The Writer Apprentice

Welcome Back to NaNoWriMo

2009-11-01T15:31:00.002-07:00

I'm going to be updating my progress here and here (Twitter and Facebook.) It'll save me some whining here. If I discover anything profound, I will share.

Microblogging was born for NaNo updates...

Bright Side of the Road author Anne Marie Bennett

2009-10-20T01:00:00.002-06:00

Today's interview is with Anne Marie Bennett, author of Bright Side of the Road: A Spiritual Journey through Breast Cancer.

I first came across Anne Marie in her articles at Creativity Portal, which led me to her website Kaleidosoul devoted to SoulCollage(R). SoulCollage(R) was developed by Seena Frost and is a process using collage to explore one's inner dimensions by creating cards for aspects of the self. If Seena is the High Priestess of SoulCollage(R), Anne Marie is one of its most enthusiastic acolytes. Her site is filled with a variety of delightful and accessible content about the process.

Reading Bright Side of the Road, I found myself in tears frequently. Not because the journey is harrowing, but because of Anne Marie's search to find grace in every moment of it. The book is illuminated with that grace and with her considerable courage.

Not surprisingly, her website is a wonderful resource for the cancer "journey" and is worth visiting as well.

Anne Marie took some time last week to answer a few questions about her writing. Hope you enjoy her answers as much as I did. (Thank you, Anne Marie!)

***

You published this previously as an e-book. Why a paper edition now? How is this edition different?

AMB: I was going through my “in process” writing projects about a year ago, feeling very led by Spirit to choose one and make a commitment to it to see it through. That was not an easy thing, since I have about ten manuscripts that I’ve begun over the years that have been “resting.” So I narrowed my choices down to 3 or 4 projects and then asked Spirit to guide me to choose which one to focus on. After several weeks it just became clear to me that Bright Side of the Road was the one to work with first. I operate very intuitively (most of the time!).

I spent many hours editing the e-book into its current format. After not having looked at it for a few years, it was suddenly clear to me what parts were not necessary for the story. The first drafts were more an emotional cleansing for me, getting it all out on paper, writing down every detail. This final version is clearer, sparer, more to the point.

What do you hope people will take away from this book?

AMB: I hope people will read Bright Side of the Road and begin to internalize the fact that “It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. --- Epictetus.” I knew that idea intellectually before my cancer diagnosis, but living it from day to day, I was actually able to really understand it, and I hope to inspire people to live from that place of inner responsiveness instead of focusing on the actual event.

I also hope that people will be infused with gratitude for their own lives when they read my book. Gratitude was a huge part of what carried me through the bright side of my breast cancer journey.

What is your writing day like?

AMB: Well, I’m not a full time writer (yet!), so I don’t really have “writing days” unless I take a few days off for a personal retreat! I find that I can’t sit for more than a couple of hours (writing) without having to get up and do something else for a while, so that fits in really well with my current schedule, which is divided between my SoulCollage® business, KaleidoSoul, family, and my part-time job at a bookstore.

How do you deal with writer's block?

AMB: I have SO many ideas flying around in my head, so writer’s block isn’t usually a problem! But when it is, I simply quiet myself and refer to this Anne Lamott quote that is on my writing desk: Writing: You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. And having trust in the creative process, that is the foundation of my own creative process.

How does SoulCollage® feed your writing?

AMB: I LOVE writing with my SoulCollage® cards! They are a never-ending source of imagination and story for me. I didn’t discover the SoulCollage® process until three years after my cancer treatments ended, but once I made some cards about the inner parts of me who had been affected by my journey, I really felt a deep freedom within to write Bright Side of the Road and put it out there for other women. (You can see my breast cancer SoulCollage® cards and my writing about them here: www.kaleidosoul.com/breastcancer.html)

Could you share a writing ritual with us?

AMB: My Writing desk is next to the window in a small lavender room upstairs in our home. It looks out on our driveway, front yard, a small garden and trees. I feel very happy and centered there, which might be a feng shui thing, and it might just be that my inner child knows that she’s going to get to Write whenever we sit there!

On the desk is a small netbook (smaller than a laptop) computer that I use just for Writing (note the capital W). Also there is a lamp with a nautilus shell built into the base, the Anne Lamott quote (see above) and a small candleholder with “All shall be well and all shall be well…” engraved into it. This is a quotation that I write a lot about in Bright Side of the Road!

So usually, I sit down at my desk, light the candle, say a prayer of gratitude and intention, open the cover of the computer… and begin. This is enough of a ritual to keep me grounded and rooted in Spirit, from which all creativity flows.

As I am reading I am very aware of when the story takes place. (I was south of you, in Cohasset at the time.) Your diagnosis happens weeks after the events of 9/11, though you mention it only once, in passing. That was a very tense autumn and winter. Do you think it affected your experience and what you journalled about? If the pervading atmosphere hadn't been so traumatized, do you think the book would have been different?

AMB: What an interesting question! It’s also interesting to note that my breast cancer diagnosis came on December 11, 2001, exactly 3 months after 9/11. I was more involved right then with the diagnosis and surgery decisions and dealing with the groundswell of emotions that engulfed me at that time, so I wasn’t immediately aware of the connection. Several months later I noticed the connection and thought “Ah, my own personal inner terrorist attack.”

I really don’t think Bright Side of the Road would have been different if I hadn’t been diagnosed at that particular time. The experience I write about is SO internal, and during that time I stopped watching the evening news and reading the newspapers, just so my heart and soul wouldn’t be distracted from the awesome job of inner healing.

I like the useful appendix of suggestions for those who have a breast cancer patient in their lives. (I have a couple of friends going through the cancer journey right now.) What is the most important thing a friend or family member should keep in mind? Any additions to the suggestions you make in the book?

AMB: The most important thing for a loved one to keep in mind is that the breast cancer patient is not just a breast cancer patient. She is still the same beautiful, interesting self that she was before her diagnosis. She is so much more than just another cancer patient. Sometimes I got really tired of people asking me “how do you feel today?” because they were referring to my physical symptoms. So even though my life at that time did revolve around what was happening to me physically, it was really nice to be reminded now and then that I was more than that.

I really felt most loved and cared for by the people who remembered who I really was, beyond the part about being a breast cancer patient. Here are some examples of questions that people asked me that really helped me remember who I was: Have you read any good books lately? Can you recommend a good movie to watch? Are you planning any trips later this year? My daughter is having trouble at school… do you have any advice to give me?

And then there was my oncologist, who during one appointment, asked me “How’s your spirit?” That is one of my favorite Bright Side of the Road stories. Talk about a question to cut past the surface stuff and go right to a woman’s essence!

In the presence of questions like these, I was reminded of who I really was, deep down. I was reminded that I wasn’t just a breast cancer patient. I felt like I was being seen for who I really was.

In the book you describe digging out a box filled with fiction that you'd written and rereading it (and discovering it was pretty good!) What happened to all that fiction? What are your plans for it? When do we get to see it? :)

AMB: Thanks for asking about this, Valerie, because I have put all of those projects back into the filing cabinet for now. It’s lovely to be reminded that they are there. Right now, with only so many hours a day to give to my Writing, I am choosing to focus on the rest of the journey with my new baby, Bright Side of the Road. I feel sure that when the time is right to let go of Bright Side, I will be led to focus on my next big Writing project.

***

Anne Marie Bennett is a writer, self-taught collage artist, website goddess, cancer survivor and SoulCollage® Facilitator. She received a BS degree in Education from Southern Connecticut State University and has taught people of all ages throughout the East Coast. She has also worked as a bookseller, sheet presser, library assistant, computer consultant, and in theatre management. Anne Marie lives in eastern Massachusetts with her middle-aged husband (also a cancer survivor), two elderly cats and one very playful dog who keeps all of them young-at-heart. She is happiest when she is reading, writing, breathing salt air, dancing, and hugging her beautiful grandchildren.

For more information about Anne Marie’s book, Bright Side of the Road, please visit this page: http://www.annemariebennett.com/

To purchase the book, please visit this page: www.annemariebennett.com/how-to-purchase

Bright Side of the Road is also available on Amazon.com .

Zombie Cookbook Winners!

2009-10-12T13:46:00.005-06:00

We have two winners!! Congrats, folks!

Swallowcliffs won the digital download of The Zombie Cookbook!

Barbara Ann won the extremely fine Damnation Books mousepad!

I will be in touch soon!

***

Thanks to Kim Richards, Damnation Books publisher extraordinaire,

for the fine prizes.

Thanks to our wonderful interviewees Lisa Haselton, Carla Girtman,

Lin Neiswender and Karina Fabian.

And thank you, Dear Readers, for reading and posting comments!

Zombie Cookbook Writer Karina Fabian

2009-10-11T01:00:00.005-06:00

Last up is Karina Fabian, who bravely volunteered to join us on this stop of The Zombie Cookbook Virtual Blog Tour.

I know Karina from her involvement in the Muse Online Writer's Conference (an annual even which falls this week). Karina teaches courses in worldbuilding, virtual blog tours and faith in fiction, including how to create a religion (not as easy as it looks) and how to portray a character's religious faith accurately, respectfully and effectively. She is also one of the guiding lights behind the Catholic Writers Conference Online, which brings an eclectic mix of writing workshops and Catholic publishers to those who might not be able to attend real-life conferences.

Her wickedly funny TZC contributions are "Wokking Dead" and "My Big Fat Zombie Wedding," about which I can safely say, Industrial-Strength 409 and Love Conquer All.

Here's her bio:

Karina Fabian suffers from an overdeveloped sense of humor and a twisted imagination. Little wonder, then, that she enjoys writing quirky stories for anthologies like Zombie Cookbook. In addition, she writes novels about a dragon detective working in the Mundane world. People have been warned not to read her DragonEye, PI, stories and books in the library. When she's feeling more serious, she writes and edits faith-filled science fiction and fantasy. Visit her website at http://www.fabianspace.com/. Check out DragonEye at http://www.dragoneyepi.net/. (Twitter: @karinafabian Facebook: Karina.Fabian)

Welcome, Karina!

How long have you been writing?

KF: Since I could put the words together on paper. Before that I told some veeeery tall tales to my sister about what Kindergarten was like. I stole from television shows, applied some wishful thinking, and lied like a big dog.

What are you currently working on/have coming out?

