How My Writer's Space Feng Shui Has Gone Awry

Happy New Year--does your office embrace the principles of good Feng Shui for writers? I called upon the expertise of Pam Gaulin, Kerrie Flanagan, and Regina Paul who wrote online articles about this topic if you're interested in reading more.

There is probably something to be said--a lot, actually--about having a tidy, neat, calming writer's space to  cause the Chi (the invisible life force or energy that is all around us) to flow in positive directions for maximum creativity and focus.

But I'm coming off the heels of the holidays and my office is a mess. (And no, there will not be pictures posted today until my Feng Shui gets more in order.)

But when will that be? The desk cleaning I did recently involved moving a large pile from the top of my desk to the side where no one can see it from the hallway. Other things accumulating on this same secretly shameful side:  books, conference materials from October, cords. Bad Chi for sure!

Regina Paul tells us that Chi can be blocked by clutter, and blocked Chi can lead to frustration and the inabiltiy to create.

So, you shouldn't stack your work on your desk because then it appears like an obstacle that's impossible to overcome. (I don't need paper clutter to make me feel like that--all I have to do is open Word every day and stare at the blinking cursor :)

More Feng Shui advice: Be sure your back is not to the door so you can keep an eye on things and the good Chi can enter freely. Have a wall behind you to feel supported in your career choice.

I face a wall when I write. And I have the option to look out a window--with my L-shaped desk, which I just read is not good for Chi. But I've tried sitting in the middle of the room with a wall behind me and it made me feel--jittery. Exposed. I just seem to need a wall in front of me for comfort. Maybe it was all those hours I spent in the library studying in carrels, staring at blank gray--um, carrel spaces.

Sometimes I think that ideally, it would be nice to be surrounded by walls--a tiny little space that just fits you and your writing and no other distractions. I once read that a famous writer--I forget whom--locked himself up into a little closet to write. I actually like that idea a lot! Away from family, phone, etc. in your own little sealed-up private space...so maybe I should ditch the office and consider writing in my closet.

Feng shui colors are important, and here as well I have gone wrong. Blue is calming , it represnts water and encourages release, higher thought, and inner wisdom.
Purple--also a good color, represents enlightenment, prosperity, and creativity.
So then, um...my office wallpaper...very un-Feng Shui pink curli-ques!






If you do use blue, be sure to put some orange accents in there--perhaps as a bouquet of flowers--for contrast and fire so you don't get too lethargic from all the calming tones.

Kerrie Flanagen tells us to not forget good lighting, a comfy chair, and a window or picture with depth of view.

Two more tips:

--Plants can minimize electronic fields, which can disturb Chi.

--Use your South wall for fame and recognition. Here's where you place book covers, awards, diplomas, and the goals you aspire to achieve.

And for those of us who don't have time to worry too much about Feng Shui...here's to a nice, quiet writing space in 2013 (even if it's the kitchen table), where we can simply write in peace.

May 2013 be a great writing year, full of good Chi, great ideas, and a calm place where you can work hard and prosper!

Creativity: Getting Out of Your Own Way

As a writer, don't you think about creativity a lot? What is it, what enhances it? And, most importantly, HOW DO I TURN THIS @#!*$% INTERNAL EDITOR OFF INSIDE MY OWN HEAD??

This weekend I heard a really interesting piece on NPR on creativity from the show Studio 360. You can listen to all the segments at

http://www.studio360.org/2012/nov/23/


In the segment "The Neuroscience of Jazz," Dr. Charles Limb, professor of Otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins, studied functional MRI studies of muscians' brains as they they played piano. During a very creative task (jazz improvisation), certain areas of the prefrontal cortex lit up red--hot spots--and others lit up blue--cold spots. The self expressive areas were "hot" (areas of active blood flow) and the deactiviated areas--areas of conscious self-monitoring--had less blood flow.

Basically, the areas of self expression were full of activity, while the other areas were actually "turned off" areas.

This might be the neural signature of creativity--the self-expressive areas are turned up, and the inhibitory areas are turned down--so this might be you getting out of your own way.

In other words, creativity occurs WHEN YOU GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY.

