Month: July 2024

Pocket Notebook

July 27, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I keep a writer’s notebook, and since I also carry a backpack with me most places, I used to take the WNB with me everywhere.

But honestly, I hardly ever took the full-sized notebook out in public and wrote in it. Just too unwieldy.

I like the idea of having one notebook where I keep all my thoughts, but since I’ve been watching a bunch of notebook “advice” videos, I’ve warmed up to the idea that maybe I need different notebooks for different things and different situations.

I started writing my fiction in my “fiction notebook.” And then I bought a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook for my RPG notes. Then, finally, I bought a little pocket notebook to be my “on-the-go” notebook for random thoughts and ideas. Basically, a substitute for my main writer’s notebook.

I almost bought a Field Notes pocket notebook, but my kids really love these little blank comic book notebooks from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild, and they’re the right size to fit in my pants pockets, so I thought I’d go a little quirkier than Field Notes and get a notebook from the Unemployed Philosophers instead.

There are many to choose from, but I went with the Cloudspotting one to start because cloud-watching is also a hobby I’ve wanted to start for a while, so I thought I could capture my random thoughts and sketch and identify clouds at the same time.

So far, about half-way through the notebook, I’m glad that I’ve started carrying it around almost everywhere I go. First, it allows me to be unshackled from having to take my backpack everywhere in order to have my full-sized notebook with me. I can leave my backpack at home when I go for a walk around the neighborhood or to the library or wherever, and yet I can still jot down some ideas in my cloudspotting notebook if necessary.

I find that I DO jot down things more often now that I’m carrying the pocket-sized notebook. It’s not nearly as weird to take out my little notebook and write a few lines of dialogue for a story or a blogging idea or whatever. And there’s the added bonus of getting to sketch some clouds if the mood takes me. (I don’t always use the cloud-sketching areas, though, so maybe next time I’ll get a more “normal” writing notebook.)

Often, I take the ideas in the pocket notebook and transfer them to my main notebook or use them in my fiction. I end up spending a lot of time during the day thinking about my fiction, about my writing ideas, and this, in turn, keeps my momentum going for my various writing projects. I’m less “stuck” since carrying around my pocket notebook.

In theory, I like the idea of one notebook for everything, but in practice, the multiple-notebooks strategy really does allow me to do more writing throughout the day. I grab my pocket notebook instead of my phone when I’m waiting in line or watching my kids at the park. I flip through it to reread earlier ideas and ruminate on them a bit more, sometimes expanding them, sometimes challenging or changing them. I look at the clouds and try to figure out which type they are, spending a few minutes sketching and paying attention to the weather and the wind.

And yeah, I like that my pocket notebook is a little different, that it’s got a bit more character than an ordinary Field Notes or whatever. I smile when I see the Cloudspotting cover. It’s kind of silly, but the silliness actually makes me want to use it more. I don’t know why, but the whimsy of a “cloud” notebook (or a “Captain’s Log” or “Neverland Passport”) gives me a jolt of pleasure that’s just strong enough to counteract the lure of my phone. I’m trying to break the habit of looking at my phone whenever I get bored, and if it means carrying around a quirky little notebook, then that’s what I’ll do.

And I’m getting more writing done too. Which is the whole point of a notebook anyway.

It Came from the Game Closet: Hobbit Tales from the Green Dragon Inn

July 11, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I teased this ages ago, but it’s finally here. The first installment of what I hope to be a regular series on the blog: “It Came from the Game Closet.”

We have this closet, you see. It is in our living room, and it is quite tall, and it is filled with games. Stuffed. Bursting. Unruly and untapped.

You see, we have filled this closet with games, but we’ve hardly ever played ANY of them, we’ve just let them languish in the game closet and think to ourselves, our heads nodding with pensive melancholy, “Someday… someday…”

And yet, “someday” never comes. We keep putting new games into the closet and never playing them.

Until now.

I’ve opened the weird sliding door of the weird corner closet with the triangle-shaped shelves and I’ve pulled out a game. It’s one of the few games in the closet we’ve actually played, but we haven’t played it in a long time, and it gives me warm fuzzies just looking at the box’s cover art, so it’s the first one I picked.