KF: Coming in April 2010 is Infinite Space, Infinite God II, and anthology of science fiction with Catholic characters and themes. I have three stories in it: in one, Sisters Rita, Ann and Tommie rescue a man from a spaceship full of snakes; in the next, a priest enters a virtual reality world to minister to people who have lost track of reality and fantasy and the morals thereof; the last is a flash-fiction sequel to the alien abduction story in ISIG I. http://www.isigsf.com/ for more details.

I'm finishing my first Catholic SF novel, which involved Sisters Rita, Ann and Tommie as they help explore an alien ship. The crew encounters a device that diagnoses the soul. Several, however are not ready for what they find. Can the Rescue Sisters keep the crew together? Or will they need rescuing themselves?

After that's done, I'm going to go play in the DragonEye, PI, world with a superhero spoof, Gapman! I'm also thinking of doing a children's book series with a couple of friends. That one's Catholic, too.

Sadly, however, none of these have publishers yet, nor do I have an agent. Any suggestions, folks? I'm glad to pick your braaaaaiiiins....

What's a nice (Catholic) girl like you doing in a place like this? :) Seriously, can you speak a little about how you fell into faith-filled spec fiction and horror?

KF: If you read my stories, you'll see that I didn't write horror. I wrote zombie humor. However, I agree with what Catholic writer Regina Doman said about Catholics and fiction: We want our fiction to be affirming, but we don't expect it to be "safe." Even among the slightly off-color (and off-odor) jokes and ridiculous situations, you are going to find in my stories the expression of love and self-sacrifice, statements against prejudice and for loving one's neighbor, and Good triumphs over Evil.

And yes, I do recognize the irony of associating with Damnation Books. Personally, I would have preferred Kim choose another name, but for dark horror, it's a good fit. Plus, I keep hearing the cheesy slogan: "Damnation! That’s a good book!" (Add fist wave for emphasis.)

What drew you to the Zombie Cookbook?

KF: Kim's a good friend. The title was too much fun to pass up. And Becca Butcher ("Beer-Battered Brains") nagged me into inspiration.

What was your inspiration for your pieces?

KF: Other than Becca? My noir dragon detective, Vern, refused to tell me any zombie cases. They weird him out—something about his leftovers taking on a life of their own. So I played with the noir voice until I got a zombie exterminator. Then I had such fun, I decided to parody "My Big, Fat, Zombie Wedding." I was laughing all weekend!

What's your writing day like?

KF: Actually, it just changed. I've not been good about concentrating on my novel, which shows in the pace of words coming out as well as the pace of the book itself. So I'm trying something new: I drop the kids off at school and go to daily Mass. I worship, pray and dedicate the next writing efforts to God. Then I go find a coffee shop or restaurant and write for an hour and a half before going home to deal with chores, requests, business, etc.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?

KF: Pantster, definitely. I may do a bare-bones plot, but it gets thrown out pretty quick. My characters lead me.

You have a quick satiric mind. I've seen you in Writer's Chatroom prompt chats coming up with very funny stuff on the spot. How do you keep "in shape"?

KF: I married a man with a mind quicker than mine. I'm continually playing catch up, or just word-playing with him. Occasionally, I'll get a zinger that tops him. He's also brilliant and well-read in other areas, which rubs off on me. He's always telling me the most unusual stuff. This month, I'm doing 31 days of zombie tweets on Twitter. He found several of them just by accident.

I also tend toward humorous, satirical reading, television, and even card games. (Check out the Munchkin card games. They are a riot just for the pictures and card names.) The kids all have our same wit, too. It can get pretty geeky odd in our house.

How do you deal with writer's block, if you have it?

KF: I take a shower or daydream. If I know what I want to write but can't get the words to come, I give myself permission to write a sh***y first draft. It's usually full of (NEED PHRASE) and (WORD FOR...), but it gets out and I can fix it. Plus, when I get going, it usually improves.

What is the genre that speaks to you?

KF: Genres don't speak to me. Characters do. However, I do prefer science fiction and fantasy.

What themes do you return to over and over?

KF: Faith, morality, discovering the right thing and realizing it's what God wanted for you all along. Also True Love, and lots and lots of cliché twisting—especially in my humor.

Who are your favorite writers?

KF: Jim Butcher, Madeleine L'Engle, Terry Pratchett. I aspire to be the mixture of all three.

What's the scariest book you ever read?

KF: Some short story collection by Stephen King. I've blocked the title from memory, along with most of the experience. The story about the laundry machine that folds people freaked me out for weeks. I was in college then. Had to do laundry when I knew people were around. Never read King again. Can't watch his stuff, either.

Here's one from the Proust questionnaire: What are your favorite qualities in a zombie?

KF: Tenacity. Well, it sure isn't hygiene!

My links:

http://www.fabianspace.com/: My catch-all site and home of my marketing classes. Click on the covers to learn more about my books.
http://www.dragoneyepi.net/: the home site of Vern and Sister Grace, the detective team of DragonEye, PI. Here, too, I have stories and novels, plus stuff about the universe. Register for Vern's bi-monthly newsletter.
http://www.isigsf.com/: All about Infinite Space, Infinite God—though provoking sci-fi with a Catholic twist!
http://www.leapsoffaithsf.com/: All about the Christian SF anthology Leaps of Faith
http://www.virtualbooktourdenet.blogspot.com/: a general book site where I feature an eclectic mix of books. It's my way of giving back to the many authors who have supported me and giving forward to the great authors out there now.

***
Thanks to all our Zombie authors for allowing us to pick their formidable brains!

LAST DAY to leave a comment and be entered into the drawing on the 12th! A free digital copy of The Zombie Cookbook and a Damnation Books mousepad are on the chopping block!

Do Not Adjust Your Set...

2009-10-10T19:40:00.001-06:00

Zombie Cookbook writer Lin Neiswender

2009-10-10T10:00:00.002-06:00

Next in our lineup of undead authors is Lin Neiswender. I know Lin mainly from Dan Goodwin's CoachCreativeSpace, which is a wonderful network if you are an artist-at-large. Lin is not only a writer but also a talented collage artist and very supportive of other artists and writers. She belongs to or facilitates several groups online and in person, and has to be one of the busiest women I know.

Her short story "The Right Recipe" is a witty look at the life of a zombie food critic who offends the wrong reader.

You can reach her through her website The Land of Lin. Her collage work is here. Welcome, Lin!

Tell us a little about yourself!

LN: I knew from childhood, with the rich language of Alabama firing my imagination, that I was destined to be a writer but lacked the courage to follow through on my dreams until recent years. I now live in Central Florida and the climate must agree with me, as I have finally blossomed into a bonafide writer. My work has appeared in Flashshot, the short story anthology The Zombie Cookbook, and the poetry anthology "Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head". I have a bottom drawer stuffed with novels in various stages of completion. I hope to be nudging (or bulldozing) them toward publication.

I spend my spare time collaging, cruising the Internet, and playing with my Shetland Sheepdog who thinks it is his job to try and kill the mailman.

How long have you been writing?

LN: I probably started scribbling on the nursery room wall as a baby! I had an active imagination and loved to read so writing was a natural for me. I can remember school papers being read to the class as early as 4th grade. I think that's when I knew I was supposed to be a writer. I just didn't believe it until I was an old lady!

What are you currently working on/have coming out?

LN: I'm working on some flash fiction pieces and- oh yes- another zombie anthology piece. There is just something about me and zombies this year, some simpatico connection. Perhaps I am just on a roll.

What drew you to the Zombie Cookbook?

LN: Zombies + Recipes = Fun! Struck me funny from the get-go and I knew I had to write for the anthology. Where else would there be such a combination? I responded to the challenge immediately.

What was your inspiration for your piece?

LN: I used recipes as the jumping-off point, and wanted to make them humorous. I thought about putting them in email format and the rest of the story evolved from there. I wanted humor to leaven the required zombie gore.

What's your writing day like?

LN: Sit in a chair, drink coffee, beat head on table, repeat till ideas come out. I seem to be more of a night owl than a day-timer, although when there is a deadline, anytime is writing time. I have to guard against the Great Evil: email. That is the greatest time-sucker known to humankind. If I'm not careful, it eats up my writing time and I wonder why I don't have anything finished.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?

LN: I'm a pantser with designs on being a plotter. I know it would make my life simpler to have a plan for my writing, but it kinda sucks the thrill out of it to have it plotted too much. My greatest problem is not having enough of the plot done to give me a good sense of direction. That leads to some frustrating dead-ends and back-tracking. But it's all a learning experience.

How do you deal with writer's block, if you have it?

LN: Email. It was invented for writer's block. Also web-surfing and mindless tweeting. Seriously, I try to brainstorm my way out of it, if I can. Failing that I turn to my support group of friends for help. Talking it over helps me.

What is the genre that speaks to you?

LN: I don't know that any one genre trips my trigger so much as novels with great sweep to them, where stories of personal change and great storytelling meet. This can be in any genre- I like them all.

What themes do you return to over and over?

LN: The human spirit's capacity to evolve upward, the redeeming power of love, doing the right thing, how friendship sustains us in hard times.

I know you've been working on a novel which intrigues me, as it deals with COPD. Tell us a little more about that.

LN: The Three Marys explores the complex relationships of three women friends who wait for life-giving lung transplants. It's fueled by real-life interest on my part as I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and will be facing a lung transplant somewhere down the line. It is heartbreaking to see your friends die and life-changing to have to confront your own mortality. I wanted to explore those themes in the novel, but sometimes I have had to step away from the book when it became too personal. I had to get some distance from it. I want to resume work on it shortly.

You are also a collage artist--how does that feed your fiction?

LN: My collage work is intuitive, starting from an initial idea or impression and selecting and modifying images to work together to support the vision. My fiction works much the same way. I'm thinking of using some of my collage pieces as story cards for some fiction much like Tarot cards and seeing what I come up with. Probably something I can use- perhaps even this year's National Novel Writing Month novel. By the way, my Orlando writing group Wannabee Writers is hosting NaNoWriMo write-ins on Sundays in November from 5 to 7 PM. We will meet at Starbucks in Colonial Plaza, intersection of Bumby Avenue and Colonial Drive. Locals invited to stop by and write with us.

How long have you known Carla, and how does she support you as a writer?

LN: Carla Girtman and I go way back, almost 20 years ago to a little writer's group we formed after taking a creative writing class that changed my whole perception of myself as a writer. We've been good friends ever since and continued our writing association to this day. Carla is great to give a critique, help brainstorm, and offer moral support plus she's a funny and very talented writer. She's been a good regular friend too, and I am lucky to have her in my life.

