Keep Going

Hi friends. I wanted to have a little honest chat about how I've been feeling about my creativity lately, because it hasn't been great.

I've been really struggling with feeling like I'm not making any progress, or more realistically, the fact that I can't recognize the progress I've been making.

I've been working on the second draft of the novel I finished last November, and I'm almost 15,000 words in, but I don't know how to measure my progress in a way that will make me feel accomplished. As such, I've been being really hard on myself about writing, and my habit of constantly getting distracted, and just everything in general.

I think part of the problem is comparison. I follow a lot of creative people on the internet, and I love it because they are a constant source of inspiration. I want to be as prolific as the artists and writers I follow online, but because writing is such a solitary, slow activity I haven't been able to share any of the progress I'm making. It sucks that in today's creative economy, it feels like you're not being "productive" unless you share the results of your efforts. And like, that's part of the creative process, right? I want people to be able to interact with the things I'm making- that's part of the reason why I make things. But at the same time, I hate that the progress I'm making doesn't feel like "real" progress unless somebody else is witness to it. It's like the creative version of "pics or it didn't happen."

I hate that the internet/social media does this to us. I love that the internet/social media connects us to this whole world of creative people I never would have discovered otherwise. I'm very, very conflicted.

I don't know if self doubt is even the right word for what I'm feeling. It's weird, because I've never been more confident in my work. For the longest time I didn't want to even consider submitting short stories to magazines, because I didn't think what I was writing was anywhere near good enough yet. I don't really feel that anymore. It feels like time to start submitting things for publication. I want to rack up rejection letters, because that means I'm finally putting myself out there. But that knowledge doesn't change the fact that every time I sit down to write I have to fight through this mire of fear and distraction and just plain old discomfort. And I know that's normal, and I know that every writer deals with those emotions, but I wish I could fall in love with writing again. I wish I could write the way I did as a kid, where the stories just poured out of me without judgement.

I don't have a neat bow to tie all of this up in. I don't have tips or answers or advice. I'm just trying to make stuff. I want to start posting here more regularly again, because maybe sharing things will make me feel like I'm part of the conversation, like I'm making progress.  Part of me hates that I can't be happy on my own little island of creativity, just slowly plodding along towards the end of my novel. But I've also never felt the urge to put my work out there as strongly as I do now. It's time.

So, I'm trying to be kind, but firm, to myself. I'm going to keep writing my novel, and I'm going to try and enjoy it. I'm going to make things that I can actually share, because I have things I want to say, things that I think are worth reading.

If you're feeling any of these things too, you're not alone. I'd love to know how you handle the topsy-turvy-ness of the social media inspiration vs distraction trap. (Honestly, it feels like a daily see-saw). How do you balance making things to share vs the slow, quiet process of making things just for yourself? And writers: how do you remind yourself that you're making progress???

This girl has a lot of questions and not very many answers. But she's gonna to keep going anyway.

On Finishing.

Last Sunday, I finished the first draft of my novel.

Wow. It feels really weird to write that. It feels weird, because "Write a novel" has been one of my New Year's Resolutions every single year since I was about 13. And 2018 is the year that I can finally cross it off my list. That's a really, really good feeling.

Messy hair, bad lighting, but a very happy writer!

Needless to say, I learned a lot of things about craft and productivity and my own very flawed process in the writing of this book, so I thought I'd share them here. In fact, some of these things directly contradict the lessons I mentioned in the blog post I shared at the halfway point. That's one of the things I love most about writing: there is always, always more to learn.

1. I'm a slow writer, and that's okay. This draft took me two and a half years to write. That's a long time, and not exactly ideal, especially since published authors usually produce work on much tighter deadlines and I want to be one of those someday. What you don't see in those two and half years are the looong stretches between writing sessions. The waffling. The dragging of feet. The distraction. To give you a sense of my pace, I reached the "halfway point" (40,000 words) on January 15th of this year. It took me 9 months to write what some people write every November. I don't say this to disparage myself, but to remind myself that even the slowest writers can still finish. I would love to write faster. I think, with more discipline and less procrastination, I can write faster. But I will never be one of those people who writes several thousand words a day. I will never "win" Nanowrimo, because a prolonged effort of 1,600 words a day just isn't doable for me. What writing this book taught me was how to work within my own sporadic productivity, and that writing at my own pace, especially for a first attempt, is perfectly okay. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by Nano this month, just remember that every writer writes differently - and if we didn't, what a boring world it would be.

2. Planning is Key. I said in my "halfway point" blog post that I thought I'd found my ideal planning method. Well, let's just say, it wasn't enough. I wrote this book with a loose outline that was really just a list of scenes I thought should be in the book somewhere. That's a good start, but it was not nearly enough momentum to keep the story moving forward. It wasn't so much the dreaded middle that tripped me up, but the last third. I'd left most of my ending scenes blank, thinking that I would figure it out as I went along. Bad idea. It's really hard to write the somewhat compelling, halfway-decent ending you're hoping for in your first draft, when you realize the whole book has been building up to....something?? That's a lot of pressure and a lot of stuff to figure out at the last minute. For my next novel I'm planning to do way more outlining. My characters need clearer motivations. They need the escalation of problems. They need (or rather, I need) an end in sight.

3. Reading More = Writing More. Let it be known, this doesn't always work, but when it does, it works wonders! If I'm reading a good book, I'm almost always more likely to want to write. Sometimes I find myself picking up a book, reading a couple pages, and then immediately feeling the urge to write. (Or, well, think about writing and then work up the motivation to actually open the document. I'm being real here, guys.) I always tend to write more when I am actively reading something, especially if I'm enjoying it. When the delicate ecosystem of inspiration and creative output is in balance, the writing feels almost effortless.

