frustration. (Photo credit: nicole.pierce.photography ♥)

If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed a peculiar silence here last Monday. Most of my posts are scheduled for Mondays at ten in the morning. Last Monday, I was behind schedule and crunched for time. I wrote a post about a tricky editorial question, scheduled it for ten a.m., then went on with my morning, confident that my post would be broadcast on time. When I had time later in the day, I check my Web site. No post. What? So I logged in and checked my editorial calendar. No post. Not a single trace of it. It was as if I’d never written it in the first place. Enter panic, anger, and frustration.

Rather than focusing on what went wrong though, I’d like to use this as an opportunity to show you how you can overcome difficulties in your creative life.

Express Yourself

Take some time to vent your frustration when you feel it. A small circle of my closest friends received a “colorful” message from me expressing my frustration with my lost post last week. Another fantastic place to let off your frustration is in your journal. I often refer to my journal as “detox” because I use it to detoxify my brain. I unload all of my frustrations, anger, and despair into it. You can also release your frustration through something more physical, such as running, working your garden, or exercising. They key here is to release it, though. If you hold onto your frustration and anger, it is not only physically damaging because of the hormones that stress releases into your body, it’s also creatively damaging. This leads to the second step to overcoming creative difficulties.

Focus on Success

We have a saying in our house: The Universe will give you what you ask for. Release your frustration, then let it go. Once I expressed my frustration to my friends, I let it go. Set your mind on success — or if you find this too difficult, at least take your mind off of failure. Get yourself a mental boost out of a failure-rut first by thinking yourself out of it. If you focus on your failures, or your fear of failure, you will see failure in everything. If you focus on your success, no matter how small, you will start to see your successes. Either way, you have the power to create a snowball effect. It’s up to you whether you succeed or fail.

Make a Plan

I’ve found, in both my personal and creative life, that when I feel stymied, frustrated, or lost, having a plan will instantly lift my mood. I quickly evaluated my options and made a mental list of what I needed to do. Your plan doesn’t need to be too specific or too detailed. Spend some time brainstorming ways that you can foster creativity in your life. Start with something as simple as a list. If you’re feeling particularly organized, you could put that list in order, but you don’t have to. Even if the plan is as simple was one small thing you can do next, having that plan will help get you out of your creative rut.

Do Something

Pick something from your list, and do it. Last week, the next thing I needed to do was move on to a project with a fast-approaching deadline. I couldn’t waste time or energy on my lost post, no matter how much I wanted to.  Identify what is the one thing you need to do next. It could be the most important thing, the next logical thing, the most pressing thing, or the one thing that excites you. Decide what your next step should be, and move on to it.

Start Small

You don’t need to take a big step. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Thing big, but start small. To keep this from happening again, I’ve decided that I need to get my posts written well ahead of time, at least a month ahead. But last week, I didn’t have time to sit down and write a month of blog posts. I still don’t. I do have time though to brainstorm ideas for them though. I can do that in my free time between other responsibilities. Then, when I can carve out the time for it, I’ll have my road map at hand and can start the next step of my plan. Say you want to write a novel but feel like you never have the time? Don’t expect yourself to write a perfect first draft. Don’t expect to to write 10,000 words every day. By starting small, you can build small successes one on top of the other.  Set goals like “I will write a crappy first draft” and “I will write 100 words every day.” As your small successes build, your confidence and creative muscle will grow stronger and you’ll be able to take on those bigger steps. After you’ve proven to yourself that you can write a crappy first draft and 100 words a day, take another small step: “I will revise my crappy first draft” and “I will write 500 words every day.” In fact, that’s exactly what the Writing Streak is about: starting small, creating a series of small success that built upon each other to become bigger successes.

Whenever you find yourself stymied by difficulties in your creative life, try applying these five steps: Express yourself, focus on success, make a plan, do something, and start small.

If you’re on LiveJournal, I mirror this blog there as well.

Image via Wikipedia

You sit down to write. The blank page stares up at you, or your cursor blinks back at you. You’re inspired though. An idea seized you by the shorthairs and you’re determined to write it. Maybe you’re able to scribble away for a while. A half hour. Maybe even an hour. But sooner or later,  it happens. You’ve written yourself into a corner, and you’re not sure how to get out of it.

