Category: Writing

You Know You’re a Writer When…

Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, I always balk at the idea of saying, “I’m a writer.”

The reason is that I don’t make a living by my writing. I aspire to, of course, but if we’re basing things on paychecks, and most people do, then I’m a teacher. However, were I to die mysteriously, and the cops came to my home to investigate, the lead detective would undoubtedly proclaim, “Well, she was a writer.”

Now, isn’t that a heartening thought?

This morbid notion popped into my head yesterday as I was avoiding work by tidying up my writing nook. So, how would said detective figure out my secret identity of “Writer?” as she searched my home?

#1: Writers Tend to Collect Notebooks

Let’s start with my stack of five beautiful notebooks, most still empty, that I’ve collected over the course of this past year. Don’t roll your eyes at me. Five is a fantastic example of self-restraint, people! I could easily have bought so many more.

Haven’t you ever caught sight of a notebook, sighed as you picked it up, caressed its cover and flipped through the blank pages, tracing your fingers down the perfect lines printed therein to feel the grain of the paper? No? Huh. Weird.

What is it about notebooks that I find so irresistible?

Maybe it’s the potential of an empty notebook that attracts me. So many pages to be filled. So much potential fun to be had in the process of filling said pages. Obviously, I write on a computer (ahem), but whenever I’m feeling blue or restless or romantic or nostalgic or anxious, I turn to the comfort that comes with grabbing a beloved writing implement and making marks on paper in a notebook. Every morning, I journal three pages of whatever dribbles out of my brain before my day gets going. (That’s a tiny lie. I grind the beans and ready the french press and pour myself a mug of coffee first). It’s wonderful, and for my morning pages I have a favorite fountain pen dedicated to that activity and no other.

That brings me to the second piece of evidence that the detective would use to identify me post-mortem as a Writer: my collection of fountain pens.

#2: Writers Tend to Collect Pens

I doubt there’s a writer alive who doesn’t understand my love affair with notebooks. I mean, I can’t go into a store and not wander until I find the office supply aisle so I can check to make sure they don’t have a fabulous notebook that must be rescued and taken home. And if it’s an office supply store? Forget about it.

But not everyone knows the secret joys of a good fountain pen. I’ve written before of my pen obsession in my post about Scrivener. The pen affair started with me watching the Quentin Tarantino film Inglorious Bastards.

Uh… you fell in love with fountain pens watching a movie about killing Nazis?

You bet I did! Early on in the film, there is a quiet and yet hyper-intense interrogation scene in which Christoph Waltz’s character pulls out a 1940’s era fountain pen, disassembles it, inks it carefully, reassembles it, and begins to record information. The scene wasn’t even over before I thought to myself, “I have GOT to get a fountain pen!”

So, I did. After a bit of online research (unsurprisingly, there is a thriving online community of people even more obsessed with fountain pens than I am), I settled on a Pilot Metropolitan in a respectable black finish.

Note that my gold pen is NOT there. The gold pen is private.

That’s not the pen I journal with, though.

See, I loved that first fountain pen so much that I bought another one with a silver finish to match it. Then I bought one with a gold finish. That third pen turned out to be my favorite, and it’s the one I journal with every morning. Then I bought… more fountain pens.

I’m up to nine now. When I finish my master’s program in creative writing at Lesley University this summer, I plan on treating myself to a gorgeous retractable fountain pen that I tested out at the Bromfield Pen Shop in Boston. It’s a little pricier than my $20 Metropolitans, but it’s SO going to be worth it.

The thing about fountain pens is this, though. They require the proper paper to be truly enjoyed.

#3: Writers (sometimes) Know Way Too Much About Paper

You can’t just grab any old notebook and write in it with a fountain pen. The moment you try, and I’m speaking from direct personal experience here, you will discover (perhaps for the first time) that not all paper is the same. In fact, most paper in most notebooks is crap. The second you touch even an extra fine fountain pen nib to a sheaf of paper, the quality of that paper will be revealed by how much bleeding and feathering of ink you get. Bond weight is a thing I now ask (hapless) salespeople about, as is paper finish and fiber blend.