4. Commit, commit, commit. Honestly, most of what got me though this process was commitment. Commitment to telling this particular story. Commitment to seeing this draft through to completion. On a smaller scale, commitment to getting to the next word count milestone, whatever that might be. Writing a novel is an endurance sport for your brain, so it's vital that you have little markers along the way. I'd always write more on the days when I could see the next milestone ahead of me, just out of reach. I'd sit down with the specific intention of finally hitting 10K or 20K or 30K and I'd actually follow though. I was at 78,000 words last Sunday when I decided that that I was going to finish this thing no matter what. I ended up writing 6,000 more words (the most I've written in one day, ever), just so I could type "The End." But this doesn't just apply to the final stretch. There were plenty of times when I could have stopped for the day at 9,000 or 59,000 or whatever, but I wanted to make it the next 10K milestone, so I pushed through the resistance. I wrote 2,000 words on an airplane once just so the person next to me would ask me if I was writing a novel! (They did, by the way.) (Is that embarrassing to admit? I don't know.) Getting through a first draft is not just about committing to the whole, gargantuan undertaking. It's also about finding those smaller moments where you can commit to just getting to the next level, and then pushing through the resistance to get there.

5. Trust the process, and trust yourself. There's not a writer on the planet who doesn't feel self-doubt. There were times when I felt like everything I was writing was crap. Sometimes a whole month would slip by, and I hadn't written a word. It was in these moments that I'd feel bad about myself and my work, and it felt impossible to face another blank page. "Trust the process" is not new advice, but it's so important. The more you write, the easier it gets. I slowed down considerably towards the end of my draft, partly because I was still clutching at vague ideas for my ending, but also because my self doubt kicked into high gear. I thought that if I couldn't do the novel justice in the last section, all that hard work would have been somehow wasted on a story with a disappointing ending. I inched forward at a snails pace, until finally, I decided to just go all in, and trust that things would work out. I figured out the ending as I went, and it was such an adrenaline rush, writing those last  few thousand words. So when you're feeling full of self doubt, remember that the only way to get through the fog is to keep writing, because every word you write is proof that you are worthy of the task. That's you trusting the process. When it feels like the story is rebelling, and you don't know if you can fix the problems you've created for yourself, you have to trust that future you will know how to fix them. That's you trusting yourself.

Writing is the process of muddying a perfectly crisp blank page, and then working to turn the smear into something beautiful. It will never be as perfect as the original clean slate, but who wants it to be? Writing this draft taught me that perfection isn't the goal: completion is.

So. There you have it. I hope this little list was helpful to those of you trying to get through a first draft. It's hard, y'all. But it's doable. This book still needs a ton of work (I predict a full re-write and a lot more research), but I'm proud of myself for doing the work. Now, whenever I feel the self doubt monster creeping in I can tell myself: I've done it once. I can do it again.

I've done it once. And I will do it again.

Happy Writing!

Writing is Like

Writing is like trying to piece together a puzzle from a bag of puzzle pieces you found in the back of your closet: no picture on the box to follow, no way to know if the pieces you have are for one puzzle or several.

Writing is like trying to take a decent picture of the sunset on an iPhone. The colors never come out as beautiful as your brain interprets them.

Writing is like cracking pistachio nuts and then dropping them into a box. The pistachios are words, and the box is your novel. You can't see the progress you're making because the box is opaque. You crack open a nut, discard the shells, and drop the little green kernel into the darkness, hoping it's enough. The only way to know how far you've gotten is to pick up the box and shake it, to hear the satisfying rattle, to feel the weight. But actually see your progress? Harder than it seems.

Lately I've been feeling jealous of visual artists. Not because I wish I was better at art (though sometimes I do) but because their progress is so obvious. From a blank canvas, an image emerges. The pieces of a quilt come together, square by square. A sweater is birthed from the apex of two knitting needles. The results of this kind of effort are tangible: you can touch them, see them.

Writing a novel is different. It feels transient. Your progress is marked by pages and word counts, by how long it takes you to scroll. When I open my word document, I don't immediately get a sense of how far I've come, or of how far I need to go. All I see are the last few paragraphs and a little blinking cursor. It's the same no matter where I am in the process, which makes it feel like I'm starting from the same place, every single time.

I suppose it was different before computers. When you pulled a finished page out of your typewriter and placed it on the stack of pages that came before it: physical, tangible proof of something that was once in your brain. I like the idea of this, but the truth is, I've tried writing big projects on typewriters, and the form is too rigid for me. I can barely get through one page before I'm dying to change something and frustrated that I can't.

In a lot of ways I love how mutable writing on screens is. I can sit down and put whatever is in my brain on "paper", knowing that it is instantly changeable whenever I feel like it. It's freeing. I can tell my inner-critic to take a seat and not interrupt until I tell her it's okay to do so. On the page, anything can happen, and if I don't like it, no big deal. One click, and its gone.

The flip side of that coin, though, is that something so changeable is hard to hold onto. A novel in itself is hard to picture all at once, while if I asked you to visualize a painting you could do it, no problem. I feel as though I'm trying to hold water in my hands but it keeps slipping through my fingers. I want to be able to hold something up, to say, "Look what I'm making. Look how far I've come." But all I have are word counts. All I have are page numbers. They work as markers, as flags. But they don't feel substantial. You can't glance at them and see the whole picture.

Instead, I just catch glimmers. A shape appears out of the fog. I hit milestones, and compare them to things I can visualize more easily. For instance, I recently passed 50,000 words, which is about the length of The Great Gatsby. When I don't have a good frame of reference, I try to make time the thing I can measure. I've been logging my writing using a time tracking app. There at least I can see how much of my day goes to this thing, this growing, changing thing that is impossible to see.

Most of the things I want to make are intangible. Things like novels (which will hopefully be book-shaped one day, but probably won't be for a long time) and podcasts and blog posts. It's been plaguing me because I want to share my progress, to have something to show for my efforts, but all I have are these words and pixels.

And so, I build my days around them. I carve out the time and record and measure and make due with flags and markers. When my first draft is done (and it will be soon, I hope) I will print the entire thing out (warts and all) and hold it in my hands. I've always imagined myself lugging a manuscript around with me to coffee shops, marking it up in different colored pens, but honestly I'm not sure that's the fate for this project. This feels almost like a practice round, like the challenge I cut my teeth on. I may come back to it, I may not. Either way, I'll have it. Physical proof of something I made. And that will make all the guesswork worthwhile.

Until then, I'll just keep dropping pistachios into the box.

Halfway

In case you weren't aware, I'm writing a novel. Actually, you probably weren't aware because I've specifically not mentioned it on this blog until now. But yesterday, I hit an arbitrary milestone towards my arbitrary word count goal of 80,000 words, and it felt like time to announce: I made it to the halfway point.

