Why Editors Say No

Ring! Ring! "Hello, editing central."
"I can't find your rates anywhere on your website!"
"That's because it depends on the work, the complexity and length, and the kind of editing services desired."
I convinced the caller at the other end of the country to email her "short story" for me to look over.  It turned out to be a rather nice story poem, written in contemporary verse. I wrote back:

Hi REDACTED,

Your lovely story poem is something I would not edit. Poems are so personal and so much creative writing rather than something to convey information.  Although I might punctuate it differently, I wouldn't know if I were violating your intentions. In poetry, copyediting matters are as much the author's tool as rhyme and word selection.

 

I will offer this advice, however:  read the poem out loud, maybe even into a recorder, and listen for the places where you want the reader's voice to continue to the next line without a break, and where you want pauses or stops.  Take away any punctuation that causes a break where you don't want one, and add the appropriate marks where you want a pause or stop.

 

Punctuation ranges from "snatch a breath" (comma) to full stop (period).  Semicolons formally separate phrases that could stand alone as complete sentences; a colon indicates a medium pause but continuing in the same tone of voice because what follows is an explanation of what came before the colon.  Use ellipses and em dashes sparingly. An ellipse marks a place where the voice trails off and pauses before starting a new sentence, while an em dash is a pause like a comma, only longer and the voice continues in the same tone.  As Jay Leno says:  exactly the same, only different!

 

I see no capitalization problems, but have you seen poetry by ee cummings?  That is another poet's choice! 

 

My minimum fee for any service is two hours of my maximum charge, $70 per hour. So, if you still want me to edit it, that's what you'd have to pay.  I suspect you can tweak it yourself with the information above.

 

Please keep me in mind for your future editorial needs.

 

Yours truly,

 

Georganna Hancock
10725 Escobar Drive
San Diego CA 92124
858-571-5390
A Writer's Edge  http://www.writers-edge.info
Hancock Websites  http://www.hancockwebsites.com

 

Just yesterday, I had to explain why I would/could not help a woman with her novel--she wanted developmental editing (POV, pacing, plot) and only on a partially written manuscript.  If I could do that type of editing fiction, I told her, I would be writing novels myself! 

Quick! Somebody send some solid nonfiction so I can get all up in your words.

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Mini- Review: Write Starts

I am such a sucker for little books!  Hal Bennett's Write Starts did not sound so interesting in the PR blurb.  However, the email came from the publisher's publicity director, and she bothered to fulfill the requests I laid out for contacts: address me by name; include book stats. It was clear the review request came from a traditional publisher (third parameter), New World Library.

The author's name rang no bell, but many of us who toil in nonfiction fields garner no recognitions at all.  The facts that Zinna has over 25 years as a writing coach, workshop facilitator, developmental editor, and is the author of more than thirty books suggested this "slim volume" on jumpstarting your creativity might hold value.
It is so much more than the subtitle promises.  Reading the thoughts of a seasoned writer was such a joy, nay, a comfort.  I saw my advice echoed on printed pages and found nothing that contradicts my experiences, freely shared.

Book provided by publisher on request.
Copyright © 2010 Georganna Hancock

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Can You See Me Now?

Most browsers should display my ubiquitous puss (icon, avatar) in the address window and tab now. Maybe it shows up other places listing the blog and/or feed, too. That is, if I followed the instructions correctly from Favicon generator and free .ico image host: Favicon for your blog ~ Blogger Book (via Kit Courteney Writes out of MyBlogLog).

This blog used to sport a favicon, then it fell out in a Blogger.com template upgrade or update or some such. I was too lazy busy to find the process again. Anyway, you can dude up your blog, or any web page, with such a trinket. Is this branding? My face in every place?

My attempts to design a logo always end on the drawing board. A three-letter name does not lend itself well to a square image. I like the "AWE" in text as a short-hand method to refer to this site, but as art it "SUX". Maybe some of you more creative peoples would like to submit proposals? I'm open to something using the site colors(#FFF3DB and #996600 I think).

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Bad Writing Advice

Why would I tell you how to write badly? Or give you bad writing advice? Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, writer, and writing consultant. Among her books are Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity and Psychology Today saw some merit in having Perry produce 11 Types of Bad Writing Advice.My first reaction was to jump on it and see how I could turn it all about to provide a quick fix of "good writing advice". I'm not alone in an effort to improve life by thinking positive, casting fresh French baguettes across the ocean, as it were. If what goes around comes around, it might as well be nourishing and gourmet! So, let's see what we can do with Ms. Perry's list of bad advice to avoid: anything that limits, cramps, narrows, demeans, distracts, diverts, straitjackets, inhibits, stymies, cripples or dictates.

"Well, duh!" I thought. No, wait. There must be value here or the magazine would not have posted this blog entry, right? Let's apply critical thinking to the kinds of suggestions I give people who want to be writers or to develop their writing skills. The first that comes to mind is the one Jane Friedman uses as the title of her blog: There are no rules! And I realized Perry's piece provides examples of the types of "rules" tossed at newbies like live grenades.

The idea is to not adopt any attitude or practice that shackles you to just one way of thinking, behaving, writing, form, or style. You may think, "That's no help, Lady!", which brings me to my second iota of writing wisdom: It's all guidance, suggested methods to try out and discard if it doesn't work for you. Some of them mean, "Don't do this in excess in one piece of writing." Let me illustrate with Perry's last piece of exaggeration:

Avoid adverbs; never use the passive voice; don't start a sentence with "there are." Every one of these "rules" has been broken repeatedly to terrific effect by top writers. And while there are established formats for query letters, nonfiction book proposals, and novel synopses, for every successful sale based on those formats, there's a major exception.

Aye, here's the rub: the people we are dumping all this advice upon are not "top writers". They are the "bottom writers" (especially if they're pantsers, if you will!) I don't encourage a vertical hierarchy about much in life, so I prefer to refer to those at the center and those on the periphery, hoping to work their way into the swirl that is the writing galaxy. Those at the center did not get far if they began and persisted in "exception" mode.

The idea is first to learn to write well. When you are just starting out, don't lean on the crutches of adverbs, adjectives, do-nothing verbs, colorless nouns and "there are" constructions. You need to strengthen your writing with strong action verbs and descriptive nouns.

Just because John Updike wrote in first person and sometimes used mundane openers like "It wasn't so much that ...", peppered his works with long adjectival passages and didn't hesitate to pop in an adverb to modify an already carefully chosen verb, doesn't mean that your writing will shine if you this do, too, if that's all you can do. Updike was/is one of the brilliant suns we revolve around because of all the other writing woven through these "broken rules", brilliance that can support the lesser structures.

Yeah, yeah. Fly away! Be free! But first begin with some grounding in the basics. It's sort of like sending children to any Sunday School, so that they will have something to rebel against when it comes time to choose for themselves what to believe. Writers, like children, need a context and structure to get them off to a good start.

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Writing Classics Rock!

What fun! "Classics Rock! features popular songs based on, inspired by, or alluding to books, authors, or literary characters. How many can you think of. . . ?"