I wasn’t able to PLAY play it (it’s not really a game that works solo because you need the other players to play the hazard cards), but I did use the cards to make up my own stories and added in a few hazards just to keep it fun. I tried to imagine myself as a hobbit sipping a pint at the Green Dragon, regaling the crowd with my masterful yarn-spinning skills. I felt silly at times, yes, but I had a good time.

Hobbit Tales is a storytelling game, and as such, it lends itself to use as a storytelling tool. As I was playing it solo, I realized how I could use it for my writing and role-playing game prep (I should have realized its use for RPGing sooner, since the game literally bills itself as an aid/companion to the first edition of The One Ring RPG… I feel a bit dumb about not catching that until now).

Each card has a title, a picture, and a quote from Tolkien’s fiction, and thus there are lots of jumping off points for storytelling/prompts for writing and gaming. Yes, there are a gazillion writing prompt-generators out there, digital and analog (I have these really cool Writing Dice, in fact, that my husband got me for Valentine’s Day), but there’s lots of charm in using the simple story seeds from the Hobbit Tales cards.

The open-ended quality of the titles, illustrations, and quotes means they’re flexible enough for any kind of fantasy story, and because they are simple and often archetypal, they prompt lots of symbolic and even mythic ideas.

For instance, one of the random cards I drew “Weather-beaten Traveler.” This immediately prompts me to think of types of weather that could beat someone down: rain showers, snow storm, wind storm, floods, even sandstorms and drought. And the idea of a “traveler” is so basic and yet full of possibilities. The traveler could be a stranger in a strange land, a person seeking a way back home, an explorer, someone on a quest, or someone simply out for a stroll who got caught up in a weather phenomenon.

What would happen if I drew such a card as a prompt for a story, or to give me something to insert into a story where I’m stuck?

I’m currently working on Norse City Limits, an urban fantasy inspired by Icelandic sagas and old 1940s film noir, and my main guy, Grettir, is about to speak to a dead man (could be magic or Grettir could simply be hallucinating due to a drug-induced haze… I don’t know yet). If I wanted to, I could play a free-association game with my “weather-beaten traveler” card.

Perhaps the dead man is a vagrant, caught up in a web of lies and vice that he’s totally alien to, just the wrong man at the wrong time.

Or perhaps he was traveling to find Grettir, got caught and killed by Grettir’s enemies, and now he’s shown up anyway in the form of a corpse.

Or perhaps he wasn’t killed by humans at all. Maybe the weather killed him, an extreme form of weather (and maybe that weather was caused by a spell or a god), and his death is a portent of things to come.

The Hobbit Tales cards are really fun in this regard because they spur ideas, invite me to play with archetypal elements, and provide several points of entry, all without being too specific or “out there” in content. Nothing in these cards will veer my stories wildly off-track or be too wacky.

The uses of these cards for role-playing games is obvious. Instead of a random encounter table, simply draw a card from the deck, or several cards, or a adventure card and a hazard card and try to combine them into a unique encounter, combat, trap, or puzzle.

Sometimes writing prompts from outside sources are too particular or too prescriptive. There are times when that specificity or oddball quality will instigate an exciting and unique story idea, but more often than not, I end up with something that doesn’t fit my sensibilities as a writer.

With the Hobbit Tales cards, I have prompts and ideas that work much better with the kinds of stories I like telling and which can easily be integrated with my current works-in-progress (if need be).

Also, the artwork and aesthetic of the game is charming and a pleasure to interact with. I like taking out the cards and the green coasters and spending time with them.

As a game, Hobbit Tales is low-stakes, congenial, and more about creativity and having fun with mates rather than the competition of who has the most points at the end. Yes, it is “competitive” in that there can be a winner at the end (teller with the highest score at the end of all the rounds), but that’s really not the impetus for playing. It’s much more about enjoying Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, pretending to be a hobbit, and flexing your storytelling muscles.

For people who are intimidated by the improvisational storytelling, the game might not be as enjoyable, or it might take some time to realize that none of these stories will end up being “good.” The fun is in trying to tell the story and include the hazards if necessary, not to be some brilliant performer.

