The Write Spot Blog by Marlene Cullen

Category: Guest Bloggers

  • What are you telling yourself?

    Guest Blogger Ted A. Moreno writes about description versus story and making up stories:

    Do you have a habit of making up stories? We know some people who have a tendency to exaggerate the truth. We think we know what is real. But do we really?

    Something that happened to me this morning:

    I was out for my morning walk when a police officer pulled up alongside of me in his car. He asked me my name and for my ID. He said that they had been looking for a missing person that had the potential of hurting themselves and that I fit the description. I gave him my ID, told him I wasn’t the one he was looking for and he drove away.

    Now, let me tell you a story.

    I was taking a walk, minding my own business, when a police car passed me. I nodded to the officer. A few minutes later he came back because he had nothing better to do and decided to harass me. He demanded my ID, and made up some story about looking for a missing person. I know he just wanted to mess with me because I nodded to him and they don’t like when you do that.

    What really happened?  Which is real? What is reality?

    We can spend days talking about reality, so why don’t we just try to stay in touch with reality. We want to deal with what’s real don’t we? We don’t want to waste our time dealing with what’s not real. Yet, the truth is, we do that all the time.

    I suggest that #1 is a description of what happened and that #2 is a story of what happened. See the difference?

    Those who study quantum physics have concluded that there is no objective reality “out there.” That means, for there to be reality, there must be you to describe it.  (Check out this video about the paradox of Schrodinger’s cat.)

    So we could say that reality is what we perceive, or experience. However, is it possible for two people to perceive the exact same thing, but have a different reality of that thing? Absolutely.

    The fact is that we each have our own individual reality. The reason that our personal reality can be so very different from someone else’s reality is not because of what we perceive, but because of what we make it mean. The meaning comes from us, making up stories. One of the defining characteristics of human beings is that we give meaning to just about everything by making up stories about it.

    In my work as a hypnotherapist, I help people see that we are all making up stories about what  happens to us. Because we are always making up stories, we believe them, and we can become “hypnotized” by them.

    Our reality consists of two parts:  There’s what happened, and then there’s us, making up stories about what happened. There is perception, and then there is interpretation.

    In my case, there’s what happened, (a police officer stopped me and asked my some questions) and then there’s my story of what happened (a police officer harassed me). The problem is, it’s really easy to get the two confused. We believe that our story about what happened is what happened, and that becomes our reality. Then we make decisions based on a story that for the most part, is made up.

    Meaning Making Machines Making Up Stories

    The fact is, humans are meaning making machines. We are always  making up stories about what happens to us, we can’t help it. That’s what gives each life its unique flavor. What that flavor tastes like will depend on what kind of stories you are making up. “My business failed, that means I’m a failure” has a pretty bitter taste. On the other hand “Because my business failed, I learned something that will help me succeed next time” is a little more palatable, as well as being infinitely more useful.

    Stuff “happens” all the time.  Most of the time, we can agree about what happened. Up to a point.

    We can agree that the weather is hot. But we’re not going to stop there; we are always making up stories about the weather!  We have to make up a story about what happened, it’s our nature to do so. For example:

    What happened: The temperature outside is hot.

    Your story of what happened might be: I’m going to suffer today because I hate the heat. Or, if you are a kid, you might make up a different story: It’s hot so we get to swim in the pool!

    Sometimes though, the stories we make up can be really lousy:

    WH (What Happened): I asked mommy to buy me a pony and she didn’t.

    SWH (Story of What Happened): Mommy didn’t love me.

    or

    WH: I don’t live in a mansion like the people on TV.

    SWH: I’m a loser!

    One of the biggest obstacles people have to personal happiness is that they are making up stories that are really crappy about what happened to them!

    It’s very easy to believe that what happened and the story of what happened are the same thing, but they rarely are. And if we tell this story over and over repeatedly, we can “hypnotize” ourselves into believing that the story is what happened, and that our story is reality, when all it is us making up stories which may or may not be accurate.

    If that’s not bad enough, we act as if our stories are real. In other words, we base our behavior on a made up story, sometimes with dire consequences.

    For example:

    WH: Mommy didn’t buy me a pony

    SWH: Mommy didn’t love me.

    Behavior based on your story: I resent my mother and we don’t talk. (I want to make it clear that this is just an example. Of the eight kids my mom had, I’m her favorite. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

    WH: I don’t live in a mansion like the people on TV.

