10 Recession Beating Personal Grooming Tips for Writers(!)

1: Save on manicures and nail trimming by typing extremely fast for long periods. If you participate in the yearly NaNoWriMo challenge you will automatically lose all your fingernails.

2: Dispense with face creams, anti-wrinkle products and Botox. This will automatically give your face a deeply etched, lived in look that will suggest wisdom and gravitas. This otherwise haggard, drained appearance will enhance your literary kudos and make you appear a serious author.

(Caveat: If you want to appear on the bestseller list, or in society pages, get an exorbitant book deal,  sell the film rights on your first effort at a novel, and appear on I’m a Celebrity ignore the above and get a complete makeover and facelift/get your younger sister to impersonate you, even if you are a man.)

3: For Men, stop shaving, grow a beard. See number 2.

4: Save an extraordinary amount on clothes, buy two tracksuits and wear them in rotation. If you are serious about your writing you will always be at your desk writing anyway and will never go out. In the month of November, if you are doing NaNoWriMo don’t bother to get dressed at all, wear your pyjamas all the time. You will not only save on clothes but on washing. This means you are a champion for the environment since you are not putting on the washing machine or travelling anywhere. This should make you feel super.

5: If you get an agent, take a risk and buy a smart casual outfit. If you don’t yet have a book deal go to a charity outlet. The charity shops do a wonderful line in jackets with attitude, for example, leather, tweed, floral. Choose the correct one for your genre. If you can’t stretch to charity shop chic, send your younger sister out to meet the agent.

6: Avoid hair cuts. They make you lose your power. If you are a real writer you will be more of an arty hippy type anyway and growing your hair long will promote that impression. You may trim your own fringe if it gets in your eyes and prevents you from writing. DO NOT. DO NOT trim the bit that you twist around your fingers while waiting for inspiration. If you cut that piece off you may never produce anything of quality again.

7: Have showers, they are wonderful places to get your creative head in gear and have the added benefit of make you smell slightly better after endless days in the same room with half eaten ham sandwiches. While baths have been accredited with give Archimedes his inspired Eureka! moment, they should be reserved for those working on intergenerational sagas only.

8: Brush your teeth, several times a day but try not to drip toothpaste all over your keyboard when you trail back into your writing room from the bathroom while forgetting what you are doing. As a rule, try to remove all evidence of your body parts/dna/hair/skin/nails from your keyboard each day as it may irretrievably clog up.

9: Make your own deodorant. There are many recipes on the internet for natural inexpensive homemade deodorants. Don’t search for/google these recipes. You are supposed to be writing, not wasting your time on fruitless googling. Most of the recipes include bread soda and shea butter. If you don’t happen to have shea butter use ordinary butter instead, its probably more or less the same. And speaking of fruit, oranges and lemons are often used for household cleaning so I’m sure if you squash an orange into your bread soda- butter concoction it will be work beautifully. Failing that add a kiwi. Don’t worry about the pithy bits or the black seeds, you are alone, writing, no-one can see you.  Anyway you want to be pithy, don’t you? If you really must, write and sell your recipe for homemade deodorant on the web. Once you get paid you will be able to buy some plain biscuits to dip in your hot water.

10.  Does my bum look big in this writing chair? Exercise. You do not need a gym. You can burn 5000 calories a day by participating in NaNoWriMo or churning out a YA novel series at speed. (You need to churn out YA novels at speed so that your target audience hasn’t grown up, moved onto the next bright thing, before you finish). Typing quickly is a terrific way of keeping yourself in shape. Get in the habit of doing ten star jumps every time you lose the flow of your piece. Do 50 press ups every time you think of giving up. Anything is easier than 50 press ups, even writing. Rotate your eyes every ten minutes to prevent goggle-eyed-itus. Rotate your neck so that it doesn’t jam in one position. Rotate your ankles and stretch your legs frequently so that your walking muscles haven’t deteriorated beyond use by the time you finish your novel. Good luck with your personal grooming and one final tip – never use webcam!

Running for my writing life

I did it. I jumped in. Which is why I haven’t been posting for a while. I mean NaNoWriMo, which is the National Novel Writing Month for which many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of crazed people with Obsessive Writing Disorder pledge to themselves to write 50,000 words on a new project in just one month. Of course tribute must also be paid to NaNo Rebels who bend the rules a little bit in terms of project (continuing with an already established project) or wordcount (adjusting the goal accordingly).

I jumped in. Mum of four less than double digited offspring, two who have already delightfully celebrated their birthdays in this auspicious month and just two days apart, the eldest, and youngest, my bookends.