And what I now know is this: there is NO relationship between the price of a notebook and the quality of the paper within.

Moleskin? Bleck. Those lovely leather bound tomes of blank pages adorning the shelves at Barnes and Noble? Ugh. You’d better choose a subpar writing implement if you’re going to use those babies to record your deep thoughts or your next best seller. The 25 cent, one subject, spiral bound Staples brand notebooks? Glorious. The paper handles a fountain pen like a dream.

Which is why, when madam detective moves from my writing desk adorned with my stack of lovely notebooks and my somewhat ridiculous collection of fountain pens (and inks. So many inks, but I won’t go there), to open the office closet, she will stand and gape at the stack of almost forty 1-subject Staples brand notebooks that I’ve hoarded there. Hey, you never know when Staples stops making those bad boys or changes the paper they use in them.

In conclusion, I pay the bills by teaching, and so I’m prone to telling people that I’m a “Teacher.” In my heart (and my psyche), however, I am a Writer and I’ve left plenty of evidence to prove it.

Do you have a favorite pen that you love? Are you a sucker for a blank notebook with a pretty cover? Come one, I know I’m not the only one with this affliction.

October 1, 2017
I Teach, I Write, I Parent, I Busy!

Excuse me, Miss Granger? Could I borrow that time turner for a moment?

Yeah, Yeah, I know. We’re all busy. We all wear a lot of different hats in life. I teach, I write, and I parent. It doesn’t always happen in that particular order. Priorities shift daily. Time bleeds out of my as if I’ve severed some existential artery. Last night, I fell into bed at 9:00pm like a corpse. This morning I woke feeling not much livelier than an awkwardly reanimated corpse. Why in the name of Odin am I so tired?!

That was the question I had on my brain when I sat down to do my morning pages. [side note: I’m back at Julie Cameron’s self-guided course The Artist’s Way. Journaling daily in the mornings is part of the program]

…anyway, I just could not understand the level of fatigue plaguing me this morning after getting an amazing eight full hours of sound sleep last night. Is my thyroid slowing down? Am I developing a vitamin D deficiency (again)? Could low-grade depression triggered by the start of a new school year be the culprit? What? What am I missing?

So, I recapped this past week, I wrote everything out on paper. Once I saw it all, I was flabbergasted but had my answer. I am busy! Like, Hermione Granger with her time turner level busy.

Between lesson planning forward a few weeks (necessary to keep me from completely losing my mind) for three different high school science courses, scoring varsity volleyball games, prepping way too many solutions for a diffusion and osmosis lab, doing one-on-one check-in’s and phone calls with my new advisees and their parents, attending my bi-monthly meeting for the North Shore Writer’s Group, getting my eldest to Scouts, and meeting my Friday submission deadline for the Widgets & Wizards novel-writing class I’m taking as part of my graduate studies, I was in near constant motion. And, like a complete goober, I decided to start lightly restricting the ridiculous volumes of food I was shoving into my face so I might stand a chance of losing a bit of the weight I put on during my first year of grad school (you know, so I can fit back into my work clothes and not look obscene).

The start of a new school year always knocks me down for a few days. It’s the sudden shift in mental alertness that does it. This year, though, this year I feel like I’ve got a brutal case of jet lag mixed with seasonal allergies and a touch of the flu. And the load doesn’t look like it’s going to be lightening up any time soon. This coming week is even busier than last week was. Tonight it’s a PTO meeting. Tomorrow I’ll be back at the volleyball scoring table, and Thursday night I’ll be leaving the house at 7:00am and returning home from my teaching day at 9:00 pm thanks to it being “Parent’s Visiting Night.”

If I’m going to make my next submission deadline, I’m going to have to be on my organizational A-game. Part of that means MAKING TIME TO WRITE! Parenting might have to take a back seat to the teaching and writing this week. Thank Thor I’ve got a loving and supportive spouse who, because they’re a creative individual who went back to school to study their specific creative medium, understands and supports me and is willing to step in and pick up the slack when necessary. And this week it will be very, very necessary.

