Last Chance to Win 'Bird By Bird'!

Just a reminder, you have another 12 hours to enter the Trim'n'Taut writing competition in order to win a copy of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

Quite a few people have commented, but no one has actually left an official entry!

So, be the first and you could be the winner!

Yours,
Buffy.

Time To Rejoice in Small Victories

ROW 80 Check In: 

You will notice that there is no writing challenge today. 

On one hand, you could be cynical and think this is because I'm too tired to think of one. Or, you could be positive and see it as purposeful ploy to point you towards my last writing challenge: Trim'n'Taut. The challenge is to take an entire story, and trim away all the side plots, etc., until you get a tweet length summary of the book. I opened this up as a writing compeition, with the prize of a copy of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird for the best entry. The competition closes on Wednesday 24th April, so you still have a few more days to think of an idea and post it!

So, my goal was to write an article or blog post every lunch break. 

How did I do? 

I think 'atrociously' comes close to summing it up. 

Thursday I was just flattened by the time I got to lunch, and so contented myself with visiting other ROWer's blogs for inspiration, safe in the knowledge that I had Friday off from work so would be able to make up for it then. 

Come Friday, I managed to get to the gym to do my half marathon training (I've just started training for my first half marathon. Read more over at Personal Fitness Base Camp), and then had planned to go shopping, do my wriging, and then go out to dinner with friends. Instead, I took a 4 hours afternoon nap and had to rush to meet up with my friends. Got home late after a cocktail had gone quite to my head (yes, have lost all my college training, cannot take more than one drink now) and so collapsed into bed without another thought. 

But that was okay, I could make it up Saturday! I knew I had to attend a family lunch (my grandmother has just turned 98! I have some awesome genes. Just saying) and then said I would come for dinner at my brother's new house (yes, he's finally moved out of home, again.) But I could still write in the morning. Except for the small fact that I was meant to have gotten my grandmother's present on Friday when I went shopping which I didn't do. So instead I was rushed around trying to find a present, drove out to my parents, had a fantastic lunch with family (grandmother was very happy to have all her children and half of her grandchildren there), visited my brother, went to see movie with my brother and sister, and then got home tired. So I just went to bed.

And to be honest, today almost didn't happen either. 

But it has. So, I suppose, that is a small victory. 

When you can't make large victories, you might as well rejoice in the small ones. 

Don't forget to add your entry for Trim'N'Taut writing competition!

Twisting Metal: Fighting Your Subconscious.

 

I have finally identified one of the causes of why I've suddenly slowed down in my writing so much.

All of November I've been working on the same story, just trying to get to 50,000 words, and admittedly I was sick in there for a few days so didn't write anything. However, there were hours and hours where I was at my computer, working away, strive and struggling, and after an hour I would look at it would be 500 words, or 800 words. Where, oh where were the days of 2,000+ words an hour? Why had my muse abandoned me? 

And the writing was painful, not just slow, but every sentence I wrote I would delete and try again, it was like trying to straighten out a flat piece of metal that just kept trying to curl. I would tell myself 'No, that's not what that character sounds like, she should be feeling this right now'. And so re-write. 

Now when I say it like that, does the problem seem obvious? Well, it wasn't obvious to me until last night when walking home from church I was throwing a little tantrum saying I didn't want to do it if it was going to be so hard. 

I then just got the image: what if my subconscious was trying to write a flat piece of narrative, but I was constantly getting in the way trying to twist the metal to match my views on what the character should be?

So fine, I said, you win little subconscious, I'm going to go home, get my laptop, and just sit down and write whatever you want to come out with. I won't stop you at all. You just have fun in your own little way, and I'll be the good little typist. 

Well, it took a bit to stop my elder getting in the way and just let my youth mixed with my muse and genius jump right in. I found myself deleting a sentence thinking 'that will never work' and then I made myself stop and retype it and give my inner child a chance to explain why they had done that.

And in 15 minutes I had more than I had written in an hour that morning. By the end of an hour and a bit I had written over 3,000 words. 

So tonight I tried the same thing. I got home from work having worked overtime, with my head a bit dead, so I downloaded a mediation/relaxation app on my phone and did 20mins relaxation. Don't know if it helped, but it didn't seem to hurt it.

I then opened up a blank document, closed my eyes and went for it. Annoyingly, to me at least, I ended up re-writing a whole lot of scenes that I had painstakingly knocked out previously. But after 2 hours I had 5,500 words, and they were better words than the ones I had drawn forth from my body like I was pulling out my own intestines. 

I then went through and replaced all the scenes, and as I took out about 3,000 words, I sort of don't feel I'm much ahead in the word count. But the scenes themselves are much better. Though the characters and their interactions are not what I thought! 

This type of writing is so much more relaxing, enjoyable, encouraging than what I had been doing for the rest of the month. At the end I feel refreshed, and curious to see what will happen next. So, just keep reminding yourself:

I'm just the typist, and my subconscious is the one digging for gold.

