Tag: creativity

  • Creative Writing and Hustle Culture is a Toxic Mix

    Creative Writing and Hustle Culture is a Toxic Mix

    Drawing to a woman in a business suit bent over at the waist, a wind up key sticking out of her back. She looks like a run down wind up doll.Hustle culture is awful. It’s not a unique thought, obviously. And it’s not a problem unique to the writing/publishing world. If you’re a creative writer, though, you know what I’m talking about. It’s so toxic. I hate it. I’m sure you do, too. Trouble is, hustle culture is hard to resist!

    A few days ago, a fellow short fiction author posted in the Codex Writers forums about how worn down she is by the grind of the short fiction world and how she’s feeling ready to just… stop? Like, she still wants to write stuff for herself, but she’s ready to quit pursuing publishing. Why? Because the publishing industry as a whole is So. Damned. Toxic. Not to mention unsustainable. The ratio of rejections to acceptances is appallingly high. Which isn’t a new thing but yeah. It sucks.

    A bunch of people responded to her forum post with comments about feeling equally burned out. My heart ached for her (and for all the authors who commented about being in the same place she is). She’s an incredible writer and an incredible person. The thread filled up with offers of love and virtual hugs and general support. I didn’t leave a comment. I didn’t feel like I had anything to offer that would change her situation or make her feel authentically better. And also, I don’t think I’m struggling with things in quite the same way she seems to be.

    I enjoy writing short stories, but trying to get them published is definitely a grind. And, oh my goodness folks, the hustle culture is ridiculous

    Recently, I read a post by author Chuck Wendig that was supposed to be funny but left me feeling a little sick. Basically, he described the sisyphean nature of the writing/publishing world’s hustle culture without actually naming it. The post was supposed to be funny, sort of, but I felt sad after reading it. Wendig’s musings highlighted the (unhappily) accepted norms of the industry, but the thesis of his post seemed to be, “This is absolutely awful and horrible but there’s no viable alternatives so we authors just need to accept it or else we’ll fail and starve.” I mean, he wasn’t actively promoting hustle culture. But he also wasn’t rejecting it. He was just complaining about it while simultaneously engaging in it.

    Stuff like this is toxic. It seems motivational but really it promotes hustle culture and might as well read: 10 Steps to Burn Out Quick and Feel Like a Failure.

    At Boskone last year (or maybe it was the year before), I listened to a panel discussion about this exact issue. One of the panelists was veteran short story author and novelist John Langen, who shared that he still gets upwards of a hundred rejections each year. He also gets solicitations to contribute to anthologies, and invitations to collaborate with greats like Paul Tremblay, which likely serves as a nice buffer to all those rejection letters. While on the Boskone panel, he advised new writers to just keep submitting stories. Just acknowledge that rejection is part of the process. In that moment, I felt seen and affirmed. I nodded my head in agreement. Yes, yes! It’s not just me getting 40+ rejections for every 1 acceptance. It’s not just new authors. It’s all of us, even the established folks. That makes it okay. But… maybe not?

    Just because creative writers, new and established, are all in the same boat together doesn’t mean the boat isn’t a genuinely toxic place to be. I mean, if I were on a cruise ship plagued with norovirus and there happened to be a few celebrities on board whom I admired, their presence wouldn’t lessen the awfulness of puking my guts out. I wouldn’t be like, “I feel like I’m dying but it’s okay because So-and-So Big Name is going through this, too, and they say this is just how cruising is.” Nope. I’d be like, “This experience is terrible and I can’t wait for it to be over and I’m never doing it again.”

    Maybe Langen’s argument that we should all just suck it up and go with the flow doesn’t make sense. Not like it used to, anyway. You know, once upon a time back in the days of actual typewriters and physical paper. Back when you had to buy postage and envelopes. When the pace of life moved at 7 to 10 business days. Oh, and there were 50%+ fewer people on the planet. Back then there were more markets and fewer writers submitting fewer stories to them. Yes, they were all still getting far more rejections than acceptances, but the ratio was waaaaay lower than it is today.

    Publishing challenges. Photo of a nail driven into a white wall under a hanging bookshelf and above and beside a writing desk sporting a stack of notebooks
    Behold! My pile of rejection letters circa 2021. It’s grown since then.

    These days, short fiction markets are closing right and left while technology is making those ever dwindling markets more and more accessible on a global scale. Magazines used to get fifty submissions a week. Now magazines sometimes get over two hundred submissions a week. In many ways, the new accessibility is a good thing. New and previously underrepresented writers who maybe couldn’t previously submit their work now can. Historically underrepresented voices and perspectives and cultures are enriching the genre fiction world. That’s fantastic. The point I’m trying to make, though, is that the market is oversaturated. Beyond oversaturated if you factor in AI submissions, and that trend is increasing. So yeah, fewer markets and exponentially more submissions to them. A perfect recipe for hustle culture. I don’t blame that author over on Codex for burning out and having a “what’s the point in trying” moment.

    There are soooo many factors involved in getting published that are completely out of an author’s control. Some of it is raw numbers and market trends, some of it is yuckier stuff (nepotism, favoritism, biases and prejudices that people in the industry don’t like to talk about and certainly don’t want to acknowledge), but more and more getting a story published is just a matter of chance. Yet the hustle culture of the publishing world would have us believing that there’s a causal relationship between how hard we work and how much publication success we have. Authors who self-publish are, perhaps, in a slightly different situation, but some would argue the hustle culture is even worse for them. I don’t know. That’s a discussion for a different day.

    In my mind, submitting a story for publication is a bit like buying a scratch ticket. The idea of getting published is fun, and occasionally I get an acceptance letter. In those instances, I revel in the endorphin dump and embrace the dopamine hit of seeing my stories in print, but I try hard to resist the hustle culture. That old adage that “If you’re not writing every day, you’re not a real writer” is harmful and self-destructive. I have a day job. I’m a teacher (another industry with a toxic hustle culture problem). I have a family and, you know, other hobbies and interests that I enjoy. 

