli to get my brain a-cooking! I'm expecting fantastic results from the cheapest writing retreat ever (since it's my town, my home, and my desk). I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and if you would like some inspiration, here's some of the decorating in my own home. I didn't get library decoration pictures yet, sorry.

My "witches live here" sign with pretty fall background.

 

Close up of my skeleton garland

 

Island table scape with candy, pumpkins, apples, and love potion brew.

 

 

Writing Routine CPR

My new job is in the health care industry, and it is also dealing with patient care. Because of this, I spent my morning in a CPR class. CPR has a very specific order (I know, I was just tested on it). First, you assess the scene to make sure the patient is in a safe place (ie, not in the center of the road or lying in shattered glass), then you see if they are responsive. After that, check for a pulse, if no pulse, remove clothing from the chest and start CPR.

This seems like a lot of steps, and I haven't even covered the compressions/breathing themselves.

My writing schedule used to be this strict. Pre-college/work I would write from 9 to 11:30 every night, then go to bed. It didn't matter if it was a Sunday, Tuesday, or Friday. It didn't matter if it was winter or spring. In fact, at that time, if I had suddenly been transported to Mars, that wouldn't have mattered either. 9 to 11:30 was my writing time.

Then I went to college, where time was never truly applicable. After withdrawing, I resumed my writing routine. But then I got an infant rabbit who needed a lot of attention and training, and a long bedtime transition from her exercise pen back to her cage. After that came my health care job. I now wake up between 5:30 and 6:30am on weekdays, depending on my schedule. The rabbit is nearly 5 months old and thinks it's okay to chew on the wires for my computer.

My writing routine is no longer working. I can't stay up that late and hope to wake up that early. So, instead, I've been writing a lot on my lunch break and days off. It's not an everyday assurance like my old routine, but it's what I have to do.

If you've found yourself inhibited by a new work, child, or pet routine, go ahead and break your previous writing schedule. Take a few weeks to adjust and reassess when you can squeeze in some writing. Perhaps it's fifteen minutes after work you can have to yourself. Or the few minutes your infant will sleep.

Adopting this flexibility to change will keep you from stalling out your writing. It's better to write for fifteen minutes every day then to not write for a month.

As parting, here's a few stories of fellow writers:

Poet Wallace Stevens wrote his famous poems on commute walks to and from his job.

 

Ernest Hemingway would write at the crack of dawn...while standing...and drinking.

 

Victor Hugo had his valet hide all of his clothing so he was forced to write and not leave the house.

 

Dan Brown writes in 60 minute stints (measured by an hourglass) and then exercises.

Illustrated by Alyssa Nedbal

The wait is over!

The illustration project I've been hinting at since mid-March can finally be revealed to the public.

 



The project is through my previous college, who has a fantastic relationship and exchange program with Malawi. While I was enrolled in the college, I was given the opportunity to create images for one in a series of young reader books that are published in both English and Chichewa. As you read this, the books are in transit to the Mzuzu University Children's Library in Malawi, Africa.

 



My early reader book was titled Nurse and was written by 12 year-old Thokozani Nyirongo, a student in Malawi. The book follows a "when I grow up" format and talks about how the protagonist of the story wishes to be a nurse when she grows up and all the things that she will do as a nurse.



I used watercolor and oil pastel to create each image - which originally measured 14x16 before being photographed, formatted, and printed. There are 10 images throughout the book. Here are a few more of the pages (held open by yours truly).

 





An Update and a Question for You

The back-to-school commercials have aired and a bombardment of first-day-of-school photos clutter the Facebook news feeds. Yes, it's that time of year again - school is in session.

I want you, my loyal blog readers, to know that I will not be joining the fray this year.

Why does this matter to you whether or not I am a student? Well, because a few of you have been there from the beginning when I started this blog out of my college dorm. Others have perused the multiple college class/life posts I wrote at the beginning of this blog's life. But more importantly, I think I can sneak another message out of this one.

Here it goes: You don't need a fancy degree to achieve your goals or get the places you want to be. Especially if you're a writer. (If you want to be, say, a doctor, you may just have to stick it out. Sorry.) But to be a writer you need to...what?...Write! This goes back to the very first post I made in this blog. We're writers not because we have agents or ebooks or publishing deals. We're writers because we write. Plain and simple.

Ask yourself this question - would you rather have the degree you're "supposed to" get, but be no better of a writer than when you started; or, would you rather be degree-less but have worked your way into the writer you always longed to be?

Yeah, that's the question that got me thinking.

Now, I'm not trying to discourage people from going to college, or encourage our current college students to drop out, but I do want to get you thinking. What is going to be most beneficial to you in the long run? If, say, you're in college now and it's strengthening your skills and helping you sort out your weak points - great! You've hit the jackpot. For many of us, this doesn't happen. If, like me, your high school counselors and college professors told you you'd go nowhere without a degree, but the whole process just isn't working for you - this is the time to step back. Think about what you really want.

For me, it was to be the best writer I could possibly be. This meant dropping the student loans, school colors, and cramped living quarters. It meant picking up a job, a writing group, and a few stand-alone writing classes that got me no closer to graduation but a lot closer to publication.

So, in future, expect fewer posts about dorm life, class discussions, and microwave recipes (oh stove, how I've missed you!), and more about the business of writing and art. I hope you join me for the ride.

