Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

Liz Shine wrote and read her way out of small-minded, small-town doom. We’re not talking about riches here. We’re talking about how a practice like writing can save a person. How it can give hope, shape identity, and ignite purpose. She hopes to write stories and poems that move readers the way certain works have made all the difference to her. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.

Dear Procrastination

Dear Procrastination,

Let’s get real. Writing is hard.

I’ve never done anything harder. Or more rewarding. But it’s the hard part that makes me turn to you, old pal. If there was one thing I wanted to do today, it was work on editing my novel. Here it is 9:12 PM: I’ve cooked two meals, shopped with my baby sis, played around with my new Zune, and baked vanilla cupcakes.

Procrastination,

The only guard against falling into your endless cycle of putting off what is challenging but ultimately necessary is persistence and optimism (in the case of writing, necessary in an existential rather than a practical sense).

The advice that we must give ourselves permission to write our worst and not sweat that one bit resounds without contention throughout arguments and musings on the art of writing. Why?

We must give ourselves permission to write our worst because the practice of writing is far more important to becoming a writer than any single sentence any writer will ever produce. Writing and editing require focus and stamina. Focus and stamina are strengthened by practice.

Writing daily. Writing through false starts, blocked narratives, and scenes that aren’t fully realized. That is how a writer conquers you, you tic!

And optimism?

The only guarantee for practicing over and over day after day is that in the end you will have written something. You’ve got to believe that even if that’s all that comes of your dedication and training, you will still be satisfied with your life’s work.

So, procrastination, you caught me today. The sun has set and to stay up much longer would be borrowing from tomorrow. But, I did manage to write this letter and now that I’ve come to a close, I see I have time for at least a few more sentences… *opens novel draft*

Beating you sentence by sentence,

Liz

Buy my books here.

Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals?
Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

A Room Of Your Own: Write one sentence

The end of a school brings a flood of emotion. Woo-hoo! Summer-time–Cooking outside–Sleeping in–Reading whatever I want.I’ve started three lists of all the marvelous ways I’m going to spend my summer time this year. (Yes, writing is on it.) But everything must be graded before that last day and you need to check out with EVERYONE and they sign your paper saying that you don’t have any overdue library books and everything that you were supposed to check in is checked in and the asset number on everything you want to check out has been properly documented. You may or may not know what classes you are teaching next year and either situation gets your mind reeling.

After school today, I found it hard enough to string words together into sentences, let alone muster the energy and inspiration to sit down to write. I took the dog for a run, a measly two and a half miles (cut down during the run from four). I dragged my body along, conscious of every step.

It was on this run that I conceived the idea for this blog.

When you can do no more, just write one sentence. Then, write one more. And one more. And one more. Until you have a page. Maybe more?

I have wasted so much time living under the myth that sitting down to write constitutes a major commitment of time and energy. When I’m feeling tired or vulnerable, thinking this way makes it virtually impossible to write.

On these days, I tell myself that I must only write one sentence today. I tell myself this one sentence at a time.

Buy my books here.

On Writing by Stephen King

The only part I didn’t like?

The very ending. And that’s my fault. It makes me uncomfortable when people get too mushy and the very ending was definitely a syrupy shot of courage to would be writers out there.

All in all?

I loved it!

I should tell you first that I listened to King reading on audio mostly while walking the dog or heading downtown to my weekly fiction critique group. So a small part of what I liked was the sound of his voice–full of confidence–telling me what was and more importantly that if I wanted to–and only if I wanted to–I could do it.

King covers the gamut: publishing, craft, writing process, and why write anyway because it’s freaking hard work?

His advice is specific, practical, and encouraging. Read it. You’ll be glad.

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” –Stephen King; On Writing

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
―Stephen King; On Writing

“Bird by Bird” – Sunday Book Review

“Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said. ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'”

I think most of us writers get ourselves so worked up over the big picture, the completed work, the masterpiece, that we forget larger, greater things can only come together when all the little pieces fit. Everything we write comes together the in the same way: word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.

That isn’t to say there is no creativity or mystery involved. Those words we choose, or that choose us, to build those sentences come in a surprising array of ways. It is helpful though to remind ourselves to take it all “Bird by Bird,” to relax and let go of some of that control, to tell our internal editor to shut his or her mouth, and to just focus on taking it step by step.

“Bird by Bird” is probably the most hilarious book of writing advice I have ever read, but it is also one of the most practical. Lamott is frank about the fact that sometimes writing really sucks. Sometimes you pour your heart and soul into a draft, and re-read it only to find out it was pure rubbish. Guess what? Not only is that okay, it happens to all of us.

I know some great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much…Very few writers know what they’re going to do until they’ve done it.

Reading this book is like listening to one side (sometimes more) of a conversation with a close friend (one of those friends who is funny and encouraging, but isn’t afraid to call your bluff). “Bird by Bird” was published in 1994, and since that time I have read it cover to cover at least three times. I thumb through it constantly. When I can’t find where I left it the last time I was reading it, I panic. Whether I need a prompt, a smile, a hug, or a kick in the butt, I can count on this book to give it to me.