Does this ever happen to you? If you’re a plotter, maybe not. But if you’re a pantser, like me, it might happen more often than you’d care to admit.

Pantsing vs. Plotting

So why not start plotting then? It will make writing so much easier, right? You’ll have your road map all ready, you’ll know the general direction the story needs to go, all you’ll need to do is fill in the details. Right? So what’s the big deal?

Again, if you’re like me, you’re probably thinking: Boooring. It sucks the excitement right out of writing. The joy of discovery? Gone. And besides: Outlining? Yech. I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork. Too rigid. Too structured. My creativity can’t be hemmed in like that.

Enter K.M. Weiland

outlining your novel by k.m. weiland

That is, until I started reading K.M. Weiland’s tweets and posts about outlining. In particular, her post on reverse outlining  got me interested in her book, Outlining Your Novel. When I saw the Kindle version priced at only $2.99, I figured, “What’s a few bucks?” So I bought it. And read from cover to cover in less than a week.

Weiland freely admits that outlining doesn’t work for everybody. And that the trick to the writing process is discovering what works for you. But she makes a solid case for outlining — and she dispels many of the myths and misconceptions pantsers like me may have about outlining.

Roadblock to Outlining

The biggest roadblock to outlining for me has been the rigidity of it. Just the word “outlining” brings to mind nightmares from sixth grade: roman numerals, with nested letters and numbers trailing beneath in precise order. I, II, III, A, B, C, etc. How can you confine your creativity to such an inflexible structure?

According to Weiland, you don’t have to.

Outlines should encourage wild creativity, daring experimentation, and focused inspiration.

- K.M. Weiland

Weiland refers to your outline as a “mistake” draft, like your first draft, the very sort of thing encouraged during NaNoWriMo. A place to make those discoveries and brainstorm your way out of those corners before you write yourself into them.

It may be purely semantic, but I suggest not even thinking of it as “outlining” but as “pre-writing” instead.

Roman Numerals Need Not Apply

The process she describes is nothing like the outlining you learned in grade school. There is very little about it that is rigid and inflexible. In fact, I was shocked to discover that much of what she describes in her book is what I already do. You probably do it, too.

Have you ever gotten stuck and just started writing about being stuck? Maybe it looked something like this:

I don’t know what to write next. What if my MC did this? What if she did that, instead? Could this supporting character be involved? Oh! What if this happened? I know: MC should do this, then the villain will do that!

Congratulations. You’ve just outlined. No roman numerals needed.

Rather than doing this sort of writing as-needed in spurts along the way, Weiland lays out a process for doing all of this brainstorming beforehand. She suggests a structure in which to do the brainstorming, but even that structure is flexible and fluid.

Recommendation

I don’t intend to follow Weiland’s process exactly, and I don’t think she wants you to do that either. Your writing process is uniquely yours, and she seems to understand this. Your process may evolve over time, changing through the years or even changing with every new project you start. The trick, always, is finding what works for you. But her take on outlining has changed my view of it.

Whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, I highly recommend this book. If you ever find yourself getting stuck as a writer, I’m certain you’ll find something useful in Weiland’s tips. Even if you walk away convinced you’re still a pantser.   I plan to incorporate some of her tips into my process and to experiment with others, but part of me will always be a pantser.

I got well over my three dollars’ worth out of Weiland’s book and I’m convinced that you will find something that works for you in it as well. If you don’t want to risk more than three dollars but you don’t own a Kindle, you can still buy the Kindle version and download a free app from Amazon to read it on.

January Check-In

How did you do for your January Writing Streak? One of the benefits of tracking your progress is that you can look back and see where you’ve been. Another is that you can adjust your goals as needed.

One of my running friends told me once, “Running is a head game.” I’m beginning to understand it now. It’s about staying motivated. It’s about telling yourself you can do it, because when you start telling yourself that you can’t, that’s when you start to lose the game. I think writing is the same in many ways.

When I began my January Writing Streak, I planned to only count new and revised fiction words. As the month progressed, I decided to give myself permission to include more words in my count. Now, I’m counting my Detox words, my blogging words, edited words, and pre-writing words. These words buoy me, motivate me, keep me from giving up.