My fave, of course: Classics Rock!: Rice Anne paired with a song from Sting’s first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles.

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Renewed Fiction Market

The revamped Saturday Evening Post returns to "a quiet read," according to an AP story by Charles Wilson. He quoted Post Publisher, Joan SerVaas: "There is a void of magazines now that do emphasize art and creative writing and fiction." Not only have fiction markets dried up, magazines themselves, like newspapers, are shrinking, shrinking ... gone in many cases.

I thought the news Twitter-worthy and jumped on a friend's laptop to blurt it out to all 155 of my "followers" and anyone else who happens onto my page. The friend and I were at Starbucks discussing how to handle the weights in multiple regressions and correlations used for a meta-analysis. Yes. You can be creative with math and stats, too.

This news about the Post is worth more than a tweet. See the Post's submission guidelines which say:

We also welcome new fiction. A light, humorous touch is appreciated. We are also always in need of straight humor articles. Make us laugh, and we’ll buy it.

Lest you wonder why the hoopla, or worse yet never heard of the magazine, Wilson explained:

America's love affair with the Post and its predecessor date to 1728, when Benjamin Franklin founded the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia. New owners changed the publication's name to The Saturday Evening Post in 1821, but it remained a newspaper for decades.

So, all you beginners and funny writers, pull up your shorts and try out this new/old market.

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Writers Inspiration Alert

A sign up form for the Inspiration series of weekly one-minute messages for writers is active in the top right web page header.

The first message you receive is a welcome (also inspirational). This week's note is about holding on to your dreams of being a published writer. I'm reaching out to touch you! Anticipate a gentle kick in your writing pants and a pat on the shoulder.

If you want to subscribe without visiting the website, Flare me through Feedburner (that's what they call emailing the author) or fire up your own email service, key in "SUB" in the subject line, and send the missive to editor[AT]writers-edge.info or to the usual Gmail address for this blog (Writers.Edge).

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Take a Creativity Break

It doesn't much show, but this is what I look like after losing almost 60 lbs. Those jeans are size four, I'll have you know! A friend was kind to take this shot of me in Felicitas Park, north of San Diego, where we'd run away to play for the afternoon.

We were hot from hiking around, up and down, along Felicitas Creek, looking for mortreros, grinding holes that the Ipai (Kumeyaay) Native American women used to make flour from acorns centuries ago. We wondered why they weren't situated closer to the water, which they needed to leach tannic acid out of the grindings.

Betsy spotted a lone mortrero apart from the others, behind a boulder, and speculated that one poor woman was relegated to the hidden position, ostracized from the ancient food prep and gab fest. And therein lies a story, part of me thought, unable to let go of writing for even a few hours!

I've missed my creativity breaks, usually taken on Tuesdays in Balboa Park at one of the many museums that bless San Diego. In the winter, it is often too cold for me to roam around much outside, and I've spent five days a week for the last year at the YMCA. But yesterday, the Santa Ana winds brought warmth from the desert to the coast, making it a delightful day just to run away.

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Writing on the Radio

Stumbled into IDEAS4ALL website and thought, "What a delightful place to pick up novel notions, actions for articles, and short story sparks." Then I found the section on Arts & Culture where the top idea is:

A specialised radio station broadcasting narrative 24 hrs a day. All kinds of stories, poetry, classic literature etc. narrated over the radio. Would be great for long trips in the car, for a lie down on the sofa at home, and for the blind or non-literate.

In America, radio stations used to broadcast stories. The earliest ones I remember were soap operas and humor for adults (which I listened to anyway) and ones for children, like Howdy Doody (I think) and The Lone Ranger and The Buster Brown Show. Who can forget The Shadow and Amos 'n' Andy and so many more. This was in the time before TV had caught on, and before my family had one (1940s).

Most of those story programs migrated to television and radio lost some punch. From time to time, someone resurrects the oldie goldies here and there, but I also remember listening to "Reading Aloud" in the late 1960s. It was probably out of Boston. Every day after lunch, a big fat pregnant yours truly sprawled on our new couch to listen to another chapter of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I learned all about the habits of hobbits during that long winter, quite content to remain indoors out of the ice storms that blew across Portsmouth Harbor and right through the old house we'd rented.

Now similar programs are appearing on the Internet. Just do a search on "radio stories" or "story radio", and see what you come up with. I think a podcast would be a perfect venue for this type of program, and sure enough there's the Radio Detective Story Hour, Short Story Radio, and beginning October 27, you can listen to Halloween tales on The Writing Show.

O.K., so the Internet isn't radio, really, but what does that matter? The sound comes out of a speaker or earphones, and that's really old radio!

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What Would Happen? Creativity vs. Technology

A variation on "What if ..." that sparks the creativity to write a novel. I'm wondering what would happen on Blogger if I added subtitles to the posts? One result, I know, would be that the list of recent posts would take up way too much room in the right column.

I'm not so sure how longer titles would look on the web page and in readers using the FeedBurner RSS feed and the email version available by signing up at FeedBlitz.

Why do I want to add subtitles? Well, I never claimed to be a good headline writer. In fact, when one newspaper city editor tried to force me into writing "heads", he quickly demoted me back to reporting. Shoot! I wanted to learn how to be an editor. Without headlines. Hard to do on a small- to medium-sized paper.

Then comes the problem of keywords. Creating a title sensible enough for search engines, one that includes a desired keyword and still attracts human readers while striving to be witty -- do I ask too much of myself? I respond, "No! Just make it longer, Stupid!"

Another elaboration of the subtitle experiment suggests putting the subtitle as the first sentence of the post. Perhaps in a bold typeface? (Bold is not a verb. You don't "bold" something. The first sentence would not be "bolded".)

We'll see how that works tomorrow when I plan to post on the saga of writing a book about Writer's Block. The project is metamorphosing -- maybe out of control.

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Forcing Writer's Block

An old joke that used to make the rounds intimated that one airline company's motto was "Force to Fit". I'm not sure if it referred to airplane parts or passengers. And once I worked at a newspaper with the informal saying, "All the news that fits, we print", a takeoff on the NY Times' subhead, "All the new that's fit to print".

Writers worry a lot about fittings, too: whether this article will be a good fit with a particular magazine, if this move will fit into a career, how to fit writing into a busy schedule. The last one is a common problem both new and established writers face. And when they force the fit and finally sit, the writing sometimes won't come. Trying to force the creative impulse is similar to blocking it. Sounds counter intuitive, doesn't it, but read on.

We speak of creativity and words as "flowing", and when we're caught up in the creative moments, we're "in the flow". We experience writing as an outpouring, almost impulsive, even compulsive for some. The secret, if there is one, is to allow it to happen. Give your creative self permission to play with words. Don't dam them up and then try to channel the stream into a flume, regulating the natural tendency for the writing to occur spontaneously. If you take this approach, when you're "ready" to write, you may find the sluice gates rusted tight.