Last night, I added another 800+ words to my WIP. Today, I need to match that or do even better. I got a very encouraging note from my mentor this morning saying I’d nailed my MC’s voice in my last submission, so I’m feeling optimistic that I’m on the right track.

As for writing, [deep breath, cracks knuckles, swigs coffee], here we go.

What times in your year do things tend to pile up on you?

September 12, 2017
Why Did I Try Writing a Book in the First Person POV?!

This past Wednesday, I took part in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group’s monthly blog hop. The prompt dealt with trying new things and surprising yourself with your writing. My response to that prompt lives here. I am not a professional blogger, nor do I aspire to become one. I’ve only been tracking my adventures and misadventures in the writing realm for a couple of months at this point, so that post is long and rambling.

Since writing it, though, my mind has returned to the question again and again. In what ways have I surprised myself with my writing? With the hope of releasing that question from my brain (so I can get on with other things), I’m returning to it. This time, however, I have a specific topic to address: Point of View.

What We Read Shapes What We Write

I grew up reading (mostly) fantasy stories, and they all used either the third person limited or omniscient viewpoint. My very first introduction to the genre came in the form of my mother reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy to me when I was six. A few pages at a time each night. It was love at first reading.

As soon as could, I found and read as many books as I could by C. S. Lewis, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Jordan to name just a few of my early favorites.

In middle school, I stumbled across a battered old copy of Stephen King’s short story collection, The Skeleton Crew. It was spine-tinglingly incredible, and it sparked my love affair with King’s writing. It also inspired me to start writing my own stories.

I turned into a rabid Stephen King super fan. I mean, I never sent him letters asking for his fingernail clippings or anything. He’s way too smart to fall for that, anyway. Still, there was a time when I wouldn’t drive through Bangor because I didn’t trust myself not to go full-on creeper outside the gates of King’s house. King wrote some of his short stories in the first person POV, but not many.

Trying New Things Lets Us Grow

Fast forward to now. I’m halfway through a master’s program in creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They’ve got six concentrations from which to choose. I’m focusing on writing for young people.

From my limited research, there seems to be a growing first person trend in the YA genre right now. To be clear, I know there’s always been plenty of first person stories in YA, but in the past five or so years it’s exploded in popularity, so much so that I began picking up and reading a bunch of first person YA books to expose myself to the viewpoint and its use in my genre concentration. Sadly, I found that many of the books I read made me want to gag. Many were self-centered, angst-ridden “I, me, me, I me” tripe.

But, like it or not, first person POV is hugely popular in YA these days. Combining it with present tense seems to be really hot right now. Recognizing my limited exposure to that viewpoint as a reader and a complete lack of experience writing it, I decided to focus on first person as an element of my coursework last semester. What’s the point of a master’s program if not to push yourself as a writer and try to improve?

Ugh! First person POV, why are you so hard?! Also, what the heck was I thinking?

At least with third person, I have years of reading and thousands of stories to draw on as I write my own stuff. There are narrative techniques that I find natural and intuitive. I don’t have to think too hard about it as I’m writing. Not so as I struggle to write a book in the first person. Two books, actually, for two different classes. One is a middle-grade steampunk piratical fantasy adventure. The other is a gritty YA wilderness survival story with science fiction and horror elements. Both are presenting unique challenges for me. Let me repeat myself: what what I thinking?!

Diving Into the Craft of POV

I own and have read numerous craft books, too many to list, but I took a photo of my collection. It’s over on my “Useful Articles” page. Anyway,

when I told my mentor (last semester) that I wanted to stretch myself as a writer by trying to write a novel in the first-person viewpoint, she assigned me excerpts from two different craft books to read, then crossed her fingers and whispered a quiet prayer to the Gods.One was a book I already owned, put out by Writer’s Digest and written by Nancy Kress titled Characters, Emotions, and Viewpoint. It’s a great craft book, and it was good for me to revisit it. I hadn’t cracked its pages in over ten years.

If you don’t own this craft book, your collection isn’t complete. It’s outstanding!

