Channeling Your Inner Yoko

Every woman who has ever had a very close guy friend has encountered a Yoko. The woman who enters his life and you think, "There goes the Beatles, man." You see her for . . . well, the interloper. The one who is going to mess up this perfectly good friendship. You see her arrive, you see the power she has over him. Maybe you try to be her friend--but she ain't having it. Or maybe you just shrug and accept and . . . it is what it is. The Beatles are over.

So today I was reading an old issue of Esquire and lo and behold there was Yoko. And she had the most amazing comment . . . that she was aware of how much negative energy was directed toward her. Think of it. The WORLD hated her. Still hates her. She broke up the damn Beatles! She is a one-worder, folks. Yoko. One word. And what do you picture? ONE WORD, her name, has a lot of emotion. And Yoko had two choices. Her quote: "Power is power." She took ALL the negative energy, all that hate for her, all that BIG power directed her way like a negative tsunami. And she USED it, people. She effectively said: BRING IT.

In writing and in life . . . BRING IT.

We all have people, critics, others in our lives who use words we should banish from our vocabulary: can't and shouldn't. Today, channel you inner Yoko. Finish your chapter. Your novel. Your impossible dream. USE the power of the naysayers as the wind in your sails. Power is power. The more negativity directed to you, the BIGGER power!

I've seen, up close and personal, what ugly looks like in people. People who THRIVE on hatin' Yoko. People who FEED off of the negative, who bait it, who bring it festering to the surface, who whisper in this ear and that one, who create dissent, who BREED the doubt, who dance when misfortune happens to others, or who passively join the haters. Seen it. AND NOW?

BRING IT.

Open your story and believe in it. Don't let anyone use the can't word around you. The shouldn't word. Who are you to write a novel? You're YOU!

Thoughts?

P.S. Leave a comment . . . and at the end of your comment list your favorite Beatles song. One winner will be chosen at random for the third Magickeepers book. By random, it means Pirate Boy will pick. He likes blondes. Good luck.

Passion

My favorite sorts of magazine or news articles are about people like him. A person who comes up with some crazy idea and then it becomes MORE than idea. And they just run with it.

Last night I had dinner with Oldest Son, who is writing Java code. And he still has this idea about building 'bots for people with Alzheimer's. And his father and I said, "Look . . . so what that you're 15. You have an idea that is unique [his is a language 'bot idea], work out some more details and find backers. Being 15 is no stumbling block." So . . . to that end, I am trying to get him signed up to take a college course on writing code since his high school doesn't have what he wants.

But more than that. He's a kid who has a passion for helping people with Alzheimer's because his paternal grandfather has now receded into a world where we can no longer speak to him. And he's a kind with a passion for math and numbers and 'bots and computers.

And I thought to myself--and said aloud to him--what kind of a human being wakes up for over twenty years and makes up stories for a living, and sees 20+ novels get published? And who blogs about craft. Who writes about her kids. Who DOES this? I mean . . . does it and still LOVES it?

So this post is really about following your bliss, whatever it looks like. See where it takes you. Enjoy the ride.

Thoughts? Is writing your bliss?

Misbehave

First . . . visit Aerin's blog today. She's posting an interview with me, and you will find out a fact about me . . . that has never before been revealed in print. Hint: It has to do with a rodent.

And now . . . today's blog is about misbehaving. I have a silver bangle given to me by my best friend, and it is inscribed: "Well-behaved women rarely make history." I don't know that I'm making history, but I do know I am not well-behaved.

I could tell you a thousand ways in which I don't behave, but . . . heck, if you're a long-time reader of this blog, you know that already. Oh, and if you read Aerin's blog, you'll find that out, too. So on to writing.

Here's why you have to misbehave. You need to write uncensored. You need to sit down and just write your TRUTH, whatever that is (even in fiction). You need to not worry what your mom or dad or kids or neighbor or the people you go to church with or the rest of the world in general thinks. If you write about sex, write it honestly, and don't worry if that means the ladies of the PTA think you must be wild behind closed doors. If you write about dysfunctional families, don't worry if that means the person across the street now really wonders about you.

Then you must misbehave by facing down your fears. Here's a secret about misbehaving. It's not without scary moments. The scariest moments in my life were when I was very, very sick with Crohn's and in a hospital, and I could not see my child because my immune system was too weak. And I didn't have any visitors for the same reason. And I was alone in a room on the 12th floor, in a city hospital, and it was drab, and I was losing my eyesight (temporarily) so I couldn't read, and I couldn't SEE the TV on the wall anymore. And my world was just about pain. I couldn't walk four feet; the morphine drip was my friend. And I wish I could say how it was I fought back, or even that I was brave. But I don't know. This book sort of did it for me. What I do know is at some point, I misbehaved and decided to kick Crohn's in the ass. But I was still really scared--I just pushed the scared part into a part of me I hate to visit. And every once in a while, I have to go to that place, and shine a light . . . and make the scared stuff face the brightness.

Writing is the same thing in a way. Because once you write your truth uncensored, you have to face your fears about whether or not it's any good. You show it to people. You show it to people who will speak a truth. You don't show it to people who will pat you on the back and congratulate you. Those people are nice, too, but they aren't scary.

Then you misbehave by being messy. Because people who misbehave generally don't have neat and orderly lives. Or if they do? There's some spot in it that's off-kilter. Being messy? That's the rewrite. Because rewriting is NEVER pretty. So you make a mess of that first draft. And sometimes the second and third and fourth draft. Some people use post-its, some a red pen, some Track Changes. I make messy notes.

