What do you love about the genre you write in most often?
Well, what’s not to love about children’s literature? I love writing for young audiences. For teens in particular, but the idea of writing for children of any age thrills me.
I adore writing fiction for kids, specifically for teens, but broadly I just love writing for kids.
Why Write for Kids?
I suppose it started with my own kids.
[Disclaimer: I don’t like sharing too many personal details about my family members on this blog. This is, after all, my blog, not theirs. They have a right to privacy, especially my children. Who knows what they’ll grow up to become? I’ve no right to start generating their digital footprint and shaping what the online algorithms think of them.]
For this post, however, I will share the couched detail that one of my kids got off to a very rocky start with regard to learning to read, and because of a number of factors I won’t delve into, they were on the cusp of loathing reading by the time their sixth birthday rolled around.
Can you imagine how terrifying that was for me to watch? Me, who fell in love with reading long before I had the skill to do it on my own. Me, who used books to get through difficult periods in my life. Me, who loved fictional worlds and the characters that lived in them so much that I began creating my own when I was still in elementary school. Me? Have a child who hated reading?
There was only one thing to do. I ignored the advice of my child’s well-meaning but MCAS-driven and test-score-fearing teachers, and I did not sit my child down daily and force them to slog through the most awful, boring, black-and-white photocopied and stapled together early reader’s imaginable, struggling through tear-blurred vision to sound out the next word.
Instead, I read to them.
Every night. Sometimes, for hours. Until my voice grew hoarse and my throat began to burn.
My child loved this map, just as I did the first time I saw it!
I sat in my one-time nursing chair at the foot of their bed and worked through The Hobbit, then the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, then all seven of the Harry Potter books, then two-and-a-half of the Inheritance Cycle books, then the Inkspell books.
A funny thing happened during those years. Yes, it took us years to get through reading those books a bit at a time each night. My child grew older, their brain matured, their teachers worked with them during the day on the concrete skills of reading, and my child learned to love books and to love reading them.
They’re off and running on their own now, I’m pleased to say. They read voraciously, thank Thor.
Books for adults are all well and good. I read my fair share of them every year. Not so many since starting my MFA program, as you might imagine.
It’s just that books for children are, and I know I’m going to ruffle a few feathers with this sweeping declaration, far more important than books for adults. I mean, it’s kind of obvious when you stop and think about it. When did you fall in love with reading? When you were a kid, probably. Some book touched your soul, gave you the big time feels, sent shivers down your spine, and woke you up for life.
That’s why I love writing for young people.
What was that first book that marked your soul, by the way? (For me, it was Bridge to Terabithia.)
Before I dive into what “living through a Bombogenic event” felt like, allow me to begin by saying that as of this morning I failed at one of my three New Year Resolutions. If you’re curious about which one that might be, keep reading and see if you can figure it out, or click the link to the post where I laid them out.
I’m not proud of my failure in resolve and will power this morning, but I do at least have an excuse that (to me) feels less like an excuse and more like an explanation. I and my family spent the day dealing with a Really Freaking Big Snow Storm. Not blizzard of ’78 big. I’m not making a boast that ridiculous. I get to call it Really Freaking Big because of how it pitched my life sideways and what that felt like.
How Do You Stay Warm in a House with No Insulation?
Our house was built in the 1950’s on land that was part of a government veterans program post WW2 in which veterans were sold land for $1.00/acre. The program was a “Hey, thanks for doing that dangerous, deadly, horribly traumatizing thing for not just your own country’s citizens but for everyone pretty much everywhere” gift from US taxpayers. That was awesome, but in the 1950’s, insulation just wasn’t… good.
Imagine insulating a house by laying a piece of cotton felt between the studs and joists and then gluing a piece of aluminum foil to it. That’s about what we’ve got. The result is, heat bleeds out of our house at a prodigious rate.
We usually deal with this inconvenience by keeping our thermostat set to 55˚F, except for first thing in the morning when we indulge in a toasty 63˚F while everyone’s getting ready for school and work. Not so, when the Bombogenesis struck.