Trying to channel your writing into specific time blocks (I will write on my lunch hour every day!) can build a block against writing. Commanding your muse, so to speak, is a futile waste of energy. It can leave you with negative feelings--about yourself and your abilities, beginning a downward spiral to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let your writing out whenever it wants to come, even if you have to snatch a few minutes during a meeting to scribble in a notepad. Don't make your life schizophrenic, trying to keep your "writer self" separate. It is part of a whole person.

I'm not warning all writers of this possibility. Of course those with jobs in journalism must produce on command and during certain hours, but that is not the creative kind of writing that comes from inside the writer. And not every creative will suffer from forced labors of love, so overflowing are their fountains.

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Inspiration Resources for Writing

Got the Block? For the type of Writer's Block that makes you wail, "I can't think of anything to write about!" Here are some resources for Inspiration:

Diarist.net|links Prompts Rotations and collections of prompts for diarists or digital journalists.

Sunday Scribblings Two and a half years of weekly suggestions by Meg Genge and Laini Taylor.

Soul Food Cafe offers a varied menu of inspirational resources including A Chocolate Box and Magic Writing Tram, which may not be intuitively obvious. To use them, click on different places in the images of a box of candy and the trollley and you're taken to a thoughtful essay and writing activity suggestion. These are very different and creative!

Story Spinner Online by Bonnie Neubauer promises to provide gazillions more exercises to complete in a ten-minute time frame. Great for flash fiction!

Writing Prompts and Journal Topics from CanTeach.ca may be for elementary students, but everyone can use the dozens of writing prompts/journal topics as places from which to take off.

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Writer's Block Commitments

Do you know the differences among dreams, goals and commitments? Dreams come to us almost unbidden, although Carlos Castaneda's mentor, Don Juan, taught his followers to enter and control their dreams. The practice of guided dreaming is a long and arduous one. Let's narrow the question to daydreams. What is it about daydreams -- of writing flawlessly in the flow, being a published author, enjoying subsequent successes -- that sets them apart from goals or commitments? It is this: dreams require absolutely no energy. We don't have to do anything, and still we have our dreams. They are very seductive.

Unpublished writers who tell me proudly, "But I still have my dreams!" suggest that they experience only big visions and little actions. Dreams will not become reality without additional effort on your part. That's where the goals and commitments begin, after the dream, the vision.

A goal makes the dream more concrete, more tangible and more probable of attaining reality. Goals are part of a plan, a map. Goals can be mileposts on the road to success. In fact, I encourage celebrating all the small successes along the way to fulfilling your dream. If you plan those celebrations in advance, you will have thought out your pathway and the steps you must take to bring that dream to fruition.

Still, how many trips are planned and marked out on a map, but never taken? What's missing is making the choice to move yourself from the block that is often a fear of failure (perfectionism and procrastination are the most common expressions of this). Commitment is the promise that you will act, invest energy, inconvenience yourself, go without, do whatever it takes to reach those goals. Ironically, you will begin to find that the commitment itself becomes a source of energy and comfort when your physical side flags or your emotions drag you down. And you can renew your commitment, just as married couples renew their wedding vows--different kinds of promises--to replenish your resources.

Use various physical means to remind yourself of your commitment. Some cultures promote "promise rings" for other reasons, but there's no reason why you can't wear something to remind you of the commitment(s) you've made to fulfill your dream via the goals you've set. You can also speak your vow to others, make them public and let your friends participate and support you in reaching each goal. They will certainly be happy to join in each celebration!

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Detailing Writer's Block

The Devil is in the details could easily apply to Writer's Block. Sometimes we are hung up on a fragment we feel is vital to the story, setting, background, or action. Maybe we need to research it to have the information necessary for an accurate description--or even for an inspiration.

Using details to spark your creativity can be as simple as sitting back and cataloging your environment. Whether it is your room, your yard, the laundromat, Starbucks, the library or wherever you are trying to write, start to notice the details. Capture them with a recorder, be it electronic or old-fashioned pencil and paper. Maybe even make little drawings to accompany the words and help remind you of the experience of being there. Make that Being There.

Being There means fully present, using all your senses and your mind (more on that in a moment).

• What do you smell? How many different fragrances are wafting before your sniffer? Focus on the odor and try to detect all the components, pleasurable and not so much.
  
• Taste is more difficult, and I'm not going to tell you to go around licking everything, but do what you can and note what your tongue experiences, texture, flavor, acid, salt, sweet, savory; breathing in; breathing out; pinching your nostrils shut (no smell changes taste).
  
• Touch, within reason, every object you pass or that you can reach. Feel the various textures and describe them. Feel the temperature. Savor the sensations.
• Seeing, really Seeing, is worthy of an article all its own. Don't just pass your eyes across the scene and call it seen. Linger on each item and scrutinize it carefully. Have you ever studied people's ears? Fascinating!
• Now do the same with your ears, listening to all the music that makes up the background of your life. Separate each component and hear each noises individually. As I have previously advocated, listen in on others' conversations--priceless prose to use in a story.

If you are observing and hearing other people, your thoughts may engage in puzzling out what they are doing or talking about. Before you know it, your imagination is teased back to life wondering, wondering ... and what if?

By the time you are bored recording all this minutiae, I guarantee you will have ideas galore for resolving your temporary interruption in the flow of creativity.

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Writer's Block Surrounds

Every writer is different in temperament, circumstances, opportunities, and, yes, even in talents. One size fits all advice isn't going to work for everyone. So many different factors affect our abilities to churn up the creativity machine and let it flow out our fingers. Often we see urges to "find a quiet, private space", "play soothing (or energetic) music", drink coffee, eat chocolate, be sure to have a clean and neat desk ... some people don't even have a desk! How many writers do we see tapping away at a laptop on a tiny table in a crowded, noisy coffee shop? They may claim it's the only way they can write. One of the most productive periods of my life happened when I sat in the midst of an old-style newsroom--people yelling, teletype machines clattering and dinging, phones ringing--and banged out three stories on a manual typewriter before the 10 a.m. deadline.

Now I cannot keep a clear space even between my keyboard and the screen. It seems to be a law of my life that any flat space becomes part of my 'piling system'. Even peripherals stack up on my big office credenza. The windows open onto noisy trucks making deliveries in the alley about 30 feet away, traffic roars along the street, birds sing or chirp or lob guttural caws my way, close by neighbors go about their busy lives. I forget to play music, don't eat because crumbs are anathema to keyboards and attract ants. I do have a mug of cooling tea at hand, part of my morning routine. And I usually forget to drink it.

The point is that you develop what works for you. If nothing seems to be working for you during this temporary interruption in the flow of creativity, the good news is that you can change any or all parts of your surroundings (to a point). This seems to be the principle of running away to a vacation or writers' conference to cure Writer's Block, a drastic and expensive approach. But don't adopt my methods just because they work for me, or take advice from anyone else and get depressed if it doesn't fix your problem.

Maybe you haven't yet found the most optimal surroundings for your writing. Maybe your choices are limited and you haven't adapted to reality. Maybe surroundings don't make a damn bit of difference at all! When I'm in the flow, I notice little that goes on around me, even the passage of time. Caught up in the ecstasy of creativity, I'm surrounded only by my actions and thoughts.