    SWH: I’m a loser!

    Behavior based in your story: Since I’m a loser, I’ll break the law to get what I want.

    One of the most important skills we can learn is to distinguish between what happened, and our story of what happened, because the stories that we make up will affect our lives, for better or worse.

    The quality of our lives is not determined by what happens to us, but by the stories we tell about what happens to us. What we do in our lives will in a large part be determined by the meaning we attach to our life’s circumstances. If we can become aware of those stories and how they affect our lives, then we have a choice. We can begin making up stories that empower us, instead of making up stories the dis-empower us.  The meaning of our lives is made up by us, so it’s all invented anyway. We are the creators of our lives. The only question is, what do you want to create?

    Much of my work with my hypnotherapy clients involves helping them identify stories they are telling themselves that are disempowering and downright scary. These stories rob a person of confidence, self esteem and aliveness, while perpetuating fear, doubt and unhappiness. The first question I ask of them is: “Ok, something happened to you, but what’s the story you’re making up about that, and what is that doing for you?”

    I help people to stop making up stories that do nothing for them and I use hypnosis to help people’s minds become comfortable with making up stories that speak to their courage, strength, intelligence and ability to overcome challenges.  It doesn’t take that long to start telling a new story. It all depends on how invested you are in your old story.

    So the next time you feel anger, or fear, or doubt or sadness, ask yourself: What is the story I’m telling that makes me feel this way? You can choose to tell a different story, or you may want to keep that story for now, and that’s ok. It’s your story, after all. We all have one.

    In conclusion, let me suggest that you don’t believe a word I’ve written. It’s just my story, and it works for me. I hope at least some of it works for you as well.

    Ted A. Moreno

    Originally posted on The Moreno Method Blog on March 30, 2016

    Moreno.cdNote from Marlene: I have used Ted’s relaxation cds for years and I highly recommend them for relaxation and de-stressing.

    Hypnosis Audio Recordings By Ted A. Moreno, Certified Hypnotherapist

    Hypnosis audio recordings in the form of CDs and mp3 downloads are a popular and effective way way to reinforce positive changes in your life. By listening to these recordings, you can easily go into a hypnotic state and benefit from  positive suggestions reinforcing relaxation, motivation and the desire to reach your goals.

     

  • Components for a great story – by Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell

    Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell writes about creating a great story.

    Confronted with a blank screen, poised to  tap away,  how to go about creating that great story. Perhaps one primary consideration is the theme.  Maybe the theme should  be a ghostly shadow within the confines of the story, not screaming at the reader, but there none the less.  It may make the reader think about their own lives, there might be a moral to be learned, but a writer should not take on the role of a preacher.

    Then there has to be a plot, all the conflict or struggle that the main character or characters go through. The conflict should develop in intensity and excitement, reaching some kind of climax.  If you are writing a novel there may be a number of conflicts interspersed, but a short story will have only one principal conflict.

    Moving onto story structure,  the story has to entice the reader, right from the first sentence.  Equally then, ending has to round things off perfectly.  You may have your theme and an outline of the story, but how are you going to tell it… a writer needs to decide about writing the story either in “first person” or in “third person.”  Will you be using “he,” “she,” and “it”—so writing in third person means telling a story as if it’s all about other people., or will you be writing using “I”—so writing in first person means telling a story as if it happened to you.  If in your head you have a rough idea of the theme,  you will also know which tense you are going to use,  either “present tense” or “past tense.” Writing in past tense means writing as if the story already happened, which is typical  manner in which most stories are written. Writing in present tense means writing as if the story is happening right now.  Normally you can’t mix the two.

    An important consideration is the characters.  I like to “live” with characters in my head, before committing to write about them.  For me the name of the character, says a lot about the character, for example in my short stories, I have a character called “Bugeyes” and the story revolves around the fact that he is a person who suffers intensely, due to his oversized eyes.  Lead characters should be someone readers can feel something in common with, or feel empathy. In my stories I love to create evil characters.  My characters are far from perfect, have flaws and idiosyncrasies.  Characters are interesting if they are not too one dimensional,  even evil characters have to have some kind of redeeming feature, or perhaps they have been victims themselves in one way or another.

    Settings are also paramount. In my book there is quite a range of different settings,  some are set in America, for example my story “Opium” is set in America, post-civil war.

    Then there is the question of language,  it has to really correspond with your story.