In some ways, it’s a good lesson for everyone, professional storyteller or amateur: Have fun and don’t worry about whether something is “good” or not. Let the creative voice do its thing. Let go of perfection and have a good time.

Dear Mom, the mother in the story is not you (but maybe…)

July 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Avalon Summer is somewhat based on my real childhood, especially in the details of the setting, which is basically my grandparents’ home in Michigan.

And yes, the main character, Sarah, is similar to ten-year-old me.

And yes, there are other characters who have some basis in real people from my childhood.

But no, it’s not an “autobiographical” novel. I made up a lot of stuff. It’s fiction. It borrows from my real life, but it’s not real.

Every story I write borrows from my real life. That’s how writing works, at least for me. Fiction is a stew made from real life experiences, art/literature/music, and imagination. We mix all the things we’ve ever read, seen, and heard with all the things we’ve ever lived through, and we add our own imagination and dreams to the pot, and that’s what we draw from, that’s the elixir we drink when we conjure up these tales.

The mom in Avalon Summer is an actress who is getting divorced from Sarah and Jay’s dad. My mom and dad are so far from this picture as to be ludicrous. The parents in Avalon Summer are total fictions.

But I wanted some conflict between Sarah and her mom, and I wanted a reason for Sarah and Jay to be staying at their grandparents’ in a different state (mom’s shooting a film, so they’ve been shipped off to Michigan), and I wanted to explore the inter-generational conflict between the grandmother and the mom, since the grandmother is super-practical and the mom is a flighty dreamer, and Sarah takes after her mom in some ways, so I decided to create a character who is an independent actress with a penchant for self-absorption.

My real mother is NOTHING like this.

It’s fiction. Make-believe.

And yet–

I do draw from my real life. There are aspects of Jay (the brother in the novel) that are like my real brother. The grandparents are like my real grandparents (and also different). I’ve written stories in which there are husbands and sons and daughters and parents and friends, and these characters do, in fact, share similarities to my own family and friends. How could they not?

When inventing worlds and plots and characters, a writer must draw from somewhere. She must pull from her real, lived experiences in order to make the stories feel real.

And yet, when I’m inventing these characters, when I’m drawing from my own life to give these character depth and authenticity, I’m not thinking about how one day, the people in my life will read these stories and wonder, perhaps, if I am writing about them.

I’m not, of course. I’m writing fiction.

But then again, I am. I’m stealing from my own life. It’s all I know, this life of mine. How could I not use it as fodder for my stories?

I get nervous, when I think about my brother or my husband or my children reading my stories. Not because I’m spilling secrets or whatever, but because they might wonder, “Is that me? Am I like that? Is that what she really thinks?”

It’s not, and no, it isn’t. I’m not writing autobiography.

But I can’t deny that the people in my life are in my stories in small ways. In little details. In mannerisms and aspects of personality. As inspiration and jumping off points.

I don’t want my fiction to fray any relationships, but I also feel compelled to be honest. To write the world as I see it. I have to draw from somewhere, and so I draw from my experiences, from my life.

And the person who is most often in my stories, the person I draw the most from, is, of course, me.

If the mother in Avalon Summer is anyone, she is the part of me that worries that I’m not a very attentive mom. That I’m wrapped up in my own career and not focused enough on my children. That I’m dreamy and flighty and forgetful.

I steal from my own life, from the people in it, but most of all, I steal from myself. The experiences, the relationships, the memories, they are all filtered through me, the writer. If anything is revealed in my fiction, it’s my own heart. My own fears. My own flaws.

Killing Critical Voice: A Re-watch

July 2, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Last November I took the WMG Publishing workshop called “Killing the Critical Voice” with author Dean Wesley Smith. At the end of the workshop, he told us to put a reminder in our calendars to re-watch the workshop in six months. That reminder popped up for me the other day, so I’m going to attempt a re-watch of the workshop.

The first time around, “Killing the Critical Voice” was a HUGE help to my productivity. It gave me a lot more confidence as a writer. Paired with another WMG workshop called “Speed,” I was able to get back into a groove with my fiction that had been previously stalled since my return to teaching last August.