The other was a craft book I’d never heard of before by an author I was unfamiliar with—David Jauss. The book isn’t in print anymore. I struggled to find a copy on Amazon, and when it finally arrived I thought, “Wow, this thing even looks old. That makes it even more awesome!” I was right, by the way. Alone With All That Could Happen is my new favorite craft book. One of the best I’ve read, and if you checked out the picture of my collection, you know that I’ve read quite a few of them.

Here’s the rub. It’s one thing to read about a bunch of excellent techniques to develop characters and engage in world-building in a particular viewpoint. It’s another thing to sit down and execute those techniques with any degree of success.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (and the Hopeful)

I am particularly bad at going all the way inside my characters’ heads to share their thoughts. Too familiar with outside narrators sharing character insights from a distance, I guess. Most recently, my current mentor gave me feedback that included, “You’ve got a lot of third-person narrator techniques embedded into this scene. Try adding more first-person elements to bring us closer to your main character.”

Yep. That’s the face I made. Oh, yeah.

Guess I’ve got some work to do, and while I could get discouraged by that (and sometimes I do get discouraged), I prefer to remind myself that I chose to give first-person a try to see what it felt like, to see what I could do with it. I actively sought to surprise myself. Thus far, I’ve succeeded, and as difficult as it’s been to stretch my abilities as a writer, it’s also been tremendous fun. I mean, come on. Who doesn’t love surprises?!

Have you ever intentionally attempted something new and different and risky as a writer with the hopes of learning and growing? Tell me about it in the comments section.

As always, keep writing. Keep creating. Keep striving to make a mark on this world by building and sharing other worlds.

September 10, 2017
#IWSG: Creative Insecurities, Community, and Surprises!

Creative Insecurity:

Creative people of all types tend to be insecure folks, I think. Creative folks are bold, daring, maybe a little crazy. They push the boundaries, lean into the unknown, risk failure. But because of that, they occasionally run afoul of moments of doubt and insecurity.

Unfortunately, those are the moments that, from a psychological standpoint, really sting. Those nagging thoughts are what our brains remember, obsess over, amplify in orders of magnitude until we can’t see beyond them.

That’s how it is for me at least. Most of the time, I’m good. Like, 80% of the time. 20% of the time I feel like a fraud. I’m wasting my time. What I’m trying to do is ridiculous and unattainable because I have no talent whatsoever and how could I have ever thought that I could succeed as a creative writer. Chuck Wendig wrote a great post about this over on his Terrible Minds blog. (Be warned, his language is fabulously profane).

The life of a writer can easily become a life of solitude, one in which the only people you can talk to are the voices in your head, most of which are nasty jerks who thrive on negativity and despair. I’ve sort of given up reaching out to friends and family members for reassurances. I’m lucky in that my friends and family members are supportive, but they also don’t really get it, so I never quite trust their words of encouragement, and my insecurities remain.

Building a Community of Supportive People Who Get It:

To help me cope, I’ve sought out other writers who are down in the creative trenches, pushing their own boundaries and taking risks. They’ll understand. They’ll know. Their support and encouragement carry more weight and really do help to dispel those horrible moments of insecurity that sneak up on me here and there.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been a member of the North Shore Writer’s Group in Massachusetts. I can’t begin to tell you how great it has been for me as a writer and as a creative person in general to be able to gather in a room with a bunch of other writers twice a month to chat about life, our creative struggles, and then discuss our work.

Online writing groups are great, too. I recently discovered The Insecure Writer’s Support Group. What a cool organization/site! Their mission is to recognize the dark moments of the writing process and the writer’s life and connect people to each other. They help writers find and build a support network. One of the many things they do over there is to host a monthly blog hop. Budding and established authors are all welcome to participate (I current fall into the former category). The group posts a monthly prompt, and we can use it to spark a blog post.

IWSG Question of the Month: Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing?