    I write stories, and I submit them to markets for possible publication. But I do it at my own pace, in a way that fits in my life, and I don’t feel guilty about that. I’m not willing to engage with the hustle culture that seems to drive the publishing industry so completely.  If I don’t write today, or this week, or this month because I’m too busy with other things or even just because I don’t feel like writing, I’m okay with that. The author who posted about burnout over on Codex probably won’t read this, but I hope she finds a way to reject the grind and rediscover the joy in writing, because she’s a damned good writer and I hate what the hustle culture of the industry is doing to her and to all writers (all creatives really). 

    I’ve got a few stories out on submission right now. I’m playing around with a few new stories, too. I’m doing a live reading with two other Radon Journal authors in July. I’ll also be attending ReaderCon as a panelist this year. Beyond that, I’m elbows deep in developing two new genetics and biotechnology courses to teach next year, and I’m taking a graduate class so I can actually teach those classes competently. I’m embarking upon the college application process with my eldest child (omg MORE hustle culture shenanigans). Yikes, that’s a lot. Guess I’m as trapped in the hustle culture as everyone else. But, I’m also gardening, and kayaking, and bird watching, and going for hikes, and reading, and sitting in the backyard feeling the sun on my face while listening to the wind rustle through the leaves of Yggdrasil. 

    Are you feeling burned out these days? Is the hustle culture grinding you down? Feel free to vent or commiserate or offer tips for breaking free in the comments. As always, thanks for stopping by, and happy writing to you.

  • Fall 2023 Writing Update: More Publishing Success and Some Winter Fun

    It’s been a minute since I last posted, so I figured it was time for a quick fall 2023 writing update. This has been a whirlwind year of publishing progress and milestone moments.

     

    My Clarion West Fundraising Efforts

    My fundraising efforts for Clarion West were partly successful. Though I didn’t meet my $1,000 target, I did raise over $500 for them – a feat for which I’m pretty damned proud. The whole experience was fantastic. I learned a lot, had fun, did a ton of writing, and helped out a very worthy cause. I definitely plan to do it again next summer. 

     

    Published Stories and My SFWA Mentorship

    Image from the website of Radon Journal, Issue 5Excitingly, my flash fiction piece, “The Colony Ship’s Companion,” found its way into Radon Journal, and “The Portal in Andrea’s Dryer” graced the pages of Uncharted Magazine. That brings my total number of stories published in pro- or semi-pro magazines up to four (all four of which came in 2023).

     

     

     

    Screenshot of the homepage for Uncharted Magazine: Premier Publisher of Genre FictionMy summer mentorship through SFWA under Julia Rios‘ guidance wrapped up in early September. The experience was phenomenal. Truly transformative. Julia helped me SO much as I worked to flesh out the  middle-grade steampunk novel I’ve been noodling about with since 2017.  

     

    The Cycle of Balancing Teaching and Creative Writing Continues

    A lab bench in a classroom with various piece of lab equipment set up on it.There are definitely some seasonal cycles at work in my life. For example, fall is a four month season of teaching, coaching, and family commitments. As such, September requires I pause in my creative writing endeavors. The months between August and December require head-down determination and a focus exclusively on lesson planning, grading, and (this year) volleyball. Interestingly, seeing two of my stories in print during my no-room-for-writing fall season has acted as a creative beacon for me. It reminded me that the exact same thing happened last year. I had to put my personal interests down for several months. Yet despite that fallow period, I ended up with four new short stories written and published. As a result, I’m feeling slightly less burnt out than I usually do at this time each year. Perhaps a few months away from writing every autumn is a good thing. 

     

    Upcoming Writing Events and Engagements

    As November wraps up and December approaches, my excitement to get back to my creative endeavors is growing. The Codex Writers’ “Weekend Warrior” flash fiction challenge will be starting up in about a month. It was through that challenge last year that I generated all four of my published stories for 2023.

    Banner posters on display at Boskone 60. One reads, "Boskone, the SF & Fantasy Convention for MidWinter Fun." The other reads, "NEFSA: New England Science Fiction Association."I’m also looking forward to taking part in Boskone – a highlight in the science fiction and fantasy convention scene. That convention is such a shot in the arm for me as a writer. It always recharges my creative energy. I’ve attended as a fan, and as a volunteer, but this year I’m hoping to step into the role of a program participant. With some actual publications under my belt, I think I can do it without feeling like a complete and utter fraud.

     

     

    What Have You Been Up To?

    Now that you’re caught up with what I’ve been up to, I’d love to hear how all of you have been faring. What’s your Fall 2023 Writing Update? Have you found time for writing amidst life’s demands? If so, what have you been working on? Share your accomplishments and triumphs in the comments section so we can celebrate our collective journeys together.

    Until next time, keep writing, keep dreaming.

  • On Finishing What I Start

    On Finishing What I Start

    I’ve always struggled with finishing what I start. It’s probably a foundation stone in my personality. Great at starting things. Trash at finishing them. Except books, for some reason. Reading them, I mean. Writing them? Well… let’s talk about that. And some other stuff.

     

    I’m a Sprinter by Nature

    Physically, for sure, I was built for speed. Growing up as a kid, the only kid in elementary school faster than me was John Cena (yes, the WWE wrestler). No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch him, but I loved trying. Sprinting is my safe place. Maximum power right out of the blocks. Hold nothing back. That mentality bleeds into literally everything I do in life, really. I suppose the apt term to describe me is “Hardo.” It’s generally used disparagingly, but I embrace that identifier. You better believe I’m a Hardo, folks. YOLO. Go big or go home. Do, or do not. There is no try. 

     

    The problem with that all-out, 150% mentality is that I have a tendency to… hit the wall. If I can’t crank through a project quickly, there’s a real danger that I won’t ever finish it. I guess I’m like Gimli. Very dangerous over short distances.

    But, sometimes (like with Gimli) I surprise myself with my own long-distance fortitude. Which brings me to the main point of this particular post.

     

    I Have a Finished Draft! 

    If you didn’t know, I’ve been working on a novel. It started as my MFA creative thesis at Lesley University under the guidance and encouragement of one of my favorite human beings, author Chris Lynch. You can read about some of my earlier adventures drafting this book HERE. That was was in 2018.

    True to myself, I went full throttle from day one. And, I wrote a full draft of a novel. Huzzah! But… it was broken. Hey, at least I realized it was broken, right? The problem was repairing it. That took about two years, with lots of stops and starts and wrong turns that required backing up and starting again. In between those stops and starts were long bouts of not writing because I just didn’t know how to move forward. Frustrating? You bet. I kid you not, about two months ago I was on the verge of just abandoning it.

