The Enemy

When I first discovered Buddhism, I learned a meditation, a mindfulness exercise. You fix on a person in your head whom you love and meditate on him or her, wishing them peace. Then you fan it out . . . you walk through the store or down the street and as you pass people by, you project, "I wish you peace"--to strangers. With a smile on your face. The first time I tried it, it was in the chaos of Christmas a few years ago. I let harried shoppers go ahead of me on line. (Most people thought I was kidding!) I stopped to help a frustrated clerk with a fallen-down display. I left the store feeling calm . . . and peaceful. Then, of course, there is the next part. Thinking of an enemy and wishing them peace.

The problem was, I didn't really think I HAD any enemies. I try, generally, to be nice to everyone I meet. I don't like conflict. I didn't think I legitimately hated anyone. So I wished peace to a couple of people I maybe didn't like so much, like a woman in the neighborhood who always says mean things to people. Then this past May happened. To make a long story short, I discovered the church where I took my children (a Christian church), where I THOUGHT people were nice . . . really harbored some very, very not nice people. I saw nastiness the likes of which, honest to God, I had never seen before. To the point where I don't intend to ever enter a house of worship ever again, unless it's to see one of my kids get married or something like that. But what was really amazing to me, was one woman who said, "Just remember, the people I sit with in church hate you." I was like, Holy crap, I have an enemy and I didn't even know I had one.

So over the next few months, I pondered . . . and I've decided I still don't have enemies, because I guess you have to hate them BACK in order to really have an enemy.

BUT . . . my writing? Sometimes it feels like a battle. And sometimes, I really DO have enemies.

Case in point? Sit down to write . . . school calls. Child #3 has strep, come get her. Except she doesn't go to the neighborhood school, she goes to a magnet school and the whole thing is an hour round-trip.

Case in point? Sit down to write . . . now it's Son #1. And his magnet school is even farther.

TIME-SUCKING VORTEXES are my enemy.

Sometimes my writing enemy is of my own making. It's lack of focus or discipline or energy. Sometimes it's just easier to fiddle around with "research" than really pump words out.

Then there's laundry. That's always a nemesis. And now? God, I can hardly face the thought of Christmas. I am the sole shopper, wrapper, Christmas-card writer. Oh, and for everyone who expected a card in 2009, they never even got mailed. So don't feel bad. This year ain't shaping up much better either.

Like my Buddhist meditation, sometimes I think you have to make peace with the enemy. You just have to accept that sometimes . . . life gets in the way. And that is perfectly okay. Smile. Let life cut in line.

Other times, though, I guess you have to get all Ninja on its a**. Ruthlessly excising the enemy where possible. It's why you won't see me entering a church this holiday season . . . but you will see me lighting candles here at home--a safe place where I know all my "enemies," like laundry. I may even sing a few Christmas carols.

So how about you? What "enemies" does your writing have and how do you deal with them?

Business as Usual

First, a really lovely review for Pyramid of Souls.

Second . . . I showered today. I know. News flash. My shoulder and arm look like I went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. Black and blue doesn't even describe it. I really look like I was horribly beat up. But I'm showered. I did my hair. I slapped on some lipstick. I dressed in black pants and a loose-fitting black top (and my sling is black!!!). I came downstairs. I made coffee. All of this signaled to my very hurting body/arm that "It's business as usual, so suck it up."

I find that though I joke about working in my pjs, and I AM uber-casual, that some sort of "getting ready for work" seems to put me in a working mindset. I have my ritual. Coffee and blog. Getting dressed in some sort of attire. Putting on makeup even if I will see no one except my cat and Dynamo Boy. Sitting at my keyboard. Looking over my Day Planner.

I've always said, with four kids and a chaotic life, my writing schedule is when life permits it. But in reality, I signal that it's Business As Usual by my routines.

How about you?

So I Printed Out My Pages . . .

And drove to meet my beta today. [Funny, only writers would know what that is. I imagine other people figure I am off to the pet store to buy a fish.]

And I realized something. I have been, twice a month, producing pages for a group or a beta for (GULP) 17 years, just about. Longer if you count other groups I was in . . . the 17 years is CONTINUAL. Aside from that I have 4 other years, total. in other groups or workshops. Two decades, in essence, of producing pages twice a month.

You know, because my desk is a mess and my life chaotic and hectic, like any mom of four (except those crazy organized uber-moms, who amaze me!), it is easy for me to think I lack discipline. What looks like discipline for me, sure as heck doesn't look like discipline for others.

But when you look at it in total . . . in the end, whether you do a little word-count meter, a word total you want each day, or once a week whip out ten pages in one sitting . . . you have to produce.