At this point, in June 2024, I’m not quite sure I need to re-kill my Critical Voice — I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the ways Critical Voice often tries to shut me down and make me doubt my work, and I’ve got systems and habits of mind to help battle that doubt — but maybe a little extra boost of confidence will do me good.

As I read and study what other writers and artists say about their creative practice and mindsets, the more it becomes clear that the prolific artists understand that Creative Voice wants to make things, whereas Critical Voice wants to stop things. “Fix” is Critical Voice talking. “Create More” is Creative Voice talking. It’s interesting that the Matthew Dicks book I just finished also emphasized how important it is to create as much as possible. Dicks’s message was that making things leads to making more things. Smith’s Critical Voice workshop has a similar message. Critical Voice exists to stop you. Creative voice is abundant. It wants you to make MORE.

I will say, my fiction writing has been going slowly lately. Feels like Critical Voice is sneaking in. One of my biggest frustrations as a writer is that I can’t seem to produce words as quickly as I’d like. I want SO BADLY to be highly prolific, but I can’t seem to get it going. Every year, I wish I could write four or five novels, and every year, I’m disappointed. I know this is Critical Voice stopping me. Yes, there are days when I don’t have a lot of time, but honestly, I can find the time if I wanted to. But instead, when I have pockets of time, I tell myself, “I don’t have enough time to really get started.” It’s that phrase, “really get started,” that’s a killer.

I am afraid to start. That’s ultimately what’s stopping me. My Critical Voice is whispering negative thoughts all the time: “Why bother starting. It won’t be good enough.”

Good enough for whom?

Well, that’s my problem right there. I want my writing to be judged well. I want to be lauded. And it’s that desire for accolades, for atta girls, that stops me.

If there were no standards to measure up to, I could write more and faster and not let the “lack of sufficient time” stop me from getting a few sentences or paragraphs down.

If I wrote some fiction in all the little pockets of time I had throughout the day, I could probably write 2,000 words per day easily.

IF.

If I used those pockets of time to write. If I followed Bradbury’s advice: “Don’t think.” If I wasn’t afraid of being judged badly.

So maybe I DO need this re-watch of the Killing Critical Voice workshop.

I’m still blocked. I’m still operating from a fear mindset.

Thinking about my goal-setting for 2024, what if I went really big? What if I said, “My goal is to write FOUR novels in the remainder of this year”?

That seems like an impossible goal at the moment, but what if it isn’t? What if I could write 2,000 words per day just by writing whenever I get the chance and not being afraid to write badly? What if I made sure to do the best I could every time I wrote a sentence but not WORRYING if others think my best is “good enough”?

If I could write 2,000 words per day, starting now, I could write four novels this year. That’s crazy. But not crazy if I stop operating by fear and start operating with joy.

Bradbury calls it “gusto.” It’s the Creative Voice wanting to play. What would my writing life look like if I called my Creative Voice to come over and play?

Looking at my kids, they pretty much play every second of their lives. It’s us, the parents, who are trying to shut down the games for five freaking seconds so we can finish a meal or brush some teeth in a reasonable amount of time. But the kids? They are ALWAYS PLAYING. Everything is a game to them.

This play-based mindset is what I must cultivate in my writing practice. Every free moment must be for playing in my creative worlds. If I can make that switch, I really can write four novels this year. If I can make that switch, I can write so much more than I ever thought possible.

I was skeptical that I needed this re-watch of the workshop, but jokes on me. I needed it.

Kill the Critical Voice. Set the Creative Voice free.

Isabel Stories

July 1, 2024 / / 0 Comments

“Once upon a time there was an owl named Isabel, and she lived in a willow tree in the backyard of a little girl named Natalie.”

opening line of every isabel story

I don’t remember when I started telling Isabel stories to my daughter. She was little, maybe two or three. We got the name from a Natalie Merchant song called “The Adventures of Isabel,” and I got the owl because owls are my favorite type of bird, and the adventures I invented happened mostly at night (these being bedtime stories), so it felt only natural that Isabel should be an owl.