Buy my books here.

A Room Of Your Own: Commit To One Work

After I’d told yet another story of my struggle to decide just what I should be working on, Carrie (friend; colleague; fellow writer) put it simply:

“Everything’s back on the table.”

The truth of her words struck me hard enough to probe further.

For months now, I have been taking projects on and off the table pretty much every time I sit down to write.

Last August I graduated with my MFA in fiction. During the three years I spent working on that degree, I remained entirely dedicated to one project: an autobiographical novel titled Hallelujah.
Taking work on and off the table has long impeded the realization of my writing goals because I don’t stick with one project long enough to “finish” it. Shaken by the truth of Carrie’s words, I see now what I haven’t seen since I left the program last August. Those three years constitute an exception to my writing life since I began penning my first poems as a freshman in high school.

I often proclaim proudly: “I’ve never had writer’s block.”

It’s true! And I see now why. When the writing gets truly hard, on the third, fourth or fifth read-through–even when I’m stuck mid-story– I switch projects.

Carrie and I spoke in the afternoon. Both high school English teachers, we encourage each other on a near daily basis to make time for writing after the work day is done. It’s hard to do. We have families. School days are long. Dinner needs to be made. Dogs need to be walked. We have other hobbies too. She said, “Everything’s back on the table” in the same way she typically makes such comments, commiserating. So much of our friendship is based on reminding each other that the struggles we face daily as writers, as mothers, as women, as teachers, as lovers are entirely shared. We are not alone. As is often the case, she made the comment as much to herself as she did to me.

The comment sent me reeling and hours later when I sat down with my weekly fiction critique group, a writer I respect offered a simple

solution to the my dilemma. He told me to take all the files I wasn’t currently working on off my computer. He said put them on a disc or flash drive. He advised that if necessary I should even give the files to someone I could trust not to give them back until I finished what I had committed to work on.

Eureka!

All these years I have been buying flash drives and uploading my entire library of documents to my cloud (as that inter-space is now called). A few months ago I bought an iphone and as I searched for apps to download, I thought how cool would it be to be able to access all my Google Docs from my phone.

The fact that I had hundreds of poems, dozens of short stories, and several novel drafts at my fingertips at any given moment, comforted me.

Like some other comforts, I see now how having all that work right in front of me every time I sat down to write moored me in indecision, kept me from staying long enough in any one work. This makes sense when I think about it. Staying too long means experiencing pain (such as doubt and fear of failure) and probably writer’s block.

This morning, I deleted all but the start of one story from my Gmail Drive. I took all the other folders and files and saved them in two locations. Until I finish the first draft of novel I started about Travis (a 24 year old stuck-in-neutral romantic who pumps gas at his parents gas station in Southeastern Oregon for a living when he should be moving on to his own life journey), when I sit down to write, I have exactly one choice of files to open, the work I have committed to finish.

Buy my books here.

Dear Solitude,

You are sometimes hard to come by anymore in my beautiful, busy, love-drenched life, but without you, shadows pool in my eyes and I struggle to see or feel clear.

A young woman, I took you in excess, as I tended toward excess in things that felt good. Hours spent writing, listening to music, watching insights form on the ceiling like clouds in the sky, coming into focus, then shifting. I took you on long walks across two towns. I found a more disciplined you in yoga.

You are why I walk to runs and meetings even in the pouring rain. You are why, though I’m not a morning person, I love the quiet hours when the whole house still sleeps. You are why I run distance, trying to shed all the mind phantoms that keep me from just being you.

Though you are sometimes mistaken for loneliness, you have nothing to do with that particular sadness. You aren’t sadness or joy, though you can be filled by either one.

The people I love best are good company in solitude. These people I can sit next to on a lawn chair reading a book without a word passing between us for the whole of an afternoon. I can write when they are in the room.

As for writing, without you the valve shuts, creating a pressure strong enough to signal all the wrong neural networks.

Buy my books here.

A Room Of Your Own: Don’t Hesitate

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.” (The Writing Life, Annie Dillard)

Hesitation wants to stall my writing. She spends her time mulling over and over again. She thinks it matters where one begins or ends. I know her well. She pressed me to the wall at middle school dances. She conjures excuses for me and I take them like an alcoholic takes to drink.

In elementary school, I preferred to blend in. I hated situations where all the attention turned to me and avoided them as best I could. I learned to ask others questions and to defer.

Step up to the line our P.E. teacher said, stop watch in hand. One at a time. i went to the back of the line and when my turn came, by will I had induced an asthma attack that cleared me from having to perform.

“Jennifer, will you walk Liz to the office,” said pudgy Mr. E.

Hesitation has plagued me all my life, but with practice and experience I am learning to keep her in her place.