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Do Writing Dreams Matter?

Of course they matter to you. "But," you may well argue, "they don't seem to matter to anyone else." We have a universal need for validation, acceptance, approval, a feeling that we "fit in" to our families, society, and life in general. No one would choose to go through life as a misfit, right?

Let's think about that for a moment. In a world without misfits, no one would feel uncomfortable around others. No one would prick our consciences. No one would act outlandish, stretching the boundaries of what is with what might be. There would be no "what if?" Reality would be a fixed agreement, possibilities nonexistent, and crazy dreams crushed before they are even spoken, maybe before they're even dreamed.

Now the landscape begins to sound bleak and life as sterile as a gulag. As much as we may individually want acceptance, as a whole we need the dreamers to thrive as a part of Life. Without the dreamers, barriers would never fall, innovation not take place, and humanity might as well be stillborn. Your dreams matter more than individuals can ever tell you to your face in critique groups or boilerplate rejection notices.

This is what is meant when you're told, "Don't take it personally." Literally, don't take the setbacks personally. The agent, editor, peers, your family and friends may not support you in the way you'd like, but they also may not realize the importance of your dreams to their own lives. To all our lives. When the rejections threaten to build into a Writer's Block for you, keep in mind that your dreams matter to the universal book of Life.

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Writing in a Positive Light

I'm seeing many requests asking how to remain positive in a world that seems to be so depressing. It looks like everything is gloom and doom: the stock market, prices for necessities, wars, babies stuck in holes, natural catastrophes ... all the media reporting negative happenings. It is true that bad news is news. Some writers feel that being surrounded by so much sadness saps their creative energies. Others point to depression as their Writer's Block. The most difficult situation to deal with must be that of a negative individual in your daily life.

One writer, and editor of the Internet Wizards magazine online, Bonnie Boots, offers 7 Steps To Staying Positive In A Negative World. I happen to know that Bonnie has survived some tough stuff in her life, and I am in awe of how she is able to not only carry on, but bounce back running. Some of her tips include:

1. Practice humor
2. Use physical reminders of positives
3. Get away from negativity

Her points for specifically handling a negative person you must deal with (an editor, perhaps?) are truly gems, but I wanted to focus on the third item above. One way to distance yourself from the negative influences in your life is to reduce your exposure to them. When I get my hands on a newspaper, I head straight for the comics section. Customers in my neighborhood Starbucks are familiar with the sound of laughter when I visit.

Tune your radios to stations that play music to either invigorate you or soothe the passions. No talk radio to inflame or lay on downers! When someone begins a rant or a conversation of complaints, don't hesitate to interrupt and jerk (if necessary) the talk back on track or to a pleasant topic. Look into yoga, meditation and other eastern practices to even your outlook. It is true that you become what you fill your mind with, so repeat positive affirmations throughout the day.

Strange as it may sound, using the Twelve Step "attitude of gratitude" can also help banish the blues. Learn to focus on the smallest blessings that surround you. Take compliments with grace and hug them to your heart. Let your mind bathe in the positivity than surrounds you, point it out to others, and as the old song says, "Accentuate the Positive".

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Writer's Block Emergency

The terms emergent and emergence are hot in several disciplines (physics, evolution theory, social sciences). From the Encyclopedia Britannica: "In the philosophy of mind, the primary candidates for the status of emergent properties are mental states and events."

The two words are, in my mind, too close to the alarming word emergency, a sudden or unexpected event which connotes danger. Writer's Block can have the aspect of an emergency or it can creep up on the victim. Better to focus on preparing the mind for the condition of emergence, which, according to the Geographical Dictionary is "The creation of new phenomena, requiring new laws and principles, at each level of organization of a complex, and often non-linear, system." Sounds like lateral thinking, huh?

To do this, we can take some cues from The Center for Creative Emergence:

• Everyone is creative and simply need the right conditions to access that infinite well.
• Focused creativity is not separate from the bottom line, but a major factor in contributing to it.
• Next-level innovative solutions require new levels of being as well as thinking.
• Comfort with change increases with consistent practice entering unfamiliar territory in non-habitual ways.
• People can transform their experience of uncertainty from one of fear to one of discovery.
• Creative thinking skyrockets motivation and breeds more relevant - and successful! - contribution.
• With safe cocreating, a group collective intelligence takes over and the “whole exceeds the sum of its parts.”

Try following one or all of these principles as first aid for a Writer's Block and as preventative medicine.

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Why Is Writer's Block?

"Creative block — or artist’s block — comes in many different forms, but they all have one thing in common: they stop you from creating what you’re capable of creating and what you long to be creating."

For a general overview of dealing with Writer's Block (temporary disruption in creativity) read Dan Goodwin's article: Creativity Coaching: Creative Block | Why You Don’t Create More. He offers a method for overcoming the negative thoughts he dubs "creative resistance".

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Breakout on Writer's Block

The first time I saw the term "breakout sessions" in a conference schedule, I wondered what acne had to do with it, but "breakout" is also associated with imprisonment. Indeed, the first definition listed in the American Heritage Dictionary is "A forceful emergence from a restrictive condition or situation."

Part of that sounds like a good description of a Writer's Block. Remember, WB is only a temporary interruption in creativity, like dammed-up water. Behind the dam is a deep, deep pool of ideas and actions, just waiting to break out. That's what I'm advocating here, "a forceful emergence" from the thinking, routine, slants, topics, maybe even "the rules" you think govern your writing (and your life).

Let's "shake things up" as the FBI agent on Bones urges his forensic team. Do something different, or differently, if that applies. Make it a radical change. Investigate subjects, ways of thinking, physical activities that you've never tried in the past.

For example: until this decade, I knew little about Islam or an existence in which religion is the law of the land. I've learned about a strikingly different way of life through intellectual exploration and friendships with Muslim women. My thinking has changed, several times, about many topics as a result of this new interest. I've read, watched programs, attended art exhibits and talked or emailed with resource people (a.k.a. my new friends).

Bring fresh new activities, topics, and thinking into your life and feel the creativity break out from a Writer's Block.

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Writer's Block of Fear

In twelve step programs, participants learn several mantras about fear and courage. For example, courage is just fear that has said its prayers. Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway. My favorite reminds me of junior high school:

Fear is

F alse
E ducation
A ppearing
R eal

Why am I talking about courage and fear in relation to a Writer's Block? Because often the true source of a temporary disruption in creativity is knotted up with one or more fears.

Finding the worm within can take a slow course, such as writing down any dream you have (even a daymare) and analyzing it, but then you risk the paralysis of analysis. In other posts we've already explored the critical voices from childhood whose echoes haunt the chambers of our minds. Contemporary sources promoting veiled fears can include an unsupportive significant other, a too-critical critique group, still living relatives who doubt your potential for success, and friends whose attitudes promote a budding writer's self-doubt.