    A writer will tend to use actions and speech to let readers know what’s happening. Showing , rather than telling, using  direct more “real life” quotes like “Go away!” instead of indirect quotes like “She told him to go away.”

    You don’t have to write over elaborately to write well. Don’t shy away from using simple words and simple sentences, so you words and sentences cut through easily.

    I often spend a long time mulling over what is the best word to use, glued to a thesaurus. Each sentence and paragraph should resonate, I often spend a lot of time, writing and rewriting so as to get the optimum sentence. Some sentences or paragraph can be redundant. You can get carried away, lose sight of the story, or go off on tangents.

    Francis H. PowellFrancis H. Powell‘s, Flight of Destiny , is a book of 22 short stories.  Born in a commuter belt city called Reading  and like many a middle or upper class child of such times, Powell was shunted off to an all-male boarding school at eight, away from parents for periods of up to twelve weeks time.  What better way to put all angst into short stories.

    Powell began writing while living in Austria.  His writing evolved while living in Paris. Flight of Destiny won the Compilation/anthologies category in the Pacific Rim book festival.

     

  • Literary Agent Mary C. Moore has personal experience with The Rejection Form

    Mary C. MooreGuest Blogger Mary C. Moore (literary agent) writes about the rejection form letter.

    I recently wrote a short story, my first in over a year. Inspiration struck and I listened.

    Unlike novel writing, short stories are short-term rewarding because you reach “the end,” while you are still loving that muse whispering in your ear. I was particularly excited about this story, as I knew exactly which magazine I was going to submit it to. A few years ago, said magazine had rejected another story of mine, but with glowing praise and a request to see more of my work. I kept that in mind, because this magazine is a professionally paying market and one that would be quite a feather in my writing resume. Thus after some furious late nights, anxious waiting for the beta reads to come back, and a lot of editing, I sent off my beautiful 3k-word gem to this magazine.
    Another rather sweet aspect of short stories is these days most magazines use submission software. This means you can stalk, I mean track, your submissions. And, at least in the SciFi/Fantasy professional market, many of them have fairly quick turn around times. This is in part because they don’t allow simultaneous subs in part because the stories are shorter. Altogether it’s a much quicker and less frustrating process than novel submissions.

    So a week full of checking the website later, there it was, that email. I took a deep breath and opened it to find… a form rejection letter.

    The range of emotions that followed is one every writer is familiar with. But there was one more.

    Understanding. Working for a literary agency, I’ve sent out hundreds of form rejection letters over the years. And recently I opened up my own inbox to queries. In the beginning I tried to make each response a bit personal, a note here, a comment there. I knew what it was like to be on the other side, and that experience pushed me to communicate personally as much as I could, especially if the writing had potential. However, I discovered, to my dismay, that the majority of personal rejections were not appreciated, in fact they were often responded to with a “could you clarify this?” or “can you take this further?” or “what can I edit to change your mind?”

    My personal notes were not received as the compliments they were meant to be, but rather as an opening for an editorial conversation. One that I had to ignore. It made me feel guilty, not continuing the conversations, but there is not enough time in an agent’s schedule to answer every author question that floats through our inbox. I was also spending more time coming up with ways to make the reason I was passing on the project sound nice and encouraging and editorially useful, rather than focusing my energy on considering each submission carefully. Which made me reluctant to open my inbox. I had burned out. Thus more and more I found myself responding with a form rejection, both in the interest of time and clear communication. My defense of the form rejection:

    • It’s a clear answer.
    • You receive said answer faster.
    • It’s less emotional.
    • It helps prevent slushpile burnout, so the agent/reader can focus on what’s important, considering the submission itself, rather than coming up with something to say in response to it.
    • The form rejection helps to keep expectations in check.

    I know most authors who don’t do their research don’t understand this, because they don’t see the other side. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard writers say, “it couldn’t be that hard to respond to a query!” Let me tell you, yes, yes it can.

    Every once in a while, if the writing jumps out at me, or if I’ve met the author in person, I will still respond personally, but for the most part I’ve become a fan of the form rejection. Sure you could argue that if I hadn’t gotten that personal response back in the day, I wouldn’t have been as eager to submit to the magazine, but I also wouldn’t have had as high of hopes. At least you can take comfort in the knowledge that I’m getting them as good as I’m giving them. We all just have to keep on keeping on. My so-called gem of a short story is already sunk into another slushpile.