Want to know my most recent trick?

In The Faith Of A Writer , Joyce Carol Oates tell the story of a writer who writes always in a rush. He puts his coat on and goes out on errands, then comes back to write. When the urgency worked up by his errand running wears off, he goes out again, then comes back to write some more without taking off his coat.

My trick is a lot like this.

When I return home after a run, I sit down immediately to write. No shower. No tidying up the house. No talking. Only write and write to a specific goal. It works! The momentum of the run breaks through the hesitation that so often slows or even prevents the flow of words to the page.

Must be a body-mind thing. 😉

Buy my books here.

Reading Like A Writer

I am lucky enough to be a part of a book group for writers and occasionally we choose a book on craft to read alongside whatever novels we are reading. This is how I came to read Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer s

Prose’s essential premise is that creative writing is best taught through the close reading of literature. She writes, “It’s like watching someone dance and then secretly, in your own room, trying out a few steps” (9). She endeavors to show what we ought to be looking for and how we should respond to what we see. She achieves her goal by breaking the what down by chapter topic (words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, gesture) and showing her own close readings of text within each chapter.ome months ago.

Prose urges us to “slow down and read every word” (15). She explains that, “Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations” (16).

Prose advises us to read with a particular kind of care and to read classic literature–works that have or will endure. She asserts this advice from the start and proceeds to show just how one might go about reading this way.

This showing of her thinking about particular books makes her book a worthy read. The backbone of Reading Like A Writer is her commentary on style in work after work after work. You might be tempted to skip this part, particularly if you haven’t read the work that contains the scene or sentence she is commenting on. I urge you not to do that. I u

rge you to treat her book with the same care she would have you read Babel or Bowen. She provides model after model of how to look and think as a writer observing the dance of another in order to dance with her own style and rhythm in a way that might move an audience to tears or laughter or insight.

Not only doesProse posit that critical reading is the only way to learn to learn creative writing, but she also suggests that it is the only way to rise about the supposed rules of writing to find a style of our own: “If the culture sets up a series of rules that the writer is instructed to observe, reading will show you how these rules have been ignored in the past, and the happy outcome. So let me repeat, once more: literature not only breaks the rules, but makes us realize that there are none.” Her implication: A writer who does not read with a discerning eye could never write above average.

I’ll admit that in my case Prose was preaching to the choir. I have not read without a pen in my hand since I was in elementary school. Whether I am making comments in the margins or copying lines that I like into my journal, reading has for a long while been both a personal experience and an analysis of style. Even so, this book kept my interest and took me through an experience in reading that I learned from, even admired. She notices more than I do and so gave me something to strive for.

Buy my books here.

Dear Imagination Tree,

Half way into a ten mile run, half way up a doozy of a hill, you shifted my perspective the instant my brain received the sight of you. Trudging up that hill, by breath, by cadence, by will, I felt your influence before I understood its meaning.

You are like the sight of a rainbow caused by sunlight through a window prism, like stumbling upon a hopscotch board with time and inclination to spare, like the urge to turn a cartwheel just to make sure I still can. I saw you and longed to play under your branches, to let imagination trump sensibility, to pause mid-hill to play.

Imagination Tree, you remind me to:

skip rocks

splash in puddles

smile when I run

and, most of all,

to write what pleases me.

Buy my books here.

A Room of Your Own: Boundaries

Let the people you live with know when you are sitting down to write. Tell them that for an hour or two or a page or a word count or whatever your goal is to please not disturb you.

It is your fault that at first they won’t listen to you. You’ve been at their beck and call for so long that they will need you without even thinking.

And you like that they need you.

Even if they do listen to you and they leave you to write just like you asked, you will start to feel guilty about twenty minutes in and begin to wonder how they are getting on without you. You may even make an excuse for needing to talk to them.

You forgot to ask how the oral book report went.

What are some synonyms for relaxed?

Did you remember to pay the car insurance?

What do you think of a trip to the beach this weekend?

You will need to be willing to let the domestic paradise that is your household fall to pieces without you. And you know it will fall to pieces without you.

Barring blood or broken bones, you will need to ignore every crash, every whine, every hard-shut cupboard or door.

When they don’t listen to you, you have to channel another you. The you that is a writer. The you that knows that in the long term you are helping the people you love more by showing them that if you really want something, you have to be ready to put in the time and work at it.

So, tell them when you are going to write and for how long and prove to them that you mean it by staying in the room and writing your heart out until you reach that day’s goal.

Buy my books here.

Make Time.

Liz Shine: Author, Editor.

Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

Dear Procrastination

A Room Of Your Own: Write one sentence

On Writing by Stephen King

“Bird by Bird” – Sunday Book Review

A Room Of Your Own: Commit To One Work

Dear Solitude,

A Room Of Your Own: Don’t Hesitate

Reading Like A Writer

Dear Imagination Tree,

A Room of Your Own: Boundaries