Halfway. The term implies that something is in the process of becoming something else, but it's also a pause. On Dictionary.com the sample sentences for halfway are as follows: "He stopped halfway down the passage"; "She woke halfway through the night"; and "I'm incapable of doing anything even halfway decent." Besides the humor in these sentences (especially the last one), I find that the halfway point is a time for reflection. So I'm reflecting.

It's hard to know what to say about this book because for so long I've avoiding calling it what it is. I avoided saying that I was writing a novel (except to my family) because I didn't want it to fall into the ever growing category of "Projects Laura Says She's Working on But Never Finishes." Besides, the same goal has shown up on my new year's resolutions every year for probably the past ten years: "Write a book!" Always with so much enthusiasm. Always with so much hope.

I've never gotten as far with a project as I have with this one, and miraculously, it feels like I might actually finish it. But right, I'm supposed to be reflecting. I'm such a future-oriented person that I tend to see every accomplishment as a gateway to the next big thing. I need to stop doing that. I need to acknowledge all the work that went into making it happen.

So let's start from the beginning. This isn't like other things I've written, where I can pinpoint the exact moment the idea came to me. I do know when the seed of the idea appeared, though. It was the summer of 2014, and I was working at the Harris County Archives. The office was quiet, and white, and I was cataloguing the dates and contents of documents in a series of boxes, so I often listened to music and podcasts to fill up some of that quiet, empty space. I listened to two podcasts back to back: the "Wild Ones" episode of 99% Invisible and the Radiolab episode about the Galapagos Islands. I'd always had a passing interest in the Galapagos, but these two episodes filled me with curiosity. Who lives on the islands? What was it like in Darwin's time vs now? The islands loomed in my imagination: they felt untamed and magnetic and completely mysterious. I knew immediately that I had to write something set there.

I got as far as writing the first paragraph of a short story called "Mother and Daughter Go to the Sunny Galapagos," before in classic Laura fashion, I abandoned it. For a year. One day I re-opened the document, re-read the paragraph and let it grow into something larger. Something with more scope than a short story. Something that could, maybe, one day, be a novel.

I think there are a couple of factors that have made this project easier to write so far:

1. No re-reading. I hardly ever go back and re-read what I've written after writing it. That's not to say that I don't edit as I go - I can write and re-draft and tweak whatever I've written that day as much as I want. But as soon as 24-hours have passed, I don't look at what I wrote the day before unless it's just to remind myself where I am. If I did re-read whole passages with even that little bit of distance, I don't think I'd have the confidence to keep going, no matter how much I told myself "It's a first draft. It's supposed to be bad."

2. Loose structure. I think I've finally figured out an outlining technique that works for me. Basically I make a list of all the scenes I know I want to write, in somewhat chronological order. As I write, I move those scenes onto a list of existing scenes. That way I can see what I've written and what still needs to be written at a glance. I write in what is basically chronological order, but if I really get stuck, I let myself skip ahead to important scenes from my list that I really want to write.

3. Cutting myself slack. I want to finish this draft. I want to finish it so badly it hurts sometimes, because I know exactly how far I have to go, and how bad I am at writing every day. But I also know that I'm not the kind of writer who can just pound out 2,000 words a day and not care if they're bad. I like being happy with what I've written that day, even if it's only one sentence that I'm proud of. My goal is to write as quickly as I can without turning the experience into a chore. I even let myself "start over" when I thought – 25,000 words in – that the novel needed to be told from a different character's perspective. It took me 5,000 words of back-tracking to figure out that no, that wasn't the case.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm really proud of how far I've gotten. I still have another 40,000 words to go, but somehow they don't feel as daunting. Because I'm halfway. And I'm pausing. And that's a good feeling.

On Creative Guilt

I have a lot of creative guilt. It sounds like this:

-Why haven't you written anything today?
-When was the last time you made something?
-How long has it been since your last blog post?
-You're adding another project to your list? What about all the unfinished ones?

And so on. Creative guilt doesn't just show up when I haven't made anything in a while. It rears its ugly head at the precise moment when I need it to shut up: when I'm about to start. That can be embarking on a new project or just trying to fit in thirty minutes of work. It's the voice in my head that says, "You haven't been able to keep this up in the past, so what makes this time any different?"

It's true that my track record for follow-through is pretty lousy. Even this summer, when I have the gift of free time, I haven't been able to consistently keep up a creative practice. And while, yes, I could really benefit from less daydreaming and more doing, the voice that makes me feel bad about myself and discourages me from getting back in the game is textbook creative guilt.

That first hint of failure - the first day you didn't write after a multi-day streak, the day your enthusiasm ran out, the day someone asked you a question you couldn't answer and it threw the whole project into question - is most often when creative guilt pounces. It's one thing to feel restless, to want to make something after a hiatus; it's another to feel like every setback is magnified because you can't seem to get your act together.

The guilt is a liar. I could agonize for days about how little I've accomplished, but would it help anything? Of course not. And what I have to remind myself, over and over again, is that past failures  have no bearing on my ability to do the work. It doesn't matter how many days it's been since I've written. What matters is that I write today. It doesn't matter how many projects I've left unfinished. What matters is that I finish this one.

My advice (that I'm still trying to follow) is this: Take a deep breath. Push the guilt monster out of your head. Begin.

**When you need a break, or an extra kick in the pants, check out the links below**
An Invocation for Beginnings
Chuck Close on Inspiration and Work Ethic (via Brainpickings)
Austin Kleon on Learning Creative Habits from his Son

My Writing: An Evolution

I've never really been one to dwell on the past. I find it easy to conceptualize the new year ahead of me, but hard to remember what exactly happened in the past year. Because of this I tend not to read my old writing, unless I'm digging for an unfinished story that I can turn into something new. Lately I've been inspired by Crystal Moody of The Year of Creative Habits. Crystal is really good at talking about her process, and teasing out the seemingly inscrutable path of her own creativity.

I've been feeling more confident about my writing lately, and for the first time in a while I feel like I'm seeing real progress. My sentences, while still a bit long and flowery, are finally getting some variety thrown into the mix. While I'm still unsure about plot and pacing in a lot of ways, actually finishing stories has really helped me understand the nuts and bolts of creating a story. It's kind of a strange feeling, seeing yourself improve without knowing exactly how it happened.