You are insanely busy! How do you get it all done?

LN: Google Calendar and Tasks are my new best friends! I had to start writing things down because I was having too many embarrassing brain farts like forgetting special occasions, meetings and deadlines. Not cool. I still miss some and the house is a wreck, but what the hay, I'm pedaling this hamster wheel as fast as I can.

Who are your favorite writers?

LN: My Number One squeeze has to be Ray Bradbury. He marries superior storytelling with lyrical writing. Others are Larry McMurty, Pat Conroy, James Clavell, Stephen King.

What's the scariest book you ever read?

LN: A couple stand out- Bram Stoker's "Dracula" had me sleeping with the lights on for a good week after reading it under the covers as a kid. Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" is right up there, as is Whitley Strieber's "Communion". George Orwell's "1984" made quite an impression on my young mind too. Those horrible rats!

Here's one from the Proust questionnaire: What are your favorite qualities in a zombie?

LN: Shaken not stirred, easy on the pineapple juice. Oh, not that kind of zombie... well then, one retaining most vital body parts and fresh enough not to be trailing a cloud of flies. Sense of humor a plus as well as a command of the English language beyond grunts and groans.

***

WE'RE STILL TAKING NAMES: Leave a comment for Carla or Lin and we'll throw your name in the hat for a download of The Zombie Cookbook or a fabulous Damnation Books mousepad! Winner announced Oct 12th!

Zombie Cookbook writer Carla Girtman

2009-10-10T01:00:00.001-06:00

Next up in The Zombie Cookbook Virtual Tour is Carla Girtman. I am privileged to know Carla from the Muse Spec Flash Fiction Group. She is well-versed in speculative fiction and is a master, as she is in "Brain Food," of the twist ending. Her work touches on the trials of day-trading cockroaches, the superiority of cats in space, and of course Zombie scientists. Here's her bio:

"Carla lives in Central Florida with her family and two cats. When she isn't working undercover at an international airport or teaching online, she manages to write speculative flash fiction and poetry. She has successfully participated in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) for three years. Her work has been published in Clockwise Cat, Flashshots, Demonic Tome, Flashes in the Dark and a poem will appear in the soon to be released anthology Poems of the Dead. Carla is currently working on "Wordscapes" a collection of her published and unpublished work. (Her cats claim they write better than she does and want their work included.) She hopes to have her website up and running by the end of the year. "

Her publishing credits can be seen here. Welcome Carla!

How long have you been writing?

CG: I’ve been writing since sixth grade.

What drew you to the Zombie Cookbook?

CG: This story started off as a prompt from the Speculative Flash Fiction writing group. Then my friend Linda (also published in TZC!) sent me the call for submissions for Zombie fiction and well, the Zombie muse said "Hey, you got one. Submit that one!" Of course there's nothing like waiting until the night when submissions close. I am frantically editing using the critiques I got from the group and trying to meet deadline that is just seconds away. The Zombie muse breathing down my neck, "It's fine! Just submit the d*** story!!!" Less than fifteen minutes later, my story was accepted! It was just as exciting as getting my Master’s!

What was your inspiration for your piece?

CG: Sometimes I just take dictation from the Muse and edit after she’s done. The Zombie muse likes stories that relate to real life kind of like Philip K. Dick’s stories.

What's your writing day like?

CG: On a good day I get to write. Here lately, dealing two online classes takes a huge chunk of time daily – 3-4 hours. Sometimes at work when I’m handling phone calls for the airport authority, I’ll work on something. Believe it or not, being interrupted has been helpful to me in writing short fiction..

Often the way I write is I get a good idea and let it simmer for a few days, then the Muse will dictate a story and bada-boom I have a story.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?

CG: Oh definitely a pantser. There’s nothing like a looming deadline to get the creative juices flowing!

How do you deal with writer's block, if you have it?

CG: If I’m working my novel, and get stuck, I’ll just write another section of the story.

What about that novel?

CG: My novel (I've been working on since Tallahassee over 20 years ago) was put aside for school and I haven't got back to it. It's pretty dusty. It's titled "Between Light and Shadow" has 3 main (Aria, Seth & Logan) characters who journey to renew the magic of Threadesh (planet). I've worked on it in writing classes and made a screen play out of it for a class. The best thing about the screenwriting class was one of my characters became more fully developed! There's also a romantic element between two of the characters. Each of the characters have to learn to "let go" of something that's been holding them back in life. It's all about relationships.

I've learned a lot more about writing and character development since I've started that project and hope someday that I can get it finished as a full fledged novel.

What are you currently working on/have coming out?

CG: I’m working on a type of noir zombie story for submission. Deadline is November with a minimum of 2500 words. And of course Nanowrimo is coming up. Oh yeah - my idea for my next Nano novel is tentatively titled "The Many Deaths of Mary Jones."

What is the genre that speaks to you?

CG: I’m very fond of fantasy and science fiction. These genres allow you to explore life themes in a different way than regular fiction.

What themes do you return to over and over?

CG: Relationships. And if you read any kind of fiction--science fiction, literature, fantasy—it’s all about relationships with people, the world, and yourself.

You have a background in tech writing. How have you found it helping your fiction writing?

CG: Tech writing has the same qualities as flash. Every word counts and you can’t waste the time of your reader.

You also teach online. How do you get it all done?

CG: Oh sometimes you just can’t. You have to prioritize, meet deadlines, write at lunch time and sometimes the dishes just don’t get done.

You know TZC writer Lin Neiswender in the real world. How do you and Lin support each other as writers?

CG: Lin and I brainstorm on questions. We meet once a month and work on prompts we get from "The Writer's Book of Matches: 1001 Prompts To Ignite Your Fiction." Or we make up our own. Sometimes we use tarot cards. We write prompts then read them aloud and comment on them about how we'd expand the story, make it better, maybe develop the characters more.

Who are your favorite writers?

CG: Robert Jordan, Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffrey, Greg Bear, Terry Brooks, Joan Vinge, David Brin, Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker to name a few.

What's the scariest book you ever read?

CG: 1984 was a scary book – almost prophetic in some ways. It's interesting how many of its concepts, words, and ideas have permeated society.

I also read intense books like Fahrenheit 451, The Thief of Always, and Kiln People are on my top ten of favorite books.

Here's one from the Proust questionnaire: What are your favorite qualities in a zombie?

CG: I like my zombies to be smarter than what the world gives them credit for. Sure, they may have not have the best communication skills and be obsessive compulsive about what their next meal is, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be intelligent.

***

LEAVE US A LOVE NOTE: Leave a comment and we'll enter you in the drawing on Oct 12th for either a download of The Zombie Cookbook or a stunning Damnation Books mousepad!

Zombie Cookbook Writer Lisa Haselton

2009-10-09T00:00:00.001-06:00

The Zombie Cookbook from Damnation Books is a fun and satiric romp combining two subjects you wouldn't guess would go together in an appetizing way--zombies and food. I was delighted to see many old friends among the writers, and volunteered to interview them for the ZC Virtual Blog Tour.

My first guest is Lisa Jackson, who writes under the name of Lisa Haselton. She contributed "A Zombie Named Clete" and a unique tale of revenge, "The Secret Ingredient." I've known Lisa for almost three years, from various writing groups at the Muse It Up Club and Long Story Short's My Writing Friend. We belonged to a group called Muse It or Lose It, where we had to critique eight thousand words of each other's novels every month. Not for the faint of heart! Lisa is a professional freelance editor and has worked for several e-publishers. Her short fiction has been published in Mysterical-E, the Fiction Flier, Flashshot and Penpricks, and she has quite a few non-fiction magazine credits as well. And now I get to pick her brain a bit! Welcome, Lisa....

How long have you been writing?

– Since I could hold a pencil! Hee hee, okay, so maybe that’s not entirely true, well, it is, but not what you were asking. I have been writing stories since a young age. I remember ‘winning’ a trip to a local college for a day when I was in fifth grade because of a story I wrote. Really wish I still had that story somewhere, but I remember how it felt to have someone interested in my writing and to be ‘one of a few’ chosen to explore a college. I’d actually been writing since my first journal. The journal recorded thoughts and feelings, but my mind was awhirl with stories. I grew up in a rural area and had few neighbors. I’d spend hours outside exploring and making up stories as I found crevices in hillsides, and funny-looking creatures in streams. I also loved to read (still do), and those stories sparked my curiosity even more. So, to answer your question, over 30 years.

What are you currently working on/have coming out?

– I’m working on several short stories at the moment – I’m now addicted to anthologies and would love to get in several others. I have a paranormal thriller that absolutely has to see the light of day soon or I might burst. I also have a mystery set in a fictionalized version of the city I live in. I’m writing a history book using my real name (Haselton is a pseudonym) based on a town that existed in southern NH from 1746-1770. That book should be out in summer of 2010 if all goes well. It’s my first non-fiction book and I’m very excited about it. And I have another persona who writes hot romances. Second book due out in December, working on a sequel to my first (which released in June).

What drew you to the Zombie Cookbook?

– It was the fact that a friend of mine through The Writer’s Chatroom put out a call for zombie stories, poems, recipes, and what have you, for The Zombie Cookbook. I’d never written a zombie story before and it felt a bit too much for me. I love vamps and weres, but zombies weren’t on my list. I let ‘zombie’ toss around in my gray matter for a bit and I had a slew of poems come to me. All based off of names. I submitted my favorite one "A Zombie Named Clete" and it was accepted. Well, then, that just got me excited and so I wanted to develop a short story around the poem. It took a while. I mentioned it to a couple of friends and one told me that zombies are averse to salt (I had no idea until then), so I let that tidbit mix with my poem and then I went on vacation to a dude ranch and THEN the story finally came together. It took a while. I felt out of my element, but I wanted to craft something to see if I could. And that’s how "Secret Ingredient" came to be.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?

– A punster for sure, but with my novels I have to become a plotter in order to make sure I have all the details correct. It’s a challenge for me to make the change.

How do you manage to turn "editing-brain" off?