And finally, you misbehave by dreaming. Being a writer is an audacious dream. Seeing your words in print, sharing them with the world. Once you write uncensored, face your fears, and make a mess . . . it's TIME. Time to pursue the dream with reckless abandon, whatever that looks like, whatever path.

So . . . misbehave today. Thoughts? What other misbehaving writers are out there?

Shake It Loose, Part II

When all else fails, do like Demon Baby (and make sure you stay to the VERY end).

Shake it, Gang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcoAZacGWsI&feature=email

Proust Was Right

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes

but in having new eyes.--Marcel Proust

I find this quote utterly brilliant. I thought of this particular Proust quote this morning, as I read the NY Times . . . specifically, this article on self-delusion in humans . . . and monkeys. Seems we're not the only ones who deceive ourselves, who need to see things with new, honest eyes.

And I thought of this quote as it relates to writing. When I think back over the years and all the authors I worked with, critiqued, edited, and coached, I think the ones who were successful had this ability. Most of the time, when someone hires an editor, they can construct a sentence, and hopefully it won't have too many errors in it. Sometimes, you may encounter a writer with a certain gap of knowledge--perhaps they don't use the comma in a compound sentence correctly, or maybe they have an abundance of dangling participles. And most of the time, that can be taught and corrected rather simply. What they need, with an editor, is a fresh eye.

And the writer who cannot look at their journey with fresh eyes? Often doomed. I can think of one author whose beautiful hardcover book I edited for months prior to its splashy publication. She was a very well-known old-time romance writer. And I can tell you that even though it was the year 2000, she was not going to budge at all--one iota--in her use of cliches, those heaving bosoms and swelling male organs, those sinewy thighs, and flashing eyes. And she has since disappeared from the landscape of publishing, I think pushed out by new writers who were willing to look at historicals in fresh ways with new plots and exciting language. I was sorry to see what happened to her, but it didn't surprise me, and when I met her in person out on the West Coast, I met someone who was very caught up in her status as author and famous person and who had forgotten the joy of the journey as a writer. She had lost whatever fresh eyes she had brought to her career twenty years before.

Having fresh eyes sometimes means parting with a work in progress. Literally tossing it. We've all met aspiring authors carting around a version of their first novel now ten years later. They tweak it--change the heroine's profession to one that is now hot in the romance biz, or the detective's quirks to something that seems new--but underneath it is the SAME novel just packaged slightly differently. They rail against the "system" and the "New York houses and agents" who won't give them a chance. But they don't take fresh eyes and look at the landscape--like the monkeys in the NY Times article, they can find a reason for their situation, and the reason has nothing to do with the novel at hand.

To me, fresh eyes means always learning. Every day. I restrict my blog-hopping mostly to the ones at right on my blog, but I will hop along to other writer blogs. When I find one that has a fresh angle, I add a link or visit it for a while. I visit the blogs I do because not a day goes by that I don't want an "ah ha" moment and some of the writers I visit have provided me with them. Edie Ramer's blog had given me some great moments . . . so has her other blog, Magical Musings. Spy Scribbler . . . where do I begin? In fact, because I will surely exclude someone, just link away . . . they're all great.

Fresh eyes means living passionately. I want to die of exhaustion. Not really, but you know, I want to be 80 or 90, in good health, still doing yoga and walking . . . and STILL volunteering and still writing, and maybe even with a half-dozen foster kids around. Or on a farm with horses and sheep, and my grandkids visiting me. Or living with my best friend in Tuscany for a year, drinking wine and eating good cheese. For right now, it means I want each day to count, to meet great and interesting people, to love with all I've got, so I have something to write about. Rather than just imagining a life, I want to really LIVE it. Doesn't mean I have to be a kick-ass private eye or any of the things I sometimes write about, but I want to live like there's no tomorrow and bring that to my work.

So does the Proust quote resonate with you? The monkey article? What does a fresh eye mean to you?

Everyone Has a Story

As a fiction writer, I am fortunate in that I have lived a really full life, complete with family members who really should have their own reality show. Not kidding. Eccentric relatives, LOUD relatives, crazy but lovable people all around . . . and I've packed a lot of living in my years--some of it unhappy--divorce and unhappy marriage, a life-threatening bout of illness, high-risk pregnancies (baby#3 was born with me having a catheter inserted into my heart while in labor--and I went on to try for baby#4). But even the sad and difficult and grief-filled parts of life are fodder for fiction.

When people meet my family--boisterous and funny and a little left of criminal at times--they say how lucky I am. "They sure give you stuff to write about."

But that's where they're wrong in a way. I once met an aspiring writer who told me he had lived a timid, quiet, shy, boring life. "Nothing to write about," he told me. "I've been a scientist all my life. I never even got married."

But he was wrong--because even in THAT there is the story. Maybe, in my own take on living life fully, it is a tragic tale of a man afraid to love or a man afraid to take risks. Maybe there is tragedy in the man (not him but some hypothetical man) burning with resentments and filled with pessimism and a life unfulfilled. Or the man who has sat in the same armchair for twenty years, drinking himself into a stupor. Or the wan who tossed his wife and children away for a chance on what he thought was love--and gambled wrong. In these lives of quiet desperation, there are stories.

In the lives of the man who packs my groceries and the woman I meet at the park who secretly loathes her mother-in-law, there are stories.

We all have them. The key, as writer, is to pull them out and write about them.

I am lucky in I have a bold life. A reckless, wonderful life that I can draw on. But everyone has a story. Don't you think? Do you listen to the stories of others or just imagine them? Do you draw from others' lives? I'm curious!

Peace,
E