Understanding my own progress is exactly what I'm going to try and do today. Hopefully my own triumphs and struggles can be of interest/usefulness to anyone else who, like me, isn't sure how they ended up where they are.

the early years
I've been writing for basically as long as I can remember. It probably began in ernest in the third grade, when a representative from Writers in the Schools came to our classroom every week and gave us writing prompts. That year I wrote a poem about the lamp on my bedside table (yes, really). I don't have the original on my computer, but I still remember the line that sparked the poem: "When it is day, my little yellow lamp is as peaceful as a pearl white swan floating on a clear blue lake." I was a big fan of similes. And adjectives.
It might seem like overkill to start at the beginning like this, but I'm trying to figure out how my writing has evolved, so I might as well give myself a point of reference.

high school
I'm counting middle school as "the early years" because what good writing really comes out of middle school, anyway? One of the oldest documents on my computer is a poem I wrote during freshman year of high school. It exists, somewhere, on the website of a independent publisher I can't remember the name of because I placed in one of their contests. Here's an excerpt:

The News
I watched the news last night
the blue light from our TV
making pockets of shadows
dance across the walls.
The anchorwoman, skin pulled tight
over wide cheekbones, hair plastered
into submissive curls
tells us a story, with the words
"Deadly Tornado" quivering over her
shoulder in front of a fake New York skyline.

It ends with the lines:

I get tired of listening to them.
I click the remote, the screen goes black,
and finally my world is silent.

Like most of my early writing, it has some interesting word choice and details, but otherwise the strokes are too broad, and I end on a classically teenager-y note, just wanting "silence."

Around this time I was also toying with a new story about a girl who lives next to a strange (aka magical) subdivision that no one is allowed in. I give you the opening lines of "Into Suburbia":

Emma sat cross-legged on the blue lawn chair in front of her house, her legs bent uncomfortably between the rough plastic arm rests. This was how she and Marcus spent most of their summers, underneath the minimal shade of the scrawny tree in Emma’s front yard, lulled into a half-sleep by boredom and heat. They sat like this for another half hour before Marcus sat up abruptly from his spot in the grass next to the lawn chair and extended a pale white arm.
“Here comes another one,” he whispered. They watched in silence as the beat up Chevrolet rolled down their street. It was going slow, as if the driver was searching for an address, and as it passed they saw it was driven by an middle aged woman, her hair done up in old fashioned curlers as if she were going to a Halloween party dressed as a grandmother. The two watched in silence as the car rolled towards the end of the street and stopped. The thing blocking its path was not a tree or a culdisac, but a huge wrought iron gate separating Emma’s neighborhood from some sort of gated community. She’d lived on this street her entire life and she’d never seen anyone pass through those gates. The woman in Chevrolet didn’t bother to get out of her car to inspect the gates, like some people did. Instead, she backed up and used the nearest driveway to turn around. Marcus and Emma exchanged glances.
“I don’t know what you expect, Emma,” Marcus said, standing up and stretching. “Every summer we spend hours out here in the heat, watching cars, and not one of them has ever gone through that gate.” Emma smiled. This was Marcus’s usual argument.

This is the first idea I had that was even remotely large enough to be a novel, and I actually made it through 16,000 words of it during Camp Nanowrimo one year. I have yet to re-read those 16,000 words...

My proudest achievement in high school is probably the following story. I wrote the first draft in a single sitting, something which rarely happens to this day. Here are the opening lines:

The call of a train whistle echoes through the night. The sound is mournful, alone. It seeps into the hollow place in my heart and stays there for a long time, vibrating. This is when it’s the hardest. I’m surrounded by darkness in the room with the blue walls and the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. John put them there for me, saying they would help me stay calm if I woke up in the middle of the night. But he forgot that stars fade, and right now they’re so dim I can barely make them out. I close my eyes, listening to his gentle breathing next to me. How can he sleep so peacefully? I wake at the slightest rustle of the curtains, the pat of the neighbor’s cat as he walks along the edge of the roof, the sound of a train in the night. 

Woah! Look at that! Sentence variety! This is also probably the first time I strung three dependent clauses together without separating the last one with an "and." (See that last sentence) Somehow, this one little quirk stuck with me, and now I catch myself using it constantly, probably a little too much. 

college

I've written quite a lot in college. Every workshop class I've taken is different, so it's hard to know exactly where my writing stands. I think it's on the upswing though.

I've been struggling with another possible novel idea, and this time the backdrop is a Neverland-esque summer camp.

They called it the summer house. No one knew what it’s purpose was before it became the summer house, or even who had lived in it before the campers arrived. What they did know was that one June day in the summer of their thirteenth year, they awoke in hanging beds on a screen-in porch with light pressing like honey against the backs of their eyelids, and no memory of how they had gotten there. 

There I go with those long sentences again... 

My poetry's gotten better since high school, but upon reading the two poems side by side, I realize that I'm not getting loose enough with my language. My poems still read a bit too much like prose, and I'd like to experiment more. Here's the stanza I'm most proud of:

Last night I dreamt of flying

over distant hills. They were blue,

perfectly pristine, and I had the strange

urge to dive downward, half

expecting the land to part like

water and envelope me.

Below is an excerpt from a recent piece of flash fiction. It could just be because it's fresh, but I saw something in this piece that made me think that maybe I've been improving, and prompted me to go back and look at my past work.

Her body is a taught string when he enters the room. They are at the house of someone she doesn’t know, someone richer than they are, and the mirror in the bathroom makes her feel small, like she’s standing in front of a waterfall. But she doesn’t have the coherency of thought to think about waterfalls now because when he looks in her direction her whole body vibrates. She wonders if the other guests notice it. They look at her strangely, and she looks back at them like a frightened deer. 

There's something about this that just feels right: right amount of sentence variety, right amount of simile and metaphor. 

the takeaway

This post is already too long for it's own good, but here are some things I learned from this exercise:

1. You can learn way more than you think you can from your old writing. I can still remember how I felt about "The News" when I finished writing it, and now I look at those last lines and cringe. Comparing it to my new poetry, though, I didn't see as much improvement as I expected. 

2. Progress is always slow, and it's almost always invisible until you go looking for it. 

3. I'm still moderately interested in some of the stories I started when I was younger. With a little work, I think some of them could be expanded. 