     

    Writer's Block

     

    When Lightning Strikes, Write!


    Lightning StrikeI was going along in my day, minding my own business, not even thinking about the book when, BAM! The problem revealed itself and the solution became obvious in an unexpected flash. 

    I was not allowing my characters to drive the plot forward. Duh. So focused was I on having my MC do X, Y, and Z to finish things that I didn’t realize her antagonist would never in a million years allow any of those things to happen. Too bad, author. It’s just not going to fall out that way. Back up, and let the characters take the reins. Finally, I understood.

    So, I set a goal. Life was busy. I didn’t have a whole lot of time each day for my creative endeavors. Still don’t (teaching during a pandemic is bananas). How about 500 words a day? That’s two pages. I could do that, right? Yes, I could. And I did. In just a week and a half, I finished the draft I’d been struggling with for years. Seems fitting that I sprinted to the finish line. I mean, that’s who I am, apparently. A sprinter.

     

    Owning Our Own Personal Processes

    I envy writers who are super consistent. The ones who plod along, getting a little farther in their projects every day, week by week, month by month. Their consistency. Their routine. I hunger for that, but I don’t think that will ever be me. Just like I wish I could run three miles (heck, let’s be real; I wish I could run just ONE mile) without doubling over and sucking wind. It’s just never going to happen.

    The more honest I can be with myself about who I am and how I operate, the more likely it will be that I achieve my goals. You can’t trust the process if you don’t know the process. For me, the process will be HIIT sessions of writing: fast, furious bursts of productivity interspersed with long periods of downtime and metal recovery. If I can learn to be okay with that, maybe even enjoy it, then maybe I’ll start finishing more projects.

     

    What Now?

    What now, indeed! I’ve got a draft of a novel. One that is NOT broken, just dirty (as all first drafts are). Huzzah! My brain is screaming, sprint!!! Run at that thing as fast and as hard as you can. But I don’t think that would be a smart approach. When I emailed Chris Lynch to tell him I’d finally found the ending to that creative thesis he got me started on way back in 2018, he wrote back with the sage advice that I tuck it away for a while and turn my attention to something else.

    Story Ideas BoardSo, what shall I work on next? There’s a corkboard on my office wall with hand written pages pinned up in various shades of fountain pen ink, and they all bear the same title: “Story Idea.” Guess it’s time to peruse my options. 

    What’s YOUR process, fellow creatives? Do tell. Are you comfortable with how you naturally tend to operate, or do you wish your brain worked differently? Regardless of what your struggles might be, I hope you are able to overcome them and be successful in whatever it is that you are doing.

     

    Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!

  • My Interview for Arthur McCabe’s Website!

    My Interview for Arthur McCabe’s Website!

    My Very First “Writer” Interview!!

    Over on the website Interviews from the Void, I had the honor of chatting with Arthur McCabe about a whole bunch of interesting writing stuff. It’s a sign of how inept I am at professional marketing and blogging that I only just thought today of mentioning this on my own site.

    In any case, Arthur and I talked about the neuroscience of engaging fiction, how evolving communication technologies are or aren’t changing readers brains, and how I use neuroscience both when I write for and teach science to teens. The questions were thoughtful and I revealed a lot about myself, I think, in the interview.

    If you’re interested, check it out.

    Interviews from the Void: Episode 24 – Katherine Karch

    Interviews from the Void

  • The Biggest Pitfall for Aspiring Authors

    The Biggest Pitfall for Aspiring Authors

    It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means.  It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…

     

    The Insecure Writer's Support Group

    What pitfalls have you encountered on your journey to publication that you can share with others?

    Well, uh… hmm. I don’t actually know of many pitfalls from direct personal experience. To date, I only have two minimal publishing credits to my name. This post, therefore, will focus on the one that I feel is the biggest and most fatal pitfall facing all of us creative folks: the pitfall of giving up.

    But first, allow me to drop a plug for the Insecure Writers Support Group.  The IWSG, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff.  There’s a Twitter Pitch (just happened in July), contests, books, swag, conferences, and more.  Be sure to jump over there and check them out!

    The awesome co-hosts for the August 1 posting of the IWSG are Erika Beebe, Sandra Hoover, Susan Gourley, and Lee Lowery!

    Okay, back to this month’s topic: pitfalls to void.

     

    A Lesson from Stephen King! 

    On WritingBack in my early 20’s, right around the time I got married, I bought a copy of Stephen King’s semi-autobiographical craft book On Writing. In it, King shared his youthful adventures in writing an submitting short stories with blind optimism to the magazines he loved to read: Analog, Asimov’s, Amazing Stories, etc. He started submitting in his early teens. As you can imagine, he got a lot of rejection letters.

    King did something great, though, in turning the submission/rejection thing into a game. Upon receiving his first rejection letter–a form letter–, he drove a nail into the wall of his bedroom and impaled the letter upon it. How quickly could King accumulate enough rejection letters to overwhelm that nail? Understand, please, that King didn’t compromise the quality of the stories he wrote and submitted in an attempt to grow the stack with artificial speed. That would have been cheating. His primary goal was always to write the best story he could and get it published. He merely created a synergistic secondary goal that he could work towards when he wasn’t making progress toward his primary goal.

    The important lesson I took from reading his book was that it’s possible to find ways of turning failures into successes. There are ways to immunize ourselves against the discouraging sting that comes with rejection. A sting that all too often ends up crippling creative individuals and ending their careers before they begin.

     

    Playing the Game

    Chimpanzee at a Typewriter

    Upon finishing his book, I decided it might be fun to try my hand at King’s game. I’d been writing stories all my life and harbored secret fantasies of becoming a successful author. But that required sticking my vulnerable neck out and submitting the stuff I wrote. The “Rejection Game,” as I called it, gave me permission to expose myself to the volley of rejections I knew would ensue.

    Over the course of the next year, I researched and submitted to close to fifty magazines. This was in the very early days of the internet, so most venues still required print submissions sent via snail mail with self-address-stamped return envelopes for letters of acceptance/rejection. Of those fifty submissions, I received 48 rejection letters. Two magazines took a story from me. Tiny publications that paid out in single contributor copies, but still, two out of fifty. I was pleased.