So how do we accomplish this difficult feat? Everyone has different ways of helping themselves get "in the zone" so we can create those stories, build those worlds, experience our characters practically as real people. Coffee, music, or just writing as fast as you can so the editor can't catch up to you are a few ways.

Another segment of this program called "Enhancing Creativity" talked about when we get good at things, we do multiple tasks at once. In writing, this can be getting the creative ideas down, as well as putting them down in a grammatically and structurally correct way. With practice, practice, practice, creative tasks can get easier.

Are children more creative? Does creativity get whipped out of us as we age and go through the drudgery of school? It is true that 5 year olds are less inhibited and explore ideas more--but they often don't have the skill set to bring their ideas to frution.

So, what ways do you use to get your muse up and running and that nasty internal editor to stop talking? How do you get out of your own way?




Water Texture at FreeFoto.com http://www.freefoto.com/imagelink/?ffid=33-04-3&s=s

Why They Call It "Revision Hell"

I've recently had the great pleasure of coming back into the real world after a month of revisions. How you know you might need to detox if you've had a similar experience:

--An entire wardrobe of sweats is critical to survival (including my favorite sweats I call my writing pants). But the one time you wear them out (because you've deteriorated to the point where you just don't give a fig any more and all you want is just to be DONE), you will meet everyone you know--and they will all be dressed in their nice work clothes, making you feel a bit pathetic. Moral of this story: grocery shop early or late, or dress better going out!

--The mail pile becomes a mail avalanche.

--Ditto for laundry.

--You begin calling your children by your characters' names, OR

--You walk around the house talking to yourself (or others) in an English accent.

--Correlary:  You begin calling your husband's by your hero's name...

--...or (more commonly) your villain's!

--Instead of asking what's for dinner? your kids start asking you what kind of takeout we're ordering tonight.

--For company, you devise numerous ways to cheat on housework, stashing things in closets, closing doors, and tossing away everything en masse that has rotted in the fridge. You never put water on your kitchen floor unless totally forced.(i.e., some kid spills a sticky beverage that makes noise when someone walks on it or the dog barfs).

--So far, there is no shortcut I've discovered to cleaning bathrooms. (If anyone has, let me know!)

--Your back and fingers ache from scrunching yourself over a keyboard all day and skipping your exercise classes. Warning: skipping physical activity for fear of  "it takes too much time" is a hazard to sanity! (Will I ever learn this?)

--Every time you sit down at your keyboard, you start to twitch and your skin begins to crawl.

--You feel that if you so much as look at another cup of coffee you're going to hurl.

--You never want to see Thesaurus.com again.

--You feel that you can probably work on your manuscript forever and it will never be done. This is the hell part. Am I fixing it, making it better, or am I ruining it?? Will it ever be done?

--You finally get the courage to push send, and release your literary child into the universe, subjecting it to potential criticism and of course, rejection. This is reminiscient of dropping your first kid off at the first day of preschool. If only you can protect her from the bullies of the world! The kids that won't like her! But she has to go out into the world...and hey, preschool might have its knocks, but it's mostly fun!

Lastly, the nail biting continues as you wait in desperate hope, but not too much hope. Tempered by caution. And the experience of multiple "no's."  

You wash your hair, do some TJ Maxx therapy, clean your house, kiss your kids, see your friends again, maybe even make dinner and then...you start a new manuscript. You leave the outcome to fate, knowing you've done the best you can possibly do.

I think I can finally call myself a writer now. 

Peace-inspiring scene, the Atlantic coast this summer.

  

  

A Writer and His Editor: Fitzgerald and Perkins

Yes, I am actually going to write about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor, Maxwell Perkins!

(No, this is not a topic related to Regency or Victorian England!)

But I came across this remarkable book that illustrates this amazing relationship.  The letters exchanged between the two show so clearly the universal dreams and aspirations, doubts, and fears of writers everywhere.  You will recognize them in these brief passages that follow!  Perkins was friend, mentor, and most remarkably of all, full and true believer in Fitzgerald's genius.  



Celestial Eyes, the iconic cover painting of The Great Gatsby by Francis Cugat



The book I discovered, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 219:  F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, I found quite by accident.  While hibernating one Saturday in a study room at our local unviersity library. I discovered this book tucked between the legs of my study table and the wall.