4. Stories, for me, always begin with language. There's usually an idea behind the language, but the ones that I end up finishing have a kind of momentum (a voice, maybe?) that drives the story forward.

At first I was scared to write this post. Putting your work, especially your old, far-from-perfect work, out there is hard. I'm trying to come at it from a place of objectivity, so that we can look at it together. This exercise isn't just for me. It's for anyone who is unsure if they're on the right path. Writing isn't as straightforward as some other disciplines. There are no benchmarks to quantify success, and even the term "good writing" is up for interpretation. Every person's path is different, but sometimes it's nice to know that we're all plodding along, reaching our own milestones, making our own tracks in the snow. 

Go-To Inspiration

This blog post is coming to you from my messy brain in my messy dorm room in the midst of my messy life. I've been feeling a little overwhelmed lately. I have so many projects I want to work on. There's school of course, but I'm also trying to step up the discipline in my writing routine. I'm working several work-study jobs, writing for two different blogs (this one and my college's English department), and beginning the search for a summer job in my hometown. Plus, there's a super secret project I can't stop thinking about, and I don't know if it's really worth the time to undertake it or if this is just the honeymoon period. Maybe the excitement will wear off and I'll start hating it, and hating myself for not committing to it, and end up more stressed than when I started.

All of this was causing some creative burn-out, until I stumbled upon this blog post from The Secret Life of Writers. The question it asks is simple: What images will always make you want to write? I've always loved the idea that inspiration is everywhere, but I assumed it was something you had to wait for, that you'd never see it coming. I guess I'd picked up on patterns in the past, but I never saw them as something reliable to turn to when I was at a loss for ideas. Following in the same vein of Heather's post, I thought I'd share a few images that continually make me want to open up a word document and pour my heart out:

1) These paintings by Cy Twombly that hang in The Menil Collection in my hometown:

2) Medieval Tapestries

3) Open windows with white curtains

Photo by Sarah Jane on Flickr

4) Lone canoers on a lake 

5) Road Trips

6) Obscure vintage photography

7) Abandoned houses

I really enjoyed compiling this list, and I hope you find some of these things inspiring as well! Lightning strikes of inspiration are great, but remember, there are always things in your life that inspire you simply because you are drawn to them over and over again. Use these things to your advantage!

Lastly, I would just like say thanks to Heather Marie for her original post. While I too am inspired by things like castles and statues in cemeteries, I had never really dwelled on the mystical qualities of the lighthouse.

Let me know what things inspire you in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading!

The Creative Life

What does it mean to live a creative life? Google images would have you believe it looks something like this:

Dalton Trumbo (Source)

Photo by Lynn Bauer (Source)

Wether you see yourself in a bathtub with a typewriter or painting in a field full of flowers, when picturing the creative life there's always a sense of creating something out of nothing, of a life that borders on chaos but never leaves the realm of possibility. Maybe this is why we love hearing about "process" and "routine." We're trying to explain the unexplainable.

On the surface level, the life of an intellectual like Darwin looks pretty darn perfect. His routine included working through the morning, long walks in the afternoon, and reading in the evening, all in a secluded, stately home in English countryside. What this routine doesn't show is the crippling doubt and stress induced by his work, and the inner turmoil that ruled his life, from his compulsive letter writing habits ("Darwin made a point of replying to every letter he received, even those from obvious fools or cranks. If he failed to reply to a single letter, it weighed on his conscience and could even keep him up at night." Source) to the rift his scientific discoveries created between him and his wife. What I'm getting at here is that the creative life isn't all painting in fields of wild flowers.

This is not meant to discourage those looking to go into a career in the arts. It is however meant to dispel the idea we have of creative individuals as enlightened beings who have somehow transcended the plight of every day living. Even its opposite, the "tortured artist" trope, is an idealization in its own right. We are just like you. We have bad days, and we have good ones. They can be exciting and productive, but they can just as easily be mind-numbingly boring.

I really dislike the way we split ourselves into categories: left-brainded vs right-brained. Analytical vs. Creative. Conventional vs. Unconventional. As if accountants can't think creatively and artists can't be analytical. And worse, that the route we choose in life can be labeled as "lucrative" or not, that we are suddenly seen as outsiders if the path we choose doesn't point towards clear-cut success.

While writing this article I stumbled across a quote by John O'Donohue that reads:

"The call to the creative life is a call to dignity, to a life of vulnerability and adventure..."

While I appreciate the sentiment, I would argue that it's not the just the creative life that should contain these things, but life in general. Here's to living a life of vulnerability and adventure, whether you are working a 9-5 job or making things up in a cabin in the woods.

Afterthoughts:

Check out this fantastic info-graphic on the creative life. If you're lucky, I would hope your life includes lots of these things, even if you're not living the creative ideal.

I've been really interested in Darwin lately, can you tell? Read more about his daily routine here, and don't miss out on this awesome graphic novel biography.

If you haven't noticed, I link to Brain Pickings a lot. It is a compendium of knowledge I never would have discovered otherwise, and I highly recommend you go subscribe to their newsletter. Like, right now.

My Plans for Nanowrimo 2013!

Hello friends! I am taking a quick break from Letters to October (don't worry, I'm going to catch up, I promise!) to tell you about my plans for Nanowrimo 2013. For those who don't know, Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The traditional month for novel writing is November, but the organization has several other months set up for noveling as well. Now that we're all on the same page, here's what you need to know about my participation in Nanowrimo this year:

1. I will be attempting the full 50,000 words, but not in novel form. My plan is to write a series of short stories instead of going for a single story. I have always been bad at seeing even the shortest of stories through to their end, and I am really trying to get out of the habit of abandoning them halfway. I think Laini Taylor says this best in one of my favorite essays on writing:
"Sitting down to the work is the start, but there's more. SARK talked about developing a "habit of completion" and this is a VERY important habit! For me, there's no feeling like finishing something! Getting through a first draft! Typing "the end" at the end! It's the embodiment of the satisfaction of crossing items off a list once you've accomplished them. Completion is a habit well worth the agony of developing. And I think, like any habit, it gets easier. It gets, you know, habitual. The more things you finish, the more you know you can do it -- and not onlycan but will. I'm hoping that this grows continually easier throughout my writing life, that my habits will imprint themselves deeper and deeper."
That's what I'm aiming for with Nanowrimo this year: forming a habit of completion. As Ms. Taylor so aptly points out, it's not going to be easy, but since when has Nanowrimo EVER been easy?