– Excellent question! That’s my biggest challenge. I’m an editor by profession, so that side of my brain does not like to be silenced. I have found the absolute best way to turn it off is to do timed writings. And I discovered this by doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and participating in "word sprints". It’s where you sign up with others on a chat board to write for a certain number of minutes. For example "starting at :30 of the hour, I’ll write for 30 minutes". You post your name to say you’ll do it, and then at the end of 30 minutes everyone posts their word count. Some times only one other person may be in the sprint, sometimes several people, but I tell ya, after doing it a couple of times, I didn’t care if I was doing it myself, the quantity of words the came from my brain to fingertips blew me away! Giving myself permission to "just write" seems to only work if I set a timer and just do it. Without a timer, my editing side chimes in with "oh, come on, you can choose a better word than that" or "this is crap, just give it up", hee hee. It’s so much fun to have the editor turned off!

How do you balance multiple genres?

- I can’t tell you how many years I struggled with this. I kept hearing "pick a genre and stick with it", and so I tried and tried to pick a favorite one, but I just couldn’t. After my MBA I went to school for a degree in writing and literature, hoping to narrow down my interests – thinking whatever course I did the best in would be the winner. Well, I found I liked every writing course I tried, so I ended up having MORE interests! It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve come to terms with writing in several genres. I don’t think I balance them, I think it’s more that they balance me. I’ve always loved to learn and I have a lot of varied interests. I do my best to write down my dreams when I wake up. And I have so many notebooks and scraps of paper with ideas on them, too. Ideas strike all the time. My lifetime isn’t long enough to get them all down. ;) I write YA and adult; flash, short stories, and novel-length; mystery, horror, romance, sci-fi, historical, humor, time travel, paranormal, futuristic, and anything in between. And that doesn’t even get into my non-fiction writing side!

What is the genre that most speaks to you?

– Mystery speaks the most to me with horror a close second.

What themes do you return to over and over?

– Wow, this is a good question. I haven’t thought about themes before. But in thinking about it, I’d say the general theme is a person discovering that he/she is unique and stronger than he/she ever imagined. I think so many of us go about our lives and get into a routine that we don’t dig deep to find out who we really are or what we can do. We give up too quickly, depend on others to carry us, or decide "I could never do that". And I think this is a theme with me because there was a time when I climbed Mount Washington in NH and got seriously lost. I was dependent on my partner. Eventually I figured out he had no clue what he was doing or saying and I sat down and said "I quit". I was going to figure out how to survive on my own…no joke, the clouds thinned and I discovered I could almost stretch out and touch the corner of the foundation. The building was right there and we had no idea until that moment. I was lucky that day, but it gave me a glimpse of how strong I could be, and I think it’s a theme I use a lot.

Who are your favorite writers?

– I devoured Stephen King for several years in the 80s and love that he finished The Dark Tower series (definitely effects my writing now), I like Walter Mosley, JD Robb, JR Ward, Jessica Andersen, Archer Mayor, and so many others. I’m always reading and discovering new authors and then I have to go and devour all their books.

What's the scariest book you ever read?

- The Fog, I can’t remember the author’s name right now [James Herbert], but I had to read that book in the daylight. Many restless nights with that one.

How do you get it all done?

– One word at a time!

Here's one from the Proust questionnaire: What are your favorite qualities in a zombie?

– That they remain uninterested in me! Hee hee. My folks were excited to learn that zombies have an aversion to salt. Since I’m always on them (and so are their doctors) to cut back on salt, they feel they will never be appealing meals for zombies. Really made their day to know that. ;)

***

More about Lisa and her work here:
http://myspace.com/lisahaselton
http://lisahaselton.tripod.com/

Lisa will be lurking like the undead today...leave a comment or a question for Lisa and she'll get back to you as soon as humanly possible :)

UPDATE: OH GOODIE, PRIZES! Also, if you leave a comment for our Zombie writers, your name will be entered in our drawing. Win a free electronic edition of the The Zombie Cookbook or a special Damnation Books mousepad! Two lucky winners will be drawn and announced October 12th!

Zombie Cookbook authors coming soon...

2009-10-05T16:51:00.002-06:00

Don't touch that dial! Here, starting October 9 I will be interviewing authors from Damnation Books' new release The Zombie Cookbook.

It would seem I know quite a few of the undead. :)

Sumerian Moon on CreateSpace

2009-04-21T18:03:00.004-06:00

With a day to spare to the deadline (which it turns out I needed) I uploaded the formatted text for my first draft of my NaNoWriMo 2007 winner to Amazon's POD publisher, CreateSpace. (Chris Baty arranges a free proof copy for the winners. In previous years he's used Lulu. For 2008 and 2007 retroactively, he cut a deal with CreateSpace.)

I'm not as fond of CreateSpace as I was of Lulu. They are geared toward marketing (they assign you your own ISBN for example), so it is not as intuitive a process to make the content available only to you. I am making a proof copy only, something to sit on my own shelf. (I did not even think if having this ISBN assigned is going to mess up future publishing rights. I wouldn't think so, but Amazon, being as big and pervasive as it is, may not favor the individual in a situation like this.)

Second, they don't have their own pdf generator, which is a little bit of a pain. But I found a suitable one online.

Third, my files are subject to "review." In the Lulu universe, once you have a text pdf and a cover (uploaded or using their generator) you are ready to roll. In CreateSpace, I need to wait for someone to look at my material and see if it follows submission guidelines. Well, what the heck does that mean? Now I am paranoid that my political content will set off algorithms in a computer program. Or entry level dweebs are laughing at my sex scenes. And if my web generated pdf is not to their printing specs, what do I do?

So I'm waiting by my mailbox for the go ahead. :(

But I did have fun making the cover with their wizard. Wow, it looks like a piece of literature!

The Atheist's Way by Eric Maisel

2009-02-26T14:25:00.007-07:00

If you've been interested in improving your creativity at all in the last twenty years, two names are probably familiar to you: Julia Cameron and Eric Maisel.

Julia, who wrote The Artist's Way, approaches creative recovery using the tools of addiction recovery, including the dimension of a higher power or Great Creator. Hers is an unabashedly spiritual program. Eric has written Fearless Creating and countless other books, and is the world's leading creativity coach. His background is as a writer and a behavioral psychologist, and his hands-on approach includes cultivating the empowerment that comes from assigning meaning to one's creative practice.

Both are humane, gentle approaches and complement each other. I have just about every book by each of them on my shelf. But I didn't realize until recently that Eric is an atheist.

I expected his new book the Atheist's Way to be a stretch for me. I grew up Catholic but left the church because of its dogma. One could say of any organization started with the best intentions that hierarchy and middle management eventually will subvert its members' experience. :)

So I'm not a fan of organized religion, but I'm an astrologer and the granddaughter of a Christian mystic. Eric's premise is that reliance on any supernatural experience is false and damaging. I'm not entirely sure. I think there might be a place for individual mystical experience.

He is right that the our country has a fundamentalist shadow that is problematic. We project it on our enemies, but express it ourselves. Blind faith, fed by (to put it nicely) major distortions and intolerance are considered justification for damaging policy.

Any system of belief needs to withstand critical testing. Any belief that makes you sign over control of your life to something outside you (even the Flying Spaghetti Monster) is not necessarily benevolent.

So this is a very useful little book about making individual meaning, and in some ways is the clearest and most direct of his meaning books. Making meaning means examining your values, and then choosing to live them full-time, reassessing your values constantly, and changing them when you need to. To really make meaning, says Eric, you have to go deep, making moral and ethical choices thoughtfully. The work is difficult but the rewards are great: “The painter creates a world, the writer creates a world; and you create a world, your own force field of ethical action. This is at least as beautiful a creation as any symphony or poem—more beautiful, really, because without it, civilization would soon collapse.”

We are the heroes of our own stories. Eric shows that atheism is not merely a dogmatic negation of gods, but a positive, active moral choice.

I consider it brave of Eric to write this book. Those who fly in the face of the status quo, who choose to make their own ethical choices, need validation. His book is necessary, encouraging, and eminently readable.

This is only one stop on the Atheist's Way blog tour. To see more, visit here.
Eric's blog on the Atheist's Way is here.
Purchase The Atheist's Way here.

***

Here's an excerpted interview with Eric Maisel on The Atheist's Way:

You’ve written many books on creativity—more than
fifteen. Why a book on atheism from you now?

Like many lifelong atheists who want to communicate the
beauty and wisdom of the atheist worldview and lifestyle,
I’d wanted to write a book like The Atheist’s Way for a
long time. But the publishing industry had shied away from
books of that sort. Then, when several atheism books
became bestsellers, a few publishers took a second look at
their reluctance and stretched in the direction of providing
atheist authors with a platform. This is a book that I’ve
wanted to write for a long and now the times allow for it to
appear.

What is the central message of The Atheist’s Way?

There are three central messages. The first message is that
there are no gods and that the use of god-talk is a betrayal
of our common humanity. Anyone who plays the god card
is playing a dirty trick on his fellow human beings. The
second message is that a paradigm shift is needed from
seeking meaning to making meaning. Until people realize
that human-sized meaning does not exist until they make it,
they remain stuck embracing supernatural enthusiasms or
else pining for meaning. The third message is to describe a
beautiful and attractive atheist lifestyle, full of effort and
ethics—a complete way of life—that I hope people will
decide is exactly right for them.

What’s the real harm in believing in gods?

The harm is that it makes a person more stupid than he or
she would otherwise be, more authoritarian, and more
antagonistic to solving our shared human problems. It
amounts to a complete betrayal of our common humanity.
The instant a person gives in to the urge to answer difficult
questions about the facts of existence with false, slogansized
supernatural answers, he makes himself a smaller,
more frightened, less democratic person, lowers the critical
thinking bar, and endangers our freedom. Just imagine that
I started mouthing the made-up belief, “God says that blue
is bad.” Wouldn’t you immediately begin to fear that your
blue rug puts you in some undeserved danger? People
should not do that to other people.

Why should it matter to the rest of us whether or not a
person believes in gods?

A belief in gods is not an innocent thing. It is a position visà-
vis the world and vis-à-vis one’s neighbors. It is a refuge
for scoundrels who want their views to count more than the
next person’s, it is way to enslave the minds and hearts of
children, it provides cover for bigotry and prejudice, it
causes sharp divisions among people, and it makes the
world a less rational and a more dangerous place. Therefore
it should be the hope of every thoughtful person that beliefs
in gods wither way and the practice of every thoughtful
person to indict god-talk as a betrayal of our common
humanity.

Your book is also being billed as an “atheist lifestyle”
book. What does that mean?

