Category: writing process (Page 9 of 15)

Starting a new notebook

January 3, 2021 / / 0 Comments

My daughter watched as I began a new writer’s notebook today. She wondered if it was a new notebook because it was a new year. I told her it wasn’t; I just happened to finish my old notebook the other day, so now it was time to start a new one. I showed her my “guardian spirit” from the old notebook (I chose J.R.R. Tolkien last time, because I started the old notebook in September and therefore felt very much like an academic who’d rather be niggling around in my imaginary worlds than grading papers), so my daughter decided to make me a guardian spirit for my new notebook.

The first creation was made from recycled paper and was three-dimensional (which wouldn’t quite work on the inside cover of a spiral notebook), so she tried again and made a colorful picture from an old piece of paper towel. I decided it was perfect for reminding me to be playful and use whatever material might be lying around.

After adding the guardian spirit, I copied over my list of “Books to Read” from the previous notebook into the new one. This is a ritual I always do when starting a new writer’s notebook. My list of books to read is LONG, so it takes at least four pages to fit all the books, plus I leave extra room for new books that I’ll add as the weeks go by. I used to use Goodreads to keep track of my books, but when I said goodbye to social media, I also said goodbye to Goodreads.

Honestly, Goodreads made me anxious. I didn’t like people knowing about my reading habits; it made everything seem very performative, as if I had to play a part (“self-published fantasy author”) instead of just being myself. Not that I read weird books or anything; I have nothing to hide, LOL! But it was just stressful having my books-to-read and my currently-reading books all out in the open. I felt pressure to add books to my lists so I could been seen to have all the same books as everybody else.

(A lot of this was tied to my work as a self-published author. Goodreads was a marketing tool as much as it was a personal one, so all my interactions on the site felt driven by that marketing aspect. I felt compelled to keep up with the latest self-published books as a way to show my support for the community. I’m not opposed to supporting other authors — not by any means! — but my books-to-read list became more about that than about what I really wanted to read.)

Even more stressful was getting updates on other people’s reading progress. I have a bad problem with envy and jealousy, so I would get super envious when I saw other people reading more books than me, or when I saw other self-published authors getting all kinds of good reviews. It was not a healthy way to spend my time, and it wasn’t making me feel good about my reading (or my writing).

When I decided to keep track of my books using my notebook — and keep it private — everything changed. I started reading whatever the heck I wanted, and I let myself go down strange reading paths that had nothing to do with my public persona as a fantasy author. I’ve been much more prolific as a reader since I’ve stopped doing the Goodreads challenge thingy: I don’t set any goals for myself, I just try to read as much as I can. No longer is that little bar graph thing on Goodreads taunting me and reminding me that I’m behind on my goal. Now I can just read and see what happens, and be excited by all the reading I’ve done. After I finish a book, I mark it as “Read” and write the date I finished. It’s my big, beautiful, analog reading list, and I love it.

For the record, I’m not opposed to others using Goodreads or the reading challenge. My husband still uses Goodreads like a boss, and it’s a useful tool for him. I just know that it didn’t work for me.

So now every time I start a new writer’s notebook, I get to use the first few pages for my book list, and it’s a nice little ritual: I write “Welcome to the notebook” and the current month and year on the first page, then I start my “Books to Read” list on the second page. Four or five pages later, I have all these book titles calling out to me, and whenever I’m ready to start a new book, I go to my list and see what stands out. The notebook is no longer blank; it starts off newly-christened with a gloriously long list, and I feel as if I’ve accomplished something (even though all I’ve really accomplished is copying a list).

A new year, a new notebook. I’m ready for 2021.

Do I need to have something to write about?

December 27, 2020 / / 1 Comment

I often tell my students that in order to write they don’t have to have “something to say.” Instead of trying to figure out what to write, they should just write, and let the act of writing help them discover their own thoughts. Writing is magical in this way. Even if we don’t have “something to write about,” when we put pen to paper and start writing, even if it’s just “blah, blah, blah, I don’t know what to write,” if we keep going, if we keep moving the pen, then eventually, our thoughts start to form, they go from being invisible to visible, from formless blobs into recognizable shapes.

