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.

A Quiet Place

The dishes are done. The cats are napping. Quiet at last. I sit down to write. Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! “What are you doing, Mommy?” my son asks between mouthfuls of cheesy puffed corn snacks.

“I’m writing.”

“I’ll bring my toys back here and play then.” Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

I stare at the blank page. Two fat crows squawk and caw back and forth to each other outside the window. My son is staging an epic battle between a cluster of shock troopers and a battalion of Middle Age knights adorned with gold fleur-de-lis. “Bam! Clang! Wham! Crash! Blam!” One of the crows flies up to the tin-covered patio roof. His feet scritch and scratch as he struts to and fro.

One of the greatest struggles I face as a writer is how to tune out the noise and find a quiet place amidst the din and clamor of daily life. Sadly, I have not discovered any magic formula. What have I learned? The more I fight the noise, the more I make excuses why I can’t write right now, the more I blame the people and things around me for my lack of creativity and productivity, the more miserable I become and the more my writing suffers.

It’s okay to write in a noisy house. If that’s all you have available to you, take a deep breath and dive in. It’s okay to tell everyone in the house you’ll be unavailable for an hour, a half hour, even fifteen minutes. If you’re interrupted by anything other than an emergency, it’s okay to half-heartedly listen and respond with auto-pilot “mhmms.”

Trust me, the noise isn’t going anywhere. From the hiss and froth of your local coffee shop, to the “he said, she said,” conversation of the teenagers in the “Quiet Study Area” of the library, to the rustle of leaves in the trees, noise is everywhere. Besides, if I’m perfectly honest, there have been times I’ve complained I couldn’t write because it was too quiet.

Forget about finding the perfect circumstances. They’re never perfect. Focus on the words. Tell the story. Stop fretting about the Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Behind you. Gnaw on it. March with it. Write.

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

Sunday Book Review

I think we can agree that reading is essential. If you’re like me (and I’ll bet you are), certain books you read and the impact they had propelled you to begin writing in the first place. Then pretty soon, you found yourself copying down your favorite sentences from your favorite books or reading the same books over and over again. You may not have even known that by doing this you were becoming a writer.

When I am struggling to write, one of my internal editor’s favorite disparaging comments is, “Who do you think you are? Give it up. You’ll have more time to read all the really good writing out there.” This particular comment comes from a well-worn path made by my thoughts and actions based in the fear that I am somehow less than everyone else: less talented, less intelligent, less worthy of love.

When my collaborators and I decided that the topic for Sunday on this blog should be reviews of books and articles, I happily stepped forward to write the first review. I read often and closely. I feel helpless if I have a book to read and no pencil in hand to converse with the text in the margins. I’ve read plenty I can review. However, when it came down to deciding where to start, my confidence waned. I thought I’d write about Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg since that was the first book on writing I ever read and still the most inspiring (perhaps nothing can ever compare to a book read at sixteen that bids you to follow your heart?). I considered articles and books, including the book that I’m reading this month with my writer’s book group (The Sense of An Ending
by Julian Barnes). I considered books I have read specifically to fuel my current fiction project, a collection of stories exploring one woman’s relationship to food.

Until I sat and began to type, I remained mired in indecision. Each word typed made clearer the review I needed to write and why.

I first tried practicing yoga when I was fifteen years old. In the near quarter century that has passed since that curious, self-conscious time, my practice has whispered and roared, but there hasn’t been a time when I gave up practicing at all. I keep my mats, blankets, and props always where they can be easily taken out. I keep enough open floor space that a mat can be thrown down without having to move the furniture around. Is it coincidence that this is the same path my writing has taken? No. In fact, when I consider that question the answer is so obvious it makes my eyes water.

Yoga allows me to cut through the crap that goes through my mind and keeps me from writing. In the past year, my yoga practice has been a whisper, 10 minutes here or there, a full practice once a week, sometimes once a month. This has something to do with how much has changed in my life of late. Three years ago, I was married and teaching three yoga classes a week. Since then I have divorced, fallen in love, moved from a small apartment I shared with my teenage son to a house shared with my boyfriend and his two children too. My life is fuller and more chaotic. I am still reeling from the change, finding my way.

