Note to self: when planning to watercolour a sketch, don't sketch it with a water-soluble sketching pencil. Also, don't try to erase lines made with a water-soluble sketching pencil with a gum eraser. Success rate is low.
Other than that the sketching is going alright. I'm experimenting with using colour or just going black and white. I couldn't sketch the kids at the bus stop yesterday because they weren't there. So I settled for sketching a few pictures from my newspaper, and they turned out okay. I'm hoping to get out to the park this weekend and try sketching some other people and/or things.
I know this is meant to be primarily a writing blog, but the writing has been pretty ... not there recently. I've felt drawn to the art side, so I've meandered a bit. Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way, in an interview I heard on tape, mentioned jumping from one creative frying pan into another. When this creative endeavour stops working, she jumps to another one. I feel the same way lately.
I still have plans to complete my manuscript, at least in a usable first draft edition, before CreateSpace's offer ends at the end of July. I also have Associated Content articles to work on and two short stories to write, not to mention I keep bumping into ideas all over. Frustratingly they're mostly bits of things: pieces of setting or background or the like. But I'm writing them down. Hopefully they'll prove useful in conjunction with plots or characters at a later date.
I'm coming back round to the concept of 'Ass In Chair' - in order to get all these projects done I must sit my butt down in the chair and write. My manuscript's not going to edit itself, nor are my stories going to write themselves. A periodic diversion for art is all well and good, but my nose has to go back to the grindstone soon.
Here's hoping you all have a great weekend. See you Monday.
I was reading Sol Stein's 'Stein on Writing' yesterday. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny early spring day and I took the book out into the yard to read for a bit. I read a few chapters, then got to the one about suspense. In it, Stein challnges an author to find the weakest scene in his or her novel, and eliminate it. "It takes guts," he writes, "but do it!"
I did it. There's a scene in The Rise of Umbra that has been bothering me for a while now, and I just grabbed up the closest thing to hand -- an orange mini-highlighter -- and drew a big 'X' through most of the chapter. It was painful, terrifying, and wonderful all in one. But I couldn't heal the patient without cutting him open, so to speak. It's left dangling a bit of continuity, but that can be fairly easily rectified. It's like knocking down a bridge between Town A and Town B. Now I have to find another route to Town B. I have some ideas.
I later received an e-mail from a writer friend who had finished reading this early draft, and he offered some suggestions for improving the chapter I had just carved out. I'll look into that in greater detail, hopefully at some time today.
In the meantime, I need to spend half an hour writing on my short story. Ass In Chair must go into effect, no matter how tired I feel this morning. When I write, I can talk about the process of writing. When I don't, I can't, and that means meaningless blather in here. No one wants that.
I feel kind of like a hack today. The latter half of the week has been rough for me. I've been plagued by old enemies from within, been driven down (and allowed myself to sink) into that bleak bog where dwells the Black Dog.
It's so easy to get down on myself when I've not done my writing for the day. Even if it's just writing for this blog, if I haven't touched it in a week, which is nearly true as of today, I feel like a supreme slacker. Monday I looked into joining a critique group with the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. I'm also considering going back to the Montgomery County Community College's Writers Club, who have a critique group twice a month. I just don't know if I can stand having a room of bright-eyed new writing students circle every single adverb in my piece. There's an article I've been meaning to write for Associated Content about that. "Show, Don't Tell" is about more than adverb usage.
Yet "Self Editing For Fiction Writers" claims to agree, at least in principle, with the idea that adverbs are bad. They contribute to weak writing, the authors say. I believe in moderation. I believe that adverbs are not your enemies as a writer. They're easy to reach on the writer's shelf, but it's best not to get carried away. Don't dump the whole container on your story, but you can sprinkle a 'quietly' or the like here or there without spoiling things.
I've found "Self Editing" to be a very good manual so far. I've read through the first three or four chapters and gone through the exercises provided, and every time I pick up the book it makes me take out my novel manuscript. Which is a good thing, because March is National Novel Editing Month, or NaNoEdMo. I'm not officially participating, but it's a great reminder to get editing/revising. NaNoEdMo demands fifty hours of editing in a month. Having never edited on the scale of a novel before, I have no idea how much that is. With NaNoWriMo I know that 50,000 words is a pretty big deal, especially if you're a member of the "Indiana Jones School of Writing" and fly by the seat of your writerly pants during November.