This happened to me recently during a training session for 826Michigan. We had to write about a moment when we learned something, and I honestly couldn’t think of any such moment. I’m sure I’ve had many, but as I sat there in the midst of the training session, my mind was a total blank. I wracked my brain for something, anything to write about, but nothing was coming, and the timer on the computer screen was ticking. So instead of waiting for that “something” to appear fully-formed in my head, I just started writing. I wrote about how I couldn’t think of anything, of how I was sure I’d learned many, many things in my life, but no particular moment stood out, and on and on I wrote, very stream-of-consciousness. And then — as I’ve told my students so often before — suddenly an idea came into my head, as I was writing. The writing pulled the memory out of my head: a memory I NEVER would’ve thought of, even if I had sat and thought for hours.

But here’s the kicker: Even though I tell my students about this phenomenon, about how writing IS thinking, and that we don’t have to wait until we have something to say, that we can just start writing and let ourselves think on the page, even though I preach this over and over, I STILL end up forgetting it when it comes to my own writing, to my own craft. Physician, heal thyself!

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to start blogging everyday, but as you might see if you scroll down through this page, I have not been particularly successful at reaching this goal. There are spurts here and there, where I manage to write for a few days in a row, or nearly. But then there are huge gaps. Weeks. Months. I backslide continually. And then I always resolve to get back on the horse and try again. Which is good, in a way. But despite my best intentions and resolve, the thing that trips me up is that I don’t know what to write about. I come up with schemes (“write a poem everyday for thirty days!”), but they never work. I’m afraid to write those thirty poems because most days, I don’t know what to write about. I don’t have anything to say. So I don’t put my fingers on the keyboard because I don’t have any ideas. It’s the same problem as the one I had in that training session: I can’t think of anything. My mind is blank.

But what I’ve missed is the simple, true fact that writing IS thinking. I don’t need to have anything to write about. I can just write. I can write and let ideas come as they may, and in that act of writing, I will discover what I have to say. Just as I’m doing right now. When I sat down at my computer this evening, I had no idea what I would blog about, I only knew that I needed to blog. If I was going to make “blog everyday” a thing, then I needed to do it. Not think about it, not wait for an idea, not even try to come up with an idea. I simply needed to start writing.

Metaphors: Writing as rambling, wandering. Writing as discovery. Writing as a physical act, not just a mental one.

And here I am, blogging. Writing. I tell my students all the time, “To ‘essay’ means to find one’s way.”

(I stole this quote from Barb Rebbeck and my high school AP Lang teacher).

I need to remember my own advice.

Magna Carta for Fantasy

June 18, 2020 / / 0 Comments

The “Magna Carta” is an idea I discovered in No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty.

Basically, it’s a list of all the things — plot elements, character types, settings, themes, language, etc. — that you enjoy in a story. Then, with said list as inspiration, you can begin crafting your own story, filling it with as many things from your magna carta as possible, thus ensuring that your novel will be something you enjoy writing. We are all readers first, after all, so if we write what we enjoy reading we will create books that excite us.

I taught a Creative Writing class a couple of years ago, and I used the Magna Carta idea with my students (we also did the Anti-Magna Carta, which is from Baty’s book as well). I modeled it for them by creating my own Magna Carta for fantasy literature. I am not sure it’s an exhaustive list of the things I like, but it includes many elements that I enjoy. Some of them are easily found in today’s fantasy genre, but some (“Stories where violence doesn’t always save the day” or “Mothers and non-traditional protagonists”) are harder to come by (at least to my knowledge).

My Magna Carta for fantasy stories:

  • Magical treasures
  • Lots of magic (but it’s not commonplace)
  • Magic that is numinous, mysterious, and unpredictable
  • Magic that involves transformations
  • Lost/forgotten empires
  • Places/people/things being lost to the mists of time
  • Dragons
  • Female characters being skillful/having professions
  • Characters who aren’t fighters still having an impact on the story
  • Stories where violence doesn’t always save the day
  • Desert settings
  • Cosmopolitan cities
  • Mysterious towers
  • Sinister magicians
  • People who can do a special craft
  • Musicians
  • Music
  • Dungeon crawls
  • Writing that is poetic and mythic
  • Mothers and non-traditional protagonists
  • Characters with lofty dreams
  • Highly flawed characters who have to persevere
  • Characters who need to atone
  • Stories about forgiveness
  • Stories where characters go on an inner journey as well as an outward journey
  • Journeys to strange, new lands