The temperature over the past two weeks has been abysmally cold. This morning, I heard a news reporter crow like a rooster that Boston was officially colder than Bismarck, North Dakota. Also, at what point did “who’s colder” become a thing to compete over? Anyway, we’re talking a two week period where temps regularly dipped or flat out stayed in the single digits. If you’re someone who lives where that’s a regular occurrence and you’re scoffing, I’d ask you to pause for a moment. Weather that cold is not a typical thing on the eastern coast of Massachusetts. Many homes (mine included) weren’t architecturally designed for such conditions. Freezing and bursting pipes is a genuine threat. The easiest way to avoid that happening is to crank the heat in your home.
Our heat-leaking home has had its thermostat set to 65˚F night and day for the past seven days.
What To Do With All That Snow And Nowhere To Put It?
Yesterday, ten inches of snow fell on us. It may have been more or less than that, but the wind was blowing so hard that there are bare spots in some places and giant snow drifts in other places. Point is, a LOT of snow.
I and the kids got a snow day, which we were all pretty stoked about.
All of Thursday, we listened to the wind roar through the trees around our house and slam itself against our northern face. We stood at our picture window and watched it drive sheets of snow almost parallel to the ground, so thick there were moments when we lost sight of the neighbor’s house across the street.
We stayed inside and sipped cocoa. I did some writing. The kids spent way too much time playing video games. My beloved got down into the studio and did some photographating. We cooked dinner and ate as a family and counted our blessings for being fortunate enough to have a warm home and plenty of food and electricity.
But today was (and I’ll get to the “was” thing in a moment) supposed to be my first day of my fourth and (almost) final nine-day-long, on-campus residency for Lesley University’s Low Residency Masters in Creative Writing program. Which meant we needed to get the cars dug out so I had a way to get to the train station this morning, because even if I wanted to walk the mile and a quarter to the train station, the sidewalks wouldn’t be dug out. No way I was going to walk the narrow, snow-plowed streets. I’d get creamed.
The photo really doesn’t do it justice. We also had to shovel our way down our front steps to even get to the cars.
So, after dinner, we ALL suited up and headed outside, shovels in hand and began the two-hour-long torture session of shoveling during the Bombogenesis. Odin, let me tell you, snowflakes sting like [insert preferred curse word here] when they’re pelting your face at 50 mph… in the dark… in single digit temperatures. I don’t usually post photos online of the areas in or around my house, but I think it will help give context to the volume of snow that we had to move and where we had to put it.
By the time we were done, I was done. Toast. Not physically sore, no. More like numb and flacid, as if my muscles had been replaced by jelly. I was moving slow, and it was an effort.
When the 5am alarm sounded this morning, my beloved (cut from a stronger cloth than I) rose to do our morning workout routine. I did not. I slept until 7am, when I was woken by the sound of the porch door being wrestled/slammed shut and someone stamping snow of their boots on the porch. Then the kitchen door opening and closing.
I went downstairs and learned that, during the night, plows had come by and undone most of what we’d shoveled the night before. And by undone, I mean they put back the 3′ high by 5′ wide mound of wet, grimy street snow that had blocked our driveway entrance. Instead of waking me and asking/demanding I help dig back out, my better half simply suited up and took care of things so that I could sleep in. Because today was my first day of residency, and it was going to be a long day for me. I know, I am blessed!!
But the Bombogenesis wasn’t finished with us yet.
No Insulation Plus A Ton of Snow Equals Ice Dams
As I grabbed my cup of coffee, sipped it, and strolled past our bathroom on the way to waking up my oldest child to let them know that their school had been cancelled for a second day, I glanced out the bathroom window and beheld an icicle as thick around as a grown man’s thigh streaming down glass like a frozen mountain stream.
Oh. My. God.
No one ever went out yesterday with the roof rake! Not once did it occur to me that with the heat up so high, all day long, the snow landing on the roof was melting, dripping into the metal gutter that was the same temperature as the air (9˚F) and freezing. We probably had an ice dam the size of Fort Peck sitting on our back roof.
