Tag: writing

A Writer’s Guide To A Healthy and Happy Marriage

Leave a comment

Five years ago, my husband and I found ourselves faced with the opportunity to own a “fixer-upper” house, with the potential to make a profit if we ever decided to sell it. It looked like an easy decision at first: everyone was buying a home, and, supposedly, a home never loses its value.

Yet, instead of leaping at the opportunity, my husband and I visualized what the next few years would look like. We went over the building plans for the house, the financing we were eligible for, and the estimated time it would take for him to do the repairs. For financial purposes, he planned to do most of the construction work himself, which meant that renovating the house would be his full-time occupation, and I would be the primary breadwinner responsible for paying the bills.

After careful deliberation, we bought the house…

* * *

Please continuing reading the post at Courage 2 Create and *share your insights with me there!

(*The comments are moderated, but they’ll eventually appear!) 😀

Do You Have Any Writing Advice For Me?

20 Comments

 Writing Advice

I was deleting old emails from this blog’s contact form, and stumbled upon an email from a young lady stating that she hoped I was a friendly variety of writer, and asked, “Do you have any writing advice for me?”

I checked my email archives, and was happy that I wrote her back. Her question, after all, was very easy to answer, since I feel like I have to continually advise myself every day I write. My emailed response to her was this…

 I don’t really have much advice in the way of writing, since I’m still learning myself!  The best advice that I’ve read for any writer is something that Stephen King said: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” That’s pretty much all you need to know and do, especially while you’re still in school.  Read as much as possible.  Read read read.  While you’re reading as much as you can, write write write. When you surround yourself with words, you’ll be able to use them more creatively.

On my blog, I chronicle my writing journey.  Feel free to poke around there, and glean any learnings as I stumble around on my own writing path.  Though my goal is to be a published author one day, the skill/art of writing is a talent that I believe needs to be strengthened and sharpened continually.  It’s like a muscle that way.  You use it or lose it. My blog is my way of keeping myself accountable to “using” my writing skill.

Oh, one more thing: as you write, remember why you’re writing.  I truly enjoy creating stories, and I love getting lost in the creative process.  Sure, it gets frustrating sometimes, and I get tired, but in the end, I write because I love it.

…and re-reading it now, my advice wouldn’t change if she asked me again. The best part? Seeing my old words, “Sure, it gets frustrating sometimes, and I get tired, but in the end, I write because I love it,” and knowing they’re still as true today as they were six months ago.

Friendly Variety of Writer

There was one point in her email that stuck out to me that I didn’t notice the first time I read it six months ago. (Possibly because I was still amazed that anyone would ask me for writing advice, and was distracted by making sure my answer made sense.) (Also, what a great argument for letting a manuscript rest before revising it.) The young lady hoped that I was a “friendly writer.”

Of course, because I’m me, I’ve wondered all morning if she had encountered many unfriendly writers to have phrased her sentence that way, and moreover, if I lived up to her expectation of being a friendly writer.

Anyway, I didn’t write this last part to garner any words of sympathy or encouragement. Only that the realization gave me the opportunity to reflect on my writing journey and public persona, and to hope that I can be a support to my writing peers. (After all, writers provide me with books, my drug of choice, and I need to support my addiction.) 🙂

So, what one piece of writing advice do you share the most? What recent epiphanies have you had that caused you to reflect on your writing journey?

PS: One of my favorite author role models is Beth Revis, and she wrote a blog post HERE that stayed with me long after reading it.

Work In Progress

10 Comments
Writer's Block

Image by thorinside via Flickr

Since my last Work In Progress post, I have cobbled together my re-envisioning of the story, including a semi-new beginning and tweaking what I wrote so far to create a semblance of cohesion. I also sketched out the next few chapters, and am honestly excited to see what happens next. It’s sort of thrilling to get to new territory, especially since I lived in the first part of WIP2 for a couple of months. I feel like I knew that terrain, and how my characters would react there. I like the familiarity of those older, more established scenes, and love being able to add details here and there with each read-through.

But, now that I’m moving toward this really new next part where MC will be facing new characters and settings and challenges, I’m feeling my “blank page” issues a little bit. No matter how often I feel like I’ve conquered that little anxiety (believe me, I’m set up with affirmations and action plans galore!), it’s still there, noodling around in the back of my mind.