I’m especially interested in women who have professions that aren’t the trope-y, “masculine” professions like assassin or soldier. I want to read (and write) stories about women who are craftspeople, midwives, brewers, scholars, cartographers, apothecaries, and more. I’m interested in women who are mothers who also GET TO HAVE ADVENTURES. Or perhaps a fantasy novel with an elderly person as the protagonist. I’m curious to see how such non-traditional protagonists would thrive in a fantastical world filled with danger and magic. I feel as if far too often, the “ordinary” folk who are tasked with a quest are either A.) young people or B.) “ordinary” men who used to be soldiers/warriors/wizards/ etc. George R.R. Martin explored some of these non-traditional protagonists in his A Song of Ice and Fire series (characters like Sansa and Catelyn), but he still stayed mostly in the realm of high-born people. Not many POVs from regular folk.

However, even though I’m interested in “regular folk” (especially mothers and elderly people), this doesn’t mean I want a low-magic story. What I really love seeing is how ordinary people deal with the numinous, the extraordinary, the strange, the magical. And preferably, they deal with these things in a non-violent way. Not that I don’t enjoy sword-play and action scenes (I do), but it would be nice to have more fantasy that didn’t lead to climactic battles and bloodshed. I’m guilty of this tendency myself; Merlin’s Last Magic, thus far, has lots of violence and killing. But in future stories and novels, I’m interested in exploring how to tell a rousing tale that doesn’t end with a big battle or a violent death.

Overall, the Magna Carta is a useful tool for writers. It’s not meant to limit or restrict writers from pursuing an idea that might not fit their “preferred list,” but instead, it gives them a clearer idea of what they love and what they’re interested in exploring. The things on my magna carta get me excited to start writing; they stir my imagination and feed my muse.

Get Lost

June 7, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I am self-critical of my work. I am a perfectionist, so if my stories or essays or blog posts aren’t amazing/wonderful/mind-blowing/totally awesome, then I get down. Sometimes very down. I consider not writing anymore (or at least not sharing my writing anymore). Many days, I feel like a failure because I don’t have a big audience or lots of five-star reviews.

As a result of this self-criticism, I’ve been on the lookout lately for new metaphors to help me approach the writing process and the work I’m doing. Bradbury had this metaphor in Zen and the Art of Writing where he wrote about “stepping on landmines” first thing in the morning and then spending the rest of the day picking up the pieces. In other words, explode yourself — your memories, your ideas, all the things you’ve ever experienced — and see what pieces you can find to write about. Elsewhere in his interviews with Sam Weller, he mentioned jumping off a cliff and “building your wings on the way down.” I do like both of these metaphors (especially the wings one) because they advocate for courage, for jumping into the unknown, for not being afraid to do something shocking and see what happens. But both of them are inadequate for me because I don’t quite have that much courage, and also because they imply a goal or end-game at the heart of creative work. Jumping off the cliff means, “Build those wings or you’ll go SPLAT.” Stepping on the landmine and picking up the pieces means, “You had better pick up a good piece or you’re screwed.” They seem to be saying, “If you fail, then you’ll be toast.”

For a self-critical perfectionist like me, that’s not a great message. Not only do I have a fear of failing, but I think most of my work is a failure. I jump off the cliff but don’t build very good wings. I step on the landmine and can’t pick up the right pieces.

This is why I’m in need of new metaphors. Metaphors that encourage me and help get me past the fear of failure. Austin Kleon uses a garden metaphor for creative work in his book Keep Going. I like the garden metaphor, but there’s still a goal inherent in that one: what happens if I’m a terrible gardener and all my plants die?

I need a metaphor that has imperfection built-in.

This is why I’m attracted to the idea of writing as a form of “getting lost” or “wandering.” The wanderer, or rambler, has no fixed goal, no endpoint. She isn’t trying to get anywhere. For her, the whole point is to GET LOST. Wandering into the wilderness, adventuring with only a vague idea of where she’s going, traveling with a torn and faded map (ancient and indecipherable in parts). She’s willing to lose her way, to stumble through the forest.