When you’re an atheist, you’re obliged to figure out how to
live as an atheist. It isn’t just that you’re convinced that
god-talk is a human contrivance and a human weakness.
That’s only a small part of it. It’s a complete vision about
the finiteness of your time on earth, your intimate
relationship to nature, the sources of your values, and all
things human. If you’re addicted and intend to recover, you
recover as an atheist. That’s how an atheist recovers—
without god-talk. If you’re an artist and intend to create,
you sit down and create—you don’t wait for divine
inspiration. That’s how an atheist creates—by doing it.
Atheism supports and demands a completely atheistic
lifestyle, a way of life free of supernatural enthusiasms, full
of personal effort and responsibility, and beautiful in its
clarity and honesty.

Where do atheists get their values and morality?

How does a believer decide whether to stay at home with
his sick child or go off to war? He thinks about it, brings
forth his cherished principles and his ideas about right and
wrong, and makes an agonizing decision. That’s how every
human being who is not brainwashed into accepting the
slogans of god-talkers decides what is right for him to do.
He thinks about it, using his brain and his natural sense of
ethics. Every moral person is moral by virtue of the fact
that he is trying to be moral, that he is making the effort to
think through what is right and wrong. An atheist who is
thinking through what is right to do is more moral than a
believer who is mouthing some authoritarian slogan.

Isn’t atheism something of a fad?

Atheism is as old a tradition as the world’s religions. 2500
years ago Heraclitus wrote, “Religion is a disease.” At the
same time, Aristotle explained, “Men create gods in their
own image.” 2000 years ago Cicero wondered, “What old
woman is so stupid now as to tremble at those tales of hell
which were once so firmly believed in?” When the
disciples of Confucius wanted to debate the spirit world he
reprimanded them, “Why talk of spirits when you do not
understand men?” For thousands of years intelligent men
and women have been identifying god-talk as man-made
and religions as scourges. Atheism is not a fad: it is a
vibrant tradition and our best hope for the future.

The Power of Story

2009-02-24T15:21:00.003-07:00

My husband and I watch PBS on Fri nights--Washington Week, NOW and Bill Moyer's Journal. We've dubbed the lineup "The Friday Night Smackdown," with only some irony. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing rational people wrestle with ideas.

I particularly enjoy Bill Moyers Journal. Moyers tells truth to power, but always looking for a little optimism. If he gives you a harrowing story on the economy or media consolidation, he'll balance it with a winsome chat with Nicki Giovanni. This last week the ubiquity of lobbyist influence/money was counterpointed with Parker Palmer of the Center for Courage and Renewal on America's need for self-reflection.

Palmer pointed out something I didn't know about how the Obama campaign was organized. Three years ago, Camp Obama gathered people together and encouraged them to tell three stories-- the story of "self," the story of "us" and the story of "now":

...To me, the underlying genius of what happened at Camp Obama was simply this. I don't remember until the Obama campaign a presidential campaign which we were not asked, I was not asked, to buy a presidential candidate as a commodity in a consumer culture. The Obama campaign did not ask me to buy something. It asked me to tell a story. And in that movement it turned me from being a consumer of a political commodity to being a citizen, a voice. Somebody wants to hear my story.

Palmer also talked about the "tragic gap" between reality (cynicism) and idealism and how we need balance between the two in times of crisis: "...If you don't have a capacity to hold the tension in your heart between reality and possibility then you're just going to give up eventually."

Transcript and video here.

Eric Maisel Interview Feb 26th on The Atheist's Way

2009-02-05T14:35:00.002-07:00

Watch this space! I get to interview Eric Maisel again, this time on his new book The Atheist's Way. Eric Maisel is internationally known in the field of creativity coaching, and now he brings his background in psychology and creativity to the search for meaning outside of religion. Read the first chapter of The Atheist's Way here.

Eric's main site is here.

And his excellent podcasts on creativity and meaning are here and here.

To a Friend on Writer's Block

2009-01-31T19:29:00.002-07:00

Letter to a flash-writing compatriot...cleverly recycled into a blog entry. We are nothing if not green!

I find the short fiction harder sometimes than novel writing. Although I had problems this November, too. Here are some things that worked for me:

1. Lowering the jumps. Of course, NaNoWriMo is all about lowering the jumps to nothing, but like you, I have standards. :) For me, it meant breaking down the 1667 into 500 word increments, real minimums I knew I could reach.

2. Remembering I was supposed to enjoy the process. Strange, but when I consciously decided to enjoy NaNo it started getting a lot easier and fun. Coaches and touchy feely types would call that reframing... Jill Badonsky, I think, came up with saying "Now I get to..." instead of "Now I HAVE to..." about your to-do list. But really, if you can get back in touch with why you like writing--what kinds of stories you enjoy and what kinds of subjects intrigue you and write about those, it helps.

3. People swear by timed writing. I sort of swear by it. First I have to get my butt in the chair. :) Five minute timed writings have gotten me all sorts of interesting things. I recommend at least one a day, but you could do a bunch back to back. Take a handful of prompts (I have a prompt basket--make it FUN) pick one, set the timer. Before I even start writing, I cluster the idea or set of ideas. Usually within 90 seconds BANG, it hits, and I write about whatever it is for the rest of the five minutes. Kind of like improv acting, if you ever did that. The time constraint makes you come up with a story FAST. Perfect for flash.

4. Sometimes you can use an additional prompt to narrow your focus further. Jurgen Wolff has a wonderful podcast on how he generated lots of ideas for TV writing, and it required combining two subsets--characters for the TV show (his given parameters) with random words.

5. Finally, I recommend going and doing something else, but specifically what Julia Cameron calls the "Artist Date"-- a twenty minute session to "refill your well." Go do something novel, like visit a model train store, or look through a magazine you would normally not buy. Or surf unusual websites. Here is a Chris Carter (X-Files) favorite, the New Scientist. Just a cursory look gives us all kinds of food for thought. Bacteria that causes rain. A baby who was genetically selected to be "cancer free." Video games used to treat trauma. Walking rocks on Mars.

6. It's entirely possible you need a break. Sometimes if you are not writing you might be in a better position to edit. Pull out something old and redo it. Even a new improved ending. The important thing is to keep moving if you can. Don't forget to check your ideas notebook and see if there's something you haven't developed yet. Eventually you will come up with something new again.

Eric Maisel on The Van Gogh Blues

2008-02-20T15:19:00.006-07:00

Today I catapult myself, as someone once said, from local to worldwide obscurity :) As promised, my guest is Dr. Eric Maisel, internationally-known creativity expert. Not only is he a prolific author and a major mover in the field of creativity coaching, but very generous to fellow artists. I am delighted to be part of his blog tour. I very much enjoyed reading his new book, The Van Gogh Blues, and have noticed that I have been questioning my negative self-talk in terms of meaning lately. It's a very interesting shift, and takes a lot of power out of the judgments I make about whether an action is worthwhile or not….

Eric’s website, with information on his books and trainings, can be found at http://www.ericmaisel.com/.

Q: Eric, can you tell us what The Van Gogh Blues is about?

E: For more than 25 years I’ve been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are people who stand in relation to life in a certain way—they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize. This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them—if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people—I would say all of us at one time or another time—get the blues.

To say this more crisply, it seemed to me that the depression that we see in creative people was best conceptualized as existential depression, rather than as biological, psychological, or social depression. This meant that the treatment had to be existential in nature. You could medicate a depressed artist but you probably weren’t really getting at what was bothering him, namely that the meaning had leaked out of his life and that, as a result, he was just going through the motions, paralyzed by his meaning crisis.

Q: Are you saying that whenever a creative person is depressed, we are looking at existential depression? Or might that person be depressed in “some other way”?

E: When you’re depressed, especially if you are severely depressed, if the depression won’t go away, or if it comes back regularly, you owe it to yourself to get a medical work-up, because the cause might be biological and antidepressants might prove valuable. You also owe it to yourself to do some psychological work (hopefully with a sensible, talented, and effective therapist), as there may be psychological issues at play. But you ALSO owe it to yourself to explore whether the depression might be existential in nature and to see if your “treatment plan” should revolve around some key existential actions like reaffirming that your efforts matter and reinvesting meaning in your art and your life.

Q: So you’re saying that a person who decides, for whatever reason, that she is going to be a “meaning maker,” is more likely to get depressed by virtue of that very decision. In addition to telling herself that she matters and that her creative work matters, what else should she do to “keep meaning afloat” in her life? What else helps?

E: I think it is a great help just to have a “vocabulary of meaning” and to have language to use so that you know what is going on in your life. If you can’t accurately name a thing, it is very hard to think about that thing. That’s why I present a whole vocabulary of meaning in The Van Gogh Blues and introduce ideas and phrases like “meaning effort,” “meaning drain,” “meaning container,” and many others. When we get a rejection letter, we want to be able to say, “Oh, this is a meaning threat to my life as a novelist” and instantly reinvest meaning in our decision to write novels, because if we don’t think that way and speak that way, it is terribly easy to let that rejection letter precipitate a meaning crisis and get us seriously blue. By reminding ourselves that is our job not only to make meaning but also to maintain meaning when it is threatened, we get in the habit of remembering that we and we alone are in charge of keeping meaning afloat—no one else will do that for us. Having a vocabulary of meaning available to talk about these matters is a crucial part of the process.

Q: A depressive since adolescence, I suffer from mild manic episodes as well and find it difficult to concentrate on creating in the middle of one. Can bipolar disorder be considered a meaning crisis? How might the context of meaning be used to make sense of mood swings?

E: The manic side of the bipolar swing has to do with the hope that meaning can be made—it is not so much an optimism as a pressure to try again, to throw oneself into life and to make some meaning by any means possible, often without any concern for the bite of reality or how reality might prevent you from succeeding. The person flings herself into some enthusiasm—and soon enough reality strikes: perhaps the work isn’t as good as she hoped it would be, perhaps it can’t be marketed, perhaps it was only meaningful in the contemplation and not in the execution. So depression follows—the meaning crisis that was always lurking there, waiting to be activated. The best way to avoid this dynamic of pressurized hope followed by sad retreat is to step back and recognize that making meaning is not a sprint but a marathon, that it is the lifelong pursuit of activities worth investing in and requires the discipline and patience of any lifelong practice. You don’t rush out and make some kind of super meaning this week—you make meaning day in and day, month in and month out, decade in and decade out, in a steady, heroic way.

Q: The chapter on Braving Anxiety is very compelling, in particular procrastination and its relation to anxiety. Can you explain how anxiety and procrastination can be debilitating to a creative person?

