‘Dem Bones, ‘Dem Bones…

I started to type the title for my post and the theme to “Bad Boys” came into my head. ‘Dem bones, ‘dem bones, whatchoo gonna do? Whatchoo gonna do when dey come fo’ you… Our theme next month is releasing our ghosts through writing and I couldn’t resist posting to that a little early. It feels Octoberish in my part of the States right now anyway, so here we go.

Many, many words have been penned about memoir, personal writing, journaling, keeping a diary, and a host of other ways to say the same thing: meeting ourselves on the page. I read once that journaling is the closest we come to being in the moment, except that it’s still at one remove because we’re talking about the moment and not literally being in it. (Sit with that thought a moment, it’s rather Zen but I think is a good point to ponder.) So how the hell do we do that?

One of my favorite books for getting into the moment on the page is by Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones. In it, she gives a series of essays and exercises to guide us in getting in touch with ourselves on the page and for getting into the moment. It amounts to getting out of our own way and quieting the censor, that voice that says, “That’s not how you spell censor!”

Rather than worrying about how we’re writing, we write and let the words flow out of us like the breath. When we breathe, we don’t worry about how we’re breathing, it just happens automatically. When we start to speak to someone, we open our mouths and the words flow out of us – we don’t think about how to breath to form speech, how to shape our mouths, where to put our tongue, or any of that. For most of us it’s simply an automatic process. We speak, simple as that.

I remember the first time I picked up Ms. Goldberg’s book. I was living in Mount Shasta at the time. I worked in a bookstore/coffee house and my official story was, “I was on sabbatical to write books.” That’s also the literal truth, though I wouldn’t have put such fancy language around it. I wanted to write books with every fiber of my being but, unfortunately, there’s not a book-writing tree from which we can go pick fruit and BAM! a book results. It’s a lot of hard work and there’s a lot of “stuff” in the way: chiefly, that censor I talked about above. Ms. Goldberg’s words practically floated off the page and hit me between the eyes: try filling one notebook a month.

One notebook a month? Is she nuts? Crazy? Cracked? Wrong?

Nope. She’s pretty much on the ball with that one, as I discovered over the months after reading her book and fighting with the exercises and learning, word by word, page by page, to get over myself and just write.

What about you? What’s your favorite tool for getting onto the page?



--
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
- E.E. Cummings


The Chicagoland Shifters series:
Book 1 BURNING BRIGHT, available from Samhain Publishing.
Book 2 TIGER TIGER, available from Samhain Publishing. An All Romance eBooks Bestseller!

The Persis Chronicles:Check out EMERALD FIRE, available from Torquere Books.
Check out "Seeking Hearts", available from Torquere Books.

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Aunt Noony's Inside Look at Publishing

It’s funny, I don’t really think of myself as being “inside publishing,” or inside the ebook publishing industry, but since I have a book out with a major digital-first press I suppose to others that I might be considered at least “published,” if not on the “inside track.”

So how’s the view from here?

The more I know, the more I learn that I need to know. As much as I know about writing (active voice, action tags, story craft), I find I still have more to practice. Each time I go through a manuscript to edit, I think, “This is the time, it’ll be so clean I won’t have to touch a thing.”

I’m wrong. Routinely.

Humbling experience, that.

Each time I think I “know about the ebook publishing industry,” someone will mention a new-to-me publisher that’s been in business for years. It’s not that they’re so small I’ve never heard of them, it’s that I’m not well versed enough on the businesses playing in the industry yet.

So here’s what I do know:

Concentrate on the basics and on what you can control.

1. Write daily or as often as you can. There are many prompts available on the internet (type “writing prompts” into Google and poke around). Experiment with a new one every day for a month. Write with a pen and write on the computer, see how the different mechanics work with your creative process.

2. Practice your writing skills. Get a book on grammar from the library or buy yourself a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. Wrestle with comma usage and the dreaded semicolon; become an expert in verb tenses. Learn about the “story arc” and the seven traditional plots. Get yourself a copy of Fiction Writers Workshop by Josip Novakovich or take a fiction class through a local writing group.

3. Meet other writers. Find writing friends online through magazines like Writer’s Digest or The Writer, and make local connections using your local newspaper or Meetup. Exposure to others working on the same things you are is helpful for the learning process and can also inspire you to try new things.

4. Attend regional writing conferences or even a national one. My own writing organization, Evanston Writers Workshop, holds our annual conference very year during the third weekend of August. We bring in authors, publishers, agents, and have an awesome time learning and playing with words for three days.  There's a lot you can learn about traditional publishing and the ebook publishing industry, and how the interrelate and augment each other from the authors' perspective.  It's no longer enough to ignore ebooks; we as authors need to understand it because that's how a lot of newer authors are being published.

5. Stay humble. No matter how much you know or learn, remember there’s always someone out there that can teach you something. Be teachable.

6. Keep writing. Through it all, remember to keep writing. This is surprisingly easy to forget, in fact. I meet writers through Evanston Writers Workshop who have all sorts of dearly-held opinions about publishing and writing, but when asked what they’re working on, the answers “oh, this manuscript I’ve been writing for twenty years.” One manuscript for twenty years is not a good track record for knowing the publishing industry. One of our speakers, author Jody Lynn Nye, has published over forty books and over a hundred short stories.  I think THAT is the track record of someone who knows the publishing industry, don't you?  Everyone has opinions, and it’s easy to forget that our job description is “writer,” not “pontificator” or “prognosticator.” If you have the urge to do either of the latter two things, DO IT ON THE PAGE! Whatever you do, write.

Lots.

Write on!

Summer stretch

Writer's are similar to athletes... except that we spend the majority of our time sitting on our butts. We have to. Have you ever tried typing while walking, running or working out on a treadmill? Not easy. Actually, it's a good way to get hurt.

The way we're similar, however, comes into play when we work on our craft. An athlete has to stretch their muscles... to push themselves just a little harder and further in order to improve their game. Writers need to do the same thing -- only the muscle we stretch is more cerebral.

If you have a favorite writer, you may notice, from time to time, that their stories sound a little stale. I can't tell you how easy it is to get in a rut. I find myself leaning toward a very specific type of heroine, for example. I've also noticed that there are certain plot devices I tend to favor. That's all well and good -- as long as I don't let my stories get boring. I don't want you to think I simply change the location and character names to create a new book. Who'd want to read it? Not me.

This summer I'm shaking things up a bit. I did this once before when I turned a would-be, somewhat standard romantic suspense into a paranormal romantic suspense. That turned out very well, btw. ;) Now I'm finishing book two, and stretching those writing muscles all the way. This hero is not my typical alpha.

So far, so good, but what I can I possibly do to get a better work-out? How can I stretch my writing muscles just that much more?

I think I've found the answer: Steampunk. No, not because it's all the rage, but because I love the genre... have even before it earned such a special designation. Remember Wild Wild West? Sexy. Funny. And oh-so cool. ;)

So now this new idea is percolating. One featuring a feisty bounty hunter and her shifter prey. Steampunk style, naturally, with funky goggles, gadgets and corsets. Not to mention those steam-powered machines. Yeah, this should be fun. And a challenge, which is the best way to give the gray-matter a work-out.

I take what I know I can write... and add something new to the mix. Another level to the plot. Another element to the story. Something that makes me work for just the right mix. Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes I'm overcome by the urge to bang my head on the keyboard or nearest wall. I frequently have to step back; take a breath; ask my resident consultant for some plot ideas; etc. But it's the best way I've found to keep my muse from losing the spark.

Now if I could only come up with a good way to exercise my butt, as well. ;)