Of all these undermining attitudes, the one that matters most is your own. Even if you are unaware of the negative messages your psyche is sending your mind to generate fears about writing, YOU ARE STILL IN CONTROL. You can effectively counter the fears by two types of action. Just like the old song says, "Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative."

Learn to use a list of affirmations about the successful writing career you envision. Fill your outer life with people who give your spirit a boost, understand your goals, and offer support. Yes, you may have to drop out of the family for a while, get new replacement friends, find a different critique group, join a gym, go for counseling if necessary. Just do it!

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Thinking Around a Writer's Block

You can look at a Writer's Block as a problem to be solved (rather than only wallowing in the drama and angst of the moment). Edward de Bono suggested that creative people need to incorporate lateral thinking into their repertoire:

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place. Edward de Bono

In an article for The Journal for Quality and Participation (Vol. 11-3), de Bono described types or categories of thinking that you can use to bypass your block:

Metacognitive -- thinking about thinking

Positive -- benefits and workability

Negative -- cautionary judgements

Provocative -- finding changes, alternatives

Informative -- assessing available facts

Intuitive -- unjustified feelings

I've redesignated the kinds of thinking because I find the metaphor of colored hats a weak tool, but feel free to research de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" system for yourself. These kinds of thinking about your Writer's Block can be used in any order or sets. I've presented them here in a series that more or less alternates right-brain, left-brain functions to provide more opportunity to shake up your process and jog you into thinking along a lateral track to success.

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Writer's Block and Depression

Much research and writing goes on about creativity and depression. Creativity is the opposite side of Writer's Block. It's the flip side in the recordings of our writing lives. Depression can also be a two-sided coin: an impediment to our work or a catalyst. If you suffer with depression and feel it is holding you back, consider this list of famous writers thought to have had depression:

• Mark Twain
• Charles Dickens
• William Faulkner
• Mary Shelley
• Isak Dinesen

This is from an appendix in Kay Jamison's Touched With Fire; Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. According to Amazon, "Jamison marshals a tremendous amount of evidence for the proposition that most artistic geniuses were (and are) manic depressives."

The good new is that depression is sometimes only temporary, and it is treatable and manageable when a chronic condition. (And we don't all need to be geniuses or crazy to be creative.) Still, depression can sometime hamper our production. It makes us dull, slothful and fosters the "I don't give a damn about anything" attitude. This can also translate for writers into, "I can't think of anything to write" or simply, "I'm stuck!"

When writers fall prey to a of lack of creativity, it can result from or lead to a depressive cycle of I can't write -- My writing is no good -- I'm no good -- I don't deserve to be a writer -- I can't write. Break out! Whether with self-help methods like affirmations, with counseling or with a course of antidepressant medication (or any combination), taking action can be one of the most powerful antidotes to depression that we have in our survival tool kit.

The truth is that you are fine just as you are. Don't use a permanent solution (like giving up) for a temporary problem.

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Balancing Writer's Block

Writing is like crossing the Grand Canyon on a tightrope. Sounds impossible, yes? You know where to start, firmly anchored with an idea. And you know the end, a polished, finished piece. In the center is a yawning chasm one mile deep with sharp rocks and a raging river at the bottom. This looks like an endeavor fraught with danger. But all you really must do to succeed is put one foot in front of the other without losing your balance. Start and finish. Simple.

Most of us are blessed with the ability to walk, or we have some means of moving, even if only in our minds, so that leaves balancing, the tricky part. I'll leave the tightrope metaphor here, because I have no experience in that area, and anyway I don't want to beat it to death. I'm sure you get the picture by now. Balance is an important element in becoming and remaining a successful writer.

Several different kinds of balancing support creativity:

• physical
• emotional
• intellectual

These are my top three. Losing balance in any of them can block progress.

PHYSICAL

Although "just sit and write" is often hurled at beginners as the cure for Writer's Block, spending too much time sitting at the computer or curled up with your notebook can work against you. Muscles stiffen, eyes burn, the brain drains. The writing part of your life, like everything else it seems, needs physical exercise and variations. Neglect to move around and you may have more than one type of constipation!

EMOTIONAL

It's good to be emotionally invested in your writing. That's part of being committed, and your enthusiasm affects the writing. Too much investment, however, elicits irrational fear of rejection and fosters the myth of the "lonely writer". Keep building connections with other people in your life, spend time with your family and work on improving any troublesome relationships. We writers need the emotional support of others, and sometimes we need to ask for it in plain terms. Fall in love with writing and life, not your characters.

INTELLECTUAL

A novel can easily take over a writer's mind. I used to hear my characters having conversations when I was not at the keyboard. Spooky! The brain needs a break from writing activities, too. Depending on whether you are creating fiction or nonfiction work, the "other" side of the mind can benefit from stimulation from different creative arts or left brain challenging activities like working Sudoku puzzles, preparing tax forms, and home fix-it repairs.

Keeping your life in balance is a good preventative measure for warding off Writer's Blocks, as well as potential cures. Good for the writer in any case, good for those around you, and good for life in general. Take a cue from Mother Nature: balance is everything.

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Women's Day, History Month

Saturday, March 8th, is International Women’s Day and all of March celebrates women in history. The 2008 National Women's History Project has a focus on women in the arts. One of my most enjoyable re-creational experiences was discovering the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, where I purchased their lovely eponymous book, published by Harry N. Abrams in 1987 and apparently out of print now. Viewing and celebrating sister artists' creations is one method of renewing your well of creativity.

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Writing Through Writer's Block

Avoiding the empty page. Staring at the blank screen. Puzzled at a pause. Stopped at the end of a sentence. You've come to the start of a Writer's Block. Nothing is coming. "I have no more to write," -- or so you think. Right here, right now, on the same page, begin a new section and write about this temporary interruption in creativity. *

• How or where did it start?
• What does the block feel like?
• How do you feel about yourself?
• What were your plans?
• What do you need to continue?

When you've exhausted these and any other issues you can think up about your block, cut and paste this section into a new document (if you're working on a computer) and "play" with it. Shape it up into an article, a blog post, a journal entry. Turning it into a salable article might include listing methods to prevent or overcome this particular form of Writer's Block. Maybe you will need to do a little research, digging up references.

At any rate, you will have been writing. Not blocked at all. In the process, you will gain insight into your feelings and thoughts, perhaps about the original piece, perhaps about yourself as a creative producer, and perhaps about writing itself.

* reframing the problem can help overcome it

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Squeeze Copyright to Stifle Creativity

The Harry Potter brouhaha playing out in British courts threatens the "fair use" provision of copyright law, or so says New York Times business columnist, Joe Nocera, in A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity. In a tight nutshell, the case involves a website publisher who announced he was about to present a companion book (long a standard practice in the fiction world) for profit. The problem? The product for sale was to be a portion of the Harry Potter Lexicon, also very much for the profit of the publisher. Nocera claims the "fair use" portion of copyright law, "allows anyone to create something new based on someone else’s art."

Perhaps J. K. Rowling and the handlers of her empire don't think an encyclopedia of Harry Potter terminology is something new. After all, it was Rowling who created the Harry Potter world and everything therein. Nocera implies Rowling is suing because no one asked her permission (read: paid for a license or franchise) to produce this new book.