2. It's impossible to know how many short stories I will have at the end of November. The most important thing to me is that they are complete first drafts, so that I have smaller chunks to work with when I start revising in December. Ideally, I'd like to be able to send the revised versions to literary magazines, but that is a little too far in the future to really think about at this point. 

3. According to the Nanowrimo forums, I'm classified as a "rebel", since I am writing a series of unconnected shorts rather than a novel. If you are planning to do something non-traditional this November, I highly recommend you check them out! Remember: November is an arbitrary month chosen by the Office of Letters and Light for noveling purposes, but you should use it in the way that you think is most productive for you as a writer!

4. And, if you're planning on participating in Nanowrimo at all, feel free to add me as a writing buddy!

Finally, if you're looking for daily inspiration during Nanowrimo, check out these two Youtubers, who are both doing daily videos throughout November:

1. Katytastic: Super fun/energetic, experienced, VERY motivational, and hilarious. 

2. Abbythemuggle: Talented videographer, novice Nano-er, makes personal, relatable videos that have such a great atmosphere!

Well, that's all for now! You may not be hearing from me very much during November, but I would love to hear about your thoughts/experiences with Nanowrimo. Oh! And keep your eye out for the rest of Letters to October! 

July: The Month of Finishing

My life right now: I'm in a boat floating in a sea of unfinished things. It's actually my normal state, but this time I'm working towards being finished. And working towards finishing feels a lot better than doing nothing.

So if this blog has been a little sparse lately, that's why. Blogging is something I can always do more of, which is why it's been kind of pushed to the side during my "Month of Finishing," which is what I've just now decided to call July.

Partly to keep you all informed, and partly to keep myself accountable, here's a quick look at what I've been doing/thinking about:

1. First of all, I wanted to say a HUGE thank you to Christopher Gronlund over at The Juggling Writer for writing a truly inspiring post in response to mine about Expectations vs. Reality. He was so sweet regarding my blog and he brought new insight to the points I was making. Thanks Christopher. You really made my day and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond!

2. So...I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month, which if you haven't heard, basically consists of trying to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's something I've been wanting to do ever since I heard about it several years ago, but never had enough time until this July. If you'd like to keep track of my progress you can see my word count in the left side bar under the typewriter.

3. Reading. I've got so many books I want to read! I'm currently trying to finish my required summer reading, which I am LOVING so far. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin is beautifully written and also gripping and scary and emotional. I was totally not expecting that. I'm still not really sure what to expect from this book. I will let you know how it turns out.

4. Collaboration! Ok so my best friend and I are working on something we've been trying to do every summer for the past three or four years. We're going to make a book of our writing and artwork and publish it through Blurb. When it's done, it will be the culmination of not only ten years of friendship but also the result of our creative efforts so far. Scary but exciting.

5. This blog. My New York recap post is sitting half-finished in my drafts folder. I have a list of books I still want to review. You probably won't be hearing from me much this month (I've got a lot on my plate), but as soon as I get some of the larger projects out the way, I really want to devote some time to writing all those posts that have been nagging at me all summer. Stay tuned.

Links:

I don't usually share links like this, mainly because I almost never click on the links other people share when they're in list form. I don't know, maybe I just get overwhelmed. But if you are the kind of person who loves going through link lists, then I hope you'll enjoy this! (I promise, these are worth taking a look at.)

Under All this Noise: On Reclusion, Writing, and Social Media : Awesome, awesome article on what it means to be an author and a recluse in today's society, where the compulsion to share everything is turning into a "business strategy."

What a World : Beautiful, heartbreaking letter from Ken Kesey to his five closest friends after the death of his son. Incredibly sad, yes, but hopeful, too. 

Letters to July: One of my favorite Youtubers is making daily video letters to the month of July. Short, lovely, and good for the soul. While you're on her channel you should also check out her video called "The Secret Life of Things."

The Fishbowl: Where Ideas Swim: My best friend's blog. She has challenged herself to post something every day in July. Go forth, read, and support!

What are you working on this month?

On Expectation vs. Reality

Photo Spread: Ms. Butterfly on Tumblr. Movie: 500 Days of Summer

If anyone knows the feeling that reality never lives up to our expectations, it's writers. We rely on our imaginations to give us story ideas and interesting characters and plot twists, so it's no surprise that we also spend inordinate amounts of time imagining just how great our stories are going to be once they get on the page. Or at least, I do. It's writers who must deal with the constant disappointment of not having the words on the page come even close to the potential the story held when it was just in our heads.

I was talking to my mom about this the other day, and she said something which I thought made a lot of sense. When you think about it, the story in your head doesn't really matter. Sure, that idea is the catalyst for what you put on the page, but its importance pretty much stops there. After that, all that matters is the real story. That's the story that will be worked on and labored over. That's the story that will go through actual critiques and have actual readers. What's the good of clinging to what your story could have been when you have the real one right in front of you?

Of course you can tell yourself this all you want and it won't make up for the fact that the real story will never be as good as the imagined one. But maybe we should stop putting so much emphasis on the imagined story. Maybe we should shelve it in the backs of our minds once it's given us that first spark of inspiration and focus on the task at hand, which is learning to appreciate the real story, and the work that goes into it, even though it will never be the same as the one in our heads. This is all easier said than done. Still, I think it's worth a try. As Maureen Johnson puts it: Dare to suck. I'd also add: Dare to embrace reality. Even if it sucks. A lot.

If this post was helpful or confusing or you have more thoughts on this subject, don't hesitate to leave comment!

Quote of the Day: The Page

So, I'm writing this from my phone. I'm not sure if that makes me more or less professional... Needless to say I will be thoroughly checking for typos when this is finished, and I apologize for any weird autocorrect problems.

It seems only fitting that after a short hiatus we start at the beginning again. We start with the blank page. I recently ran across this absolutely stunning quote from Annie Dillard's The Writing Life:

"Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know. The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity..."