Detox: 29,192
Blogging: 6,547
Fiction: 5,787

Counting only fiction words, I’d have 5,787 words this month. But my Detox words clear my brain out and make room for creativity. And my blogging words, while they aren’t fiction, are still an expression of my creativity. Giving myself permission to recognize these words as part of my creativity has freed up that creativity. Instead of berating myself for not writing enough, I can look at this month and feel good about having put 35,939 more words toward my creativity. Combined with my 5,787 fiction words, that’s 41,526 words — nearly a NaNoWriMo-worthy word count!

Your Turn

How did you do for January? Is it time to reevaluate your goals? Do you need to give yourself permission to track words you hadn’t been last month? 

For this month’s #JustWrite exercise, we’ll play with words and wonder, opening our senses to the world, so that we can invite our readers into it.

Awakening the Senses

Our world is full of images, but our senses are often dulled to them.

Gabriele Rico, Writing the Natural Way

Very young children are Zen masters. They explore the world with wonder, engaging it with all of their senses, discovering the color, shape, size, texture, sound, smell, even taste of everything they can get their chubby hands on. Just ask any mother of a newly mobile child.

As we grow up, we lose touch with our inner Zen master though. We exchange wonder and discovery for responsibilities and schedules. We begin to sleepwalk through life. We’ve forgotten to see the world, to experience it with all of our senses and all of our being, to be a part of the world rather than apart from it.

Twenty-Five Details

My husband likes to tell a story about an English teacher from his high school days, who would tell his students: “Twenty-five details! Good enough for Ray, good enough for you!” The story goes that Ray Bradbury always made sure he had at least 25 details about any scene he wrote, even if he didn’t use all of them. I’ve yet to be able to confirm this, but it’s a nice story.

Draw [the] world with your words, and you will draw the readers in.

Jane Yolen, Take Joy

Take some time this month to fully engage your senses, to truly see the world, to reawaken your sense of wonder. Dorothea Brande exhorts taking fifteen minutes to “notice and tell yourself about every single thing that your eyes rest on” in Becoming a Writer. In her book, Take Joy, Jane Yolen suggests going out into the world and spending up to an hour sitting still, just watching.

Wondersense

Engage all of your senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Go beyond the basic senses though; develop your wondersense instead. Aim for that state of Zen mastery and exploration you had as a young child. Delve into the tone of a scene, listen to the shape of words, try to capture the texture of an emotion. Pay attention to the senses you rely too heavily on, and those you dismiss. Bring balance to them as much as possible.  If you really want to get daring, play with synesthesia: mix the senses up. What does purple taste like?

While it would be ideal to go out into the world for this exercise, you could opt instead to take a walkabout into your imagination. You could go to an imaginary place or a remembered one. You could even choose instead to take a scene you’ve already written and inject it with sensory details.

Vivid, exact, concrete, accurate, dense, rich: these adjectives describe a prose that is crowded with sensations, meaning, and implications.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft

Last Month’s Winner

The #JustWrite Fostering Creativity award for last month’s challenge to write an addicting first line goes to Caine Dorr, from Vancouver, WA. His winning entry:

“You know what would help me calm down some? If you go down there and put a bullet between her eyes!”

Caine’s hook starts in the middle of a tense situation. We don’t know what’s going on yet, but the speaker is clearly agitated. “Down there” evokes the image of a heroine trussed up in the cellar, mad scientist’s underground lab, or subterranean cave. And already, the threat of violence!

The winner of the Reader’s Poll was Rena J. Traxel, with this entry:

“Sleeping Beauty doesn’t die!” I slammed the book shut and placed it beside me on the plush window seat that my gramps built for me, last summer, before the accident.

I’d also like to give an Honorable Mention to Jess Isaac Hanna for his entry, which suggested shades of Ray Bradbury with “The fire had no choice but to burn.”

Vote for Your Favorite Hook Here!

This is crazy fantastic to watch. Be warned though, it’s two hours long. I also have to wonder if it’s going to get pulled sooner or later for copyright issues.

The Girl of Fire and Thorns

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

Rae Carson is one of those authors. I first read her work at SFF/OWW (an online workshop I highly recommend to writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror).  So when I heard the news that her book, The Girl of Fire and Thorns (ISBN 978-0062026484, list price $17.99 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle version) had been picked up by Greenwillow Books  (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY), I was thrilled for her. I put it on my reading list and recommended it to my local library as a new purchase.

When her book was shortlisted for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award and nominated for the Cybils Award, I was doubly thrilled for her. But the book stayed on my reading list until early January.