I'm still wrapping my mind around what pages every two weeks for 20 years means.

You? How do you maintain discipline.

As for the game . . . I played "pah" for 44 points. I don't think Stephen is happy with me right now.

Rebel

I was raised to be an intellectual rebel. My father told me never to believe anything a teacher told me until I confirmed it for myself. That cops . . . well, I won't even get into his opinion of cops. And priests and religion? Let's just say he and Karl Marx had a lot in common.

Over time, this intellectual rebellion started exhibiting itself in other ways. If someone said "Do this," then surely I would "do that." And after a while, I was set in my rather eccentric, chaotic ways. I haven't had a "real" job in 15 years . . . and I generally am comfortable being, in the words of a dear friend, "decidedly odd."

And that's all well and good. It dawned on me this weekend that success in writing probably has a lot to do with being rebellious. Writers generally see the world in unique ways. And deciding to BE one . . . well, that's different for starters.

But I think it's really easy to ignore the other half of the equation. It's a word I hate.

Discipline.

Some people will call it persistence . . . but I think they're more kissing cousins. Persistence is going on in the face of rejection and hard lessons about your writing. Discipline is that ol' "sit your ass in a chair" thing.

My kids haven't been in school for the last 10 days because of snow. They're not in school today. And a "wintry mix" is forecast for tonight, meaning if I were a betting woman (and readers of this blog know I am) . . . they're not going tomorrow. Any semblance, any inkling, of a routine or a schedule has been blown clear out of the water. Yesterday, I think there were . . . 13 kids here. And no, that's not a misprint.

So discipline has been sorely lacking. But not really. You see, my discipline probably doesn't look like some other writers' disciplines. It can't. Not with 13 kids in the house. I don't necessarily write every day. Some days I have to be content with a page. Other days with three chapters. It fluctuates based in inverse proportion to the insanity in my life.

But know this . . . I write. Come hell or high water (and I've lived through hurricanes, so I've had both), I write. I show up to my group with pages. I've written through four pregnancies and more pain thanks to Crohn's disease than I care to dwell on. I've written through personal crisis and through grief, through chaos and unhappiness, through happy times . . . and not-so-happy times. And I think I've undervalued that sort of kick-my-own-ass and do it mentality. I've overvalued, in some sense, my rebelliousness because that speaks to my soul. But in reality, my work ethic is hardcore. Idon't have writers' block because I REFUSE to.

So today . . . I'm going to write. And all of you better sit your asses in your writing chairs and write too.

Or not. You can always choose to rebel. :-)
Thoughts?

Stuck in My Head: The Balance Between Discipline and Creativity

First . . . I have got to have you click over to this review of Freudian Slip because it has the most HI-LAR-I-OUS first line in a book review ever. Worth the trip, no?

All right . . . so . . . where do I get my ideas from? The $64,000 question I get asked all the time when people find out I am a writer (which is why I usually say I am an actuary). I'll tell you where. I woke up at 4:00 a.m. yesterday, stressed out, tired, kicked in the back by Demon Baby who was in my bed and insists on sleeping "thisclose" to me. And I had a Shiny New Idea. Not just ANY Shiny New Idea, but a totally awesome, got a major hook/concept that I think ANY editor would want to at least look at, kick-butt idea.

Only problem? I am 150 pages into my thriller rewrite.

What's a writer to do?

Well, if you're me, you'll at least try the voice on for size and get something down on paper until you have time to flesh it out.

But here is something I have learned over time. Those Shiny New Ideas that come along fairly rarely, that give you goosebumps, that have the high-concept piece, that could be a breakout novel? They don't come along every day, so you snatch 'em when you can. But the other piece of that is at some point, you have got to marry that with discipline or you would stop every work in progress because something new and shinier comes along. Abandon books often enough and it will become a bad habit. Slog through finishing . . . .

On this blog, I tend to blather about process and life. But not often enough about discipline. I suppose it's because my life LOOKS undisciplined. It's messy around the edges, loud as the Clash blasting on my stereo, left-of-center, chaotic. But somewhere in that mess is a disciplined writer who has managed to write 20+ novels though four pregnancies and enough disaster and crisis for ten people. That takes tucking your head down, facing the wind, and just doing it.

Sometimes Shiny New Ideas get stuck in my head. But to really succeed, I always have to find the Middle Path. The Buddhist approach to writing. A balance between the worlds of discipline and creativity.

Thoughts?