What You Find in the Trunk

**Please note: I will be posting on Tuesdays now due to a new work schedule. Thanks for understanding in advance!**


Place: My garage, more specifically, inside my Honda CRV which is parked in the garage.
Time: Early. After I've eaten some granola but before a shower. Probably 8:00 am on Labor Day morning.
Climate: 52 degrees, raining, with an icy wind gusting through the open door.


I decided to spend my extra day off cleaning out my car, which hasn't been cleaned in a little over a year due to college demands. Within the first few minutes of tossing receipts and deflated straw wrappers out the door, I discover a pair of blue gloves in the passenger side door. They are knit and have silver patches over the thumb and index finger to keep warm while texting. I unball them and slip them on. I don't remember ever owning a pair of gloves like this. In fact, I'm pretty sure they aren't mine at all. It's cold enough this holiday to wear the gloves while I work. I clean the front seats, the back seats, and then open the hatch. The rain spatters onto it so I try to move quickly. I'm emptying it out so I can vacuum away the little leaves and bug carcasses when I find a pair of black socks. Like the gloves, they are neatly balled. After removing my ice scraper, I find another pair of identical socks, also balled. I know these socks are mine and I suspect they got loose in the move. I stuff the socks into the pockets of my sweatshirt and keep cleaning.

End Scene.

***

Much like my car-cleaning experience, I recently rediscovered a poem I wrote almost two years ago. Like the gloves, I found little gems I didn't remember writing, but that I found to be pretty good lines or ideas. I kept them.

But I also found lines or ideas that were out of place - like the socks. I found myself asking, why is this line here? Can I cut it? What does this scene do to my narrative? Can I cut it?

The socks didn't belong in my trunk. They went rogue in a move and I forgot about them. The lines of poetry had the same syndrome. During my first draft (and second draft) I either didn't see them as problems, or had read the poem so many times, I didn't see them at all. They popped out of my mind like my socks popped out of their suitcase. And just like my car cleaning, they needed to be cleansed from my poem.

This is the beauty of letting a piece sit for awhile before you go back and revise/reedit it. The time apart can force you to look at it in a new light, just like a reader who finds it in a magazine or online. Gone is the sense of creation and instead you can focus on what the piece needs to be truly brilliant. Does this mean you may miss a submission deadline for a contest or literary magazine? Yes. But don't you want to submit your best work? If you don't give the piece some space and some time apart, you will never be able to see it anew. You could be missing the black socks against the black upholstery of the trunk. In most cases, you will be rejected because the editors can definitely see the socks. If you are accepted, though, and you reread the poem a few years after publication. I'm sure you'll see the socks too. It will drive you crazy.

So, make sure you take your time. Don't rush into submission or queries. Do what is best for you, your writing, and your career and take a step back. Let the piece breathe. Revisit in a month or a year and do your cleaning.   

Working on the Working Title

The "industry" (am I allowed to use that word without sounding pompous?) defines "Working Title" as the title you give your project either while you are working on it, or before it is finalized by a publisher/you if you're self publishing.

Now, I'm going to say up front that I don't find the working title to be very important when it comes to writing. In fact, tons of things are more important: plot, character, setting description, good metaphors, etc. But, when you're in a bind, it could help to think about your working title. Not only because it gives you a break from fretting over your current problem scene, but because a title helps you understand your work as a whole.

Writing can force you to work on your manuscript on a scene to scene basis. This is a good and bad thing. It's good because you want every scene to be as good as possible. It's bad because you can lose sight of the work as a whole. Coming up with a decent working title (note the word choice - not "good", just "decent" because this can be changed rather easily down the line) helps you to re-grasp your manuscript as an entire piece of art or entertainment.

Choose a working title that fits the feeling, mood, and voice of the story. Is your writing terse? Your title should be too. Is your writing fanciful? Try a matching working title. Do you write spiritual or inspirational work? Keep that thread in your working title.

Another plus side of the working title is, if you're like me, it allows you to deflect the, "What are you working on?" question.

"The Pharmaceutical Hippopotamus." Nuff said.   

Verbs

No, I'm not running out of ideas for quirky titles. (promise)

Yes, verbs are important enough to constitute their own title. (promise)

About now you're probably thinking, verbs, yeah, I learned about those in first grade. A sentence needs a subject and verb. Got it.

But do you?

A sentence needs a subject and verb to be complete (upon first grade standards), but that doesn't mean your verbs should be toss-away. Let's take a look at an example;

Rough Draft sentence: He walked across the lot.

Revised Draft sentence: He [trundled, stumbled, hopped, promenaded, tottered, etc.] across the lot.

Do you see the difference? The rough draft sentence is fine. It's a sentence. But as far as hard-hitting writing, it lacks voice and stage direction. The revised draft sentence - no matter which new verb you choose - has increased ten fold. Not only can you picture the protagonist more clearly, but the action is more forceful. The flow of the story, the tension you want to keep so effectively high in your reader, is upheld. If someone "walks", you know what's happening, but that's it. Now, if that same someone "stumbles", you infer their mood, their gait, and their personality in that moment. Also, it keeps the reader interested because they aren't bogged down in crappy verbs.

So, yes, verbs are important. When you're revising, don't settle on comfortable verbs. Find a thesaurus and a suitable verb that gives your writing more punch and keeps the action going - tension high, of course. Your manuscript will thank you. (promise)