I chugged my coffeed, and together I and my beloved suited backup and went back outside to deal with all the digging out we didn’t do last night. Luckily what at first appeared to be the mother of all ice dams ended up being a gigantic cornice of wind-compressed snow. We easily knocked off and then raked off the rest of the roof. Thankfully, it didn’t have a lot of snow on it because the wind was so fierce during the Bombogenesis. We shovelled a path to the basement door and cleared that out, then dug our way over to our dryer vent and cleared that out, then dug a path out to the middle of the yard so that our medium sized mutt could have a place to do his business without freezing his wiener off in snow up to his shoulders.
I may have slept in this morning, but I still got my workout in. Thanks mother nature.
Okay, potential ice dam crisis averted. I still had just over two hours before I had to catch a train into Cambridge for my first seminar of my Residency. How I was going to muster the physical energy needed to pick up a pen and write with it, I wasn’t sure, but I was ready. In fact, I was excited.
At Least I Had Residency To Look Forward To
Pretty much since December 1st, I’ve been counting down the days until my (almost) final residency. I’ve made some incredible friends through this program. They are spread out all over the country: Texas, Las Vegas, Seattle, Georgia, West Virginia, New York City. I get to see them face-to-face just twice a year for nine days during residency. For that reason alone, I’ve been looking forward to today. But, the program is so much more than that. The instructors, the seminars, the intensity of the learning process, the raw energy of being surrounded by other writers equally passionate about creative writing as I am? It’s intoxicating. It’s exhilarating. It’s nerdy writing camp for grown-up’s and it’s awesome!!
About a half hour before my train was scheduled to depart, I got an email from the director of my program stating that, because so many of the residency students and professors’ flights had been cancelled or delayed, today’s residency program had been cancelled. We’ll be jumping into Saturday classes on time tomorrow.
Well, Sugar Honey Iced Tea. That certainly does suck eggs. Glad I thought to check my email on last time before I took off.
Guess I’ll have to wait one extra day to see my friends again and experience the joy that is living, breathing, and eating all things devoted to the art and craft of creative writing. I still can’t wait.
In the meantime, since I feel I just need a few hours to recover myself, physically from lifting and throwing 15 to 25 lb loads of snow over and over again for a total of four of the past twenty-four hours, I thought I’d set up camp on my couch and blog about what it was like at my house during the Bombogenesis.
And by the way, please don’t be fooled by that term or by the giddy meteorologists dancing around up on top of big piles of snow singing the word at you. This Bombogenesis was just a typical New England Nor’easter with lower than typical temperatures. New Englanders are used to crazy and sometimes difficult to deal with weather. We deal with it.
Did the Beast of Bombogenesis impact you? Tell me about it in the comments.
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.
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:
Wake up at 5 am every day except Sunday, so that I have time to:
Work out for 20 to 30 minutes with my beloved, then:
Write for one hour.
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!
As if I haven’t already read about 50 blog posts on this very topic, here I am throwing up a blog post about great gift ideas for writers. Why? Because it is after Christmas, and now the pressure is off and the sales begin.
If people I know are anything like me, they flew out the door on the 24th for a frenzied, unpleasant, angst-ridden gift-buying binge and hated every moment of it. (Oddly, I got all my shopping done this year with a full week to spare. Who am I?!) The last thing most people I know are going to want to do is to head back out and “hit the sales.” I know that thinking about doing that sort of thing makes me start to sweat and not in a good way. However, it’s the season to be thinking about gifts and buying stuff, so while it’s fresh in my forebrain, why not use this blog post to generate a list that I can direct people back to later on in the year at other appropriate gift-giving moments?
Do remember that “great” is a relative term here. This is MY list of gifts that, as a writer, I would love to get any time of the year on any occasion for any reason! The list is not arranged in order of preference either. I’m creating it as things come to me.
