The HEA Cafe

… to write!

It’s scary to think how much time I can waste checking emails, reading blogs and generally surfing the Internet, especially when recently I had a total of sixteen hours over a weekend in which to write, but probably wasted a good twelve of them fiddling around.

But time spent on the Internet garnered gold for me when I stumbled across a piece of writing by Johann Von Goethe. “Lose this day loitering,” Goethe wrote in the early nineteenth-century, “twill be the same story tomorrow …(and soon) days are lost lamenting over days.”

That brought me up by the bootstraps, especially when I found other long stretches of what could have been writing time spent “loitering” wthout intent to do much of anything in particular. In the same essay, Goethe stresses that we must “seize this very moment … only engage and the mind grows heated, begin it and the work will be completed.”

So, inspired by Goethe I stopped loitering and began … In the past three days I’ve written over 6,500 words, that’s probably 5,000 words more than I would have done without Mr. Goethe’s inspiring (and scary) words pushing me forward.

It’s easy to form habits – good or bad – the trick is to form the ones that hurtle us forward toward our goals and dreams, not hold us back so that we end up lamenting over lost days. Goethe’s words are pinned above my computer screen and I set them out below in the hope they might inspire other “loiterers” out there …

Lose this day loitering, twill be the same story
Tomorrow, and the rest more dilatory;
Thus indecision brings its own delays
And days are lost lamenting over days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Courage has genius, power and magic in it;
Only engage and then the mind grows heated.
Begin it and the work will be completed.

Tricia
www.tricia-jones.com

… also known as the nature or nurture argument. Which wins out, do you think? Do we have to have talent first, a natural ability that with persistence ensures success? Or does writing success come with a mere grain of ability and then by working at it, learning and practising until our minds and fingers hurt?

I’ve been thinking on this for a while now and not sure I’ve reached any conclusions. Sometimes it feels like the more I know the less I know, if you get my drift. I’ve GMC’d, plotted and pantsed, snowflaked and what-if’d until my head spun, yet lately it feels like wading through treacle. It feels like I’ve hit a barrier which I can’t get through.

The first stories I wrote were as an innocent. I was totally green and naive and just enjoyed the wonderful process of making up those stories and developing the characters who inhabited them. I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong. Then comes the reality of trying to sell those stories, of having them fester in that awful thing they call the slush pile. Of having them critiqued and rejected. Of learning from mistakes, and trying to move forward.

So, my question … Does there come a time when those with the raw talent power ever onward and upward? While those with less talent reach a plateau and stay there? Is there a limit to what we can learn as a writer, a barrier beyond which we cannot move no matter how hard we try? Are writers born or made?

What do you think?

How I love my holidays. Travelling is one of my big passions. The weeks before are spent planning what to pack, where I want to visit while I’m there and how I’m going to walk and swim and generally come back feeling fitter than when I left.

While I adore my day job, I have absolutely no problem switching off while I’m away from it. Apart from thinking about what to bring back for my buddies, I don’t give work a thought. I just step off into wonderland for a couple of weeks. It’s a different matter with writing though. I can’t switch off and if anything those couple of weeks away really get all my juices flowing. There’s inspiration for settings, plots, not to mention heroes

So, having just arrived back from a couple of weeks in the South of France, I am inspired! I’ve got sneaky photos of inspirational men, lovely villas set amidst pine trees and lavender groves, glamorous yachts and glitzy restaurants. My writing pad is jam-packed with plot ideas, some of which are scribbled on napkins or restaurant menus as hubby and I indulge our “what-if” games.

My head is buzzing with ideas …

Ah, indeed, there’s no rest for the writer ….

Tricia
http://www.tricia-jones.com

Yesterday, I was sorting through some old papers and found a quotation. “Creative successes are often preceded by creative failures, for trial and error are the natural companions of creativity.”

It made me think about my WiP, which currently makes me feel like I’m wading through treacle. One step forward, twenty back. Ten pages written, nine deleted. That kind of thing. If I’m honest, this process is nothing out of the ordinary, at least not for me. Usually right smack bang in the middle of a story I get lost in the fog and plum forget that the creative process is full of trial and error. By it’s very nature, it has to be. Instead, I get frustrated that the story’s not flowing. I think maybe it’s a pile of junk and should be abandoned. Except by this time, I’m usually so taken with the h/H and want them to find their happy ending, that I struggle through the crud until that little ray of light shines through and I find my way again.

So, I’ve typed out that anonymous quotation and stuck it above my computer, ready for the next time I’m deep in doo-doo land. It’s right there next to Picasso’s wise words “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it“.

What about you? Do you have any words that inspire you when the going gets tough?

Tricia
http://www.tricia-jones.com
Satin Lies, now available from Samhain Publishing

When I was trying to get published, I prepared myself for a lot of things. I knew that family time would suffer, deadlines would need to be met, rejections faced … but there was one thing that never entered my radar.

My friends gave me every encouragement along the path to publication. They supported me, encouraged me to keep going when things got tough, they celebrated with me and cried with me – they still do. Most of them. Yet a couple have reacted very strangely. One was shocked at the cover of one of my books, declaring “I didn’t realise you wrote THOSE sort of books”. Another was visibly surprised when she found out I wrote sex scenes, as if I didn’t have enough experience to write sex (hmm … surely I must have learned something in 33 years of marriage).

That’s all okay, and I can deal, but when one told me that using bad language, in dialogue I might add, was a sign of sloppy writing, well, that I couldn’t handle. It’s not as if she’s a purist – she has no compunction peppering her sentences with the odd swear word.

At first I was so taken aback I considered changing the dialogue, but then I realised that first and foremost I am a writer. I spend time creating a character and it gives me great pleasure when that character starts speaking and acting in his/her own unique way. So, the dialogue stays. If it loses me a few friends, then so be it. The true ones are still there … supporting, encouraging and ready to offer an expletive in my defence when required.

Tricia

www.tricia-jones.com