    Originally posted 1/4/16, “In Defense of the Form Rejection,” on Mary C. Moore’s Blog.

    Mary will be the Writers Forum presenter on May 19, 2016

    Mary C. Moore has been with Kimberley Cameron & Associates since 2012. Mary specializes in science fiction and fantasy, although she does appreciate a wide breadth of the literary canon. She started reading at an early age, and her love of reading continued, as she earned her B.S. in biology from the University of California San Diego. She was a veterinarian’s assistant, then a field biologist, and then a zookeeper.

    Mary’s passion for writing and books caused her to veer off her original path and drew her to publishing. She graduated from Mills College, Oakland with an MFA in Creative Writing and English and after freelancing for two years as an editor and writer in non-literary sectors, she began an internship with Kimberley Cameron & Associates and found she loved working as a literary agent as much as she loved writing.

  • My endings are always asymptotes. —Rachael Herron

    A conversation with Rachael Herron, author of Herron. The Ones Who Matter MostThe Ones Who Matter Most.

    “How did you get the idea for this book?”

    “The original idea for any of my novels usually gets buried so deep that by the time I’ve finished writing, I can barely remember what the first ideas was. This book, though, was different. The first scene was my original idea.”

    “Do you always know the endings of your novels when you start them?”

    “I wish! I know writers who know their endings and aim for them like marksmen. Rather than apples to be hit with arrows, though, my endings are always asymptotes. I write toward them forever, getting closer and closer but never quite getting there. Usually I have to revise the whole book (minus the ending) a few times until I figure out what should really happen.”

    Excerpted from the Conversation Guide at the end of Rachael Herron‘s book, The Ones Who Matter Most.

  • Is there a ghost in your future?

    Guest Blogger Holly Robinson writers about ghost writing:

    Recently, I appeared on a radio show to promote a literary event. We were talking about my latest novel, but inevitably the host asked, “So you’re a ghostwriter, too? Who have you written for?”

    I laughed and gave my standard answer: “Sorry. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

    “But don’t you even care if your name’s not on the cover?” he asked, sounding offended on my behalf.

    The truth? No. I write novels, essays, and articles under my own name, but when I’m ghostwriting, my job is to stand behind the curtain and channel a voice.

    By now, I have ghosted over twenty books. I fell into the profession accidentally when my agent, who knew I’d studied biology in college, asked if I’d be interested in helping an editor fix a messy health book written by a doctor. In other words, I was the book doctor to the doctor. It was fun, and it paid enough that I started fantasizing about taking out smaller college loans for my kids.

    Fixing that one book quickly led to another. The jobs seemed to fall into my lap. Ghostwriters may be invisible to the public, but editors know who’s behind the curtain. Gradually I expanded my projects from just health and science books to include memoirs by business executives, cookbook authors, and celebrities. I was being introduced to whole new worlds both on the page and off.

    These projects also led me to develop more creative ways of working, since one reason celebrities make all of that money is because they never sit still. I interview my clients in person occasionally, but more often by phone, as the client rushes to the next TV shoot or salon appointment. One actress was so busy on a stage production that she had to answer my questions via Dropbox; I fed the questions to her talent agent, who then sent me audio files of her responses. Another actor could call me only late at night, after hosting his TV show.

    “I bet you hate not being able to write fiction full-time,” a friend said recently, when I mentioned a new ghostwriting project. “I mean, it’s not like a book is really yours if you’re ghostwriting it, right?”

    Yes, it’s a little surreal to walk into a bookstore during an author event, as I did recently, while someone else is reading a chapter I wrote—especially in a sonorous male voice very unlike my own. It’s often difficult for me to sit quietly in the audience without shouting, “Hey! Read from chapter four! That’s the really exciting part!”

    But, once you finish ghosting a book, it’s not yours anymore. The book now belongs to your client, as well it should. And writing these books is a gold mine for a fiction writer like me who is interested in studying character development, new settings, and how to build narrative tension. “Ghostwriting” can mean anything from developing a messy partial manuscript to riding shotgun through another person’s life in real time. Sometimes I’m acting as a journalist, researching background material. More often, I’m in a therapist’s role, asking, “How did you feel when that happened? What impact did that have on your life?”

    My goal is to ferret out the truth of a story. I love hearing a client say, “Wow, I can’t believe I just told you that,” because then I know we’ve got something raw and real that we can polish and share.

