The HEA Cafe

Author Archive

Barak Obama’s battle cry, ‘Yes, we can,’ has touched the world in many ways. I hear people adding it to their campaigns whether personal or political.  For instance, Ben & Jerry’s newest ice cream? Yes Pecan. (from http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/05/02/yes-he-can-borrow/)

So I thought I would jump on the band wagon.

Yes, I can.

I can learn all the ins and outs of my new computer and it’s programs. I can figure out how to get back my lost programs (with the help of someone much smarter about computers than I but it will get done.) I can learn how to download pictures from my camera and then send them on email or post on  a blog using my new software.

Yes, I can… enjoy summer while coping with all the extra work it brings–garden, travel, company. etc.

I can figure out my current story. Someone asked me this week if I had a formula. Don’t I wish I could just follow a formula, do A, B, C and then D follows automatically. However,  I find every story comes to me differently and develops differently so I can’t write a story based on what worked last time. Each story presents its own challenges and problems. Knowing that, I have to work through the process of creating a story, discovering characters, blending a whole lot of ideas into a structure. Sometimes I have to bleed from the ears to make it work. It doesn’t always come together. I have to accept that part of the process is failure. But when it does come together in a satisfying story, I am glad I persevered.

Yes, I can.

Am I the only writer who seems to find whatever part of the process I am currently working on is the WORST part? I admit there is a certain excitement about starting a story, a delightful sense of urgency about getting the first draft on paper and a thrill of completion when I reach the end. (I always feel a little bit like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally–ready to cheer, full of release though no one else can see the cause. LOL.) But there are also times in each stage when, as my critique partner says, I bleed from the ears. The agony and ecstasy of writing.

Recently, I read an article from www.writersdigest.com called 10 Disciplines of a Fiction Writer, by James Scott Bell. He suggests a number of things that make the writing less of a struggle. The suggestion of Super Tuesday really resonated with me. He says, “I have designated each Tuesday to be exclusively a writing day. I have other duties during the week, but I work it out so I can leave Tuesday completely free. I don’t schedule appointments or pleasure trips or anything else on that day. My goal is to blow through my usual quota of words. Sometimes I see just how far I can go. The result is often that wonderful feeling you get when you’ve been in “flow.” Time speeds up. You have done a great day’s worth of work.”

I love the concept of giving myself one day when nothing else matters. The bills can wait. The errands in town can be done the next day. So I gave myself a Super Thursday. It went very well. I did about 7500 words. That’s a healthy portion of a manuscript.

I guess I need to find ways to challenge myself and make each part of the process fun. Any suggestions?

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/ 

From the above site I was able to have a peak into some authors daily routines. Enjoy a glimpse of how others work.

Alice Munro

As a young author taking care of three small children, Munro learned to write in the slivers of time she had, churning out stories during children’s nap times, in between feedings, as dinners baked in the oven. It took her nearly twenty years to put together the stories for her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968 when Munro was thirty-seven.The Atlantic, December 14, 2001
My comment: Alice was so dedicated it scares me. Her stories must have burned at her brain until she had to write around everything else in her life. But I like the idea of using slivers of time.

Toni Morrison

INTERVIEWER
You have said that you begin to write before dawn. Did this habit begin for practical reasons, or was the early morning an especially fruitful time for you?
MORRISON
Writing before dawn began as a necessity–I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, Mama–and that was always around five in the morning.
 

My comment: I’m tired just thinking of this. How did she function throughout the rest of the day.

Truman Capote

INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?

CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance. The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957

My comment: if I tried writing horizontally I would fall asleep. Besides my arms hurt just thinking about it. But I do some of my best creative thinking while horizontal. I often use a small light to write notes during the night as my ideas begin to sort themselves out.

Isaac Asimov

His usual routine was to awake at 6 A.M., sit down at the typewriter by 7:30 and work until 10 P.M. 

In “In Memory Yet Green,” the first volume of his autobiography, published in 1979, he explained how he became a compulsive writer. His Russian-born father owned a succession of candy stores in Brooklyn that were open from 6 A.M. to 1 A.M. seven days a week. Young Isaac got up at 6 o’clock every morning to deliver papers and rushed home from school to help out in the store every afternoon. If he was even a few minutes late, his father yelled at him for being a folyack, Yiddish for sluggard. Even more than 50 years later, he wrote: “It is a point of pride with me that though I have an alarm clock, I never set it, but get up at 6 A.M. anyway. I am still showing my father I’m not a folyack.” The New York Times, April 7, 1992

My comment: LOL. Sounds like a great work ethic. Sometimes, too many times, authors wait to FEEL like writing. Issac’s comments prove that getting at the work is more important that sitting around waiting for something inspirational to drive us to it.