The book is remarkable in that it traces the development of Gatsby as a book (revisions, rewritings, etc.) and charts its rise to great noveldom.  Fitzgerald's struggles with alcoholism undermined his literary genius in that it hid the fact that he revised painstakingly and did layers of drafts.

Fitzgerald died young at age 44, and never lived to see his true literary success.  While he published and lived off of the money he made from writing short stories, Gatsby did not sell well.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1932, Carl Van Vechten photographer, public domain (www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/079_vanv.html)

Perkins, who discovered the likes of Hemmingway and Thomas Wolfe, was far more than an editor to Fitzgerald--he was a mentor and a father figure. 

Maxwell Perkins, 1942.  From Library of Congress, no copyright restrictions www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94507177/ 

So take a look at these exerpts.  (I hope I don't ruin them with my comments.  But I was struck by how Fitzgerald's struggles embodied those of any writer.) 

Fitzgerald (July, 1924):  "I want to write something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned."

(Ah, the lofty goals of artistic aspiration...we can all relate.)

Sept., 1924:
"Now for a promise--the novel will absolutely and definitively be mailed to you before the first of October.  I've had to rewrite practically half of it--at present it's stored away for a week so I can take a last look at it and see what I've left out--there's some intangible sequence lacking somewhere in the middle and a break in interest that invariable means the failure of a book.  It is like nothing I've ever read before." 

(See--even F. Scott had to deal with sagging middles and brain fatigue from re-reding his ms over too many times!)

And here is Perkins replying in November, 1924:

"The general brilliant quality of the book makes me ashamed to make even thse criticisms.  The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the expression you make a paragraph carry, are most extraordinary.  The manuscript is full of phrases which make a scene blaze with life.  If one enjoyed a rapid railroad journey I would compare the number and vividness of pictures your living words suggest, to the living scenes disclosed in that way.  It seems in reading a much shorter book than it is, but it carries the mind through a series of experiences that one would think would require a book of three times its length."

"...You once told me you were not a natural writer--my God:  you have plainly mastered the craft, of course, but you needed far more than craftmanship for this."   

(This is a dream relationship.  Perkins clearly saw and understood Fitzgerald's genius.) 

So inspiring!



For a fascinating discussion of Cugat's artwork for the 1925 cover of The Great Gatsby, see Charles Scribner III's essay at http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/essays/eyes/eyes.html

Write and Live in 2012

As we welcome the new year and set our writing goals, I'd like to share something I heard yesterday on NPR that stayed with me on a very gutteral level.

As writers, we (well, okay, I) tend to define success based on outcome--did we publish?  This amazing story I heard on NPR yesterday helped me to understand that while we can't always control the outcome in life or in writing, we can control the process. 

So...if you face any adversity in the writing world--namely, rejections, stinging contest feedback, upsetting reviews--you've got to listen to this!

Author Bruce Feiler spoke to Michel Martin on her NPR show Tell Me More.  His topic was overcoming adversity and getting the right start for 2012.

You may know him as the author of The Council of Dads, a bestselling book about his cancer journey and how he asked each of his close friends to share their unique talents with his daughters.

When asked about his new year's resolutions, Feiler offered this story:

Three years ago, he had leg surgery for cancer.  Six months after the surgery, he went to see his surgeon, Dr. John Healey of Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York, and asked him this question (From here on are Feiler's own words.):

"'If my daughters ever come to see you and say, what lesson should they learn from our daddy's story, what would you tell them?'
And this man's a pauser.  Ooh, he pauses longer than anyone I ever heard.  And he said, 

'I would tell your daughters what I know.  And that is--everybody dies.  But not everbody lives.  I want you to live.'

And at its simplest, corest level, I would say, every year, I don't live every day like it's my last but I live every year as if it might be my last.  And my goal every year is to live.

And to me that means--go on an adventure.  Ask a question.  Begin some process that I can look back and say, whatever has happened, good, bad or indifferent, I will have lived my life on my toes and not on my heels."   

To me this means acting, striving to be the very best we can be, controling what we can control, hoping for the best but not taking the worst personally.  Always working to be better.  Or, like my mom always told me, do your best. 