E: Because creating tends to make us anxious—and it does, by virtue of the fact that it is more anxiety-provoking to go into the unknown than to stay in the known and more anxiety-provoking to demand excellence from ourselves than to do things which are more ordinary—we react as people react when they get anxious: they avoid the anxiety-inducing situation. If you fear flying, you stay far away from the airport; if painting makes you anxious, you stay away from the studio. You may not know that this is why you haven’t gotten to the studio for three months—but it likely is. The anxiety produces the avoidance and we fail to get our work done. The answer is to recognize the place of anxiety in the process and not let a little anxiety keep us from working. We bravely work anyway; and we use our anxiety management tools, like a little deep breathing, to help us dispel any anxiety that wants to well up.

Q: How does The Van Gogh Blues tie in with other books that you’ve written?

E: I’m interested in everything that makes a creative person creative and I’m also interested in every challenge that we creative people face. I believe that we have special anxiety issues and I spelled those out in Fearless Creating. I believe that we have a special relationship to addiction (and addictive tendencies) and with Dr. Susan Raeburn, an addiction professional, I’ve just finished a book called Creative Recovery, which spells out the first complete recovery program for creative people. That’ll appear from Shambhala late in 2008. I’m fascinated by our special relationship to obsessions and compulsions and am currently working on a book about that. Everything that we are and do interests me—that’s my “meaning agenda”!

Q: What might a person interested in these issues do to keep abreast of your work?

E: They might subscribe to my two podcast shows, The Joy of Living Creatively and Your Purpose-Centered Life, both on the Personal Life Media Network. You can find a show list for The Joy of Living Creatively here and one for Your Purpose-Centered Life here. They might also follow this tour, since each host on the tour will be asking his or her own special questions. Here is the complete tour schedule. If they are writers, they might be interested in my new book, A Writer’s Space, which appears this spring and in which I look at many existential issues in the lives of writers. They might also want to subscribe to my free newsletter, in which I preview a lot of the material that ends up in my books (and also keep folks abreast of my workshops and trainings). But of the course the most important thing is that they get their hands on The Van Gogh Blues!—since it is really likely to help them.

(Thanks to Megan Warren for her excellent question about anxiety and procrastination…)

Writer Apprentice 2008 Edition

2008-01-31T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here I am again. This month I am at the knee of the redoubtable Margie Lawson, learning all about Defeating Self-Defeating Behaviors (e-mail and excessive surfing, anyone?) It's a very good course filled with tools to attack and defeat all the negative things we tell ourselves and the negative behaviors we tend to have around writing.

Goals for 2008...well, they seem formidable. But I think another pass through my WIP's couldn't exactly hurt. And this is the year I tackle Donald Maass's Breakout Novel books and continue to master short fiction.

And I would like to blog just a little bit more. :D

I do have a new short story. Finishing it made me feel like I'd accomplished a marathon. If I do this once a month, I could have an anthology by the end of the year. (!!)

Maybe I'm just a teeny weeny bit depressed with all that's going on...which makes The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path through Depression a timely addition to my library. Nationally known creativity coach Eric Maisel will be my guest right here on Feb 21st, as part of his virtual blog tour for VGB. The tour has already started--the schedule is here and I encourage you to surf around. I'm small potatoes :) but he is visiting many neat people in different artistic disciplines with unique perspectives on creativity and depression.

Annals of Plagiarism: Heaving Ferrets

2008-01-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

This story of a wildlife writer's article on black-footed ferrets being plagiarised to produce pillow talk for a romance novel was amusing, until you realize how chronic the novelist's little habit of plagiarism was.

Who found all this? Bloggers on a romance blog armed with a stack of books and a search engine. What tipped them off? "Change of voice." Not satisfied to just check the data dumps, they started running the well-written passages through as well, which is how they found this Pulitzer prize winner from 1930.

Bad enough the publisher thought lifting whole passages from all those dry scholarly works in public domain without attribution was fair use. I think possibly publishers should rehire their fact checkers and have them google manuscripts all day. It might save them some embarrassment.

Like the Opal Mehta case...how could you (an agent, editor, publishing house) be familiar with YA chicklit market and not catch it before the readers on the street did?

And I know I'm getting old...and I know our schools are turning out kids who don't know the difference...but when is plagiarism ever the right thing to do?

As I told a friend of mine, I may be a hack, but I come by it honestly.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

2008-01-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

William G Fuchs

3/18/24 - 12/19/07

My blog has humble beginnings. I started it for my parents to give them a place to go on the Web and keep up with my writing. My Dad was delighted and printed out the whole thing.

I cannot begin to describe him to you. He was very humble and unassuming. He was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. His life is a kaleidoscope of extraordinary images: passing through Ellis Island as an infant, sitting on Einstein's lap as a child, sneaking into the Apollo Theatre with a black classmate in the 30's. Being tapped for OSS because of his fluency in German, surviving bombings in London, lying quietly in a boat next to director ("The Admiral") John Ford as a German patrol boat cruised past. Showing up for a blind date at the GW auditorium, even though he was ill with food poisoning. (The blind date was with my mother.) The OSS stint turned into the CIA, Germany and Switzerland, DC and Hawaii. He helped raise a Soviet sub, helped invent the fax machine and saw the Roswell autopsy reports. Those were the things he could talk about.

When I last saw him in September, he told me what he was doing on the day I was born in Germany in 1962. Some of it is still classified. He took all those oaths he signed to secrecy seriously, so it was significant that he told me this. I suspected it was closure. He awakened me and saw me out the door at 3 AM the day I left. Still punctual and efficient.

This is the only digital picture I have of him...from the US Navy Memorial site. From 1945, a young sailor in front of Picadilly Circus.

Godspeed.

What about NaNo?

2007-10-15T20:42:00.000-06:00

To a writer friend contemplating NaNoWriMo...

Re NaNo...you start with as little or as much preparation as you would like. Just don't start actually writing until Nov 1st.

From spending time in the forums ( found at http://www.nanowrimo.org/) , it looks like fantasy and sci-fi folk spend the most time prepping (world building, language generation, character bios, storyboards, outlines, etc.) They have it down to an art. They generate avatars, banners and YouTube trailers. (They also tend to be the people who write 100K drafts or two novels at once. They are not well people :)

I've written three 50K/30 day novels. The first one, Corsica, I carried the first hundred pages around in my head for fifteen years. I'd done most of the research in college. (The second part of the plot still needs help, BTW :) Both NaNo novels I winged (Glorie and Without A Leg.) I had characters and an opening premise. With Glorie I did research as I went along. The Internet loves the Civil War. I made my husband sit through Ken Burns' series the first week :) I had just enough detail as I went along to get myself out of trouble. Never got the geography of Virginia worked out to my satisfaction. Wouldn't dare send it out without a CW buff or two reading it. Without a Leg was easier because I'd lived in Nantucket in the 90's when it was set.

Having the start date is extremely powerful. Once I'd made the decision to write, I carried a cheap notebook around with me. New scenes came to me at night, and I'd get up out of bed and make notes, then transcribe them the next day. Two or three scenes for me would make the minimum word count that day. Then I'd despair that I didn't have anything for the next day. I would do research, think, walk, sit in the hot tub. Usually something would show up. I never ground to a halt.

Occasionally, I'd whine to my husband. He'd say, "Go write."

I use the Randy Ingermanson Snowflake for outlining. I find it organic, because the story grows in detail from all points and not just in a linear fashion. If I got really, really stuck, I'd see if I could Snowflake my way out.

And there are days you cheat. You write backstory. It serves you, answers some question you have. It's going to be cut out of a later draft. You use what's happening for you that day. During Glorie, my mom was in the hospital and the prognosis was not good. In response, I started killing off characters. (She recovered, BTW.) During Without A Leg, my brother was visiting and took me sightseeing to Frank Lloyd Wright's compound in Scottsdale. I made my developer in the book a former Taliesin apprentice.

Oh, and frequently, I get a clear picture of the ending of the book mid-month. I'd write it when I'd get it, and spend the last ten days or so filling in the gaps in the middle.

The reason I thought I was able to do this in the first place...in college I took a screenwriting class. Our assignments (based on Syd Field's *Screenplay*) took us through an index card synopsis and some significant scenes. No full draft assigned. One night, writing on my landlady's computer, I decided I'd write the whole thing. So I showed up diligently for three weeks, late every night, and wrote a scene for every card I had. And I discovered that when I did that (showed up) things happened in my screenplay. Characters took over. It was a heady feeling, staring at my landlady's K-pro (it was the eighties) and watching things unfold in green type on black. It was magic. And it only happened because I accepted that I was doing a ridiculous thing. The screenplay was terrible. But it proved to me that I could sit down and write one.

So it was not much of a jump to writing a terrible novel. Especially when Chris Baty made it sound so attractive.

It's play. It's a kind of writing practice. And you end up with something to improve upon :) which is better than nothing. I think you'll be surprised.

Back Again with October goals...

2007-10-07T13:10:00.000-06:00

...Simply getting through this month would be nice. What am I up to?

The Muse Online Writers Conference, which starts tomorrow.

Mary O'Gara's journalling course. Margie Lawson's "Deep Editing" course. Both chock-a-block full of good information. I haven't had a lot of time to "try it on my own pianola" as old sheet music used to put it.

I have a laundry list of topics to write about: writer's rejection, visiting the parents in Florida, how I really didn't get Middlemarch. (But I finished it!)

And of course NaNoWriMo looms....

In other news, I have a poem in this month's issue of Long Story Short magazine. It was the first poem I wrote for their poetry forum, and the first poem I've had published since high school.

My other blog on SoulCollage(R)...

2007-08-19T15:35:00.000-06:00

...can be found here.

I've been messing around with SoulCollage for a few months and had made a few cards, but this morning was the first time I actually sat down and did the "I am the One who..." dialogue exercise with one of them. I decided to chat up Robert Oppenheimer, and he did not disappoint. In fact, I was in tears at the end, which I'm guessing means I did something right.

SoulCollage(R) is a therapeutic collage practice that was developed by Seena Frost. Another excellent site, by facilitator Anne Marie Bennett, can be found here.

This Month's Exciting Goals

2007-08-01T15:50:00.000-06:00

Time to do this again....

Exercise: walk at least five times a week, and do weight cycle at least two times a week. I had this theory about being in better shape before going to see my parents in September.

Listen to self-hypnosis tape for anxiety, also advisable if I'm flying in six weeks.