Quick disclaimer: I am not sponsored by or getting paid by anyone for recommending or for using any of the products I put on this list. These are entirely my own thoughts and ideas.
1) Fountain Pens (for old-school writers)
The Pilots are the four on the left of this picture.
You had to have seen that coming. I continue my obsession with fountain pens. Most writers like quality writing implements, but not nearly enough of us own a fountain pen. I own many, and I write with them all the time. I’m also not rich or really anywhere even close to that descriptor, so I can’t recommend an expensive pen, although I’m hoping to treat myself to a gorgeous retractable fountain pen as a grad school graduation gift this summer.
Anyway, I recommend the Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen as a gift for the writer in your life. These pens have metal casings and a nice weight in the hand. The caps post well. They come in a variety of attractive covers. The disposable ink cartridges are inexpensive and easy to find, and if you’re cheap like me or are equally nerdy about inks like me, the disposable cartridges can be rinsed out and then refilled with other inks using either a plastic pipette or a glass eye dropper.
2) Notebooks (for all writers)
I find a certain pure joy in the sight of a crisp, blank notebook.
This is another obvious choice for a writer friend. I caved and bought myself two new (super cheap) notebooks for myself at Five-Below this year, because I have a teensy obsession with notebooks (see previous post here). I also found a few with pre-generated writing prompts. I got several identical copies of these and am going to be giving them to members of my long-distance writing group. The idea is that we can partake in a story-swap. I’m envisioning it a little like a book club, where once a month we all take the first prompt in our notebooks and write a piece of flash fiction off of it, then send it to each other. It’ll keep us all writing, keep our creativity-muscles in good shape, and keep us connected. Win-win-win, and whatnot.
Come on! A wireless, digital keyboard for a tablet that pays homage to its own humble beginnings?! Fabulous.
Part of me knows this is sort of a stupid gift, but that doesn’t change the fact that I grin like an idiot every time I look at this adorable if impractical device. My dad owned an ancient, high-backed Underwood typewriter when I was a kid. He showed me how to use it and then left me to play school, and secretary (sad, I know), and then to start typing stories on that old machine. Therefore, this high-tech-low-tech gift pushed my nostalgia button hard. In practice, it would probably end up annoying the heck out of me due to how small the keyboard is, and it doesn’t look all that easy to transport without snagging the keys and popping them off on stuff. But, seriously, just look at it! Isn’t it cute?
4) Gift Card to a Hip, Local, Coffee Shop (for… hip writers?)
Odin, hear my prayer, please no more gift cards to Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks or Panera Bread. Okay, Panera Bread, maybe, but not the other two. Ask your writer friend where they like to go to write and, assuming their answer is a coffee shop of some kind, hit up that spot and get them a gift card for MORE THAN ten dollars. Come on people; make it worth it, please.
4) Books (for humans)
Duh! This is the absolute no-brainer. And, by the way, books are just about the best gift idea for anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any occasion. Giving someone a great book kills so many birds with a single stone. Reading will improve the receiver’s brain, give them an awesome extended experience, and give them something great to talk about to other people. Books as gifts support the creative person or persons who wrote the book, designed the cover, etc. Also, buying books sends a message to the marketplace that books are a product worth creating, and maybe that will have a trickle-down effect for all of us. Maybe? That last bit could be a naive thought on my part.
Now, please, don’t just take a shot in the dark. And don’t buy them a book that YOU would like to read and so you figure they would, too. Take the time to find out what books they want. If they have a Goodreads account, check out their “Want to Read” list. If that isn’t a possibility, how about you just flat out ask them? You might be thinking, “But then they’ll know what I’m getting them for a present,” allow me to speak on their behalf for a moment: They don’t care. They will love the gift even if it’s not a total surprise because it’s something they WANT.
5) A Contigo® Travel Mug (for environmentally conscious writers)
This ties back to the gift card to your writer friend’s favorite haunt. Give your writer a way to nourish their caffeine habit in an environmentally friendly way.