    Confession: I miss getting rejection letters in the mail. Even a form letter felt a tiny bit nifty when presented in a physical envelope that arrives in your mailbox. A digital email just doesn’t carry the same special weight.

     

    Watch Out for That Pitfall. It’s a Doozy.

    If only I’d kept at it! Remember, this was happening the year after I got married. And changed my job. And got pregnant with my first child. Guess who stopped writing and submitting stories? Yeah, me.

    Thirteen years would pass before I sent out another story on submission. What can I say? Life got busy. I got distracted. Not an excuse, just my reality. I didn’t give up intentionally. Many folks probably wade into the pitfall of giving up slowly, day by day. So many things can fill up our lives that we can feel as though we’re drowning in quicksand. I was certainly feeling that way last October when I wrote my post, “Life, Will You Just Chill Out Already?”

    Lots of people never figure out how to strike a balance between their writing goals and life obligations, or maybe they fail to immunize themselves against the sting of having their creative work turned down over and over again. That didn’t happen to me, but I’ve witnessed it happen to other writers. Without some way to turn each “no” into a positive, the weight of all those “thanks, but no thanks” can accumulate until it’s crushing your soul. And Odin knows, it’s the easiest thing in the world to set that weight aside and do something else.

    Author Jason Reynolds
    Mr. Reynolds, an incredible writer and mentor in our program

    On my way out the door of my MFA program at Lesley University, I was reminded of the lesson I’d gleaned a decade and a half ago from Mr. King’s book. If you want to succeed, you must keep writing, keep submitting, keep querying. Young Adult author Jason Reynolds told me and a small classroom of other impending graduates that the difference between those that make it in the publishing industry and those that don’t is persistence. The authors who find success are the ones who don’t give up. They kept playing their very own “Rejection Game” until something stuck. Talent helps, but even the most talented writer in the world can fall into the pitfall of giving up.

     

    Lessons from Vigo Mortensen

    Have you ever seen the movie G.I. Jane with Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen? I love that movie. Whatever. Don’t judge me. I’m not judging all the fans who love 300. It’s all love here!

    Anyway, there’s a scene in that film where the cadets are doing push-up’s and leg lifts and other generally awful forms of exhausting exercises in the ocean. They’re right in the middle of the breaker zone, icy waves crashing down over them again and again. It’s been hours. They’re soaked, sand-blasted, shaking with fatigue and the early stages of hypothermia. And the Master Chief (Viggo) is walking up and down the line shouting all kinds of philosophical musings at them. This is the moment when he delivers a few lines that resonated to my core.

    “Pain is your friend, your ally. It will tell you when you are seriously injured. It will keep you awake, and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain? It lets you know you’re not dead yet.”

     

    Viggo’s basically telling his cadets to embrace their pain and frustration and exhaustion because it means they haven’t given up. Stephen King and Jason Reynolds were preaching less intense variants of the same philosophy.

    As creative folks, rejection hurts. Of course it does, but that sting you feel means you’re still playing the game, you haven’t quit, you’re not dead yet. So there you have it. Giving up is the first and biggest pitfall you can fall into on your way to getting published.

    Don’t give up.

    Find a way to turn the rejections into positives. Make the pain be your friend. Keep writing, or painting, or sculpting, or composing, or whatever it is that you make. In this world that is becoming more and more obsessed with consumption, we need folks who engage in glorious acts of creation.

    What’s your strategy for staying resilient and skirting the pitfall of quitting? Help the rest of us out by sharing in the comments! 

     

    Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.

  • Refilling the Creative Well – A Must for All Artists

    Refilling the Creative Well – A Must for All Artists

    If you hadn’t yet realized, I’m a big fan of Julie Cameron’s book (and 12-week, self-guided course) The Artist’s Way. I took it as an interdisciplinary course my first semester in Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. It changed the way I thought about myself, about my creativity, and about the creative life in general. And one of the biggest lessons I learned in taking the class was this: creative individuals need to nurture their creative spirit by “refilling the creative well.”

    The Act of Creation is Tiring

    It is a common misconception among non-creatives and casual creatives that artists don’t “work” at what they do. From an outsider’s perspective, creation looks like play, and to some degree it is, but it is anything but casual play. It is active, and focused, and intentional, and draining.

    That last point is essential to understand. Tapping into your creative mind is tiring, though many of us don’t notice that we’re fatiguing until we’re lying face down like a stick of butter that’s been left out on the counter in August. Letting ourselves reach that point is damaging and dangerous and difficult to recover from, so how we avoid it?

    Try scheduling activities into your life that will nurture your creative spirit. Not use it, mind you. These are moments in which, as an artist, you receive rather than produce. Julie Cameron calls them “artist dates.” She advocates one per week. I agree, though I fall far from accomplishing that once-a-week schedule myself.

    An artist date is anything that lets you to take in and enjoy the external world. Go out to eat at a nice restaurant. Go for a walk in the woods. Visit the beach. See an art installation at a local museum. Attend a concert. These should be private moments when you can be alone. For me, that’s difficult because my beloved is a visual artist. We tend to bundle our artist dates, which is fine but not ideal. Doing anything with anyone else necessarily involves moments of compromise, small or large. Artist dates are supposed to be 100% about you, so my co-dates aren’t ideal, but they’re certainly better than nothing.

     

    Investing in Yourself as an Artist

    The purpose of giving yourself an Artist Date is to “refill your creative well.”

    NeuropathwaysWhether you’re a composer, a painter, a poet, or a novelist the act of creation uses energy. Literally. It also uses neurotransmitters. If you’re continually working on your art, you’re activating and reactivating the same neural networks in your brain again and again. The cells of those neural networks talk to each other via chemicals that are manufactured at night while you sleep. Over time, you can deplete your store of neurotransmitter by using them faster than you can make them.

    That’s the fatigue that sets it. The lethargy, the creative block, the depression, the doubt. You’ve been working so hard creating beautiful art that you’ve exhausted the parts of your brain involved in the process. Athletes know this as “overtraining.” They avoid it by building “off days” into their training programs. Creative folks would be wise to follow suit.