What moved it from my reading list to my Kindle? This post at the Greenwillow Books blog, where she talked about misogyny, and how a woman’s worth is so often tied to her body image:

Thousands, maybe millions of women have their accomplishments waved away or ignored daily, even as their bodies suffer devastating scrutiny—from both men and women.

These experiences were very much on my mind when I sat down to write The Girl of Fire and Thorns. The protagonist, you see, is fat.

Body Image

I haven’t made any secret of this, but I don’t think I’ve ever come right out and said it either: I’m fat. Medically, I’m overweight now, but I’ve also been obese and even morbidly obese. I’ve struggled with eating disorders for years and viewed most of my life through the lens of a ‘fat chick’ even  when I was starving myself to stay thin. I’m okay with my body image these days, but before I even cracked the virtual spine of this book, Elisa resonated with me. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a fat protagonist before.

I bought the book in early January, and finished reading it in three days. Two nights in a row, I stayed up well past my bed time, promising myself over and over, “Just one more chapter.”  It has been years since I have devoured a book like this. Elisa’s story, but more importantly, her character, left me astounded. I started reading this book because Elisa was fat, but I kept reading it because I grew to love her.

Not Just For Teens

Although Rae’s book is marketed as a YA novel, her web site touts her as an author of books for teens, and the protagonist herself is a sixteen-year old girl, do not be mistaken: This is not a just a kids’ book. There are no vapid vampire-wannabes. There is no catty backstabbing. There are no wacky teenage hijinks or sappy melodrama. This is a book about growing up, finding your strength, and coming into your own. In other words, this is a book for anybody who ever has grown up, or ever will grow up.

Elisa is sixteen years old, thrust into an arranged marriage and a politically charged situation, imperiled by her family’s desire to protect her by keeping certain truths from her while she was growing up. In almost every chapter, she faces her fears and discovers new strength within herself — discovers that she is capable of much more than she, or most people around her ever thought possible.

This is the kind of book I want my daughters reading. These are the kinds of messages I want running through my daughter’s brains: Even though you are scared, you are capable; you can face this; you can get through this. 

As an adult, I found the book to be affirming and uplifting. While reading other YA books, I’ve often wanted to reach through the pages, grab the protagonist by the shoulders, and scream, “Get a clue!” Not so with Elisa. I took comfort and joy in every step she took to overcome her struggles.

What Else I Loved

Another aspect of The Girl of Fire and Thorns that I found not just refreshing but absolutely captivating, is the shades of gray throughout the book. There is very little black and white, although many situations are first presented as such. The antagonistic characters have their own stories, and they are facing their own struggles as best they can. In some cases, I found myself outright sympathizing with some of these characters.

There are romantic elements to the story, but I didn’t feel that they overpowered it. As a 40-something mother of two young girls, I can’t stand most romantic storylines or romance novels because I find them unrealistic. They relay messages I don’t want my children to be ingesting about what love is. Love is not the flutter in your belly or the long hot kisses or anything below the neckline. Love is commitment and doing the right thing and putting someone else’s needs before your own. While there are some belly flutters in The Girl of Fire and Thorns, I enjoyed reading as Elisa learned to separate those feelings from reality.

What I Didn’t Love So Much

There were only two things that felt a bit bothersome to me. First, there were two “bad guy” characters who felt more one-dimensional than others to me.  With most of the other characters who first came across as unsympathetic, Rae eventually showed us how they were the heroes of their own stories.That multi-dimensionality was hinted at with one of these two bad guys; it just wasn’t explored as fully as it had been with other characters. Based on Rae’s treatment of other characters though, I expect this to be remedied in future installments of this series.

Second was the way that Elisa lost her weight and how it was tied to revealing her strength. I’ve lost a hundred pounds in my lifetime. It doesn’t come off easily, nor does it come off quickly. While body image is intensely personal, particularly body dysmorphia, Elisa’s weight loss did not feel entirely realistic to me. Although she does begin to find her voice and her power before the weight comes off, that weight loss becomes the symbolic transformation point for her. Although Rae makes the effort to point out that Elisa is not supermodel thin, I worry that the message could still be misconstrued as “If you just lose weight, everything will be okay” or “Thinner is powerful.”