    Journals on quiltOnce I’ve gathered the material I need, I become a quilter. I remember my grandmother laying out her swatches of fabric on the living room floor until she found patterns that pleased her. That’s what I do, too: I take these fascinating scraps of material from people’s lives and piece them into unique patterns. Yes, I might add my own touches with the hand stitching, but that is strictly ornamental. The tone and cadence should belong distinctly to my client, so that anyone who reads the book can recognize the voice.

    The longer I do this work, the more honored I am. I have learned to banish my own experiences and expectations of what a story “should” look like. Instead, I let the pieces emerge and fall around me in an infinite variety of patterns, so that I can piece together powerful stories that deserve to be told.

    Originally posted on Holly’s Blog, February 24, 2016.

    Novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer Holly Robinson is the author of several books, including The Gerbil farmer’s Daughter: A Memoir and the novels Beach Plum Island and Haven Lake. Her articles and essays appear frequently in The Huffington Post, More, Parents, Redbook and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. She and her husband have five children and a stubborn Pekingese. They divide their time between Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, and are crazy enough to be fixing up old houses one shingle at a time in both places.

  • Is serialization in your future?

    Guest Blogger Daedalus Howell reveals a tried and true method to reach new audiences.

    The revolution will be serialized. As it’s always been. Much of episodic entertainment, from our favorite shows on Netflix or premium cable to the summertime superhero blockbusters, are issued in discrete elements that comprise a whole story. Comic books have long functioned in this manner, ditto popular literature, which was once serialized in newspapers. And, of course, there’s the staggeringly popular Serial podcast, which not only popularized a new storytelling medium but so embraced the concept of serialization that it branded itself with it. Clearly, serialization is back, representing to some, a vanguard in publishing. It can also be an integral part of your creative process.

    Howell.Quantum DeadlineThis is what I’ve found creating Quantum Deadline, a sci-fi crime romp that comically explores the death of newspapers through the foggy lens of a reporter tripping through the multiverse. Like many authors, my project found its first iteration as a National Novel Writing Month novel — one November, I arranged 50,000+ English words in a manner that produced the general effect of a novel. Despite the fact that the result was an unholy (if occasionally inspired) mess, I remained committed to seeing it through the bitter end of a Kindle download.

    I put it in the proverbial drawer through the winter to cool and found when I exhumed it the following spring, I was ready to rewrite it. That said, there is no “National Rewriting Your Novel Month” and I loathed the notion of working alone sans the esprit de corps I’d experienced with NaNoWriMo.

    I tried. I failed. I had no sense of accountability or “ticking clock” to compel me back to the work. Not that I was enthralled with the prospects I perceived in the book, it’s just that, as a career-long newspaper columnist, I’d grown accustomed to a weekly deadline. And someone to enforce it. With a speculative, self-generated project like Quantum Deadline, there was neither a deadline nor an irate editor to make me deliver. That’s when I began to contemplate serialization. I needed to feel accountable and I needed a schedule — two aspects of serialization that I theretofore hadn’t realized were possibilities.

    Moreover, I suspected serialization would allow me to “course correct” if I found that my readers were losing interest or recognize possibilities in the work that I hadn’t. I think of it as akin to The Lean Startup concept of creating a “minimum viable product” that allows for pivots between plot points.

    “The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere,” writes Eric Reis, The Lean Startup’s main advocate and author of a popular business tome of the same name.

    If we replace the term “startup” with the word “writing,” the path to serialization becomes self-evident. Instead of hunkering down, alone in the back of a Starbucks, the premise of releasing iterations of your work while refining it allows you the opportunity to grow and create community around it in the meantime.

    The trick is to be responsive to the concerns of your readership rather than defensive. You’re creating a feedback loop, not a combat zone. You don’t need to completely alter the vision of your paranormal YA romance when your readership is flagging, nagging or otherwise bagging on your work. However, you do have the opportunity to make adjustments in the next installment (and retroactively as well — serial readers are very forgiving, I find, so long as you point to relevant changes that improve their enjoyment of the work).

    Likewise, authors are advised to read Austin Kleon’s excellent book Show Your Work!, which extols the virtues of sharing your creative process as a means of cultivating an audience. Much in the same way film studios invite entertainment reporters on set to drum up interest in a film prior to its release, Kleon suggests sharing your process and inspirations as you create. This notion also dovetails nicely with “rewriting in public” through serialization.