Yes, definitely. Frequently, in fact. On the spectrum of plotter/pantser (pantser is a term I don’t care for, by the way. I prefer to call myself a “discovery writer.” Not my term. Picked it up from fantasy author Brandon Sanderson in one of his co-hosted Writing Excuses podcasts. Fabulous podcast. You’ve got to check it out), I’m pretty far over toward the discovery writer end of things. I’ll sketch out a loose outline of where I want the story to go, but mostly I just start with a “what if” premise, conjure up some imaginary person to throw it at, and see what happens.

A couple of weeks ago, I started writing a scene that came to me as I was drifting off to sleep one night. It had nothing to do with anything that had happened in the story or that I had visualized happening, but it was an intriguing “what if” situation.

I had no expectations when I started writing that scene. For all I cared, I could finish it up and trash it if I decided it wasn’t something I liked. No harm, no foul. Everything I write is an opportunity to practice my skills, and Gods know I have a lot that I can practice. Pacing, description, POV and perspective, character development, world-building, dialogue, even basic sentence structure.

So, I started writing. What the hay, kids. Let’s hop in the car and go for a drive. Why not? See where the open road takes us. We might stumble across something interesting.

What I stumbled across was an unexpected plot twist that I’m super, and I mean SUPER excited about pursuing.

When my explorations, my unsupervised road trip inevitably leads me and my characters down a dead-end street of ugliness, I will despair. My insecurities will breed like gremlins and grown in size until all I can see is how awful I am. But that’s okay because I’ve taken steps to find and connect with other creative writers. I have not one but several support groups who will help me defeat my doubts. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group being among them.

So, how about you? Do you have a support group of like-minded folks who help you keep pushing your boundaries, keep taking risks? And when you do stick your creative neck out, do you ever surprise yourself? I’d love to hear about it.

September 6, 2017
Life: It Happens to the Best of Us

It’s been my experience that a creative person’s goals–fragile, beautiful little things that they are–frequently crash headlong into the mercurial realities of life.

This morning, as I sit at my kitchen table to do my morning pages, I can’t help but catch sight of the wall calendar opposite me and notice that August 28th is a mere sixteen days away. Time appears to have sprung a leak this summer. Just a moment ago, it was June 16th, and I was attending the end-of-year faculty party.

Ah, summer vacation. The kids would be in camp all day. Hubby would be hard at work with his stuff down in his studio. I’d have two

A visual representation of my mental image of summer in all its leisurely, creativity-inspiring glory.

months crank out as much work for my graduate studies as possible. Heck, I might be able to knock off every third-semester assignment before the end of August when I had to return to my full-time job of teaching science to high-schoolers. The future looked bright.

Now, I have less than three weeks before I’m back in the classroom and my creative endeavors become relegated to a dimly lit, neglected corner of existence. What the heck?!

Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote in 1785, “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men go oft awry.” Isn’t that the truth?

Now, sitting here, faced with irrefutable evidence that yet another blissful summer of writing has snuck by me, shielded by the dust kicked up by the mocking chaos of reality, a couple of thoughts spring to mind.

First, I spend perhaps a bit too much time cursing J. K. Rowling for thinking up that damnable Time Turner from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Why, J. K.? Why did you have to tease me with that thing? I’ve never been good at math, but even if I were a genius with numbers I still wouldn’t be able to count all the times I’ve wished for things that don’t exist: the ability to fly, a non-evil and therefore helpful clone, a sable-coated prehensile tail… and now, I can add a time turner to that list. Garr!!

Additionally, I find myself thinking yet again of the first episode from the 1980’s reboot of the Twilight Zone. In “A Little Piece and Quiet” (directed by Wes Craven), a housewife with way too much stuff in her life and no time for herself digs up a necklace/amulet in her flower bed that gives her the power to stop time completely. It’s fantastic until nuclear war breaks out, and then it’s not fantastic anymore.

There she is, realizing that her fabulous discovery has just ruined her life.

Hey, it’s the Twilight Zone. Nothing ever ends well in the Twilight Zone. That’s what I loved about it and still do. The thing is, I first saw that episode as a rerun when I was fifteen or sixteen. That was… a very long time ago, yet it’s still with me. A magical necklace that can stop time! Not unlike that half-alien chick from the TV show of the same era, “Out of This World” (which, in stark contrast to the Twilight Zone, was terrible) who could stop time by touching her fingers together. The time-stopping amulet was way better because of its mysterious and potentially sinister origins.