I wish all of you the best in 2012.  And to find joy in the striving!

Here is the NPR link if you'd like to listen.   (The whole discussion lasts 12.5 minutes, and the part above is at the end.)

High Concept Tree

I have never (until now) seen a pine tree that changes colors and LOSES its needles.  A deciduous pine?!!! 

Even scarier, I saw it and thought, this tree is EXACTLY the kind of thing we strive for as writers of fiction.  That unique twist on the usual that is so compelling it makes you immediately turn your head!

(I think I need a break)...but anyway, Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Slaying the Dragon--Every Day

Every day, the same fear seizes me.  I sit at my keyboard, hands poised, and I freeze.  And that horrible, whining voice starts in.

"What if you're not clever enough?" (or funny enough, smart enough, entertaining enough, just fill in the blank) it says, mocking me. 
"Do you actually think you can put words into coherent sentences?  You actually think you are clever enough to tell a story?"

Every single day, I must find the will to stop this dreadful voice, the voice of my deeptest fears, and continue despite it, drown it out, override it.

It never gets easier. 

Desperation, despair, hope.  They all mix together as I bleed words onto each screen page.  Pieces of my soul I bear for all to see. 

Okay, that's a bit dramatic.  But it is October, and it is Golden Heart time once again.  My goal is to have my manuscript done and in querying shape by the sort-of-end of November.  The Golden Heart offers the perfect excuse to do that--the first 50 pages in tiptop shape, a synopsis, and the whole manuscript on disc.

This is a marathon of willpower.  Every day I grit my teeth and sit down.  Every day I stay planted.  It seems it will never end.  There are too many pages, I will never get to the end.  There is too much to do, too much to fix, too many glitches to smoothe out.  And when I finally type THE END, I worry it will suck so badly I will have to write the entire thing over.  Sisyphus and his rock, the eternal climb. 

Being a writer means for me that I am always conquering myself.  It's a constant mind workout, a battle between my strong self and my weak self.  A constant buckling down, a discipline to keep going regardless of which voice, the Good One or the Bad One,  is the dominant one in my head for the day.

Eventually, the story takes over, most of the time, and the voices quiet (the Haldol helps quite a lot, too--just kidding).

Did I also mention the food voices?  The ones that cry, get coffee!  Get cookies!  Chocolate emergency NOW!!!  Have to beat those down frequently, too. 

Yet we endure this, day after day, because of something--something great that we occasionally partake in.  A process of creation.  A yearning to tell our tales, to show that flawed people can prevail regardless of what life throws at them.  That love brings out the best in all of us.   That forgiveness and redemption are priceless.

The messages we are meant to tell, I honestly believe, are more important than all our fears and weaknesses.  And that's the sword I keep by my computer every day.
           

The Quirky Things Writers Do

A few days ago, I finished the first draft of a novel I began writing in April under the tutelage of Lori Wilde in her Novel in Six Months Class at SavvyAuthors.  It came in at around 77,000 words.  Now mentally exhausted and physically drained, I took the entire weekend off to reboot my weary self.  Four romantic comedies and one Jane Austenesque book later, I found myself (as I sipped cold sparkling water in my back yard while reclining with aforementioned book) becoming introspective about the crazy life writers lead.

--Writing the climax of this book-in-progess of mine was the most agonizing thing I have ever done.  I could not sleep until I got my hero and heroine out of crisis and tucked safely into their happily-ever-after.  It took about a week for me to navigate those tricky scenes and I was mentally and physically affected.  An example:  my daughter asked me a question while I was furiously typing away and I mumbled an answer...and then she asked, "Mom, why did you just answer me in a British accent?!"   The characters in my head were coming out to torment the rest of my life!

--Author Steve Berry, when he spoke at RWA in NYC earlier this summer, said something really interesting.  He said (and this is from scrawls in my little notebook--so it's a paraphrase)--Every writer he's ever known has a little voice in their head.  I have known about my little voice for quite some time now.  But this was a revelation!  Someone was actually admitting this out loud!   On observing someone or something, the voice says particular things like, she cast her weary eyes downward or her skirt pouffed out like a skein of cotton candy at the most unexpected times.   What a relief to know that others hear The Voice, too!