Glow

Let's say you have a knack for writing. In high school and your twenties, you create short story after short story, novella after novella. You earn As for your efforts in university. Then someone says, "Why not try writing a novel?" You think . . . "Can I write 300 pages about something? Anything? THREE HUNDRED pages?" You have no idea, but you know there's something, some badge of courage won by writing the Great American Novel. So you labor. For a LONG time. Like a year. Maybe more. You see the end in sight. In fact, you know you are within . . . oh, maybe a week or two from writing "The End." You type the words. You lean back in your desk chair with a contented sigh. You bask in the glory. YOU are a novelist. Lots of people TALK about writing a novel. YOU actually wrote one.

And then, a day or so after the glow has worn off, you realize you don't know sh*t and the REAL work has yet to begin.

Welcome to the life of a novelist.

I can always tell the person writing their first novel from the person on their 10th. It's a glow thing. Sometimes the person writing their first novel is already knee-deep in realizing how hard it is, but sometimes not. They are learning process. Characterization. Plot. It can even be a darn good novel! I sold my second completed novel, the first one I ever really attempted to put out there. But there's something about my friends--many of them regulars on this blog--who are battle scarred from having done this a few times.

I think it comes from the clarity they have that you never master writing. There are always stuck scenes and things that aren't working. You will always have those moments paused over the cursor when the right word--the exact word--just won't come. You talk to yourself. You drink copious amounts of coffee. When that fails, you drink a martini. When that fails . . . well, I won't reveal the self-destructive habits of my pals. You know who you are.

You trade the glow for sweat equity. And you never stop learning. You claw through the forest . . . to realize, Holy crap . . . there's ANOTHER forest and you are just as blind.

You learn. You get better. But then you gain the wisdom to know where you still have miles to go.

But here's the thing. It's supposed to be like that. It's supposed to be hard. You are supposed to get your a** kicked by the story gods once in a while.

But if you want to play the game, you're not allowed to quit.

So go write today.

Thoughts? What wisdom have you gained now that you've lost the glow?

Hello, Grasshopper

If you read my Demon Baby blog, then you know that the only way he bathes is for me to call it ritualistic cleansing for the Ninja Warrior. And the only way he wears clothes is for me to buy special Ninja outfits (a.k.a. black fleece sweatpants from Old Navy with black turtlenecks). In other words, I have to try to outsmart a three-year-old, which actually isn't really happening since he is clearly outsmarting ME by having me invent a Ninja world for the two of us, but it's what works with this rather unusual kid.

But when it comes to writing, I suppose I'm not so much different. I have to constantly devise ways to outwit my bad habits. I can't surf the 'net until I finish writing a chapter. I can't blog-hop until my own ritualistic blog writing and then brainstorming is over.

I have somehow over the years, trained myself to "see." If Ninjas can see perfectly well at night, then I can see, on a page crowded with words, the ones that need to be sliced away. The "down" in "sat down" (Is my character going to sit on the CEILING?). Words like "just" and "really" and afterall." Brian posted some funny ones over at his blog (nice to see you blogging again!).

I wrote my first novel at age 23, give or take. I got a request for a full from Ruth Cavin at St. Martin's from the first and only query I sent. It took her a long time (many months) to get back to me to say it was too much a psychological thriller and therefore not enough mystery for her list. I tucked the manuscript away and set about training harder. Only after ten years (give or take) did I feel ready to submit something again. I realized that there is no shortcut to being a Ninja. Training and discipline. I am somewhat amused when someone makes their very first attempt to write and promptly sends it off to publishers with no beta readers, no critique group, just like that. Or when someone says, "I have completed three chapters of my first novel . . . do you think if a publisher liked the chapters they would pay me to finish it?" Or "I'm going to self-publish my first novel because it's been rejected three places and I don't really want to go through all this."

Now, that said, what about all those awesome "first novels" published every year? Those sparkling debuts? They're NOT first novels. Chances are those "first novels" represent years of Ninja training and millions of words.

So my Ninja training continues. How about yours?

Writing with Spiderman

I am writing this blog post sort of one-handed. No, I didn't break an arm, but I have a squirmy two-year-old in Spiderman pjs on my lap. He is babbling on about "Loola"--the dog next door (whose actual name is Lily, but don't tell Baby #4 that).

And I write anyway.

A long time ago--about four kids ago--I gave up the myth that I needed certain things in order to be able to create. Quiet. Long stretches of solitude. Coffee (gave it up for geen tea). My desk in a certain order. My lucky bathrobe. Candles burning. Two hands.

Believe me, I sometimes fantasize--not about my not-so-secret infatuation, Anthony Bourdain, but about a quiet retreat, a mountain cabin or a beach cottage, all by myself, where I can write.

But I realized, a long time ago, that writers simply write. The ones who produce write when they are sick, when they are inspired, when they are not inspired. When they have only one hand and Spiderman on their lap.

So how about you? What illusion about what you need have you given up--and write anyway?

Peace,

E