Really, how creative is it to list words and their uses in someone else's novel? Sounds more like a specialized form of editing to me, like indexing or preparing a glossary for a manuscript. Not exactly original work. Certainly nothing new. The information in the website itself comes from established sources.

I realize I'm arguing against my own forté, nonfiction. But I'm thinking like a fiction writer of a successful enterprise, wanting to keep creative control, as they say in the movie biz.

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Learning to Write from John Baker

British author John Baker wrote a series of 31 articles about learning creative writing in his blog. They began in June 2006 with Learning to Write I - John Baker’s Blog. At the end of that first piece are links to the other 30 articles, ending with one in June 2007. You don't absolutely need to read them in order, and I wouldn't dare to reproduce each tidbit here, but this is a handy list of the links to all the juicy parts:

Table of contents for Learning To Write from John Baker's Blog

1. Learning to Write I
2. Learning to Write II
3. Learning to Write III
4. Learning to Write IV
5. Learning to Write V
6. Learning to Write VI
7. Learning to Write VII
8. Learning to Write VIII
9. Learning to Write IX
10. Learning to Write X
11. Learning to Write XI
12. Learning to Write XII
13. Learning to Write XIII
14. Learning to Write XIV
15. Learning to Write XV
16. Learning to Write XVI
17. Learning to Write XVII
18. Learning to Write XVIII
19. Learning to Write XIX
20. Learning to Write XX
21. Learning to Write XXI
22. Learning to Write XXII
23. Learning to Write XXIII
24. Learning to Write XXIV
25. Learning to Write XXV
26. Learning to Write XXVI
27. Learning to Write XXVII
28. Learning to Write XXVIII
29. Learning to Write XXIX
30. Learning to Write XXX
31. Learning to Write XXXI

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Blank Page Writer's Block

You've been chugging along, cranking out, well, whatever it is that you do involving words strung together, probably for profit. Maybe you've been at it for a few weeks or even quite a few years with successes spurring you on. Perhaps you've never even experienced a "temporary creativity interruption" in your life. You start a new project and POW! [comic book eruption]. Nothing happens. Usually writing happens, but this time you sit there and stare at the blank page.

Now, all the naysayers who deny Writer's Block even exists will tell you to apply seat of pants to seat of chair and write. To stop being lazy and looking for excuses. Just do it. Blah, blah, blah. It's all baaaaad advice because you have been producing, you did show up, you are perspiring (by now, it's possibly from panic.) And most of all, you have been doing it. You're obviously not lazy and you weren't looking for an excuse not to write, or you wouldn't have shown up atthe appointed time and place all ready to go AS USUAL. Your expectation was that things would go on the same as always, but this is a different experience and calls for a different tactics.

Many other advisers (myself included, at times) will suggest that you take a break, maybe visit museums, cross-pollinate with other arts, take a walk or even take a few days off from writing. These quick fixes work when the writer discovers she doesn't know enough about medieval basket weaving or he is stressed out by the new twins. IF you can analyze your state and determine no lack of knowledge or planning is holding you up and no emotional or psychological cause has plugged up your font of creativity, THEN I have a radical suggestion:

Put writing on a hiatus. Take a sabbatical. Make it a real vacation from this type of work, but don't throw it out of your life, just ease your pot of now simmering creative juice to one of the back burners. If you need immediate income, take a temporary job (at its worst, you'll be exposed to new characters, dialog and plot ideas). And that's what you can always tell busybodies who snoop into your business -- "I'm doing research for a new article/book/website."

While your mind is relatively empty, it's time to recharge the batteries of your senses. Notice the fragrances, colors, sounds, tastes and touches all around you. Focus on one sense at a time, then the zeitgeist, near and far. Be good to yourself, indulge and play, maybe even revisit childhood activities. Try something new and expand your horizons. And do it all as long as you need to. You're opening a door and who knows what will stroll in? Maybe your missing muse, or maybe a whole new life.

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Can Your Book Heal the World?

It is true that much of my advice about writing and getting published is practical, intellectual and market-oriented. In the interest of providing a balance, I direct your attention to Naomi Rose's recent article at the Creativity Portal. In Your Book Can Heal the World: Looking in the Mirror of Our True Nature, she makes a good case for authenticity in writing, despite the industry's apparent fixations on what she calls the 3 P's of "Promotion, Profitability, and Platform."

The healing aspect comes in when you bring your deeper Self into the telling. And you do this by:
1. learning how to listen to what’s inside your heart,
2. trusting its (often initially nonverbal) ways of making its message known to you, and
3. learning how to translate that inner sensing into written language that
* carries out the deeper Self’s intention, and also
* naturally rises into metaphor and poetry

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Writers Tackle TMIS

Right now my "To Do" list reads:

Write a memoir
Resume watercolor painting
Redesign A Writer's Edge website
Start a book on cooking
Secure a paid blogging gig
Sell excess junk in house
Advertise for more editing jobs
Edit or create a new blog on cooking

Abmitious? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes! I printed the list in large text and taped it to the front of my printer where it is in view every time I sit to compute. Result: I futz around going from one project to another, accomplishing little. It's too much to do to reach ta daa!

That's why I was delighted to find Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant's article on Creativity: Overcoming Too Many Ideas Syndrome. Skip the lengthy introduction and ignore the cutsy subtitles and you'll find nine suggestions for coping with TMIS, including to talk about the ideas with other writers, use mental imagery to manage the mess and evaluate all the ideas to find the best one on which to focus. Some of the notions she recommends are conflicting, so it's up to you to find what works best in your situation. This could be a goal for your new year: get your ideas organized.

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Bust the Writer's Block

From Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story by Barbara Abercrombie:

To live your own true and precious life, you need to express yourself and make your inner life as important and known as your visible life. Whether you’re published or not, you need to turn the chaos and the glimpses of beauty, the questions and the search for answers, the days and months and years of your life into something meaningful on a page.

Sometimes all those bits and pieces glom together to build up a creative block. Just too much information, too many experiences, feelings, people, relationships overload our writing circuits and plug up the flow.

The good news is that out of this chaos, you can choose to own the mess and design an orderly arrangement that allows creative construction. Busting the block is deconstruction, selecting the elements on which to focus. Incorporate and discard features as you experiment with a piece of writing. If it isn't working--fix it. Don't fear experimentation. No one will penalize you for overproduction and flops. We'd never see Broadway successes if playwrights and producers didn't take repeated risks.

Each day, as you age, fragments of life add to your store of ideas, memories, experiences on which to draw. If you're the type to compartmentalize and pigeon-hole this material, you have a tidy, orderly inner castle. The downside is a tendency to rigidity that needs occasional messing up in order to play the "what if ... " game which nurtures imagination and creativity. At the other end of the continuum, if you can simply absorb what life tosses your way and let it pile up inside, a little housecleaning and organization can help you find the order necessary to make sense and make art.