I know that I’m not really facing a blank page, and that I have a lot of material to get out of my head and on to the page. I just wish that The Looming Doubts weren’t, I dunno, genetically hardwired to my Ideas of Awesome That Must Be Written.

Anyway, I read these posts this morning. In their own way, they lessened the Looming Doubts, and increased the Ideas of Awesome.

Routines

17 Comments
The Writing Life

Image by Simply Bike via Flickr

{So, I decided to start yet another series of posts for the best reasons of all: because this is my blog, and because I can. It’s simply titled, The Magic of Writing—that indefinable, ineffable relationship between the writer and the muse.}

I probably shouldn’t have titled this post, “Routines” since that implies a certain healthy-ness that my writing habit does not have. Maybe “Ritual” would be more appropriate. Or, “Addiction.” Oh well.

Anyway, a running theme with all time management gurus is this: whatever goal you have, make sure you do it first thing in the morning. There are plenty of reasons why this advice is common, so I won’t get into that here. And, I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with that advice. I’m just saying it’s out there.

Well, I’ve discovered a long time ago that I’m not a first thing in the morning kind of writer. I’m actually not the best thing at anything first thing in the morning, unless you count coffee and meditation (read: staring off into space) as a “thing.” (Although, while on vacations, I enjoy morning walks on the beach. Since I live in the Midwest, this is not so much a possibility in my everyday life…) But, after my cup of coffee, putting the dishes away, and my morning ablutions, I can sit down and hammer away at the keyboard and sprint out a couple of pages before work. Then, after a day of work and other non-think-y pursuits, I can bust out more pages at night right before bed. (Actually, through a happy accident of passing out on the couch after a late night movie marathon, and not being able to get back to sleep, I found that I’m the most productive and creative between 1AM-4AM…possibly because my brain is really supposed to be sleeping and dreaming, but hey, whatever works, right?)

But, before my self-discovery, I thought I was the most uninspired, unfocused writer ever! After all, ALL the author websites that I’ve visited that have a “My Writing Process” page include waking up at 6AM to write their requisite page counts per day. I know all writers have a different process, and we all have to find out what works best for us, but I always felt “wrong” for not having a morning writing session.

Now, I have my semblance of a routine, and feel good about it. (I know, I know, I should sleep more, but sometimes, writing into the night and “dreaming” that way is WAY more refreshing to me than sleeping a full eight hours.)

How about you? When are you the most productive? What habits/quirks/superstitions do you have in your writing routine?

Work In Progress

18 Comments
Writer's Block

Image by thorinside via Flickr

I haven’t been racking up the page counts as I’d expected to this past week, but then again, I didn’t expect to write much of anything in the month of August knowing how challenging my paythebills job would be this month. So, if I think about it, any progress I made this month is a good thing.

BUT. I still have a goal to get this draft finished by September so that I can get feedback on it from my dear crit partners (*waves hi*).

Seeing that I haven’t made a lot of forward progress in the storyline, I decided to summarize what I had so far, and really think about my MC’s motivations, backstory, basically, evaluating the characters’ goals, why they had them, and what’s stopping them from reaching those goals.

Admittedly, I started out with a lot of nothing.

http://twitter.com/#!/lizakane/status/108737159997042688

And then, Snow Patrol’s Olive Grove Facing the Sea started playing on my Pandora Radio station, which is the first song that I have ever associated with WIP2 back in January. I let myself be transported back in time, and relived the emotion that I wanted to capture. Soon enough, I was able to brainstorm a little and add in little details that I forgot about; I even added in little bits here and there to make the story more logical and believable.

I have a long way to go. Those little bits are not smoothed into the story at all, and I’ve added a lot of [insert something here], but even these little tweaks have helped me stop fixating so much on some issues I’ve had with the beginning, issues that were holding me back from making forward progress because I knew they were there, being all…wrong.

Anyway, I hope that in a few weeks, I’ll be able to report that I’m 85% done with WIP2. Until then, I hope you enjoy some Snow Patrol. I love their live performances, which are sometimes better than their studio recordings. There’s a long introduction here, but he’s funny and cute so please humor him. ^_^