Thanks Anne Lamott. 

 

Discovering Plot - Being the Designated Typist

Was reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird this morning on the train and came across a wonderful description of how to do discovering writing.

 

She is discussing how to develop plot, and her major point is that plot should be discovered based on getting to know your characters and seeing what they do. She then continues:

 

P. 56.

‘This is how it works for me: I sit down in the morning and reread the work I did the day before. And then I wool-gather, staring at the blank page or off into space. I imagine my characters, and let myself daydream about them. A movie begins to play in my head, with emotion pulsing underneath it, and I stare at it in a trance like state, until words bounce around together and form a sentence. Then I do the menial work of getting it down on paper, because I’m the designated typist, and I’m also the person whose job it is to hold the lantern while the kid does the digging. What is the kid digging for? The stuff. Details and clues and images, invention, fresh ideas, an intuitive understanding of people. I tell you, the holder of the lantern doesn’t even know what the kid is digging for half the time – but she knows gold when she sees it.”

This is a method of writing which I practise so find her suggestion very useful.

 

And I know that there are writers who are extensive plotters, who like to have an entire outline before sitting down to write. However, I haven't actually come across a good description of this process in the writing books I've read so far. Particularly I'm interested to know whether it requires a full understanding of your characters before you start plotting? Is one of the dangers of this method that it will stifle the character as they must act along certain lines, or is that my bias as a discovery writer?

 

Anyone practise this method or read more about plotting and character?

 

As to my writing, I met up with friend and fellow writer Bec Butterworth this morning at Koko Black to write together for NaNoWriMo. (Bec's actually working as a writer, and has articles published and stuff! Check her out at http://becbutterworth.com. Also she has an upcoming article in Women's Health.) 

 

Koko Black is a wonderful place for the inspiration, but not so good for the waist line, though I tried to stay away from the chocolate by having a coffee affrogato and then an iced tea (with strawberries and mint!). However when the very nice waiter brought us over two free chocolate dipped hazelnuts, I had it in my mouth before I remembered... and it would have just been rude to spit it out then. The nice waiter was also working on a novel, but thought the concept of NaNoWriMo was insane, so I didn't tell him about my two week drafts.

 

My writing time has been cut into as I've started going to work again at 9am (work needed people to do overtime, and I felt bad others were doing overtime when I was waltzing in at 10.30am, so good bye morning writing session until the end of the year, or I collapse). So what with handling the two blogs, and having my evenings cut into by family, friends, Bible studies, gym, etc., I'm only just keeping up with NaNoWriMo at the moment. I'm 12,000 words into my historical romance, but hope to get a bit ahead this weekend. That's the aim at least. Though with it all, I've also been cutting into my sleep which is going to come back and bite me soon.

 

Other WriMo's out there: one week down, how are you managing?

 

 

The Gift of Being a Writer

To be completely honest, I’m loving the slower, less pressured pace of writing for NaNoWriMo. I’m not working to get ahead yet. Instead, I’m writing the minimum and then spending my time reading on writing and in my genre, and it feels really peaceful.

Along with reading Jane Eyre for inspiration, I’m also working through ‘Bird By Bird – Some Instructions on Writing and Life’ by Anne Lamott. First of all I recommend it because she is a hilarious writer. You read each sentence and think ‘yup, that was the best possible way that sentence could have been written’.

So, moving on from Ray Bradbury, I’m going to share some wisdom from Anne Lamott today.

One thing she just mentions in her introduction that gave me food for thought, and inspiration, was on the benefits of being a writer (rather than just writing).

(P. xii)

‘One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.’

It is one of those things you might have realized early on, one of the things that drew you to writing. It is something I knew, and even have commented on here, but still need to be reminded every once and again.

I remember when I was about 15 I was staying with my godmother (whom I loved dearly) but got dragged along to the Annual General Meeting of the Farmers Association (or some such). It was held in the small town’s pub and included dinner and lots of speeches. The only way I agreed to go (not holding out much hope for my godmother’s suggestion that perhaps there would be cute boys there) was if I could take my pad and paper with me.

I sat through the meeting describing the people around me. They really were very easy as it was almost as if they were caricatures rather than normal human beings, and my descriptions could only add more depth and character. I also noted down the conversations around me, though I felt rather bad about this because it was eavesdropping, and eavesdropping because I thought they were amusing. However, it made what would otherwise have been an extremely boring, lonely night, something of a game.

I was actually pretty pleased with myself when at one point in the evening a man asked me if I was a reporter. Why a reporter would bother to come to this meeting was beyond me, but I took it as a compliment that I looked like a real writer.

If I had gone there without my pen and paper, I would have just been a loner, out of place in a crowd. But give me my tools and I have purpose. My silence and isolation is to only better my great work.

So what I suppose I’m trying to say is that the curse of being a writer is that you spend lots of time alone. The gift of being a writer is that you never have to be lonely.