Category Archives: A Room Of Your Own

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*

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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

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 🙂

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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.

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Revelations About Writing While Running the Capital City Half Marathon

This morning I ran the Capital City Half Marathon for the third time. I’ve run several half marathons in the past seven years, and as for overall good feeling before and after the race, this race was my best yet. Around mile 5 or 6 of the run, I put into words what it was that was making this race so good for me, so that I could stay feeling good for the rest of the run, and I kept repeating three phrases over and over to myself: stick your neck out; listen to your body; come to your own edge. It was around mile 7 that I began to see how these mantras applied to my writing life too.

Stick your neck out

This mantra has a simple, practical application to running and has to do with physical alignment. I have experienced shoulder and neck tension with frequency during runs. I’ve tried various tricks to keep my shoulders relaxed, but today something clicked for me. “Stick your neck out” reminded me to keep a long neck and to extend through the top of my head. For the first time ever, I had absolutely no tension in my neck and shoulders during the run.

I was basking in this freedom of movement and turning the corner of mile 7 or so, when I thought about how “stick your neck out” also applied to my writing life now. I just finished my first novel, have written a query and synopsis, and am attempting to find an agent. After twenty years of writing, I am finally willing to stick my neck out and try to sell my work. In the past so many things have prevented me risking rejection. I felt overwhelmed by the publishing process. I felt less-than other writers. I did not trust my own instincts. Mostly, I just didn’t believe I could do it and so I didn’t stick my neck out. I have sent out 20 queries to agents in the past two weeks and already received five rejections, and despite those rejections, I feel a freedom of movement much like I felt during the run this morning. In a different way, I am sticking my neck out.

Listen to your body

At mile 4 I was running hot and though the rain was coming down and people around me were still wearing their long sleeves, I peeled off my long-sleeve layer. I ran the rest of the run in a tank top. The relief I experienced when I peeled off that layer was ecstatic and came as a result of listening to my body. I listened to my breath. I felt the cool raindrops on my skin. I slowed and quickened my pace entirely based on my own body’s signals (breath, temperature, body sensations). I tuned out what other runner’s around me were doing with their bodies just like I would in a yoga class, a place where listening to my own body and not looking around are givens. Today I found that I could do the same in running more than I ever had before. The resulting feeling of freedom filled my heart with love. I made it a goal to say thank you to the volunteers I passed along the rest of the route and I did.

Listening to my body in my writing life has to do with accepting the natural ebb and flow of my creative energy and not judging my own writing practice by what I did the day before, what another writer does, or what I think I should do. As I mentioned, I just finished my first novel. I am eager to get back to the page. I even know what my next project is going to be. I have a roll of butcher paper that has been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for a week now in anticipation of mapping out the plot of my next project. I also have some short stories I am working on. Should I start mapping that plot while I am also researching agents and sending out queries? Should I split my daily writing time between queries and writing time? These are questions I have been struggling with. This morning, on the run, I discovered my answer. No. I will write when I am ready and when I am done sending out queries. I may take some notes here and there, but when I listen to my body and I think of having my head in a writing project and trying to sell my book, I feel my breathe catch and my muscles tense and I realize that I need to slow down my pace and do what feels right, not what I think I should do.

Come To Your Own Edge

Come to your own edge was the mantra today that reminded me to push myself the whole way. I have a tendency to be a bit easy on myself when I run and this phrase reminded me to stay in the moment and push to the best of my ability.

In my writing, coming to my own edge means to find time to write every day and to value that writing time by staying focused in the moment, setting goals and working toward them. It means being a good self-editor by being willing to delete, revise, or set aside work that isn’t my best. Coming to my own edge means that when I’m writing, I am just writing (not multitasking) and I am doing the best writing I am capable of in that moment.

Somewhere between mile 5 or 6, I had come up with the language for how I wanted this run to go: stick your neck out; listen to your body; come to your own edge. I was saying those three phrases over and over to myself and it was at about mile 7 that I began to see how each of those phrases related to my writing practice as I want it to be. I thought to myself, “The first thing I’m going to do when I finish this race is find someone with a pen I can borrow.” Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far. My pals at Guerrilla Running were the first booth I came to. As I write this, I am reading the notes I made on the back of one of their flyers.

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Jane Smiley

Just started Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. Here’s an interview with her at Failbetter.com from last December discussing her own writing and writing practice.

Make Time.

Liz Shine: Author, Editor.

Category Archives: A Room Of Your Own

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

Revelations About Writing While Running the Capital City Half Marathon

Jane Smiley