Isabel lived in the willow tree in our backyard (which I have very recently discovered is not a willow tree at all but a type of cherry tree… more on this later). Every story started with this fact, and every night (at least in the early days), my daughter would look out the window at the willow tree. Of course, Isabel was never seen because it was nighttime and Isabel would be off doing owl things, but we pretended she lived there. I pretended she lived there. My daughter often asked, “Does Isabel really live in the tree?”

“I think she does,” I would answer. It was, looking back, a cruel answer.

Isabel had a number of friends, from the fireflies that dotted the lawn at dusk, to a wolf named Wilbert and a beaver named Benny. The opening patter (after introducing Isabel and her tree) always included the line, “She had lots of adventures and lots of friends,” so naturally, I had to invent some friends for her to have.

Behind our house is a wetland, and we can’t really see much of it because of the aspens and pines that block our view, but we know it’s back there, and it became the perfect setting for all of Isabel’s animal friends to inhabit. Who knows, maybe a silly, slightly cowardly wolf really does live in that wetland. It’s quite possible a beaver lives there too. And deer. For sure there are deer. And snails and muskrats and all manner of creatures who showed up over the years to be Isabel’s friends.

Even the star bear must exist in the constellations. Isabel has flown into the heavens and met with the stars. She’s been a lot of places.

If only I could remember them all.

I’ve often told myself to write down the Isabel stories. It was always my plan. To preserve them. To remember them. Why else do I write down so much except to help myself remember?

But as the years go by, and my daughter is no longer as little as she once was, the Isabel stories have faded. I remember afterimages, little turns of phrase, a few rhymes and rhythms. But I don’t remember them all in their fullness. They are piecemeal stories now. And I reprimand myself for not writing them down when they were full and vital and alive.

I fear it may be too late. What if I can’t remember them all?

There’s a sense of desperate urgency to this because the Isabel tree must be cut down.

This is not a metaphor.

It really needs to be cut down. It’s four trunks all split off from each other, and one of those trunks is breaking away and rot is setting in, so the tree service guys have told us either we cut it down ourselves or nature will take it out for us. Storms have been bad lately. High winds. Random tornadoes out of nowhere. The tree wouldn’t fall on our house, but it may fall on our power lines and back fence. If nature takes it down, it will cause destruction.

That’s not what we want. Not for the tree. Not for us.

So we said, “Okay.” We told the tree guys to cut it down, to leave a bit of its trunks so we can try to grow button mushrooms, to stack the wood so we can use it for bonfires. We’ll remember the tree and try to honor it.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to see it go. It doesn’t mean I’m not crying as I type these words.

“What about Isabel?” my ten-year-old daughter asked me the other day when we told the kids about cutting down the tree.

What about Isabel? I thought.

“She’ll be alright,” I answered. “She’ll fly to a new tree.”

But I knew what my child was really asking. What about our stories? What about the opening to each of those tales? How can we tell another Isabel story without the willow tree?

Once upon a time there was an owl named Isabel who lived in a willow tree in the backyard of a little girl named Natalie…

Turns out it wasn’t a willow tree. The tree guys told us it was a cherry tree. We were wrong all these years.

Maybe that’s a metaphor. In my stories, Isabel always lived in a willow tree. We were wrong about the tree in our backyard, but we weren’t wrong about the story tree. The tree in our backyard was always more than just a tree. It was part of a story, and the story isn’t bound by what’s growing out of our yard, it isn’t bound by what is ephemeral, by what lives for a span and then dies. The story exists outside of that finite realm. It is more than a cherry tree succumbing to rot.

It is a love letter, a bond, a world created between me and my daughter that can never be cut down. It exists even if the real tree no longer stands. And it exists even if I have forgotten to write it down.

The Isabel story lives in my heart. In my daughter’s heart. Two trunks growing out of the same source.

I can hear the chainsaws cutting outside my window. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken.

I might not remember every word and jot of the old Isabel stories, but I remember enough. And I still have time to write down what I remember. As the tree is hewn into firewood, I can replant its stories into a new soil. I can do what I’d always planned on doing.

The old stories don’t have to be forgotten, even if what I remember is piecemeal. I can write them down, and Isabel can, indeed, fly to a new tree. The real willow tree. The tree my daughter and I both share. Two trunks, growing from one source.

Original header artwork

Copyright 2015 Chloe Bensinger

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