    I’m a writer, but I love the visual arts. Photographs, sculpture, painting. When I feel like my creative energies are waning, I hit up the Boston Museum of Fine Art or look for a local photography exhibit to attend. It gives me a chance to witness, take in, and be emotionally touched by what others have created without activating the pathways I use when I’m writing. Ideas enter from the outside world, not from the inside world. They get in there, bounce around in my subconscious, and mingle with my own ideas like colors swirling on the surface of a bubble.

    The creative well begins to fill once more. When I’m ready to sit back down and start producing again, all kinds of new and exciting things might emerge from having experienced the products of other artists’ creative acts.

     

    Art Festivals are Your Friend

    When is the last time you attended a local art festival? Summer is upon us, folks. It’s the high season for art associations to exhibit their members’ works.  I can’t recommend them enough as a place to go to be recharged and reinvigorated as a creative spirit.

    This past weekend, my beloved and I walked into downtown Salem and got to see some fabulous art at the Salem Artist Festival. We also listened to talented musicians perform and sparkling dancers dance. The square crackled with creative energy and positivity. I soaked it up like a sponge and found myself breathing deeper and smiling more widely on the walk home. Life was, is, good. My creative well is brimming. Check out the photos I took along the way, and if you’re local try to get down there this weekend and check it out.  You won’t be disappointed.

     

    When’s the last time you did anything to refill your creative well? What did you do? How did you feel afterward?

    Thanks for stopping by, and happy writing to you!

  • Surviving the Creative Wilderness—Attitude is Everything

    Surviving the Creative Wilderness—Attitude is Everything

    How Not to Die in The Woods

    Tom Browns Field Guide to Wilderness SurvivalI own a book called “Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival.”  It’s a great book.  It doesn’t teach you how to read a map or use a compass.  It doesn’t explain what gear is essential for an extended wilderness trek.  It does explain how to keep yourself alive in the wilderness if you have absolutely nothing with you but the clothes on your back.  And for creative folks navigating this life, isn’t that a great analogy for how we must exist?  We’ve got nothing but the clothes on our back.  Metaphorically only, I hope.

     

    Tom Brown’s book is divided into four parts, arranged in order of importance from the perspective of not dying.  Parts two, three, four, and five are (in this order): Shelter, Water, Fire, Food.  If you stop and think about it, that order makes perfect sense.  You could die of exposure in the first few hours without shelter from the elements.  You could die in three days without water, give or take.  You can go for a long time without food, but most of it will kill you if you don’t cook it first, so fire comes before food. 

     

    The first part of the book, and therefore the most important in terms of not dying when lost in the woods, is Attitude.  It’s all about psychology.  About the inner voice that gets louder and louder as things get tougher and tougher, whispering, stating, screaming that the situation is hopeless and we’re stupid, that we deserve to die out here.  Tom Brown argues that most people who get lost in the wilderness and die do so because they give in to a creeping attitude of defeat.

     

    Why, you might ask, am I writing about a wilderness survival guide?  Because I’m a creative writer.  I’m a creative person. I spend a lot of time wandering around in the wilderness of my psyche. And, like all creative artists, I find myself, from time to time, lost in those woods.  Tom Brown is right.  Whether the forest is real or psychological, attitude is the first and most important determiner of whether we’re going to make it out alive or not.

     

    The Creative Life is a Hostile Wilderness

    Between January 8th and May 7th, I wrote and revised 51,000+ words of a YA fantasy novel for my MFA thesis project at Lesley University.  My goal was to finish an entire first draft of the novel by April.  That, I’m sad to say, did not happen. 

     

    Wooded PathThe writing process for grad school is interesting, especially during the thesis semester.  Most students enter their final semester with a first draft of their thesis already written.  They’ll spend four months revising it before submitting it.  They’re traveling a well-worn path by that point.

     

    I didn’t do that.  I started from scratch.  I took the road less traveled. 

     

    Fallen Trees

    Let me tell you, the less-traveled path is not easy-going.  It’s grown in and full of brambles and twisting roots to trip on.  It’s hot and buggy, and most of it is uphill on a treacherous slope.  There are many places where the trail just peters out and vanishes.  And there’s quicksand.  No one tells you about the quicksand! 

     

    Chris Lynch
    My most excellent mentor!

    For this final semester, I found myself wandering, slightly lost in the forest, losing the path and then stumbling upon it again.  And as someone who does not plot well, I rarely knew in which direction I was traveling.  But, I did manage to write 51,000+ words of a story that, with the help of my incredible mentor—Chris Lynch—was of graduate-level quality.  I’d bushwhacked my way through some pretty dense, unforgiving territory.

     

    I formatted everything according to spec, typed up the synopsis for the rest of the story as I imagined it, the path I thought lay before me, and I sent it off.  I was out of the woods! 

     

    Losing the Way

    And then I stopped writing.

     

    Which wasn’t supposed to happen.

    See, in my head, I’d have the rest of the novel written by June 1st.  It was going to be excellent.  But, my brain was experiencing a level of fatigue I wasn’t prepared for.  I just… couldn’t do it.  Couldn’t even write a blog post.  I looked around, and realized that I wasn’t out of the woods quite yet, as I’d thought.

     

    A week went by.  Okay, I thought, Time to get back to it.

     

    Nope.

     

    Two weeks.  Surely, now.  Two weeks must be enough time to recover from the mad dash I’d just been through, but no.  In fact, something new had snuck into my brain to replace my mental exhaustion.  As I stood looking around and what now seemed frighteningly unfamiliar territory, something snaked its coils around my chest and started to squeeze.

     

    Fear.

     

    Each time I thought about sitting down to work out the details of the next chapter of my story, my pulse quickened, and not with excitement.  I started shying away from the story out of fear, though fear of what I didn’t know.  Heck, I didn’t even know what was happening at the time, only that it had suddenly become very important that I not work on my writing.  My writing was stalking me like some unseen creature in the underbrush. 

     

    As the days continued to slip by, a horrible pressing guilt settled on my shoulders.  I should be writing, I chided myself, but I’m not.  I’m failing.  This is me, failing.  I’m awful.  I’m a loser.  A joke. I’m never going to succeed at this because I’m supposed to be writing and I can’t even muster the simple will power needed to do touch my fingertips to a keyboard.  It became a nasty feedback loop.  Each day I didn’t sit down and write made it that much harder for me to get back to the chair, sit down, and write.  I started hating myself.  I stopped trying to get my bearings.  I sat down on the cold, wet ground and started to let the ruinous forest of my blackest doubts leech from me my will to continue.