Anyway, I think about Hermione’s time turner and that doomed housewife’s time-stopping amulet all the time. If only…

Well, I’ve finished nursing my cup of coffee. The tea kettle just whistled to let me know the water’s hot and ready for my post-coffee cup of Constant Comment. The kids are awake and ravenously ready for breakfast. And the home-repair project that ate up my entire day yesterday sits waiting to be finished. If I’m to be honest with myself, this day is probably already spent, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up regarding being able to sneak in any creative writing. That said, you never know what might happen. I could be picking roofing nails out of the lawn and stumble across the uncovered corner of an ancient rune-encrusted box containing a mysterious golden amulet. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she.

What do you dream about in the harried moments when life devours your creative goals and spits out their shattered little bones at your feet?

August 12, 2017
Finding Time to Write (or, My Endless Struggle)

I swear my kids want me to flunk out of grad school. They also might be psychic, because when I sit down at my desk to check email or indulge my Facebook addiction, they happily find quiet and unobtrusive ways to keep themselves occupied (okay, I have time management and procrastination issues). The moment my fingertips touch my keyboard for the purposes of doing some actual creative writing, the little demons arrive at the office door and demand my undivided attention. True, my six-year-old is my primary antagonist in this battle. My ten-year-old less so, but he is not an innocent bystander by any means.

Do I want to build with Legos? Do I want to play a board game? I’m bored. There’s nothing to do. I’m hungry. Can I get them something to eat? No? Well, then, let’s up the ante. How about a game of chess, Mommy? It’s educational, my youngest will point out to me in angelic tones. Do you know how hard it is to say no to a kindergartener pleading with you to play chess, for goodness sake?! You instantly feel like a terrible person for saying no to that one, and my evil little demon knows it.

If by some miracle, I manage to stay strong and say no to all of these requests, there’s always Plan B. Commence with Operation Escalation. They will begin to fight, loudly, about anything and everything. You’re on my side of the couch! I’m using that blanket! I was playing with that! You knocked that down/destroyed that on purpose! You’re cheating at this made-up game that has no rules! You’re punching too hard! The point of the argument is irrelevant, only that the battle escalates until one of them is injured and crying. Oh, yes, they are devious, diabolical strategists.

My husband does intervene on my behalf… sometimes. At other times, though, he retreats to his art studio in the basement and pretends not to hear what’s happening. I don’t begrudge him this. That’s a lie. I totally begrudge him this. In fact, I want to murder him in those moments, even though I simultaneously understand his reasons for it. The problem is that by the time I get home at close to six o’clock from a long day of teaching science to high schoolers, he’s already been on kid duty for three and a half hours, and our kids are human tornadoes in the afternoons. They’ve been pent up inside an elementary school classroom all day. Even the mile and a half walk home does little to vent their pressure-cooker energy. He can boot their butts out into the back yard on days when the weather permits it, but even then, he has to stay alert for sounds of outraged or injury-induced screaming. So, I get why he succumbs to the temptation to go “off-duty” when dinner is done, and the kitchen is cleaned up. That doesn’t mean I don’t mentally curse him to eternal damnation from my spot at my writing desk when I’m looking at a blank page, and my kids are screaming in the other room.

I want to yell at people when they lament that they can never “find the time” to write. Yeah? Well, neither can I. Why? Because it doesn’t exist. There is literally no time to write, no magical empty block with nothing going on where I can sit down with a steaming mug of cozy chamomile tea and put on some relaxing classical music and snuggle in my fluffy PJ’s and write. Nope. If I’m going to write, I must MAKE time to do it. I must set boundaries, barricade the door, and defend my selected hour like the violently seized territory it is. If I let my guard down, that time will be taken right back from me. There are 101 articles and blog posts that offer use struggling saps tips for carving out time in our busy lives for our writing. Here’s a good one from Writer’s Digest. I’ll let them tell you what to do, because (if you haven’t figured it out yet) I am a hot mess and shouldn’t be giving anyone suggestions on how to do anything.