Yoga Mind and Body by the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre is proving a kind guide back into a roaring practice. The sequence has many of my favorite poses and takes two full-color pages per asana to show and describe. The sequence is right for beginners (which some days is where I am) and adaptable to advanced practice. Most importantly for where I am in my practice is that the book leads you asana-by-asana through a full and honest yoga practice that begins and ends with relaxation. Right now, I need to be led in this way, though at times I have practiced every day without ever opening a book on yoga at all.

Is it a coincidence that the very week after I found this book and began using it to make yoga happen, the writer’s block I had been struggling with for weeks broke and I finished one story and began another? Of course not.

For me, it’s yoga. There are many meditative practices that keep our egos in check so we can do our work and do it well. Cooking. Walking. Swimming. Breathing. Biking. Gardening. There are times when all I am doing is these things and I feel guilty because I am not writing. Were those three wordless weeks truly writer’s block? Or was I preparing myself for the writing that was bound to happen?

Buy my books here.

Dear Indecision,

Watercolor Sketch by [email protected]

Dear Indecision,

How have I come to trust so much in the process that I haven’t written a new sentence in two weeks? I moved some around and deleted others. I made a chart and a theme collage. For a day, at least, I moved my back burner project to the front and vice versa. I felt so relieved by this new plan and relieved again when I changed my mind the next day. I spent considerable time considering whether I should edit the six interconnected stories I have written or forge ahead with the fourteen that are mere concepts on an idea map.

Indecision, you allow me to stall indefinitely, make everything but writing a priority including joining Pinterest and trying new recipes.

Last week, I sat down to write at three in the afternoon and at four fifty had ticked five less important tasks off my to-do list but hadn’t written a word. I told everyone in my family that I was staying at work late to write, so I responded to the question, “How did writing go?” upon my return without specificity and with plenty of shame.

I’ve heard some tips famed to help with all this. Butt-in-chair. Begin with a line from a famous book. Write one page and then delete that page before you begin to write for real. Stay in the room. Communicate with your family that for ___ hour(s) you really can’t be disturbed. Hell, ask for even twenty minutes at a time if that will help you build a habit.

Trouble is, I’m having some trouble lately deciding just what my process will be.

*Googles it*

Buy my books here.

A Room of Your Own

By room, I mean that mental space where in spite of distractions that come like insects on warm evenings you triumph in your daily desire to get words on the page. I mean the opposite of the dreaded block, that space that confirms that you are in fact a writer in spite of all your doubts, because dog-gone-it, you did write today.

I’ve read at least a dozen books cover-to-cover bursting with insight on this subject. Each one, I believed, upon completion, would save my forever-in-peril writing life. In a few instances, I nearly ran my highlighter dry and inked hearts in the margins of nearly every page. Inconvenient as it may be, like most important creative pursuits, there is no fool-proof, step-by-step guide to a productive writing life. Our lives are diverse as our personalities are. We are human and prone to swings of mood and bouts of vitality and illness. Different writing projects demand different processes. Hopefully, we get better with practice. What I have come to understand about what works to get myself in the room and willing to stay there is that one must keep at it and do whatever works.

We are not just writers. We are lovers, mothers, employees, and members of communities and social worlds. If you’re like me you also have other hobbies. Yoga? Cooking? Bird-watching? Role-playing? The very same existential energy that fuels our writing, spurs us on to garden and volunteer. I do not write every day, but I do try.

Just the other day a colleague and writer friend sent me this link that profiles a woman who has created room both figuratively and literally for her art to an impressive degree. My favorite line from the article reads, “lots happens in these little spaces between work and eating and sleeping.” I often sneak writing into my day while stuck in a meeting or waiting for the oven timer to ding. I am drafting this blog entry while watching pairs of my ninth graders decide which of four love poems they prefer most for its style and message. They are preparing a 5 minute presentation on the subject. Do I have papers to grade? Could I make another tour of the room? Well, sure. But.