What would writing look like that embraced this kind of ethos: that wandering is good, that getting lost is a happy accident?

I know the conventional wisdom would be that “wandering” and “getting lost” will result in a muddled, messy, incoherent story. Some might say, “That’s okay,” and suggest writers then do a lot of revision. But I’m getting less and less keen on doing major revisions in my writing. It takes me a long time to write stories and novels (due to lack of time); the thought of spending years and years writing and revising the same book sounds unpleasant. My goal is to write clean first drafts (minus the occasional typos and wonky sentences). By “cycling” through my draft as I write, I can avoid the need for major revisions.

And even more so, I think that “fix it in revision” is actually antithetical to the “getting lost” ethos. It suggests that the wandering is a mistake, something that needs to be fixed. If I have a destination in mind, then yes, getting lost is probably bad and I would need to course-correct. But what if I have no destination? What if the whole point is just to wander? To ramble and see where I end up? In that case, the “fix it in revision” model doesn’t work. If I’m not trying to get anywhere in particular, then what is there to fix?

This is what I like about the “wandering and getting lost” metaphor. When I go out for a walk, I often just walk around; I don’t have a fixed destination. I just ramble. But in my rambling, I discover beautiful things, I feel a wonderful sense of freedom, I get to enjoy myself without thinking about a “destination.” What if my own writing process could be like this? What if I could ramble, discover new things, feel that freedom, and enjoy myself? Would all my stories turn out like garbage? Would all my books end up incoherent and sloppy?

Maybe they would. Maybe this metaphor is not a good one, in the end.

But I kinda want to try. If nothing else, it’s a useful image for me to keep in my mind. When I sit down to write, I’m like the adventurer who wants to experience something new. I’m the wanderer with no fixed destination, only a desire for discovery. I’m the rambler who just wants to ramble, not get anywhere in particular. And by rambling, by getting lost along the way, I might discover something I never could’ve imagined otherwise.

A Wizard of Earthsea and How Great Books Can Inspire My Writing

August 12, 2018 / / 0 Comments

earthsea_coverWhen I wrote the second draft of The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, I was also reading The Last Unicorn. Even though my story and Beagle’s had little in common, the music of his prose, the vitality of his world made an impact on me while I was writing. I wanted my book to capture some strain of the magic that I felt The Last Unicorn possessed. Even though I knew my own novel would never equal Beagle’s masterpiece, I wanted to try. In short, The Last Unicorn was inspiring. It energized my writing, and I found myself more joyful while I read it, and more joyful while I was writing my own story.

It’s no secret that I’ve had trouble finishing my second novel, Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess. I’ve had babies, become the mother of three children all under the age of five, struggled to navigate the demands of teaching, mothering, and adulting, and all the while, I’ve felt less joyful and more overwhelmed. My writing time has evaporated, and with it, a lot of my enthusiasm. I’ve still managed to push on, to write even when it feels like a slog through the Swamps of Sadness, but without that spark of joyfulness that I felt when drafting The Thirteen Treasures. So this second book is taking an eternity to finish.

Curiously, at this very moment, I’m reading another classic of fantasy literature (A Wizard of Earthsea), and I’m finding myself suddenly joyful and energized again, inspired to sit down and work on the draft of my own novel.

Just like what happened with The Last Unicorn.

Le Guin’s prose, the depth of her world and her themes, the way I become completely immersed and lost in her story, the way it feeds my imagination — all of these things remind me of what it’s like to be a fantasy writer, to dream up characters and places and fantastical creatures. And when I do sit down to write, I feel nourished by Le Guin’s story. Great writing makes us as writers see what’s possible, what can be achieved with words, and when I know there are storytellers out there who have reached greatness, then in some small way, I hope I can reach it too. I know I won’t; that’s not the point. It’s the striving for greatness that gives me energy, that helps me find joy in my writing.

I am, at times, haunted by Ray Bradbury’s maxim to “write with gusto.” So much of my writing over the last year and a half has not been filled with much gusto. But when I read a great book — fantasy or otherwise — I gain some measure of gusto, some “kick-joy” (as Kerouac? would say), and I begin to wonder why I don’t just read great books all the time. If these books work like a tonic on my brain, why wouldn’t I imbibed every day? Why am I spending time on things that don’t fill me up with this kind of excitement and awe?