Sometimes I literally leave. I pack up and head to the local library or to a coffee shop. That works, but it breeds resentment and strains marital relations, so I leave those trips to do-or-die deadline situations. More often, I will abandon my office space for my bedroom, which has a lock on the door and is upstairs from the chaos. I will put on my headphones and drown out all attempts at Plan B that may erupt below. My husband feels better because he knows that, should a genuine emergency occur, I am still close by. My children seem to be slowly adjusting to the fact that mom is in grad school and that grad school trumps their need for my undivided attention.

Maybe this will be good for all of us. My kids might finally learn how to self-sooth. My husband is learning the fine art of reheating leftovers (though let’s give credit where credit is due: he does 90% of the cooking already because I’m not so great at cooking things that are edible). Who knows? I might actually get my MFA in creative writing. I’ll let you know how it goes, but right now I’ve got some writing to do.

(I’ve been told that bloggers are supposed to end their posts with questions designed to jump-start a discussion in the comments thread. I’m pretty sure no one has stumbled across this secret little blog, but I may as well engage in best practice blogging, right? After all, when I’m a successful and famous YA author, I’ll probably have to keep an actual author’s blog where I can interact with my thousands of awesome fans… sigh. We have to dream, folks. Anyway, here’s the leading question(s): are you in a similar position as me? What things in your life vie for you time and pull you away from your writing? Are you able to resist? If so, what are your strategies? Do share!

August 9, 2017
Scrivener: It Helps Me Produce

There are tons of writing platforms out there, and I’ve found that writers have some seriously strong feelings about them. I’m no exception. For me, it’s all about Scrivener.

For a long time, I wrote my stuff in Google Docs, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would pay extra money for some fancy-schmancy writing program. Google Docs was good enough (said my inner crotchety old geezer). But then, in 2015, I took part in my very first NaNoWriMo event. I won it, too. Aw, thanks so much, imaginary reader. That’s so sweet of you to say.

Anyway, as part of my “winnings” I received a 50% coupon for Scrivener, which is already a pretty inexpensive piece of software at full price. At $20.00, I figured I had little to lose, and I’d heard plenty of people rave about its functionality, so I gave it a try.

Let me be clear. I will never give up my fountain pens and my notebooks, both of which I collect like someone with a problem. Whatever. Some people collect Hummel Dolls. Some people collect Beanie Babies. I collect fountain pens and notebooks… and a few other things, but that’s a whole different post. When I am feeling stuck for ideas or just creatively drained, nothing greases the hinges and swings wide the doors to my imagination like writing with a gorgeous fountain pen loaded with some of my favorite ink in one of my favorite notebooks. So great of an advocate of this strategy for breaking up creative writing blocks am I that I regularly buy and distribute fountain pens (pre-inked with some of my favorite inks obtained via the Goulet Pen Company). If you’re ever in Boston and you’re a pen enthusiast, by the by, you must treat yourself to a trip to the oldest pen shop in the country–The Bromfield Pen Shop.

My obsessive love of fountain pens aside, however, I get most of my writing done on my mac, and since my 2015 NaNo win, it’s all been done using Scrivener.

I love the corkboard feature for organizing my chapters. I love its pre-generated templates for character development. I love its split screen, its compile feature, and its project analytics. Holy cow, do I use the words “look” and “gaze” and “glance” a lot in my first drafts. There are hundreds of other features embedded into this program that are also super wicked lots of awesome, but the feature that caused me to fall in forever love with Scrivener is its Project Target feature.

I can set a total word count for a project, a deadline, and tell Scrivener which days of the week to include in its daily word count calculations. When activated, it gives me those two lovely progress bars that you can see in the featured photo at the top of this post.

This feature won’t motivate everyone. My husband looks at it and groans, “That would drive me nuts.” Different strokes for different folks, buddy. I’ve always responded well to extrinsic motivators. Plus, my brain loves watching that bottom bar change color from fire engine red to grass green over the course of a writing session. It fills me with a sense of accomplishment.