Following an occasional creative impulse in the midst of a work day is one of many ways I get words on the page and I like to think it doesn’t hurt students to work independently while I step into my imagination. My eyes scan the room for inspiration when I lose the thread of a sentence. I’m sure they think I’m checking their progress. I see how they get busier when my eyes land on them.

Mondays are hereby dedicated to the myriad ways we get into that room to do the writing we have to do.

Buy my books here.

Making time to read what’s offered unsolicited…

I know it is hard enough to make a dent in the stacks of books and periodicals in your own mental queue. Add to that the book or two you are reading for school, work, or your book club and the one you’re reading more for self-improvement than pleasure. You also have at least a few periodical subscriptions piling up and you really ought to read more poetry, don’t you think?

I’m with you.

Today, though, I made an exception. A colleague of mine waltzed into my classroom carrying a two foot pile of fresh copies for his students. When I realized that the reason the whole pile nearly tipped over onto my floor was that he had printed something else–something extra–for me.

I had plenty more pressing duties today, but somehow, in between this and that, I managed to read the four NY Times articles this friend had offered unsolicited. He did not say why he printed them for me. I suppose because I am an English teacher and they were all about sentences, fiction, and books.

I read them all and enjoyed them all for their thought-provoking ideas and found among them four of five lines to use in class or just to underline and write a heart next to (what I do when I really like a sentence).

Here are the articles this history teacher who totally didn’t have the time to think of what I might read and enjoy but did anyway passed on to me:

“The Sentence As A Miniature Narrative” by Constance Hale

“My Life’s Sentences” by Jhumpa Lahiri

“Your Brain On Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul

“The Way We Read Now” by Dwight Garner

Buy my books here.

Tottering on the beam

Fall (September and October more specifically)is the hardest time of year to get writing done. While the change of season invites writing and reflection, the amount of things I need to do in a day widens with the start of school. Yet, the days are literally shrinking and the ungraded papers (like the leaves on my lawn) pile higher and higher. I’m not losing hope,though, not giving up. Getting up at 3 AM two days each school week is helping. Regular writing time after school on Wednesdays with my two favorite writing buddies is also a boon. Keeping my bi-weekly appointment with my critique group also urges me on. Then there is also the network of writer support I’ve built on Facebook. Hallelujah for these encouragements!

Because writing with consistency through our busy, overcrowded lives is at times impossible and, at best, difficult, but rewarding work.

Buy my books here.

Reflection on maintaining a writing life post-MFA, written in second person for no particularly good reason, just to see what emerges

When you published your first book, an allegory on dot matrix pages filled with colored pencil illustrations, held together with yarn and glue, you were told by the big sister-like teacher with the cinnamon hair in the Young Writer’s Workshop that you were a writer. You liked the sound of that. It was the thing you had been waiting to hear, the explanation for your impulse to observe, mute, a soothing from the shame of “stare hard, retard”.

Because you were young enough to believe just about anything, for a while you needed nothing more than the go-ahead of the teacher with the cinnamon hair. You wrote stories, all illustrated. You and a friend made up your own comic.

Your body too was changing when you stopped believing, no longer content with what you had been writing, afraid to write the things that sat like a heavy meal in your gut. Terrified you weren’t a writer after all, afraid to have nothing to show, you took the poem about a flamingo offered by your generous, concerned friend and put your name on it so that you would have something to show.

You started to journal and your aunts, who must have sensed your need for guidance or perhaps were once there themselves, bought you books that called you writer, offered you exercises to build-a-better-body, a body that could endure the strain of story-making.

You began to write the things that mattered, though your stories then, like the teen who wrote them, mostly only pointed and balked. You wanted to keep writing then more than anything though. In fact, those stories were the only thing you trusted and you were sure without them you were nothing.