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Think Outside the Writer's Block Box

Let's face it: when you're suffering with Writer's Block, you're in a box. You might feel like there's no way out, not a ray of light, and you're suffocating. The good news is that you've probably built that box or placed yourself in it. Blocks are usually constructed within your own mind. Do you really have to be there? Can you change the material, bend the bars, open a window?

This reminds me of my early art experiences with big, fat waxy crayons and printed books of images I was expected to fill in with colors. If the print had been more faint, the cute kittens and puppies would have disappeared into the background, because I was unable to STAY INSIDE THE LINES! I was more interested in what might be happening in the background, because I knew puppies and kitties didn't just hang in featureless space. Coloring outside the lines is thinking outside the box.

One of the best examples I know about writing is the recent development of memoir writing. Prior to the late 1980s, life story writers were constrained by the limitations of autobiography or personal essay. Then some brave souls broke out of those box/blocks to run free with tense and voice and time, mingling then and now, the person I was with the person I am, the tale with the teller. Thinking outside that traditional box was coloring outside the lines, making for a richer, layered, more colorful creation.

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Participate in Writing

You can interpret this title in several equally applicable ways. One was demonstrated on Oct. 15 with the Blog Action Day post. Another is way is simply to participate in writing, by writing. The act of writing can be therapeutic to the self and/or beneficial to others. The type of participatory writing I have in mind, however, happens when the writer takes part in the subject/event/topic being written about. This could get a little dicey for murder and horror writers, so don't get carried away like the Mexican Arrested in Dismemberment Case.

When I was writing a novel with occult elements, in addition to research, I performed some of the tamer rituals with benign intent. Summoning up feelings a character might experience enabled me to write more effectively. Similarly for articles I've gone to sea with treasure divers and on a mercy mission with the Coast Guard, meditated walking on a path Franciscan friars traveled before the this country existed, eaten rattlesnake and wild foods, watched a recovery of drowning victims' bodies, and had many other experiences most people don't ordinarily take part in.

The saddest example was writing the obituary for a friend. I like to think that event is balanced by my documentation of the joyful natural birth of my first child. Women can totally participate! As long as it injures no one or you understand any risks you might be taking, I encourage you to get out and experience in person, in reality. Your writing will take on more vivid hues and a depth not possible otherwise.

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Creative Escapism for Writers

As you may know, I regularly take breaks from writing and expose myself to other forms of expression. I hope for a "cross pollination of creativity". Touring an art exhibit almost always gives me ideas to follow up in my own media. Creativity coach Eric Maisel offers advice about Taking a Creative Escape. He urges breaking out of your rut every two weeks with activities like these:

Find running water--a river, a stream, a burbling public fountain--and sketch there; or just daydream.

Go to a bookstore, pull out all the books on Paris, take them to a table in the bookstore cafe, and visit Paris for three hours over coffee and an almond biscotti.

Set up a casual informational interview with someone whose work or profession interests you

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Text with Pictures

A ramble through the art museums this week reminded me of an urge I experienced at one time to create a series of paintings with accompanying text. I don't recall if the picture was to illustrate the text or the text to explain the picture. Either way, this notion now feels to me fundamentally wrong. I'm thinking that if a picture needs a verbal description to be understood, then the artist has failed, but it doesn't seem so much that the reverse is true. Why is this? An illustration can illuminate, deepen, clarify. Does this mean the writer has failed? Maybe. When an artist takes inspiration from text, though, is it reasonable to expect the resulting art to be a "readable" message all by itself ... or, if you will, just pleasing to view without needing to know the passage that prompted it? Am I a victim of my own fuzzy thinking?

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Habits to Prevent Writer's Block

Not to become obsessive/compulsive, but developing little rituals or habits surrounding starting to write can help prevent, and possibly overcome, the kind of Writer's Block in which you sit down to write and nothing comes. In fact, this very type of block can be considered a habit--a bad one. Fortunately, from self-help psychology we've learned that it takes three weeks to develop a bad habit and three weeks to unlearn it by substituting a good one.

What kind of habit to develop? It doesn't really matter, as long as you practice it consistently, every time you attempt to write. Some people like to light candles or incense, play certain music, clean and arrange a desktop, assure an ergonomically correct posture, even to blog as a way of priming the pump, so to speak. For others the simple procedures of starting their computers, opening a word processing program and finding or setting up the right file can do the trick.

When I write by hand, I MUST have a certain kind of ink pen (black Uni-ball Micropoint, if you're interested), unless I'm writing poetry. Then I need a sharp pencil, with or without a functioning eraser. And I prefer being curled up on my couch with a full-size composition-style notebook. And lots of tea to drink. It's as if these signals tell my mind, "O.K., you're ready to write creatively."

This procedure of developing a set of habits to foster writing works best if first attempted when you aren't suffering from a block. Otherwise, you risk associating them with failure. Start with several elements. When you feel them firmly in place, you can begin to reducing the number gradually, one at a time, until maybe you need only one activity or object to induce the desired result.

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Newspapers' Failures Online

Pity the poor papers! With more people than ever claiming to receive their daily news via the Internet, is it any wonder the papers have gone online and experimented with every available electronic gimmick? Some are successful, although the last bastions of subscription-only services are falling soon with the NY Times and Wall Street Journal opening up. For an online look at online flops by papers, read this special article at the Editor and Publisher website.

I like the attitude shown by one paper's editor:

Still, veteran Web spinners such as Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com's executive editor, understand the need for online operators to hit some snags and stumbles if they truly want to succeed. "Failure isn't to be feared on the Web, it is to be embraced," he says. "If you are not failing, you are not stretching as much."

It's a good example for today's celebration of Positive Thinking Day!

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Reading for Writer's Block

Not to develop a writer's block, but to get around one. And I am not necessarily suggesting reading about it, although much material is available from Amazon about writer's block! In general, reading can help with several different kinds of literary constipation. Take my friend Susie, for example. She was having problems starting to write a mystery novel. Part of the story involved a New Age healer who used crystals.

"Do you know anything about the topic?" I asked.

"Just that it exists," she confessed.

Suse is lucky enough to be able to buy any book she wants, so we browsed through a big box book store and found a perfect reference on the topic. She probably could have found something similar in the public library. Later Susie said that reading about the different types of crystals, especially their uses, gave her several plot points and got her out of the writing slump.

Let's look at what really happened: reading something related to what she was writing about fulfilled two functions to ease her writer's block. First it filled a knowledge gap she hadn't realized was holding her back. Secondly, it provided sparks of inspiration that ignited her zest for writing again.

Read around the block.

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Screenwriter Movie

If you have a broadband Internet connection, you've got to see The Screenwriter Movie from Sceneplay (it also requires Flash). This is one of the most soothing, best-constructed videos on creativity that I've ever seen for free. Sure, it's a tease to get you to visit a commercial website, Sceneplay.net, but it's a subtle tease. Palatable. Be sure to turn on your speakers, because the soundtrack is lovely. Beware, too ... it may expand your mind a bit. The parent website offers a free newsletter that boasts "SceneZine is the only regular publication focused exclusively on the basic building block of great scripts."