    Forest at Night

     

     

    Odin help me, I was lost!  Lost in a hostile forest, with the shadows of fear, doubt, and self-hate blinding me so that I couldn’t see a path forward, couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten there.  I was becoming more and more certain that my journey was at an end.  It was awful, and it felt inevitable. 

     

    The thing is, getting lost is a hazard of living a creative life.  In some ways, getting lost really is inevitable, because the creative path is not well-travelled.  I’d argue that if you’re doing things right as an artist, you’re blazing a new trail through the deepest, darkest woods of your own psyche.  There are no paths here, children.  Only shadows, and stones, and giant trees that might eat you if you get too close, and creatures too beautiful and terrible to look at directly.  And, wait, haven’t I gotten snagged in this same bramble patch before?  Oh, Thor!  I’m going in circles!  I’m lost, and it’s cold, and the sun’s getting low, the night creatures are coming, and I’ll never find my way out of this forest.  Why did I think this was a good idea?  I’m an idiot.  I’m going to die in these woods, and no one will mourn my demise. 

     

    Countless talented artists wander into the creative forest with good intentions and never make it out again.  They get lost, hit that moment of doubt and despair, give up, and die.  Metaphorically. 

     

    For me, May has certainly felt like a slow death in a wild and inhospitable landscape. 

     

    Finding My Way Back

    But then I received my feedback letter from my thesis reader—Jason Reynolds

    Jayson Reynolds
    That’s him, the self-professed hater of fantasy stories. And the guy who got me moving again!

    Quick back story.  At the residency program back in January, Jason sat in a classroom with a bunch of us from the Writing for Young People concentration, and went off on a (gentle) tirade about how irritating he found the fantasy genre.  Details are not important here.  Suffice it to say, the man is not a fan.  As he spoke, I sat with a polite smile cemented to my face and did my best not to freak out.  You see, by that point, I already knew I was going to be writing a YA fantasy story for my thesis, and I’d already requested him as my thesis reader. A guy who hates fantasy is going to put final eyes on my fantasy thesis. Fantastic.

     

    Anyway, four months later, I’m slipping into creative hypothermia, curling up in the fetal position, and making peace with my end, when I open his feedback letter and read it.

     

    I was expecting lukewarm but professional feedback on my prose, my character development, my pacing, scene structure, etc.  You can hate a story, after all, and still give constructive feedback on the writing, right?  Lukewarm but professional feedback was not what I got. 

     

    For almost three weeks at that point, I’d been lost in the shadowy part of my self-made forest, under thick canopy, feeling the slow creep of horror setting in as I realized that the trees were endless and I was a hopeless, pathetic fool.  Jason’s feedback was like discovering a high-powered flashlight in my back pocket, switching it on, and finding out that I’d been following a path the whole time without realizing it. 

     

    Sunlit ForestI can see again.  Maybe I don’t have to die out here all alone in the cold, unforgiving forest of my mind. The book I’m writing is my destination once again.  Chris Lynch had been my shelter.  A few close writing-friends I’ve connected with through the program had been my water, my spouse is my fire, and all the fine books I’d been reading this semester have been my food.

     

    So, with the help of Jason Reynold’s incredibly generous and encouraging words, I’m standing up, brushing the duff off my backside, and moving forward again.  Sun’s up.  The canopy is starting to thin out again, and I’m pretty sure this trail is not leading to pit trap filled with poison-tipped spikes.  If it is, I know I can find a way to disarm it.  I’ve shifted my attitude.  I’m getting out of this alive.

     

    Have you ever gotten lost in the darker parts of your creative forest?  How long did you wander before finding your way out?   

  • Write in the Morning to Maximize Productivity

    Write in the Morning to Maximize Productivity

    Every morning, I wake up, get the coffee beans ground, get the water heating, and then I sit down and write for an hour.  At the end of that session, I check my “session target” bar in Scrivener, and a satisfied warmth suffuses my brain.  I’ve discovered a couple of things about writing first thing in the morning. 1) It’s getting easier. 2) It seems to lead to more productive writing in the afternoon.

     

    Becoming a Morning Person

    Let Me SleepI don’t particularly enjoy getting up at 5 AM every day.  It’s a new habit I’m trying to cultivate as part of a synergistic new year resolution I made with my spouse.  Get up early, engage in some form of exercise for 20 or 30 minutes, then write for an hour.  That’s the goal, and so far I’ve succeeded with only a couple of slip-ups (one of which I fully blame on the Bombogenesis of 2018).  

    The actual getting up part of this is, slowly, getting easier for me due to some tremendous positive reinforcement (I’ll get to that later).  The exercise part of things… ummm, yeah. No.  I’m not.  I should.  But I’m not.  Do I feel bad about that?  Yep.  Am I going to build the working out part back into my morning routine?  One day, yes.  That day is not close, though.  

    Regarding physically getting up and getting my day going, though?  That’s getting easier. 

    The neuroscientists reading my blog (hey, they could be) are nodding their heads.  There’s plenty of science to back up what I’m experiencing: doing something over and over makes it easier to do.  Charles Duhigg wrote a book about it called The Power of Habit.  I haven’t read it, but I did read this NPR article: Habits: How They Form and How to Break Them that shilled for his book.  I’m glad I did because it made me realize that I’ve accidentally included something into my morning routine that’s pretty clutch when it comes to habit formation: CONCRETE AND IMMEDIATE REWARDS.

    In my earlier post, Writing is Like Baseball: You Gotta Swing for the Fences, I talked about the fact that I’m trying to write an entire first draft of a novel by April 9th.  Scrivener has allowed me to set a deadline date and a word count goal.  As I write, Scrivener calculates how many words I need to write every day to meet my deadline.  This, friends, is where I have accidentally been rewarding myself.

     

    Session Targets are My Friend

    Take a look at that picture over there on the left.Session Target Met  That green bar is pretty, isn’t it?  That was my session target bar at 4:23 PM yesterday afternoon.  Not too shabby.  I try to make sure that I’ve hit my daily word count goal before I head on home to my family after work because when I get home, writing gets really difficult.