--What caused all this reflection was a passage in the book I am currently reading, A Weekend with Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly.   The book is about an English professor who's secret passion is reading Regency romance novels, especially ones by a particular favorite author.  (You can read more about this charming book  here--this review made me instantly download the book.)  Anyway, the author character in the book makes this revelatory comment about writers (here's a bit of a setup before the comment for context):

"Warwick watched her as she looked around the hall, tiny white teeth biting her lower lip, and a part of him wanted to go help her--to take her bag and say, 'Come this way,' but the writer in him stayed perfectly still and watched.

That was one of the things about being a writer--one always stood slightly apart, listening and watching.  It was hard to tell sometimes, if one were really alive, for life seemd to be happening to everybody else, and yet the writer's lot seemed to be one of permanent stillness.  Had Jane Austen felt like that?  he wondered."

So, do you get emotionally involved with imaginary people in your head?  Have difficulties with the voice that rambles around in there at the most inappropriate times?  Or find yourself observing and imbibing the details of life, sort of voyeuristically?   You may not need Haldol after all...you just might be a Writer.

Living With a Difficult Muse

Still consumed with meeting my 1500 words-per-day quota for my Novel in Six Months Class with Lori Wilde at SavvyAuthors, I thought I would share more of my overwhelming frustrations as I continue to learn how to do this!

I wrote over 8,000 words last week, all in a state of pure terror.  Every morning, I wonder where six more pages of writing is going to come from.  Where does it come from?  Did you ever wonder?

My muse is ornery, difficult, and uncooperative.  Stubborn, too.  She makes my life hell!  What to do with her?  Is there any way to train a muse?

I wish I was the kind of writer who can follow a schedule.  For example, I say, I am going to sit here for four hours and at the end, I'm going to be done.  But no!  At the end of the time, yes, I do have something, but it sucks, and requires more hours of hairpulling and cursing and pacing all about the house to turn it into something resembling coherence.   This is very bad for anyone who has any other responsibilities other than writing.  It makes for a cranky, befrazzled person who feels like she can never get her work done.

I think there is a type of writer who is so gifted so as to be a natural plotter--who can envision the most unique twists and turns, who can create sensational high concept ideas.  A person like this has a highly creative mind and the vision to carry their ideas out.  There is also a writer who makes outlines and sticks to them.  Why couldn't I have a muse who works like that?  

I am not a natural plotter.  I am the wost panster-plotter ever!  I sit for hours trying to envision, write down, map, plot out, storyboard what on earth is going to happen next to my poor, tortured characters.  Even if I get some semblance of a shoddy outline down, alas, my muse changes drections on me, and it's back to the drawing board again.

I have no problem with sitting here for hours.  I've got that part down!  But now I have to learn the habits of somone who simply cannot afford to take time for tangents and detours and endless redoings.   I've got to learn to move.

Having a background in science,  I reflect often on the differences between a life that depends on creative ideas and one that works with "facts."  There are more similarities than one would at first imagine, and I'm not really saying the two are mutually exclusive, (and science does require creativity and who said science is made of "facts" anyway?) but all that makes for a different blog post.  The biggest difference I can see is that in a writer's life, your brain has to generate the raw material that makes for the rest of your day.  It's your imagination that creates what you work on all day.

Sometimes, I wonder if stories are just born to be told in a certain way.  Have you ever had this experience--you are rewriting or re-envisioning a scene.  Maybe you forgot that you've done it before.  Have you ever compared the new scene with the old one?  I find that at times the word choices are almost identical.  this always scares me in a creepy way.  Again I wonder, where exactly do these ideas come from?  

I'm hoping this all becomes easier.  That if I just keep at it, I will learn.  The great joys of writing are always balanced by difficulties, just like everything else on this planet.

In the meantime, anybody want to trade muses?

My First Blog Interview Today at Wendy La Capra's Blog

Up-and-coming historical romance writer and friend Wendy La Capra interviewed me on her blog today--please stop by! Wendy La Capra's Romance Writing Blog http://www.wendylacapra.com/