You believed this less when you became a mother,then a teacher, and it was hard to write in those years and you were so aware of that hollow, just as you were the beating of your own heart that first year of teaching. You wrote in fits, though you often felt guilty and were sure that your family must be lost without you. Selfish of you to have this page, this pen, this separate pleasure! You sometimes snuck in writing time.

It wasn’t just that you loosed your grasp on what you never could control, though that helped. You persisted, sometimes you really just limped along and lied. Now you’ve got your MFA and you know without a doubt, like you did when you published your first book, an allegory on dot matrix pages held together with yarn and glue, that this is the thing you must do and that you must in some way do it every day. When you doubt that, you will remember the rush of relief, love, and joy you felt the first time your fifteen-year-old son spent the bulk of one day struggling to master a song on his electric blue Fender guitar.

Buy my books here.

Teacher/Writer: Struggling to Find A Writing Schedule

Summer time is prime writing time for me. My best teacher friend (who also happens to be a fiction writer) and I devise an escape plan at the end of every school year to immerse ourselves in a writing life. We do this to avoid the inevitable. School ends and the routine that we have spent all year perfecting and shaping drops away, leaving us not free and inspired, but lost and looking for our keys. This year (because of a late release date) we didn’t do this. Until now. Here we are in Packwood, WA where I have no cell service and I have to sit on the roof to steal Internet from the neighbors who own the pug named Gary (who stops by every once in a while to make sure we are all settled in).
The first day here I was like a kid with ADD during a history lecture. Read for a while. Pace the floor. Write a letter. Walk down to the river, throw myself down on the sand and pray to the River Gods for aid. At least three times, I was ready to pack it up and go home, ready to say, you know what, I finished my one book, that’s all I’ve got.
Finally, I was able to sift through some short stories and decide which ones were worth the hard work of revision and set aside three that are the seeds of future novels. At that point, I couldn’t delude myself. I had a complete draft of a novel I’ve needed to write since 2005, three future novel seeds, five stories that even the thought of revising gives me a mild endorphin rush. I will write. I have to.
This whole situation is really a false dilemma that I have been handed the solution to countless times. Build a habit. Keep a schedule. Set attainable goals.
So, what’s the problem?…
I am accustomed to my teacher schedule, wherein every year the schedule begins anew and every summer, the comfort of that routine drops away. So, here’s what I decided while I was walking around the neighborhood here in Packwood trying to get even one bar on my cell phone so I could send that one last text message. It’s high time I separated my teaching life and my writing life and came up with a writing schedule that will work for me year round. If I am able to write more in the summer (because I have more time), well nothing keeps me from writing above and beyond the schedule, right? I need to create a summer schedule that will also work during the school year and hold myself accountable to that schedule.

My schedule: Thursday through Sunday
Goal: @ least 1000 words or 6-10 pages of revision
What’s your schedule?
See my success rate here.

Buy my books here.

Writing practice

Working on a short story and researching markets. Read an article with my breakfast (coffee, grapefruit, brie and crackers) about yoga and activism that nailed how I feel about writing practice, yoga practice, running, and just trying to be a better human being: “…sometimes what feels like a setback is really preparation for a big leap forward…progress isn’t a neat linear path.” That’s pretty much what my novel is about. 🙂

Buy my books here.

Publishing news with flare

Booksquare.com is a fun read full of insight and news related to books and publishing. You can also get it in a newsletter or get it injected right into your Facebook or Twitter feed.

Buy my books here.

Make Time.

Liz Shine: Author, Editor.

Author Archives: lizshine74

About lizshine74

A Quiet Place

Sunday Book Review

Dear Indecision,

A Room of Your Own

Making time to read what’s offered unsolicited…

Tottering on the beam

Reflection on maintaining a writing life post-MFA, written in second person for no particularly good reason, just to see what emerges

Teacher/Writer: Struggling to Find A Writing Schedule

Writing practice

Publishing news with flare