    Anyway, I have always, always responded well to extrinsic feedback and rewards.  I’m terrible at doing things for myself, but I am great at doing them for someone (or something) else.  Scrivener is my external motivator.  I will write that session target into the green and love every minute of it. 

    If I’m slogging along in a scene and the words aren’t coming quickly and I feel tempted to just close up shop for the day and quit, I can open up that session target and get re-motivated to push for those last couple hundred words.  It works every single time.  I’m not saying the words are fabulous.  I’m just saying this feature  helps keep me writing when I might otherwise stop.

    In the mornings, I’ve been writing forward in my current novel project.  It’s only an hour, and this is right after I’ve gotten up, remember.  I’m not breaking any productivity records here.  But check it out: when 6:30 AM rolls around (I have a timer to make sure I don’t fall into the page and get lost), I open up my “Session Target” bar and have a little peek to see how I did.  

    Session Target at 6:30 AM
    The kids aren’t even up yet, and I’m halfway done!

    That sight, that glorious yellow bar reaching more than halfway across the screen, well it just makes me smile.  Seriously, I close up my computer and finish my 5:00 AM writing session feeling like a character from the LEGO Movie (everything is awesome!)  The kids aren’t even up yet, and I’m already halfway toward achieving my daily word count goal.

    If that isn’t a concrete and immediate reward, I don’t know what is.

     

    Write Earlier to Write More Later

    WriteSomething else happens when I knock off 300 to 400 words first thing.  In addition to flooding my brain with dopamine like some literary addict, I also prime my imaginative pump and set myself up for my afternoon writing session.

    All day long, I find myself thinking about my story and wanting to get back to it.  My morning session takes my project and moves it to the front burner of my mind.  Come afternoon, I’m more than ready to sit down and dive back in, and I think that those afternoon sessions are becoming more productive, too.  There’s probably some science to support that observation, but I don’t know what it is.  I could Google it, I suppose, but really, this post is eating up too much of my time already.  It’s 3:15 PM.  I’ve got an itch that needs scratching.  It’s time to knock out those remaining 332 words and fill that bar with glorious, goal-oriented green.

    This whole get-up-early-and-write thing seems to be working out for me so far.  

    Do you write in the mornings?  Have you always?  If not, would you ever give it a try?  

  • Writing is like Baseball: You Gotta Swing for the Fences!

    Writing is like Baseball: You Gotta Swing for the Fences!

    Sandlot MovieWriting is like baseball.  Most of the time, you recognize the pitch coming in and you manage a solid single when you swing at it. Occasionally, you strike out.  Every once in a great while, though, you hit a grand slam.  Or, if you’re new at it, like me, you dream about hitting a grand slam and when it’s your turn at bat, you give it everything you have and swing for the fences. 

    Between now and April 9th, I’m going to try to crank out an entire novel, start to finish.  It’s okay, coach told me to do it.

     

    Here’s the Pitch

    Lesley UniversityI just got back from my amazing, energizing, mad-capped Residency at Lesley University.  This was my fourth and (almost) final trip to geeky writer’s camp for grown-ups.  That means I have officially entered my fourth semester of a four-semester-long program.  This is it, folks.  Everything else was just practicing in the batting cages.  The lights are up, the bleachers are packed, it’s the bottom of the ninth inning and the bases are loaded.  I’m going to use a bunch of baseball metaphors in this post in case my Thesis Advisor, Chris Lynch, catches wind of this post and reads it.  You know him.  He wrote Inexcusable, Irreversible, Killing Time in Crystal City, Little Blue Lies, Gold Dust, and a bunch of other incredible award-winning novels.

    Anyway, residency is a mixture of seminars, panel discussions, and workshop sessions in which a bunch of us sit around and give critical feedback to each other on pieces we submitted at the beginning of December.  

    Manuscript Mark-upsThe workshop sessions are one of the highlights of residency for me.  I absolutely love reading other people’s writing, digging into it deeply, and then discussing it with other serious and passionate writers.  I also love receiving feedback on my stuff.  Even when folks point out more problems than positives in my work, I find the experience hopeful.  

    This time around was a slightly different workshop experience for me for a couple of reasons.

    First, I’m entering my “Thesis Semester.”  On May 7th, I must turn in between 100 and 120 pages of a “finished” piece of writing to someone who has never set eyes on it before–Jason Reynolds.  Ever heard of him?  Of course you have, you’re using the internet and you’re reading a blog about writing. 

    So, yeah.  No pressure, right?  Riiiiiiight.  [takes a moment to breathe into a paper bag] Okay, I’m good.  

    Most students entering the Thesis Semester have a working draft already completed, or at least a very solid chunk of it.  

    The second reason why it was a different experience was because Mr. Lynch pitched something at me I was not expecting.

     

    A Curve Ball

    Curve BallSix days before my residency workshop pieces were due (we need to write two pieces, each between 3,000 and 6,500 words long), I contacted Chris Lynch with a question.  It was via email, but this is how the conversation sounded in my imagination (I may have taken extreme liberties with the details).

     

     

    “Hi, Chris.”

    “Oh, hey, Kathy.  Great to hear from you.  I’ve heard so much about you from my colleagues.  Can’t wait to work with you!”   (He said none of that, by the way.) 

    “Thanks, Chris.  Same to you.  So… I’ve got two different books going right now.”

    “Okay.”

     “One’s a fun MG steam punk piratical fantasy adventure story.  I’m enjoying it, but it’s not quite your style, I think.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “The other is a gritty YA post-apocalyptic wilderness survival story.  Totally up your alley, but it’s a hot mess at the moment.  Needs a ton of work.”

    “Right.”

    “Maybe I could submit some of one novel for my Large Group Workshop and some of the other novel for my Small Group Workshop, and then you could tell me which one you like better, and we could use that for my thesis.”

    “Hmmm… when are they due again?”

    “Six days from now.”

    “Yeah.  Okay, so, why don’t you make up a completely new story from scratch and submit that for both your workshop pieces.”

    [Eyes bulging with terror]  “Are you sure?”