Now, that might strike some folks as vacuous and stupid. It’s quality, not quantity they could argue. True, but if you’re not getting the quantity, what are the chances of getting any quality? If something helps me be more consistent and more productive in my writing, then by gum I’m going to use it, and Scrivener’s Project Target features does just that.

Do you have favorite technique or strategy for generating more words when you write? Is it a piece of writing software? A favorite spot you like to go to write? A favorite music playlist? Perhaps a favorite pen and notebook? I’d love to know what other writers find motivating.

July 29, 2017
Morning Pages, Procrastination, and Creativity

As part of my master’s program, I’m required to take an independent studies class each semester. It can’t be a course that is directly related to my primary area of study, which is writing for young people. Lesley University offers courses that run the gambit from travel writing to poetry to writing for stage and screen to memoir writing and more. They also offer a class that isn’t about writing, specifically. It’s about creativity, and the point is to help folks knock down mental barriers and find creative solutions.

It’s called The Artist’s Way, and I picked it as my very first I.S. class to take. Am I ever glad that I did! To help you wrap your brain around what it is, let me quote Carrie Battan from her 2016 article in the New Yorker about the book (the class I took followed the book to the letter).

“…the book is a program designed to help readers reject the devils of self-doubt on their shoulders and pursue creative activity not as a profession but as a form of therapy.”

That’s as good a summary as any. Thank you, Ms. Battan.

Part of the course, a big part, is engaging in daily journaling, what The Artist’s Way creator Julie Cameron refers to as the “Morning Pages.” The goal is to increase creativity by connecting with the dark places in our heads, facing them down and disarming them of their power. While taking the class, I sat down each morning and wrote three pages of mental stream-of-consciousness stuff into a notebook. I chose to write in cursive because more and more scientific studies show that longhand writing, and cursive writing, in particular, is super good for the brain.

Since taking the twelve-week course last July/August/September, I’ve continued to write my morning pages. My spouse joined me, too, since he’s a fine art photographer and generally creative individual. Together, we’ve worked morning journaling into our lives as a way to boost creativity and also control our general anxieties and stress levels.

Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worried about this blog project. How much time is this project was going to eat up? Time is my most limited resource. I am stretched more thinly that I can actually see. Only when others point out to me all the stuff I have on my plate do I realize the madness of it all. Parent to two young ones, both of whom were involved in town-league sports this spring, high school teacher, member of a writing group, member of an environmental group, student in a master’s program…

On top of all of that, I am a master of productive procrastination.

When I get overwhelmed, my brain resists dealing with the work that NEEDS to get done by finding and focusing on non-essential work. Sometimes “non-essential work” looks like cleaning my kitchen, or getting caught up on laundry, or vacuuming and dusting the entire house, or re-organizing the bookshelf, or (and this was the thing that was keeping me from my Z’s last night) figuring out WordPress and putting together a personal blog. It feels like a form of creativity, and I suppose that it is (in a way), but it’s not the primary form of creativity that I’m hoping to nurture.

Did I just generate yet another thing to add to my already ridiculously over-packed plate? Did I unintentionally create a thing that makes me feel like I’m doing something that will help me achieve my goals as a creative writer, but that actually pushes me further away from those goals by siphoning off a little of my most limited resource?

Ah-ha! Solution!

Rather than add this blog project to the long list of things I’m already doing, maybe I can make an even exchange. I can use this as my morning pages, and that way, I won’t be adding anything, just continuing something that I’ve been doing in a slightly different form. Not every day. I can’t give up my long-form writing altogether. It makes my brain feel too good. But a few times a week, in the morning slot that I’ve already carved into my daily routine for journaling, instead of grabbing my fountain pen and my notebook, I’ll grab my laptop and generate my three pages of stream-of-conscious gobbledygook here. It’s worth a try at least.

Do you find yourself crunched for time in your life? How do you make room for it all? Do you ever sabotage your goals by procrastinating? What does that look like for you, and how do you get yourself back on track?

July 28, 2017