I suppose it’s because we don’t know which books will contain the magic until we start them, and I’m the sort of reader who hates to abandon a book once I’ve started it. There are a few that I DNF, but they are very few. And I also feel obliged to read widely in my genre, most particularly the books being published right now; I can’t exactly restrict myself to the Great Classics of Fantasy if I’m trying to keep up with what’s being written currently. Of course, I’ve read some current fantasy that has indeed been the magical-kind-of-great that I’m describing in this post, but without the benefit of time and distance, it’s hard to know which of these books will be The Ones, and which won’t.

Maybe I need to constantly have a great book on hand, for those times when my verve seems a little limp. I can always read more than one book at a time; I’ve been that kind of reader since I was a kid. But now I realize that I DO need to keep pumping blood into my imagination via these great books. I need Ged — naming the otak, struggling against the shadow, overcoming his pride — and others of his kind to journey with me, keeping me on the path of adventure, like Gandalf and the dwarves leading Bilbo to the Lonely Mountain.

First Lines (a writing exercise)

August 5, 2018 / / 0 Comments

3019961773_d35178a75a_bThis is one I do with my students — and I do it myself. It’s just a great warm-up exercise, or a way to get ideas when a story or essay feels stuck. I did not invent this exercise (I think it might come from Notebook Know How by Aimee Buckner, or from some other, much smarter teachers than me. James Scott Bell has a variation of it, I think).

It’s called 10 Lines/Try Ten:

In a notebook, write ten opening lines for whatever piece you are working on (or just ten opening lines for ten potentially different pieces). Because you’ve got to write ten unique lines, you don’t labor too intensely over any single sentence, and it totally breaks the blockage that can sometimes happen when you’re starting a piece and staring at the blank page. By coming up with ten openings, you take the pressure off of having that One Perfect Line that can sometimes cripple the writing process. I encourage my students (and myself) to even try to go past the number ten — push things to eleven or even fifteen — and see what comes out. Often the best line is towards the end, when we’ve moved past cliche or the first, somewhat stale thought. Other times, I’ve found that it’s the third or fourth line that really grabs me, and I don’t bother with the other six. I just keep writing from the line that works and that gets me excited.

Here are some first lines I did as a creative exercise. None of these (as yet) are part of any larger story, but I just needed to work my imagination for a bit, so I came up with these. (N.B.: I didn’t even do ten lines, just five. But even these five did enough to get my creative juices flowing.)

1. Tetzi knew she should’ve hidden the body somewhere else.

2. Aoife knew she was adopted, and she never tired of telling their parents so.

3. I was once a bird. Uncle tells me it was just a dream, but he’s a liar.

4. It’s hard fighting duels when you’re drunk.

5. If Lao thought having two children was hard, he was in for a surprise once he had three. By the time he had five, he was ready to begin looking for a new home and a new wife to take care of them all. The five came to Lao not by the natural methods, but by the sign outside his door that said “Master,” and the reputation that preceded it.

Each of these opening lines gets me excited to keep writing, to find out who these characters are and what will happen to them next. Are they perfect lines? No, not by a long shot. But they help un-stick my mind, get me thinking about character, conflict, and the makings of a particular setting. Sometimes a First Lines exercise will be just that — an exercise, something to spur creativity — but it can also serve as a way to begin a new story or chapter. For me, #2 and #3 feel like they might be the beginnings of short stories. The other three openings are interesting, but my mind doesn’t really have anywhere for them to go. Yet.

What’s nice is that I can keep these lines in my notebook and revisit them. Maybe in a few months I might find a story behind one of them; I might have more inspiration to keep writing that story. Ten Lines/Try Ten is a great way to be playful and take the pressure off, and yet, I also find it fruitful for my actual writing; it can give me the start of a new story. Because beginnings can often be so hard, it’s nice to open my notebook and find a beginning ready-made, waiting for me to continue the tale.

« Older posts Newer posts »

Original header artwork

Copyright 2015 Chloe Bensinger

Bookshop

I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

© 2024 Jennifer M. Baldwin

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