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Jump Over a Writer's Block

Having promised to write about Writer's Block weekly, I think I've fallen down on the job. I wasn't blocked, honest! If you aren't completely blocked, write the parts you know first.

Then jump ahead in your story or novel and write a scene you know will take place. You might even write the ending. There's no rule that says your writing must be linear. I often have the climax scene in mind before I start a piece of fiction.

If you're writing non-fiction, write a chapter or section that you already know how to handle. Again, nothing dictates in what order you write a book or an article or essay. At the end, you can rearrange parts to make it flow smoothly. Sometimes I just get it all down on paper, labeling the sections A, B, C etc., then put those parts where they seem to fit and finally write transitions between.

Have you tried jumping your block? Does this method work for you?

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Persistence, Not Muse

Many conversations in creative writing especially circle around the idea of a writer's "muse", the mythical source of inspiration and genius. "How do I ignite my muse?" beginners ask, as if it were a sparkplug. "She has deserted me!" Abandonment issues? Here's the secret: discipline, not myth, pays off.

Barbara Kingsolver majored in biology at DePauw University in Indiana, and then got a master's degree in evolutionary biology. She was working on a Ph.D. thesis on the social lives of termites when she decided to abandon a career in science and try to become a writer. She took a job as a technical writer, which forced her to sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day and do nothing but write.

She later said, "I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done." Kingsolver went on to success writing both novels and nonfiction books.

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Learn About Digital Media

Ourmedia: Learning Center "is a rich educational resource for everything you wanted to know about user-created video, audio, and other forms of citizens' media." More reliable than a wiki, because it is edited. This resource is part of a larger "post your own" citizen journalism site, less silly (and predating) YouTube and the like, according to its own statement. An Open Media Directory provides information and links to free, legal music, audio, video clips and photos for your videos, podcasts and more. When I looked into all the instruction that's available for a multitude of digital media, I could see myself spending the rest of my life learning!

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Poetry According to Kowit

What a humbling experience it was to dialog with nationally-known poet Steve Kowit! He talked with our writers' group last night on a wide range of aspects of poetry. First he read one of his own poems and casually mentioned that Ginsberg (the late, great Allen, the Beat poet) told him he'd riffed on it, just as Kowit had written it based on one of Pablo Neruda's poems, "Enigma". What a web of connections poets weave! I knew we prose writers rip off one another (there are only so many topics and a set number of facts to use), but it had never occurred to me that each poem was not individual.

Kowit mentioned he's a reactionary. I asked him to elaborate. He said he's rebelling against modernism and post-modernistic poetry with all its vague incomprehensibility. "That has lost poetry readers," he declared, explaining that he wants his poems to be accessible (understandable) to everyone. While discussing the "meaning" of a poem he'd read aloud, I floated the notion that a poem means what it means to the reader. He gently rejected this idea, declaring that poetry is communication, so there must be a message and it is the poets job to make the message clear. I still wonder about ye who have ears.

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Book Marketing, Self Promotion

Tim Ferriss blogs about his formula for hitting highs on bestseller lists in How Does a Bestseller Happen? A Case Study in Hitting #1 on the New York Times.

The conclusion, in retrospect, is simple... It all came down to learning how to spread a "meme", an idea virus that captures imaginations and takes on a life of its own.

Doing that, however, included skipping the traditional book tours and signings and hitting the blogs:

* Go where bloggers go
* Be there with a message and a story that will appeal to their interests, not yours
* Build and maintain those relationships through your own blog too

The strategies he implemented were a tad more complicated, involving those to Phenomenize, Polarize and Communitize. He also notes needs to sell himself first, ensure boffo distribution for the book, and (oh, yeah) smashing writing. His book? The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, but that hardly matters. We're talking about a process here and using current technology to sell an old one.

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Find Article Ideas Easily

Working on a new website for an up and coming author has kept me busy the last couple of weeks. Rather than continue to neglect the Writing Help page here, I persuaded Bonnie Boots to let me swipe one of her great articles from The Internet Wizards Magazine site. Bonnie gave the piece a title too long to fit in the space where I list the free articles, so I've called the subject "Article Ideas". Bonnie describes her system for freelancers to come up with great article ideas all year long. You could also use the system to overcome a writer's block on what to write about. Here are quick links to the other free articles now available:

Book Signing Tips
Give and Take Critiques
Write for the Web
About Agents
Copyrights

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Writers on Vacation

Hello? Hello? Is anybody out there? Or are you all on vacation, taking it easy and not commenting on blogs? I don't believe I've ever seen such a long stretch without at least one comment on each post ... or none at all on a page. You would let me know if the comment function wasn't working, wouldn't you? I know some of you don't have a Blogger account and philosophically object to having to register someplace just to comment. I felt the same way when previously unbarred websites like the NY Times started requiring registration just to read the freebie articles. However, it does usually keep out the spam-a-lot riff-raff.

Speaking of writers on vacation, do you make the most of yours if you take a trip? Because I enjoyed my work so much, hauling along a camera, tape recorder, notepad and pens didn't seem like a chore. Taking notes on places the family visited wasn't neither difficult nor intrusive and often brought us perks the usual tourist didn't receive (guided tours, access to usually locked spaces, interesting tidbits we wouldn't have otherwise heard about).

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Write a Story Online

An interesting new (to me) online service called Our Story provides multiple possibilities for writers. You could use it as a creativity tool, design a different kind of memoir, build a feature for your website or blog, collaborate with others in creating a story. They call it a timeline, and on the surface a snapshot of it looks like this:

However, churning below the surface of this video (it scrolls to the right when it is activated) are descriptions of the events depicted on the timeline. The website offers both free and premium accounts. See the Examples page for more ways to use this feature-rich technological service.

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Runaway Writers

Running away from your problems is only a sometimes solution. If the problem is within yourself, well, wherever you go, there you are. And your problems drag along behind, but eventually catch up to you. However, creative people can use a different kind of running away to recharge their creative batteries and get over a Writer's Block slump. The escape may be as drastic as a tropical vacation or as simple as a walk in a local park, sitting by a lake or other body of water (I like running streams). It is a beneficial practice to schedule regular breaks from writing work, both for physical exercise and mental revival. Expose yourself to other forms of creative endeavors, even if you have no immediate interest in them. You don't necessarily need to participate in another medium; just observing and soaking up someone else's creative vibes can rejuvenate your own.

Every week I try to visit museums and shows that cover the gamut of arts and crafts. I usually learn something new, make new connections, deepen my understanding of the creative process. Sometimes I lurk behind a docent or professor giving students a tour. Yesterday I heard explanations of why Harry Callahan's photography was so innovative 50 years ago. It was the second time I'd visited that show at the Museum of Photographic Arts. I still don't think much of those photos, but I know a tidbit more about the evolution of photography as an art form. I can see the relationship to composition that I'm reading about in a book on painting with acrylics. None of this is immediately applicable to anything I'm writing about, but expanding my thinking and making new connections can't be detrimental and may help. Anyway, it was good to run away from the computer and walk about for a few hours.

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