Read: Middlemarch by George Eliot. I've been trying to read one big honking book each summer to get through August. Previously I tackled Les Mis and Proust. (That's right, I've actually read Remembrance of Things Past all the way through and I'm a lit major and all.) But I owe this one to Dr. Loesberg, my old lit prof. One of the first podcasts I listened to when we got broadband was his appearance on the Diane Rehm show in DC talking about Middlemarch. It's got to be easier going than Proust. If I have time, I'll try a writing book and rereading Barbara Hand Clow's Heart of the Christos.

Writing: Keep up with Musing Pens, and my new, very demanding crit group, Long Story Short's My Writing Friend. Three drafts of one poem and one short story, and critiquing half a dozen other people's stuff. The goal of LSS's group is to get you published. From the last two week's participation, I already have a poem the moderator thinks I should submit. So I need to get it together and submit it, first to LSS's magazine.

I started doing ten-minute writing for CC (Coach Creative) Space's Thirty Days of Creativity Challenge. My attendance has been spotty, but I can see where simply showing up at the page may lead to other things.

Here's a mini-noir from a prompt, "Take the B Train:"

It don't mean a thing 'cause it aint got that swing... I was thinking this while watching Flo Edwards bump and grind her way through an Ellington rhythm number. There's being fashionably behind the beat, and then there's missing the express entirely. So I turned back to my unfortunate bourbon--Leo said it was top shelf, but the way it lay on my tongue was unmistakable. Like soggy industrial carpeting. The whole evening was turning out to be watered down. Flo launched into an ill-advised rendition of "Cry Me A River" to keep with the waterlogged theme and I was humming Benny Goodman's "Goodbye" all the way out the stage door, where the hophead drummer's anxious beat was the only thing I could hear.

I lit a cigarette to burn off the stench, and was glad to have escaped into the alley. The alley was no great shakes, either, but I could hear myself think. A distant wail told me "Lips" Lipman had launched into a trumpet solo--she must have made it all the way to through one chorus.

"What are you doing out here, Ned?" Caught red-handed by Flo.

"Could ask the same of you."

"I'm singing in there."

"Really. You've got eight more bars 'til you're back on."

"Nah, he'll take another solo." Her arms wrapped around that rack of hers like she was cold. It pooked the bones in her bodice out and showed me her assets. Give it to Flo--she couldn't hold a note if her life depended on it, but her landscape was great. The white satin number was a mistake in this heat--you could see the sweat stains from here--and the gardenias in her hair were turning. She was going through a major Lady Day phase, her self-tan splotchy. Suddenly I forgot to be a music critic, and remembered what a good-hearted kid she was. And a great roll in the hay....

Which reminds me, I'm also test driving Dan Goodwin's Procrastination course...I really must keep from putting that off further :)

All Over But the Fade Out

2007-06-30T20:24:00.000-06:00

To SaipanWriter on Monologues, June 26:

I'm coming to this late, as I think you've written past this already. But I had a couple of thoughts which might be useful for revision.

Monologues are analogous to songs in musical or arias in opera. They do a few things. They concentrate the emotion of a character. Good ones have a beginning middle and end, like a short story, and the character can be changed as a function of speaking them. They catapult the action forward.

They are tools of revelation. The character is revealing his deepest thoughts, his most heartfelt opinion. Sometimes the character is disingenuous, and revelation is manipulation.

As an actor I was taught that they are tools of persuasion. The character is persuading himself, an antagonist (always someone hostile to them in some way) or the audience. Often they appear in significant places in the play--before the end of an act, for example. Sometimes they come at the climax, but I think that is a tricky place to have just one person speaking, unless the antagonist is on stage, catching his breath before continuing battle, or the whole cast is there to witness.

The most powerful ones change the action in some way, precipitate action, send the action in a new and charged direction.

Between now and when you revise, read a lot of plays in your genre. Look at monologues and see what makes them tick. Read them out loud. (Always a good idea when you are writing, anyway. See if the words can be said by a human being :)

We just watched *All About Eve* last night--excellent movie about theatre, with some great monologues. Look at Eve's story in the dressing room, Bill's harangue about theatre, Margo's talk about "being a woman" in the stalled car. And of course Addison's acerbic "Chorus" speech in the beginning, setting up the story.

Hope this helps and is not too vague. I have 2000 words to go, and am a bit addled today.

What is Workshopping--playwrighting forum, June 29th:

Saipan, congratulations on finishing! And congratulations on generating some interest in it already.

Someone with an actual foot in the current state of the theater can answer this better, but I believe a workshop is a dry run, the goal being to invite backers to see it and generate interest and financial investment. It is done a lot for musicals, because musicals have become horribly horribly expensive.

In the old days, you'd get together a party of rich New Yorkers and Cole or George and Ira or Irving would stop by and play through their score, the director would give a pep talk and people would get out their checkbooks. Then you'd go into rehearsal, work on the thing, try it out in New Haven, watch how the audience liked it, cut musical numbers and write new ones, recast roles if need be. You'd do this for a few weeks, and then you'd go to Broadway--and even if you were Porter or Gershwin or Berlin you'd still run the risk of it being a dismal flop and closing at Intermission. But that was okay, because there were scads of musicals opening and closing, and chances are you had another two projects in the works anyway.

Broadway has changed--musicals are few and far between, and have to be guaranteed moneymakers. Hence the workshop. The show is cast, staged minimally, tried out before small audiences. A dramaturg is called in to tweak story, songs are tried and discarded--all of this done over weeks and months before major production money is sunk into the project. Only when all or most of the creative kinks are worked out are investors courted.

And the other essential element--feedback is asked for, and given. (Which I always thought was a very Age of Aquarius development, right up there with the focus group. I can't imagine Cole Porter in the 30's asking for "feedback" with a straight face.)

My best guess. Here I show my age. I've never workshopped as a verb. I've done staged readings of plays-in-progress, where the audience was invited to discuss the piece afterwards, what they liked and didn't like. I'm guessing that's what your director means. If you trust this guy (very important) and are ready to surrender your baby to the world, having real human beings act it out is probably the most effective tool in seeing what does and does not work.

(That was a lengthy response. Also precious. Whatever will I do without this forum ;) But I hope this is a help.

...Feedback is scary, no doubt about it. You have to learn detachment. It can be done. It's not you that is being criticized, it's your work, and you can always learn more about the process of writing. But it takes a great deal of trust initially. (This is why I made a comment about trusting the director. It has to be someone who doesn't have his own agenda and unresolved ego issues...the type that will rewrite your whole script without telling you.)

The good thing about theater is that directors still want imput from the writer during the process. In film, once they option your script, you are out of the loop while they butcher with impunity. You won't get rich from either, but you might get more satisfaction from having a play produced.

To Keyboard Warrior, Guys Writing Romance, June 30

Wow! Found a Vein of Gold! You don't know what is in you until you write a lot for an extended period of time. I would consider myself "romance-challenged", wouldn't pick up a Harlequin or anything like that, but every single story I've written in the last two and a half years (including three and a half novels) is chock full of romance--much to my surprise.

And it isn't unusual for guys to write romance. I belong to a huge writer's group--one of its most prolific writers started as a technical writer and is now a very successful flash fiction author. He got into speculative/horror because that's what people wanted, but he also writes and publishes a boatload of romance.

Because of that, I let my surfer-dude playwright specialize in romance. I took all my arguments about why I write romance and gave them to him, and he was happy to spout them for me, in a very virile sort of way, of course.

Follow the energy and see where it leads you!

To Michelle, June 30th:

Meant to write you, but often I go out with a fizzle, instead of a bang. I finished and validated Thursday night, after a long day, most of it spent waiting for Stephen's '84 Chevy Cavalier to be repaired.

Crashed yesterday.

I've been trying to get back to the script, to smooth it out, but am still sleep deprived.

I have some scenes, or ideas for scenes, which I guess I will put in the rewrite. I kind of hate my ending. It definitely needs work.

And the cats can bear to be in the same room now, but Max is a party animal when the sun goes down, and it is really wearing to us. Last night we were also awakened by this very loud sound like a screech or a police whistle outside. We thought perhaps it was an owl, and went outside to try to make it fly away. Instead after several loud minutes, we found the source--a very small toad on our patch of lawn. We captured him, and are going to move him a damp spot on the neighboring property after dark.

So that's where I am. Thanks again for joining in the fray.

Last Lap Boredom

2007-06-24T20:08:00.000-06:00

Monday, June 18th, to Michelle--

Nope, we can't see ourselves and we really can't see our writing.

Thursday, June 21st, to Michelle--

I'm over 15K and am reaching that point where my characters have stopped saying clever things as well. I think ideally as a romantic comedy this would be a ninety minute script. I think I'm going to fill out what's left with the kind of stuff you find in the deleted scene section of the DVD....

On the forum:

AvenK--you can't judge it while you write it, you can't judge yourself when you write it, you just have to write it daily, and get it out of the way, as you said.

Been reading Syd Field. He had an interesting breakdown of the first draft revision process (bear with me if you've heard this one before:) He thinks you end up rewriting:

80% of Act I
60% of Act II part one
25-35% of Act II part two
10-15% of Act III

(His three act structure is really four acts, each 30 pages/minutes long.)

Isn't that interesting if that's true? Because it kind of implies that you don't know what the piece is really about until the end. The end ends up informing the beginning.

So the important thing is to finish, for that's where the treasure is!

Sunday, June 24th, to Michelle--

I think I finally notice a pattern here. I have about three thousand words to go, roughly four and a half days, and this ennui with the whole thing is descending. I wrote in a new character today who, I suspect, is totally unnecessary, and a little too much like an A. R. Gurney stock character invader (the old woman from The Golden Age, if you really want to know....but, but! How can that be? I'm basing it on Mimsi Harbach, related to Otto Harbach, who really did end up in a Cole Porter lyric, and on Jane Carlee, whose pet ocelot really inspired Bringing Up Baby....). And I am very resistant to going back and looking at the outline, which I should probably do at this point, to fill in gaps. Which I do have. Even if I wrote a bunch of 30 second scenes to fill them in, it might help....

What I'm missing is my MC behaving badly in flashback....

The Muse of Dramedy

2007-06-16T19:34:00.000-06:00

To a ScriptFrenzy forum member whose minor character was hijacking her drama and making it a comedy:

I gave your quandary some thought today, while avoiding my other projects in the 106-degree Arizona heat.