Specifically, I adore Contingo® travel mugs.
This is the model I have, but in green.
Testimonial – This past year I made myself a cup of tea to sip out of my Contigo® mug on my drive to work at 7:00 am. It was scalding hot, so I set it in a console cup holder to cool and completely (I mean completely) forgot about it. That afternoon, at 4:45 pm, I rediscovered it when I got into my car to go home. The tea in the travel mug had cooled just enough so that I could sip it without burning myself. Now that is an impressive mug!
I learned a lesson that day, too. I now make my tea, then add four ice cubes as I’m heading out the door so that I can enjoy my hot beverage on my actual drive.
6) A Coffee Bean Grinder (for coffee drinking writers)
If writer friend likes coffee, this is a great gift idea. Freshly ground beans make for significantly better tasting coffee than preground beans do. Also, it opens up the possibility of them trying out (or being gifted) unique gourmet bean blends. I own both a hand grinder and an electric grinder. Confession, I use the electric one more than I use the manual one, but only because it’s quicker and more convenient. The manual grinder does a better job of grinding the beans evenly.
Regardless, whenever I find myself in the rare and luxurious position of being alone in my home with a few hours of isolation available in which I can read or write, one of the first things I do is brew up a rich, quality cup of high-end coffee.
7) Noise Canceling Headphones (for writers with children)
Bose makes a $300 pair; I saw them in the Apple store and just about choked at the price. But you know what? I tried them on and, by Freya, those suckers were incredible!
Just look at her, being all productive and creative with her noise-canceling headphones on!
As a writer who struggles to close out the world when I’m writing, this gift would be fantastic! There is literally a hole in the wall above my writing desk through which the dulcet tones of my playing/bickering/crying/screaming children echo to me as I attempt to immerse myself in another world. Noise canceling headphones would be a much-appreciated gift. But beware, not all “noise canceling” headphones do a good job of actually canceling out noise. If you’re going to commit to this gift idea, pay for ones that work!
8) Magazine Subscriptions (for writers of short fiction)
In what genre does your friend write? You should know this, but if you don’t, find out. Also, ask your aspirational writing friend, “In which magazines do you dream of getting published?” The pinnacle, prestige publications. Buy them a subscription to any and all of them.
The first step toward them achieving their dream is to read from those magazines often. However, yearly subscriptions can be pricey. I have a bucket list of amazing magazines in which I dream of one-day publishing, and I’d be delighted if someone bought me not just an issue but a whole year’s subscription of any of them. That would be incredible.
9) A Wicked Good Bag (for on-the-go writers)
Aren’t they sleek and lovely?
I have owned both backpacks and messenger bags. I personally prefer messenger bags. Not sure why. Just do.
My current bag came from Barnes and Noble. A pretty good bag considering the price, and I’ve loved owning it for three years now. It’s just… starting to look its age, I guess. The heavily stained, frayed-at-the-edges canvas exterior has lost some of its attractiveness. It’s still quite functional, though. I would be so hesitant to spend money on a new one. I mean, who cares if it’s starting to look like something I found half-buried beside an abandoned set of train tracks, right?
This bag just begs for adventure!
Anyway, a woman who coaches in the same Science League that I coach in was sporting just about the best bag I have ever seen in my entire life. It’s by a company called Peak Design
Pause: Leather satchels that look like they’re meant to be perched across the back of some gorgeous adventuring archaeologist are my ultimate fantasy bags. My fantasy bags would not hold up to real life practicalities, however. The Peak Designs bag would, though, and you have to admit that they are also gorgeous in a completely different way than the Indiana Jones bags.
10) A Writer’s Retreat or Convention (for all writers)
“The Writers’ Retreat” by Grant Snider, an illustrator and cartoonist who draws the online strip “Incidental Comics.”
The gift of a retreat would be a huge gift, a truly grand gesture. It would be (in my opinion) the penultimate gift you could ever possibly give to a writer. It’s like buying someone a cruise. Heck, I know of several writers retreats that ARE cruises. So… just sayin’.