I had hoped that if I could get my writing legs under me again today I might feel better about life in general. Looking at this post, I think that's a fair bet. Sometimes the best cure for writer's block is to write. Sounds backwards, I know, but having this blog is probably the best thing I've done for my writing life in a long time. I sometimes wonder who's reading this, whether there's any point in my doing this at all. But there is a point, even if I'm not being read. I'm writing. This blog has replaced my daily writing stretch that I did for a few weeks before I realised it was producing something worth sharing sometimes. It's a great way to stretch my writing muscles and grease the wheels of my writer's mind.
So what to write about today? The world is a sunny, bright, white wonderland of snow today. A wonderland by my description perhaps most because I don't need to go out in it. On my desktop is a scene of tropical sandy warmth and if I close my eyes I can feel the sun, hear the ocean, smell the salt on the air.
One of Jack Heffron's prompts invites the writer to envision his or her perfect writing space. Blocked writers often say things like, "If only I had the money to redo the guest bedroom, I'd turn it into a writing space. Then I could write." It's easy to fall into the trap of "if only". Many writers think that they have to quit their jobs and move to the country or the mountains to write a novel. A trip through National Novel Writing Month will cure them of that belief. I've learned that showing up is the most important action when it comes to writing. A writer friend of mine calls it "Ass In Chair", or "AIC". You sit down and you write. It doesn't matter if you're in the mood or not. You don't need to be in the mood to write. If it's sunny, you write. If it's cloudy, you write. If a foot of snow has fallen on your house, you write, then you go shovel snow for a while. When that's done, you come back and write some more.
It can be hard to face the blank page/screen, but all you need to do is put something down. Make a mark. Then make another one. Pretty soon your Muse will come out to play. Can you envision her peeking around the corner, wondering what all that writing is about? She's too curious to stay away for long.
My ideal writing space would be warm and brightly lit, probably in a little cottage by the ocean. I have a backdrop for my computer of a view out of a whitewashed window, framed with light drapes, looking out on a pristine white beach and a crystal blue sea. With a little imagination I can be in that place, that imaginary place of comfort and perfect organisation (as my real-world workspace is a bit cluttered at the best of times), and allow it to refresh me. The sound of seabirds calling drifts through like music, timed by nature to dance along the rush of the ocean up to the shore. I sit at the window with a notebook of thick, beautiful paper, a stunningly crafted fountain pen in my hand, or perhaps at an old-fashioned typewriter, which, in my fantasy, is as easy to type upon as the laptop keyboard I'm really using. My Muse drifts in, etherial in a flowy white dress, and smiles benevolently on me as I write, ideas spilling like wine overflowing a crystal goblet.
But alas, in the real world it's very much winter time. Here it's -3 degrees Centigrade, and to my internal thermometer, anything below 10 C is too cold. And while it's bright and sunny, it's a bit too bright. The sunlight reflects off the newly-fallen snow and can be offensive to eyes that aren't prepared for it. Here in my landlocked town, I won't be hearing the ocean anywhere but in my memory or from a disc of recorded surf sounds. I can warm the place up, put on an extra sweater, bring back the sensations of my fantasy writing space in my mind. With the CD running, I might even begin to think I was in that little cottage, peacefully nestled against the beach, with nothing to interrupt my creativity.
You don't need an ideal space to begin writing. Writing needs only a few tools, which are easily accessible to nearly everyone. People who take time off to write their novels find they suddenly have a lot of other things to do that aren't writing their novels.
So sit down and take half an hour to write something today. It doesn't matter if you call yourself a writer or not. Human beings are, by our very nature, creative beings. You don't have to write great things. You can make poetry with a grocery list. Capture a moment of your kids' lives in a little vignette. Imagine a wonderful place to be. Describe it with words. Don't let the unique ideas in your head get away. We all have interesting things floating about in our heads. Grab one and capture it on the page. You'll be glad you did.
I know this is meant to be primarily a writing blog, but the writing has been pretty ... not there recently. I've felt drawn to the art side, so I've meandered a bit. Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way, in an interview I heard on tape, mentioned jumping from one creative frying pan into another. When this creative endeavour stops working, she jumps to another one. I feel the same way lately.