    Writing a serial not only creates both context and momentum for one’s creative output, it cultivates community with your work as its rallying point. Chapter by chapter, week by week, you steer us deeper into your creative world — a world we may not have seen were it not for the revolutionary resurgence of the serial. As Gil Scott-Heron said, “The revolution will put you in the driver seat.”

    Note from Marlene: The “Now What” feature of National Novel Writing Month supports  “the revision and publishing process. It’s an extension of our anything-goes, wombat-infused noveling philosophy, with the added aim of helping you fulfill your novel’s potential: from first draft to final.”

    Daedalus will be the April 21 Writers Forum presenter, talking about, “Write Who You Know: How to Use Your Personal Life in Your Fiction And Memoir Writing Without Ruining Your Relationships.”

    Daedalus Howell is the author, most recently, of Quantum Deadline. He hosts the Culture Dept. podcast, is a radio personality on KSVY and KSRO, hosts the TV show 707, and blogs for Men’s Health and Petaluma’s Rivertown Report. Otherwise, he’s at DaedalusHowell.com.

  • Jane Dystel: How long should it take to write a novel?

    Jane DystelToday’s Guest Blogger is Jane Dystel, president of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management:

    Over the weekend, I finished a remarkable first novel.  The author had taken many years to complete this work and, in the end, I think the time it took her to do so has paid off (of course, only the marketplace will tell).

    Thinking about this – the time it takes a writer to finish a book – brought to mind how different each writer’s process is.  I found this very interesting piece on the subject in the Huffington Post.

    I have clients who take many years to finish their novels, much like the writer whose work I read this weekend.   Then, there are those who actually ask for deadlines (from me) by when they should have their next manuscript completed.  And then, of course, there are those who can conceptualize their stories and write them down much much faster.

    In the end, there is no right answer to how long it should take a writer to complete his/her manuscript.  It is what works for each individual.  I find it’s best not to compare your process to others’. Do what feels right for you.

    Originally posted on the Dystel and Goderich website, February 29, 2016, “How Long Should It Take Me To Write My Novel?”

    Note from Marlene: Jane’s thoughts about self-publishing are in the May 2016 issue of The Writer Magazine. Here’s an excerpt: “As an agency, we are now more interested in developing . . . authors’ careers and helping them be successful hybrid authors—those who are traditionally published and continue to self-publish at the same time.”

    Jane Dystel, President, has been an agent since 1986. Her publishing career began at Bantam Books. She then moved to Grosset & Dunlap, where she was a managing editor and later an acquisitions editor. From there, she went on to become Publisher of World Almanac Publications, where she created her own imprint. When she joined the agency that would soon become Acton and Dystel, Inc., she quickly developed a reputation for honesty, forthrightness, hard work, and real commitment to her authors and their writing careers. In 1994, with a growing roster of clients, she founded Jane Dystel Literary Management, which became Dystel & Goderich Literary Management in 2003. Born in Chicago, Jane grew up in Rye, New York. She is the daughter of publishing legend, Oscar Dystel, who is currently a consultant for DGLM. In her teens, she was an accomplished figure skater. Jane received her BA from New York University and attended Georgetown law school for one year before leaving for her first job in publishing. She has an abiding interest in legal subjects. She is married to Steven Schwinder and has a daughter, Jessica, and a son, Zachary. She lives in New York City with her family and two dachshunds and is a tenacious golfer.

     

  • Guest Bloggers Wanted

    irlThursdays are Guest Bloggers days on The Write Spot Blog. If you have tips about the craft or the business of writing, you could be a guest blogger. Email your idea to Marlene.

    Perhaps you have tips about:

    ~How to find time to write

    ~ Ways to develop characters

    ~How to incorporate location in writing

    ~Writing Resources

    ~Helpful writing websites

    ~How to research

    ~How to write realistic action during a dialogue scene

    Being a guest blogger is a great way to share what you know about writing. Think of it like writing an article for a writing magazine. What is your special writing tip?

    BLOG HOP – Before participating as a Blog Hopper, I wondered what that meant. I could not picture it. Right now, I’m part of a St. Patrick’s Day Blog Hop, organized by author and blogger Francis H. Powell. Here’s how it works:

    Click on Blog Hop. You will be swiftly transported to a landing page that Francis created for this blog hop. Scroll down. Click on a blogger’s name and quicker than a leprechaun can tip his hat, you can explore the terrain of an entrepreneurial blogger.