I have set an odd pace for this thing. I write for a couple of days in a burst, and then I step back and look at the big picture for a day. It's somewhat unusual for me, but it seems to work. There's always the guilty tension of stopping for a day, and the fear that there won't be anything when I get back to it. Then I read over what I have (being careful not to edit), read the burgeoning synopsis, get images and ideas, and the next day write a thousand words.

The day off seems fraught with danger, because my first impulse is, like a shark, to keep swimming at all costs....

Character take-overs...my thought is that they are good, they show where the energy is leading, and are worth pursuing but only if they serve your big picture, what you are trying to say. If not, then either you have to take the situation back in hand or you have to change your big picture. It is a balance, unfettered creativity vs structure, seat-of-your-pants vs the outline, and I would be very surprised if there aren't half a dozen forums devoted to this problem already. (I haven't looked for them.)

Anyway, my big picture work today was to finish reading Syd Field's Screenwriter's Workbook to get some idea of how to best arrange my Act II. And he addresses your problem in part in the chapter on Act III: "If you experience any resistance, doubts, or judgements, just 'bend with it,' acknowledge it, and continue writing....If your ending comes out different from what you want it to be, write it one way, put it away...and then write it again; this time it will be the way you want it....[If you're writing a drama and] it comes out funny, write it, stick it in a drawer somewhere and forget about it, then go back and write it the way you want to."

My other thought about tone is it is a lot like theme. Stephen King is a seat-of-the-pants writer, and he says he doesn't even know the theme of his piece until he has--you guessed it--finished the first draft.

Hope this is a help. I may have melted too far to give sound advice :)

Dispatches from the Frenzy...

2007-06-13T20:51:00.000-06:00

To a forum member, June 2nd:

It is possible that your first act needs work. Now is not the time to do it. I would keep moving forward at all costs.

Some very basic questions: Do you have a rough idea where you are headed? Do you have an ending in mind? Do you know what your protagonist wants? (Strong desire precipitates action.) Do you know which characters stand in the way and why? Do you have your Act I and II plot points, if you are doing three acts? Can you write or have you written a one page synopsis of the action? Some swear off that kind of overview and structure this early in the game. I think we have so few words (comparatively) to work with that we need to make every one count.

If you haven't thought about structure, go take a walk and do so. And then keep writing. At the end of the walk you may have a better idea of where you are headed. Keep writing in that direction. Don't scuttle the first act until you have the rest of the story. (And if you have to, realize it was an essential part of the process.)

To the Playwrighting Forum, June 3rd:

I confess I am an interloper in the Playwrighting section. I'm a former stage actress and am writing a screenplay about theatre. I'm studying a little playwrighting on the side because I figure if I get stuck, I can have my surfer-dude playwright yammer on about it. :)

So I have no books to recommend on playwrighting, per se. But I can give you my tried and true references for story and character building.

Plot points come from Syd Field's *Screenplay*. He's one of the gurus of modern screenwriting. Having reread him recently, I realize he is pretty lightweight in the details of building the drama. But he's a fast read and gives you the basics. Richard Ray uses his structure for novels in *The Weekend Novelist*. It's the basic structure of western narrative tradition.

Here's a multimedia example of plot points from Syd Field's website:
http://www.sydfield.com/featured_theparadigmworksheet.htm

Plays hit their marks a little differently. I found this on a very promising website and it breaks down plays a little more precisely (with examples you might know)
Structural diagram of a two-act play:
http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/shapediagram.html

I'm going to recommend Michael Shurtleff's *Audition* here, because it's the best "acting in a can" I've ever found. Shurtleff gives you a list of twelve guideposts to get you into character *fast* in a cold reading situation. But I've found them a set of useful tools when I have more time to prepare a scene, and I imagine they would be really excellent to use to engineer characters and make sure something is happening onstage. Shurtleff says every scene is a love scene. Think about it. (That's worth the price of the book right there.)

Summary of the Twelve Guideposts:
http://www7.acs.ncsu.edu/theatre/backstage/moreauditioning.htm

Hope this helps.

P.S. Please, anyone chime in if they know a good book or source!

Letter to Michelle, June 8th:

I'm poking along...only at 4863, which puts me a few hundred behind.

I'm totally sporadic in my storybuilding of course, and am just sticking scenes in, higgledy-piggledy.

Sometimes I'm close to brilliant. Other times it's all quite terrible.

To a forum member, worried that he has too many characters, June 8th:

For a first draft, don't sweat the numbers. That's what second drafts, thirteeth drafts, final drafts are for.

As you revise, you may combine characters and settings to tighten the play. Now's not the time to worry. Get everything down and don't judge it. Now is the time to dream big, be expansive, and try a lot of things that may not work.

Later you can go through and ask, "Is every character, setting and scene absolutely necessary to the story I am trying to tell?" That kind of discernment is required later. If you try to apply it now, you are second-guessing your Muse. You run the risk of stalling and not finishing.

Just my thoughts--from a writer who does the same thing :)

To a forum member, June 13th:

I think you are right about writing a script being harder. Daily word count is lower, but every word has to count. It is a little like writing micro or flash fiction, or what Andrew Vachss said about writing the short story: "It's like fighting in a real small ring, you have to get busy quick. It's easier to make mistakes, and it costs more if you do." You have to do some prep, you can't totally wing it. (One might make an exception for the suspense genre.)

I tried to cheat yesterday. I threw in a scene from one of my NaNo novels. I transcribed it from memory. Then I went back to look at the original and discovered how lean and mean it had become in the script. Surprise! I think I got a whopping 300 words out of it.

I know I can do this becausssse...I've written three 50K novels in the last two years....and the reason I thought I might be able to do that is because I wrote a 230-page film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's Villette in college (which was totally suckitudinous, by the way.)

So how can we get you back on track? Can we ask you for your pitch (a three or four sentence summary?) Can we ask you what you wish to accomplish with this piece (dream big)? Can you make the next scene a big smack-down fight (always fun to write)? Can you write your climax, so you have something to work toward? (I never write in sequence, I'm not disciplined enough :) Can we do rain dances and make offerings?

To Michelle, June 13th:

Broke 8000 yesterday. Then we were out getting our car repaired today. I don't have a laptop, so I spent some time at the car shop ignoring Fox News and drawing character diagrams. Then I came home and wrote index cards for the scenes I do have (I have about 43 distinct scenes, but some of them are tiny flashes.) Then I went back to my one page synopsis, filled in some gaps, printed it out triple space and wrote ideas for new scenes in between the lines, complete with dialogue as characters yelled it out in my mind.

The 20K deadline is deceiving, because you spend an awful lot more time plotting things out in a script before you write them up. At least I do. People in the forum talk about just letting characters yammer on, but I know better than that. Every word has to count.

Everytime I sit down and open Celtx and look at my script, I feel cheerful. Which I think is good.

Back at it...

2007-06-01T17:12:00.000-06:00

Amazing how intimidating the thought of blogging can be.

May goals: I read five books, made two SoulCollage cards, and did morning pages for twenty days. I did not write besides that, and I didn't do the revisions I've been putting off for the last few months. (The less said about my exercise goals, the better.)

June's goals are easy: three books and a screenplay. I'm one of 7000 people doing ScriptFrenzy, and just finished my 667 words for today! Whee!

Today's Blogging Lesson

2007-02-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting with posting photos...here is the snowstorm we had in January. An inch and a half, wet and sticky. Not what usually happens in Tucson...

I particularly like the sunlight in the Catalinas in the top one. That's our swimming pool in front of the Mexican date palm, by the way...

The Price of Verity

2007-02-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

I got my training in college as a film critic, which is one of those terrible things one admits long after the fact, like inhaling and adultery. I don’t think I’m nearly as critical as I used to be, although as I get older there are simply things I won’t bring myself to see. I’d like to aspire to the Barbara Woodhouse school of criticism: No Bad Films. You have to offend my sensibilities deeply for me to hate your film. That having been said, I will write the occasional small film review when I feel the need to.

We saw Infamous last night, and my husband and I think it’s a better film than Capote. Capote nearly collapses under its serious pretensions, where Infamous is darkly comic and fuchsia-tinged. And Toby Jones is not trying hard, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, to be Truman Capote, he just is. He’s Harper Lee’s childhood friend, the “pocket Merlin”—small, gossipy, outrageous, funny as hell, and charming. You do not believe for a minute Holcomb, Kansas will open up to him, but he wins them over with the equivalent of Dill’s story of how he won Jem’s missing pants in a poker game. And yet, vying for screen space is the story of In Cold Blood, as serious and graphic as it is in Capote. But in this film, that stark story is set in dichotomy with Capote’s pink-tinged social whirl, and ultimately makes this Truman Capote much more tragic.

Daniel Craig is amazing (why wasn’t this guy nominated for an Oscar?) as Perry Smith, dangerous, charismatic, and as engaging as Jones. The conflict is the same, how far will Capote go, how far will he get emotionally involved with Smith to get the story, and does it bother him at all to manipulate Smith, even to wish for his death so his book can be released. In Capote, you see Hoffman ego-driven. In Infamous, you see Jones reporting it all back, deliciously, to society friends.

I wondered how they would handle Smith’s killing of Mr. Clutter, the father. In Capote, it is a straight chilling flashback with voiceover: “I thought he was a ...very nice...gentle man. And I thought so right up till I slit his throat.” In Infamous, you see Capote trying that line out on his various friends over lunch until he’s tweaked it to his writerly satisfaction. Infamous captures the experience that all writers who take from life eventually have—being found out by the people you write about. How much are you willing to cajole, massage, and eventually exploit your friends? What price Verity?

The Beginning

2007-02-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

I signed up for this blog three weeks ago, and then waffled about it. After all, does the world need another blog? Like another hole in the ozone, although I’ve heard that’s on the mend, so maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Not that anyone is going to see this from the greater Blogosphere. I’m compulsively checking my settings to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Right about now I should explain my purpose. I hate making pronouncements and setting goals. I’m very resistant to both. Which is why I’m doing this right now:

--To document the struggle to go from apprentice to journeyman writer (or freshman to sophomore, as writing guru Randy Ingermanson might put it.)

--To list my writing goals where I, God, and a select few can see them.

--To review (as needed) films, books and other media.

--To rant, but always thoughtfully.

I have wanted to be a writer since I self-published a book about cats in the first grade. I am a near-lifelong diarist, having kept a diary on and off since 1971. Or possibly sooner. I will fact-check that and get back to you :)