Recommendation

Did these two things detract from my love of this book? Absolutely not. I think the strengths of this story far outweigh these two potential weak points. In fact, several of the characters balance the potential misconception of “Thinner is powerful” by accepting, admiring, and loving Elisa just as she is, before she loses the weight.

As a woman who grew up with weight issues, as a woman who grew up struggling with owning her own strength, and as a mother of two young girls on the verge of figuring out who they are and what their place in the world is, I highly recommend this book.

Elisa is a beautiful example of someone learning to face her fears, trust her instincts, and own her own power. It’s affirming to read for someone who’s been there and a beacon for girls and young women just setting out on their journey to discovering their own identity.

His first draft left me with my jaw hanging on the floor. I had to cut almost all of the first four paragraphs out of the post. It was completely unacceptable.

Oh, he didn’t say anything wrong. His post was wonderful, I loved it, just as I had expected. I just hadn’t expected him to say such nice things about me.

I probably should have known better.

As I mentioned recently in Creativity’s Top Ten Most Wanted, Paul is on my cheerleading squad. He’s one of the co-captains in fact. He tells me amazing things about myself when I can’t. Usually, it’s in private chat when I need an egoboo or a shot of confidence. And that was the problem with his post. He said some amazing things about me and he wanted to say them in public.

I blogged a while ago about accepting criticism. Maybe I need to blog about accepting praise. Except that I’m really not very good at it. The only thing I know about accepting praise is something a fellow I dated in college once told me (yes, I’ve had this problem for most of my life): Just say thank you.

The thing is, Paul didn’t just say amazing things. He did an amazing thing too. He did something nobody has every done for me before: he drew a picture of me. I think it is just the coolest thing ever, and wanted to share it with all of you. This is just a small version of it:

kembers by paul tristan fergus

It was meant to go with the very nice things he said about me in his guest post, but I made him take those nice things out and put a picture of himself in it instead. (If you really want to see them, you can find those nice things here.)

So, Paul, my friend, this is my really long-winded way of saying “Thank you.”

paul tristan fergus

I’m a weirdo storyteller, and that means various forms of life count on me to tell them marvelous tales of strange excitement. Hanging out with Kimberly, or Kembers as I call her at times, ups my chances of finding clues on my quest. She’s like a bonus to my rolls.

Because I tend to be a bit of a recluse outside of people I know, she asked me to share some of my formula for removing creative blocks. Said it would be good for me to run my yap in an unfamiliar shared imaginary space.

Blocks Are Specifically Personal

My thought on blocks is that oftentimes getting into a rut is specifically personal. I experience it as a deflections field that bounces me over to some autopilot form of behavior — checking tumblr updates with a blank stare or fretting over the junk mail instead of just tossing it.

Other people might know where the invisible off switch is, or knock such an obstacle aside because they’ve got no time for such nonsense. They’ve got a different wisp of toilet paper on their shoe to outwit, so to speak.

Chewing Crayons

Persistence with the deflections field is what tends to work for me. This is certainly not an easy quality to practice, since I’m impatient with delays. When I’m ready to go to town, roadblocks and washed out bridges get on my nerves!

So I wear the deflections field out by wasting time.  A phrase I heard somewhere is chewing crayons, which is a good approximation of the psychological state one enters. I look at the goofing off as research and development, and keep at it patiently despite my wanting to gnaw the leather straps on my shield.

Super Deflectoids

Some deflections fields take longer than others to overcome, mainly because pressure from the creative flow reinforces them. I might have to spend several days working one of those super deflectoids down to size. That’s a lot of research and development into zilch.

Nothing is what I’m working with though, coming into affinity with emptiness and uselessness. Disheartening and exhausting amounts of play is required until I’ve reached a sufficient level of fooling around.

Reaching the Ecstatic State

Slowly, the deflections field becomes a wave carrying me along a rush of exuberance and I enter an ecstatic state. That’s when the gold shines brightest and leaps into my writing pan.

Another few nuggets of writing toward the next jackload I haul out of the zone.

Back to the Crossroads

When I crawl back to the crossroads for a breather, good ol’ Kembers will likely be at the hallways pub. She might listen to my latest foray, swap some shop talk, or maybe have a clever suggestion I hadn’t though of.

If I can manage it, her snacky cakes are on me. It pays in psychic treasure to have smart friends in weirdo storyteller land.