What’s great is that there are retreats suited for all types of writers. What’s sad is that while most of us will yearn and pine and dream of attending a writers retreat, most of us will never follow through and go. There are logistical issues to attending a retreat. Circumstances must be taken into account. Childcare? Time off from work? Travel considerations? Before offering up this diamond ring of a gift to the writer in your life, make sure it’s something they both really want to do and could logistically do. If you’re not sure about how to “shop” for the perfect retreat, check out this excellent post: Making the Most of Your Writing Retreat by Janalyn Voigt over at LiveWriteBreathe.
If my beloved surprised me with a week-long writer’s retreat, I would probably get as excited as the day I… well, never you mind. Let’s just say I’d get very, very excited.
So there you go. A few ideas of fantastic gifts you could get that special writer in your life and have it be very genuinely appreciated.
Your Turn:
Think long and hard. What would you love to get as a gift in the context of you being a writer? Share in the comments. Ideas are more than welcome.
Aaaaaaaaaarrrgh! Life, my good man, please! Will you just chill out already? I mean, criminiddly, I am trying to be a writer over here!
In all seriousness, though, I have not be getting words onto the paper of late, and it is starting to make me feel a little crazy. There has been a whole lot of family stuff going on over the last couple of weeks. Kid stuff. Supporting my creative spouse stuff. Parent stuff. Pile onto that all the scads of “extras” that my teaching gig has been throwing at me. Then, just to see what my max lift in life is, cue my third submission deadline on October 2nd (which I only partially met).
It was legitimately too much. I felt like the kid who stuffed one too many peeps into her mouth and was realizing that the gooey wad of yellow sweet stuff was blocking her airway. (By the way, I’ve never actually done the peep challenge. I’m not that dumb. I did the chubby bunny challenge.) So I asked for an extension on my craft essay, and my amazing mentor gave me an extra week. Phew! What a relief.
That’s the bubble. Bursting.
And then I looked at my calendar for that week and saw evening obligations for my teaching gig that were going to keep me on campus late into the evening for four of the five weekdays. And school play and scouting stuff for my kids. And PTO meetings (which I skipped). And my writer’s group meeting (which I also skipped and felt super crappy about). And non-negotiable visit to my MIL’s house. And a scout-sponsored camping trip this past weekend.
Yep. That week-long extension gave me just one additional functional writing day.
But I got the draft done and got it turned in on time. That did feel good. A weight lifted from my mind, and I thought, “All right! Now to get back to the fun stuff! Back to my story. Back to writing!”
And then I took a look at my calendar for this week. Science team meet on Tuesday eats up that evening. College Rec letters are due on Friday. I have 52 trimester one indicator grades and comments due on Monday. One of my kids has an imminent birthday coming up that we really should do something about, since, you know… parenting and stuff?
*sigh*
*glances wistfully at the Scrivener icon sitting neglected in a corner of the desktop.*
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. Or, well, maybe you don’t. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…
Have you ever slipped any of your personal information into your characters, either by accident or on purpose?
I sure have, but first, allow me to drop a plug for IWSG. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, 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, which I haven’t checked out yet, contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out!
Okay, back to the question. I often work personal information into my writing on purpose, but sometimes I do it unintentionally, too.
Here’s an example of when personal stuff just sort of slips in there when I’m not paying attention. This past winter, during one of my critique sessions for my Lesley University Low-Residency master’s program, someone pointed out that my main character sounded like she was from the Midwest. The story being workshopped was something I’d discovery written. I hadn’t generated any character dossiers and hadn’t fleshed out a background for anyone.
The comment left me agape. You see, despite the fact that was born and raised in Massachusetts and am surrounded by Bostonians with the classically difficult to imitate accent, I’ve been told multiple times that I don’t sound like I’m from the area. In fact, people often tell me I’ve got a midwestern accent and drop midwestern slang. I chalk that up to the my father’s influence. He was born and raised on a farm in Iowa, and we visited his family often when I was a kid.