I think writers struggle with the blank page for much the same reason we struggle with uncertainty. That's what it is, isn't it? The uncertainty of not knowing what to write, or if it will be good. The sheer terror of knowing that you are creating something from thin filaments of thought that may not hold up on their own. Everyone has felt dread like a weight in their stomach. Everyone knows what it is to be alone and unsure, staring if not into a blank whiteness, then into a blue sky or a pair of eyes that don't answer back. When I first read this quote, I thought "the page" sounded like a cruel teacher. But then, what is life if not the same thing?

But there is one crucial difference between life and the page. Between all the uncertainty and mystery they both hold, the page is permanent. That is something that life will never be, and maybe that's for the best. I love what Dillard says about ruining everything you touch but touching it anyway. Making art is the act of ruining, of marring something that was once clear and white and beautiful, and only when the ruin turns into beauty can we call it art. I used to get so frustrated when my teachers would pose the "What is art?" question, usually citing one of Duchamp's ready-mades as an example of something that was questionable. I used to think, aren't we done with this question? Haven't we figured this out by now? And what's more, if everyone's interpretation of art is different, then why bother to ask? I still think that "what is art?" is a poor question. I think we can do better than that. I think we should assess our own ideas about art and ruin, about uncertainty and permanence. We should come up with our own questions that have answers that belong only to us. And this leads me to my favorite part of the Annie Dillard quote, which is that she is asking us to choose action over uncertainty, to say yes to ruin. This is the part that I'm still working on. For some reason I've grown comfortable with the uncertainty and the doubt, and I think if I just hold out long enough it will fade to the background. And then, when I do act, I discover again how wonderful it is, and how much better it is than staring at a blank page. This is all still a work in progress, but I'm beginning to be okay with that. I'm beginning to understand that writing is work and that it doesn't always come like it is now, straight from my fingers into this tiny phone keyboard. And yeah, most of what we touch is ruined. But there's always an exception to the rule.

Putting Advice into Practice

I was looking at the tags on my posts the other day, and I realized that it has been a VERY long time since I actually talked about writing in any kind of helpful, organized way. There's also the fact that the tag "life" pops up more than "writing in general," which bothers me a little bit since, well, this blog is supposed to have at least some useful information on it. So, without further ado, here's some advice... about taking advice.

For the record, I LOVE advice. I'm the one who is constantly wasting time I could be using to write (or, you know, do homework) by looking up writing advice. But of course the one caveat of knowing how to write well, is that you actually have to put that advice into practice. In order to help you do this, I've gathered up a few of the most generic writing tips on the internet and am giving you my own perspective on what they mean.

Write Every Day
Ah yes, this seems to be the standard piece of writing advice. It 's simple. You want to write? Well then, what are you waiting for! But if you're anything like me, just being told to write isn't enough. I need details. How long should my writing sessions be? Should I set a word count goal? How do I write everyday without severely jeopardizing my grades? What if I only write two sentences every day for a week? What happens if I skip a day? Two? Three? You get the gist. Now, this is going to seem a little counter intuitive, but let's just forget about the whole "write every day" thing for a minute. Sure, setting a schedule for yourself is great, but you really only need to write every day if just getting yourself into your desk chair is a struggle. If you're more confident with your writing, you start to feel guilty after you've gone a long time without writing anything. Hopefully the urge to write will naturally occur. That doesn't necessarily mean you should write only when you feel like it. Use your time wisely; if you have a small stretch of time where you would normally watch Youtube videos, try writing instead. By using whatever available time you have and also freeing yourself from the cycle of guilt that is trying to write every day and failing miserably, you are going to be a lot happier with yourself and with the result of your efforts.

Show don't Tell
You've heard this one a million times, I know. In describing this technique most people use an example like this:

Showing: Julie was getting angry when James walked through the door.

Telling: Julie's face turned beet red. He eyes bulged and an insult was already forming on her lips when James walked through the door.

Even when I'm given an example, I have a really hard time showing instead of telling. While first drafts will always be riddled with places where telling is rampant, one thing I've noticed that has helped me learn the difference is taking time to notice things. If you make a conscious effort to observe the details of your life, then writing them will be a lot easier. Pay attention to the way people act when they're happy, angry, sad, tired. Pay attention to the way the first day of summer smells, or the feeling your get when you're sitting in an empty movie theatre waiting for the film to start. As you do this you will discover that you are more inclined to include the details of your character's emotions rather than just telling your readers their state of mind.

Write What You Know
There is a lot of truth to this phrase. Where would we be if Anne Frank or Louisa May Alcott or Harper Lee had decided not to write what they know? However, when I first tried to follow this advice I couldn't think of anything in my life that would be worth putting into a story (obviously I got over that and started a blog). What I've realized is that writing what you know doesn't mean you have to write a memoir about your life, or that you can't work in a fantasy or sci-fi genre. It just means that, whenever possible, you should ground your stories in a reality that you know something about. Why have a character who is a genius chess player if you've never played a game of chess in your life? Sure, you can acquaint yourself with the world of chess by teaching yourself how to play, attending chess tournaments, etc, but wouldn't be nice (and a lot less work) to have your main character love the same thing you love? This also serves as a good rule for writing about things you can't possibly "know". Say you've set your story in New Orleans during the 1920's. If you want your story world to be authentic, you need to know as much about that place and time as if you were actually living it.

Well, that's all I have time for today. Since I don't do very many of these writing advice posts, I'd love to hear if you thought this was helpful or not. Feel free to leave questions, comments, and constructive criticism in the comments!

Waking Up to Stories

If you have not heard me wax poetic about why you should be listening to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, you haven't been following me closely enough. Basically it's a podcast in which a well known author reads their favorite short story from the New Yorker archives, and then talks about it with the magazine's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. I usually listen in bed, with ear buds tucked into my ears, staring up at ceiling of my darkened room and letting the words fill my head. There is something immensely therapeutic about falling asleep to someone reading a story, and I highly recommend it to everyone, not just fellow writers. But what I want to talk about today is waking up to stories.

Recently I got an alarm clock that doubles as an ipod player. For I while I set it so I would wake up to my movie themes playlist, but one night when I had been listening to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast I plugged my ipod in an fell asleep without resetting it. The next morning I woke up to the same story I'd been listening to the night before, which happened to be Miranda July's "Roy Spivey", as read by David Sedaris. It's a strange feeling, waking up to David Sedaris's voice, reading a story in which, in one instance, a celebrity pumps Frebreeze onto the underarms of the woman he's sitting next to on an airplane. But what I realized was, that in the space between waking and sleeping the context of the story fell away. I paid attention to the sound of the words. Strange images flashed through my dreams, while all the while the voice of the reader cut through my mind like water. Eventually I woke up enough to identify what I was listening to, but I realized that the important part had already taken place. The words were already in my subconscious.