    “Definitely.  That’s what I want you to do.  I’m your all powerful Thesis Advisor.  Do you really want to say no to me?”

    “Hahaha, no.  No, definitely not.  I mean, yes, that sounds great.  I will totally do that for you.  New story.  Six days.  Not a problem.  Thank you so much.”

    “You’re so welcome.  Glad you called.  Take care now.  Bye-bye.”  [click]

    Did I freak out after I got his email reply?  You bet your buttons I did.  I wrote a post about it, actually.  But then I did what he asked me to do and cranked out about 7,000 words of a brand-spanking new story.  I wrote that sucker so fast and in such a panic that I didn’t stop to question anything. Setting, characters, plot, dialogue, point-of-view, nothing!  I put my fingers on the keyboard, cleared my mind, and wrote Ouija-style!

     

    Swinging For the Fences!

    Turns out, the thing that fell out of my brain was… kind of cool.  It feels a little weird to write that, but there you have it.  Once I got over the shock of what I’d produced (a militant feminist world dominated by psychic women who are into all kinds of stuff our society has deemed taboo), I had to admit to myself that I kind of liked the story.  Okay, I fully liked it. 

    I think all my pent-up rage from the past two years of… I’m not going to that dark place…came bubbling to the surface when Chris was all, like, “write me brand new stuff NOW!”  My beloved called it my “man-hating” story.  Chris called it a “black-widow feminist” piece.  I’m calling it The 42nd Queen.  Eh, it’s a working title.

    Chris also told me I should make it my thesis project.  In all fairness, he didn’t order me to do it.  He’s not a monster, for Thor’s sake.  I might even go so far as to say he’s a pretty awesome, inspiring, and kind guy.  And, if I’m honest, what I wrote at his request (though I cursed him as I wrote it) is one of the first things I’ve written in a long time that gave me the feels as I was writing it.  That means something, I think.

    So, yeah.  I’m going to make it my thesis project.  Fourth semester shall not be my revision semester.  It shall be my militant feminist, Ouija-style writing semester.  

    And if I’m going to take a swing at this, I’m going to swing for the fences. 

    120 page?  Pshaw!  Too easy.  

    Let’s try for a grand slam.  An entire draft of a novel.  In 82 days. 

    Babe Ruth
    If I’m going to take a crack at this, I’m going to swing for the fences, Babe.

    I mapped it out and it’s definitely possible.  Assuming (perhaps naïvely) that I write 810 words every single day between now and then, I can hit 75,000 words (about 350 pages) by April 9th.  There’s no guarantee they’ll be good words, but that’s beside the point. 

    The pitch has been thrown.  It’s a curve ball breaking to the inside corner, and I’ve got a bead on it.  The bat’s beginning to come around.  My hips are cocked.  Body weight shifting off the back leg.  Here it comes.  

    Think I can do it? 

  • IWSG January Post – Making the Writing Happen

    The Insecure Writer's Support GroupThis month’s IWSG post asks the question:

    What steps have you taken to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing?

    How apropos.

    Before I continue, I must give a shout out to this month’s most excellent hosts: Tyrean Martinson, The Cynical Sailor, Megan Morgan, Rachna Chhabria, and Jennifer Lane.  Thank you all for hosting this month’s IWSG blog hop.  

    2018 is right around the corner, and in my household, it is a big deal. I and my beloved don’t usually enjoy marching to the beat of a predictable, trite, or clichéd drum, and the whole tradition of making new year resolutions certainly fits that description. That said, new year resolutions are, in fact, something we do, and we get jazzed about it, too.

    Positive Thinking I’m all about the power of positive thinking and positive visualization. Think forward, not backward, I say. What do I want my future to look like, I ask, and then I act to manifest that future. The first step in that process happens in my own mind.

    The act of ticking over a new year on the first of January is, as I well know, an imaginary contrivance of human perception. Not to mention, it’s dependent upon which calendar you follow. Sumerian? Aztec? Norse? Celtic? Nubian? Heck, I could invent my very own calendar system and start the year on November 12th. Why not?

    Okay, so the start of a new year is a fictitious concept, but it’s one that I enjoy celebrating, almost worshiping. It provides me with a stimulus, a prompt, a chance to pause and contemplate my accomplishments (and failures) of the past spin around Solaris, and look forward to imagine what the next spin might be like.

    What am I proud of doing? What are my regrets? How can I transform those regrets into positives moving forward? What challenges can I throw at myself that will test me and improve me either physically, intellectually, or spiritually? That’s what celebrating the new year and making resolutions is all about in my house.

    It’s serendipitous that this month’s IWSG prompt deals with finding ways to fit writing into my life because it’s already one of my resolutions for the new year.

    2017 was an unacceptably sedentary year for me in which I got a lot of writing done, but not enough and it always felt shoved in last minute. Most of my writing happened in the late afternoons, at the end of a long day of teaching, or worse, after dinner when all I wanted to do was go to bed.  It always felt forced.  I was Sisyphus, standing at the bottom of the hill, hands against the boulder.  Not good.

    Here’s my plan for 2018:

    1. Wake up at 5 am every day except Sunday, so that I have time to:
    2. Work out for 20 to 30 minutes with my beloved, then:
    3. Write for one hour.

     

    KettlebellsNotebook with black cursive writing sits atop an open laptop

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    That’s right, the big new year’s resolution for me is to become–wait for it–a morning person! My writing time will become part of an established routine. I’m not stipulating what I’ll be writing. It could be rough drafts, editing work, blogging, journaling, anything as long as it is writing.

    The great thing about my plan is that I’m not alone in it. My beloved and I are engaging in this resolution together. We’re going to support each other, motivate each other, hold each other accountable. In other words, misery loves company, and I’m going to have some. Technically I already do, because I wrote this post on December 27th, but it won’t go up until January 3rd. By the time you read this, I’ll have three early mornings under my belt. Feel free to ask me how it’s going a month from now; most failed resolutions die in the third week of implementation. (Not me, not me, not me, not me <– see that? Positive thinking, baby!)

    2018, here I come! If all goes as I’m visualizing it, 2019 will see me healthier and much, much farther along in my writing career.

    If you’ve got a plan for getting more writing time worked into your schedule, or if you’ve already successfully done it, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

    Happy 2018, everyone, and happy writing.