    Bloggers: Contact Marlene or Francis to join us in our next Blog Hop. It’s really easy! And a fun way to get to know other bloggers and writers.

    March.Blog Hop

  • Amanda McTigue Untethered

    Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue . . .

    I’ll confess with some dismay that contrary to the many uplifting articles and memoirs I have read about the serenity of older age, it continues to elude me. Serenity, that is, not the march of years across my face, kneecaps and pelvic floor muscles.

    I’m looking forward to any later-in-life serenity that may come my way. Indeed, I practice all kinds of meditations and mantras and daily exercises, etc., to invite it in. But my emotional set point tends to be what it’s always been: low-level (self)doubt.

    That’s the place whence I write. If that’s true for you, let me offer some slant wisdom here from some fellow artists. Take Tatiana Maslany. You may have seen her in a futuristic TV show called “Orphan Black” in which she plays (gorgeously!) multiple clones of herself. She’s a hell of a young actor, and here she quotes one of the great dancer/choreographers, Martha Graham:

    “It is not your business to determine how good [your work] is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open… There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes us more alive than the others.”

    Snaps to Ms. Graham and Ms. Maslany.

    Or here’s a writer I love, Peter Schjeldahl, describing the work of the painter Albert Oehlen. I know next to nothing about the visual arts, but I always look for Mr. Schjeldahl’s columns in The New Yorker because I love the ways in which he helps me see things:

    “Oehlen’s process has evinced endless sorts of borderline-desperate improvisation—until a painting isn’t finished, exactly, but somehow beyond further aid. He told me, ‘People don’t realize that when you are working on a painting, every day you are seeing something awful.’”

    “Divine dissatisfaction.” “Blessed unrest.” “Beyond further aid.” These are my kinds of people.

    Good work, great work, and certainly awful work: it all comes out of whatever souls we’ve been assigned. While I wait for serenity to grace my days, I write. Often the moments before addressing the page are filled with dread, needless dread, yes, but it’s my dread. It doesn’t matter. I write. This is something I’ve taught myself. You can too. When my unrest isn’t “blessed,” my rule is, write it, don’t read it. Not yet. If I think things need fixing, they’ll get fixed later, but in the moment, I write. I slap it down. Just the way I’m doing here about slapping it down.

    I’ll cop to a suspicion I carry—really something closer to superstition. I wonder whether my unrest is precisely what makes me productive. You may wonder the same. But let’s let the rest of the world chatter over that one, while we get to the page.

    Confident or not, joyous or dread-filled, I’m going to go ahead and climb into the boat I keep tethered right here at my desk. I’m going to untie that hitch and launch. Some days I motor out. Some days I just drift. But out I go, untethered to how I feel about the work. The feelings may come with me, or not. Either way. Out we go. So be it. I’m writing.

    Citations:

    Dickinson, Emily. Tell all the truth but tell it slant. Poem #1263.

    Loofbourow, Lili. (2015, April 5). Anywoman. The New York Times

    Schjeldahl, Peter. (2015, June 22). Painting’s Point Man. The New Yorker

    Amanda will be the March 17 Writers Forum Presenter: Writing Emotion: How Do You Catch a Cloud and Pin it Down?

    Amanda’s novel, Going to Solace, was cited by public radio KRCB’s literary program “Word by Word” as a Best Read of 2012. She holds the West Side Stories Petaluma championship for live storytelling (2013 and 2014). She also makes regular appearances with the monthly “Get Lit” gathering at Petaluma’s Corkscrew Wine Bar. She’s just returned from Cuba where she was researching her second novel. In 2016-17, she’ll be directing “The Magic Flute” at Sonoma State University.

  • Where Do You Get Your Story?

    Leslie Larson (2)Guest Blogger Leslie Larson gives us the scoop on where stories come from.

    Writers on reading tours can be pretty sure that as soon as it’s time for Q & A, someone’s going to ask them where they got the story. That’s the word that’s usually used, got, as if the author might have picked up the story in the maternity ward at San Francisco General Hospital, or found it in the frozen food aisle at Safeway. The question might be offhand, as in, “Where’d you find those chenille throw pillows? or it may be asked with the earnestness and urgency of a child questioning the existence of God. It’s often followed by a swarm of spinoff questions. Did the story come to you all of a sudden? Did you just start writing and see what happened? Did you start with an outline? Did this happen to you?