"Subconscious" may seem like a loaded term for you. I'm not saying that your "inner mind" is going to write your books for you, or that doing this randomly and without thinking about it will make you a better writer. But it's been my experience that you have to pay attention to how stories work, and listening to them, especially in this half-conscious state, allows your brain to detach itself from the emotional context and just listen to the words. It lets you hear the way sentences flow together. It shows you how the emphasis falls on some words and not others. Maybe your dreams change when you wake up listening to a certain story. Pay attention to what happens in these dreams, because that's the kind of vivid and visceral reaction we writers are trying to get from our readers. There is a reason that so many writers make writing the first thing they do in the morning after waking up. In this space we are closer to our subconscious, and when we wake up to stories we wake up with words already in our heads.

5 Things I Learned About Writing in 2012

(Note: This post is a response to "5 Things I Learned about Writing this Year" by Stephanie Morrill over at Go Teen Writers.)

When I read this post over at Go Teen Writers, something about it struck a chord. I've always been the kind of person who prefers to look forwards rather than back, so thinking about what I've learned about writing over the course of this year never really occurred to me. However, now that I think about it, reassessing your progress can be a valuable technique. It's important to remember that it's not just about the face-level accomplishments. It's not about how many words you've written, or the number of short stories you finished, or the novel still languishing in your drawer. It's about the changes your writing has undergone, and how it has changed you as a person. Keeping that in mind, here are 5 things I've learned about writing in 2012:

1. The importance of community: This summer I attended the Iowa Young Writer's Studio. The group of other teenage writers that I met there changed my life. We keep in touch through Facebook and I now have an active community of writers all over the world who I can turn to to find advice and inspiration. Not only that, but I've been lucky enough to find a group of friends at my school who are also passionate about writing, and together we've done so many great things. Oh, and joining Twitter* was probably the best thing that's happened to me on the social media front, besides starting this blog, of course. :) 

2. Time will always be a limiting factor-so work around it: This year more than ever has been extremely busy: from getting through the second semester of my junior year, to all the traveling I did during the summer, and not to mention the two or three months I spent on college applications. If you want to work on the projects that mean the most to you, you have to make time for them. Don't wait for your schedule to clear up, because chances are, it won't.

3. Trust your instincts: I learned this mostly from all the college application essays I had to write, but it applies to all writing (and life in general, for that matter). If something you've written doesn't feel right, don't give up and call it a day because you're tired or you tell yourself it's "good enough." For a while I thought the first draft of my Common Application essay was fine as is, but in the end I chose to re-write it completely and the finished result was ten times better than the original. The same rule applies the other way around, too. If someone wants you to change something about your work and you disagree with them, by all means consider it, but if you still come to the conclusion that it is not the best thing for your story or poem, then don't do it. After all, it's your work, and you have to satisfy yourself first. 

4. Be concise and to the point: Another lesson learned from writing application essays. When you only have 300 words to showcase a piece of yourself, you don't have room to ramble. The same goes for other types of writing: If you can say the same thing in fewer words, do it.

5. Don't forget to live a little: Writing is hard, and no matter what you think, staring at a blank screen all day most likely isn't going to break your writer's block. Get up, get moving, and take a break from writing if you need one. You'll come back to your computer refreshed and hopefully brimming with ideas. (Also, if you're worried about missing inspiration when you're out and about, consider carrying a purse sized notebook wherever you go and write in it when you see something that might be useful. Oh! and read this beautiful essay: On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion.)

What have you learned about writing this year?


*If you'd like to follow me, my Twitter handle is @laurapoet33

Inspiration: Jane Eyre

Something unusual happened to me last weekend. I was inspired...by a movie. In our household this should not be an uncommon occurrence. My parents are documentary filmmakers. Our DVD collection takes up two shelves in our bookcase, stacked. I doubt we could survive for long without Netflix. And yet, few movies have affected me in the way that the 2011 version of Jane Eyre did. I can list my favorite films (that's for another post), but its harder to think of films that have actually inspired me to go out and make something. I think I can say that Jane Eyre was one of these films.

(Note: This post is not a movie review. I will not be evaluating the casting, storyline, or the adaptation of the book. I should also say that I haven't seen any other adaptations of Jane Eyre-to date-and I am only part way through the book, which I am enjoying.)

Lighting/Cinematography

Basically every scene in this movie has the same effect on the viewer as a Vermeer painting. The lighting is so beautiful, especially natural light that comes in through the large windows. The whole time I was watching, I kept thinking: "If only I could capture this atmosphere in words." Story aside, just the feel of this movie is enough to make me love it.

Music
As you probably know by now, I've always been a lover of movie music. I have a whole playlist dedicated to it on my ipod. But until now I never thought I could write with a movie soundtrack in the background. In the past when I've done so, the music is too engrained in the film, and I can't separate them. I'll start immediately visualizing scenes from the film in my head, or worse, writing them down. The music becomes the words, not the guiding force behind them. 

Unlike some of my favorite soundtracks, I did not consciously notice the music while watching the film, which often happens if a score is particularly beautiful. However when I listened to the Jane Eyre soundtrack on its own I realized just how emotional, raw, and eerie the music is. Even better, my mind's eye was not overrun with scenes from the film. All that was left was the feel of the film, which was what drew me to it in the first place. I still have some experimenting to do, but I think this is one soundtrack that I will be able to write to.

If you would like to hear a sample, click here.

Other Notes
It's hard to pin down why we are inspired by some things and not by others. Something just has to speak to us at the core of our being, like a silent understanding. The list above talks about two main reasons I love this film, and as for the third, it's hard to say. There is just a feeling, an atmosphere, to this film that I can't quite put my finger on, but I know that I love the vibe that it gives off. Jane Eyre made me want to write. It made me want to travel to England and wander the moors. It made me see light differently.

I encourage you to see this movie if you haven't already, and if you have, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What other films have you been inspired by recently? 

Also, expect a review of Jane Eyre (the book) soon!