Who knew my father had shaped my psyche so deeply that it was affecting my writing! In any case, I decided to have my main character be a girl who grew up on a farm in… you guessed it, Iowa. Why not just roll with it, right? So now my dad is a teenage girl fighting for her life in the Canadian wilderness. Fabulous!
More often, personal information makes its way into my stories on purpose. I’ve written stories that take place in my hometown, at my place of work, or that involve events I’ve lived directly. All fictionalized to varying degrees, mind you.
My current WIP is a young adult SciFi horror story about a group of youths trying to survive the elements (and other things) in the backcountry of Canada. As a teen, I was a wilderness backpacking enthusiast, and a couple of times I and my group members found ourselves in genuinely dangerous situations. I’ve incorporated fictionalized versions of those events in my WIP.
So, yeah, I draw on my life experiences to add authenticity to everything I write.
What about you? Do you slip personal details into your writing? How do you feel about it?
Every September, I get back into the classroom and, within a month, I catch a cold. I blame my students. They get it first, and then they proceed to coat every surface they touch with their contagion. Last year, the virus took up residence deep in my chest and overstayed its welcome by about six weeks. It was vicious. Several of my colleagues and even a few of my students developed secondary pneumonia. Thankfully, my family and I live in a state of lightly controlled squalor, so we’ve got exposure theory on our side. Our immune systems are primed and ready for battle, but I’ve got a secret weapon in my battle against the common cold: books!
And yet, here I am, all hopped up on cold meds (this might be a very interesting post), holed up in bed while the rest of the fam shares hot-wings and watches the Patriots game on TV. Now that I think of it, perhaps there are some perks to catching the annual back-to-school cold.
Books (in all forms) Make Everything Better!
Just look at all those lovely books!
If you’re anything like me, your “to read” list grows faster than your “have read” list does. One of the original Twilight Zone episodes that haunts me the most is “Time Enough At Last,” starring Burgess Meredith as a guy who just wants to be left alone so he can read his books. I won’t spoil the episode because it’s available on Amazon Prime (you should watch it), but the ending is tragic in a way that only a bibliophile can fully grasp.
Audiobooks have become a staple in my life these days, too. I check them out from my library, and I buy them via Audible.com. Whenever I’m in the car or out for a walk, I’m listening to a book. My students helpfully showed me how to overclock the reading speed to 1.25x, which shaves about 2.5 hours off of a 10-hour book. It’s amazing.
That said, as great as listening to books can be, it’s not quite the same as reading them myself.
I am a slow reader. A pathetically slow reader. And, since I’ve started up the Masters in Creative Writing program at Lesley University, my reading speed has slowed even further. Now I find myself reading at two levels. I used to read for the simple pleasure of getting lost in the story. Now, I pay close attention to word choice, verbs, description, pacing, syntax, structure, flow, et cetera. In other words, I read with a writer’s eye, which slows me down.
My current bout with the rhinovirus isn’t nearly as bad as last year. Last year, I felt like I was dying. This year, I just feel like someone has stuffed my sinuses with a soggy loaf of bread. Not pleasant, but it could be worse. It didn’t stop me from getting out to Barnes & Noble yesterday for a YA book event where I grabbed myself a few ARCs to read… eventually… when I find the time. (That’s them in the photo at the top of this post.)
Here’s what I’m currently reading!
I might be guilty of exaggerating my misery slightly so that my spouse keeps the kids at bay, but I’m not completely faking. I am in bed with a sinus headache, and I do have to rest up so that I can make it through teaching my classes next week.
But really, I just want to snuggle in and cherish this rare opportunity to READ!
Books make everything better. Aren’t they great? Have you ever used books to get through something unpleasant, like cold season?
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?
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?
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!
This month’s IWSG post asks the question:
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.
Aaaaaaaaaarrrgh! Life, my good man, please! Will you just chill out already? I mean, criminiddly, I am trying to be a writer over here!
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. Or, well, maybe you don’t. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…