    Some writers give sly responses to the inevitable question of where they get their ideas.

    “I steal them from girls,” Dorothy Allison quipped at a reading I attended. Robin Hemley, who wrote Turning Life Into Fiction answered, “Joyce Carol Oates gives me her extras.”

    No matter how many times I’m asked this question (and it ranks right up there with “How did you decide to become a writer?” and “What is your writing routine?”), I still don’t know the answer. I suspect that most writers spend a fair amount of time wondering where their stories come from, though they probably spend more time worrying about where their stories are going.

    “Where a story begins in the mind I am not sure,” Annie Proulx said in an interview in The Missouri Review. “A memory of haystacks, maybe, or wheel ruts in the ruined stone, the ironies that fall out of the friction between past and present, some casual phrase overheard. But something kicks in, some powerful juxtaposition, and the whole book shapes itself up in the mind.”

    Personally, I don’t care so much where stories comes from, as long as they come. One of the most exciting times for me is the state of fidgety nervousness, or perhaps excitement, that signals something’s out there, something’s taking shape. I begin to hear whispers. I catch glimpses of shapes I can’t quite make out. Characters materialize in bits and pieces, beginning perhaps with only a bitten-down thumbnail, a lisp, or a weakness for salty foods. It might be a scene: an old kitchen or a vacant lot, a place where something happened or is about to happen. As these tantalizing fragments begin to surface, I start looking everywhere for the story: in dreams, in the newspaper, on the bus. The next bit of conversation I overhear or the discolored scrap of notebook paper I find on the sidewalk may be exactly what I need to launch my story. There’s no telling where it might crop up.

    In the interview mentioned above, Proulx said her character Loyal Blood, from Postcards, leaped complete and wholly formed from a 1930s Vermont state prison mug shot. And there’s the famous case of Thomas Hardy who, while pruning his fruit trees, conceived from start to finish the plot of the greatest novel he would ever write. Unfortunately, he forgot it by the time he finished the job, so he pocketed his shears and went inside for dinner.

    Certain activities are conducive to finding stories. For me it’s walking, weeding, popcorn eating, and personal hygiene—particularly nail clipping and eyebrow tweezing. And reading, that’s a big one. When I’m looking for my story, I sense the presence of untold or abandoned stories in other writers’ books. The roads not taken, the bones and corpses that fertilized that novel, the shoots nipped off before they could bloom. Something might get knocked loose in my head. A cast-off stalk that didn’t find the right soil in one writer’s story might take root in mine and surprise me with a magnificent blossom.

    I’ve found that you can’t force a story to come; you can’t get one—like a new car—just because you want it. But you have to be ready for it: waiting, watching, listening. In this condition, you’re likely to get too many ideas, because everything takes on meaning. You realize how ripe our everyday lives are with intrigue, insanity, loopy characters, hilarity, irony, and twists of fate. We’re surrounded by stories, our own and other people’s. Family secrets, childhood traumas, persistent fantasies. All fair game.

    Do we find the story, or does it find us? Is it already inside us, just waiting to be told? Why do we write about some things rather than others? More than once, I’ve started what I thought was my novel, armed with notes, character sketches, rudimentary scenes, outlines, only to find myself—after ten, or fifty, or two hundred pages—putting it aside so I can crank out what I think will be a short piece, a piece that turns out to be the novel itself—the real story, or at least the story that gets told. The original becomes yet one more stack of aging papers, another dead-end reproaching me from the shelf in my closet.

    Someone else’s story, perhaps, waiting to be found.

    Leslie Larson’s critically acclaimed first novel, Slipstream, was a BookSense Notable Book, a Target Breakout Book, winner of the Astraea Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Breaking Out of Bedlam was an AARP Hot Pick and a finalist for France’s Chronos Prize in Literature, awarded by the National Foundation of Gerontology. The New York Times called Breaking Out of Bedlam, “A kick.” Publishers Weekly said, “Delightful…Plenty of heart and humor.” And the Boston Globe called it, “A funny, touching novel.”

    Leslie’s work has appeared in O (The Oprah Magazine), Faultline, the East Bay Express, More magazine, Writer magazine, and the Women’s Review of Books, among other publications. She is an editor at North Atlantic Books and a former senior writer at the University of California Press.

    Leslie has taught creative writing workshops across the country, was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook, and has been a member of the Macondo Writer’s Workshop since 1995. She was born in San Diego and lives in the Berkeley.