Roger Ebert

Morning routine: I usually get up around 7. I make oatmeal in my rice cooker. Then I take an hour-long walk: outside if the weather’s good; on my treadmill if it’s cold. Then I shower, shave and go to the first of three movies I see on many weekdays. The New York Times Magazine, February 13, 2005

My comment: What? Going to the movies is work? Bring it on. Shaping thoughts and whispy ideas into a story and getting words on the page, now that’s work.

‘Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.’

I’m working on a story that seems destined to be written entirely in the dark. First, I couldn’t find the story but I pushed on ahead and created a synopsis. Of sorts. I wrote over 100 pages but every day it felt wrong, stilted, and worse, I dreaded facing the keyboard the next day and trying to figure out what next??? So Dec. 23, I gave up and threw it all out and started again. This time I did two things I know I need to ALWAYS do. I made sure I had a clearly definable conflict and one that put the characters in opposition. Duh. How basic is that?  

Still, the story is being stubborn. I can blame the holiday season when it’s hard to pull my thoughts into the office and force them to remain on the words appearing on the screen. Or I could blame it on a touch of the flu. No brain power.  

But the last couple of days something miraculous and odd has occurred. When I go to bed, my story becomes a living organism in my head. I see the characters moving, talking, laughing. Like a mixed up dream, I see bits from different scenes. I have to jot things down. Last night I ended up with four pages of notes that will translate into 20 pages or more in my story. I could complain about missing my sleep but after agonizing over this story, I am not about to whine about that, though I might steal a nap during the day. In fact, I intend to do all I can to nurture this particular event.

It’s like I have fallen back into my childhood when I always made up stories to put myself to sleep. (One big difference—this is NOT putting me to sleep.) It just goes to prove that I can nurture the creative process but I can’t control it.  Not that I intend to trust my future to this method. In fact, I strive always to prepare well for writing a story. I don’t know all the details (in this case it seems I know none of them) but I need to know the major turning points, the emotional journey, and have a feel for the theme (which often changes and develops as I write). I need to have understandable motivation, and clearly definable conflict. I have learned the horrible frustration of trying to write a story without these and vow every time it won’t happen again.  Oh yes, a pen with a light in the tip or a little book light at the bedside are absolutely essential as well.

I have a book out this month with Love Inspired Historicals, The Path to Her Heart.I’d love for you to pick it up.

October is over. Somehow I have no idea where it went or what I did though by looking back over my calendar I can see I was busy. I had company. We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. I took a short trip to Colorado to visit my daughter and her family. I even went to a Saturday writing workshop. Writing wise I worked on a new three-book proposal while awaiting approval on a complete I had sent in early September. Approval came without a call for revisions. Yahoo.

  

Why am I telling you all this? Maybe so someone can tell me how it is that some months simply disappear? (Remember when we were young and thought a year between birthdays, or until the next Christmas or even summer vacation took FOREVER?)

  

We live in a fast paced world, multi-tasking so much we hardly remember what we’ve done two days after we’ve done it. I’ve decided it’s time to stop and savor the moment. With that in mind, I do several intentional things that make each special moment memorable.

  

One thing I do is journal. I have for years. At one time it was a way to keep sane—write down my thoughts, keep track of what I did (to prove to myself if no one else that I had actually done something noteworthy with my day.) Now I do that but I also note things that are special, fun, and memorable. Like the story my grandchild told me. Or the beautiful sunrise I see out my window. As Socrates says, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

  

Another way to savor each special moment is with my camera. I focus to take the picture. I savor again as I view each on my wide screen monitor. Then I print the best and put them in a photo album for further enjoyment.

  

I try to NOT multi-task when there is something special happening so I can really enjoy the moment. Multi-tasking is fine for household chores and mindless activities. But not for times spent with people and many other things. I am trying to learn to STOP and smell the flowers.

  

How about you? Do you find your world so fast paced it speeds by in a blur? Have you found ways to savor the special moments? I’d love to hear what others do to make those moments more memorable.