For the first week of my novel writing challenge I kept to the obligatory 1667 word count faithfully. I chose, as my project a lighthearted domestic space chase, a fantasy in the parallel universes of Susan, the perfect mother and later a Housewife Warrier Princess. She is unceremoniously visited by her Fairly God Father who she renames Dave who takes her through time, space, and the freezer department in Tesco’s on a quest to keep her intact, as she is the disintegrating Housewife with a Half-Life stuck in a temporal loop. She must reintegrate pieces of herself that are stuck in parallel universes in order to survive.

Glad you asked? Aren’t you? Where Telepathy is the route telly’s take to keep fit and sentimental whisks save the day this fabulous story, surely is, for me, a distraction from my own everyday concerns. But one of my everyday concerns is now my wordcount. And I come to you today from the sorry position of being 5000 words behind (BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE.) (Especially me or I’ll panic).

Have you ever been in a situation where you are on a long walk, perhaps a hill walk over a few hours with friends. You realise early on that you are not as fit as they are and you begin to trail behind. You try to catch up but in the process you wear out and just as you reach them and are ready to catch your breath, they stand up and walk on again. Very dispiriting. That’s a little bit of what it feels like being behind. Luckily on Nano there are many people slipping behind, rallying, catching up, slipping back again. We encourage each other, we accompany each other, we keep going. There are many mothers that are taking on this challenge alongside the challenges that raising a family bring, as well as alongside their other endeavours. We will do what we can, we will move the goalposts if we really need to.

Taking up this seemingly impossible challenge (for the first time may I add) has been a very interesting and worthwhile experience for many reasons. These are some of the valuable things I’ve learned.

1: I can write without editing,

2: That its okay to get it all out and worry about it later

3: I am a writer

4: The more I write, the more I want to write

5: The more obstacles that come my way, the more I have become sure that this is what I want to do

6: That something I’m not sure about at the time sounds Really Good later

7: How to ignore the doubt demons

8: I can actually fit 1667 words into any mad kind of day.

I feel as if I am running, running, running both in my daily life and in my Nanowrimo quest (as is the woman in the story in her quest). I am running for my writing life because the more I do it, the more I know I want to. I am learning to writing without fear (jotting down my niggles in a seperate document and then writing anyway). I know now what is possible. I am going to take all that’s possible and run with it.

The Evangelical Writer: Why you need to believe in yourself

Be your own champion

Evangelism. It can be scary. It can put you off a nice walk in the park. It can make you squirm uncomfortably at the front door. Or it can be fascinating and illuminating to see how the power of belief can make someone turn their life around, dedicate themselves absolutely to what they believe in. At its worst it can become fanaticism, extremism, terrorism. At its best it can be selfless dedication to a philanthropic cause.

Evangelism is like being possessed by a virus of belief. You want to spread the word to everybody, you want them to feel as you do. I felt that way recently when I joined twitter and after the first self-conscious new kid on the block feeling, (tagging onto people and hoping they would be nice about it) I began to discover what a wonderful place it was. As a writers forum it is invaluable on a practical, social, mental and emotional level. There is the opportunity to meet so many diverse but helpful, co-operative and compassionate people. I began to tell other people about twitter and what I had gained from it, how it had changed my writing life but I could tell from their glazed expressions that my fervour was making them a little bemused. I couldn’t get them to buy into it. Recently a writing friend Sally Clements began expounding on NaNoWriMo (for the uninitiated it’s where you sign up to write a 50,000 novel in the month of November). She explained super-exhuberantly why she thought it was so great, what it meant to her, and why I should try it. (See her great NaNoWriMo post. At first I backed slowly away, but her enthusiasm was infectious and I began to think that I could, quite possibly give it a go. (I’m still lurking in the doorway on that one, but I might dash in at the last minute, you never know!)

Evangelism is defined as crusading zeal in support of a cause. As a writer you need to be an evangelist. You need to believe in your writing, in your story, in your characters. You need to be utterly convinced and convincing. You need make others suspend their disbelief and travel with you. You need them to buy into your reality and make it their own for a time.

To write requires self-belief. But in the creeping forward towards an obscure point that is the story or novels end all writers must encounter doubt. The way is not clear, the walls and floor are not solid, and until you reach the endpoint you can’t be sure that the story you have made is coherent, has integrity, says what you want it to say. And even then, you cannot be sure if your message will resonate with others or even reach them.

And when your book is written, you have to go one step further. Now you have to spread the word. You may need to convince an agent or publisher that your story is one they want to share. You need to travel virtually or physically to meet people, to let the world know about your book, to talk and blog and tweet about it, to be its champion. All this in the face of your own doubts and insecurities. A crusade is often a battle, it isn’t easy, it flies in the face of obstacles and resistance. You need to Feel the Fear and do it anyway. If you really want to be a writer and to be read, you have to be the evangelist of your own unique story. Go to it.

Related

Dan Holloway (Blogging at:The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes) has an excellent post on the relationship of doubt and creativity and Jemi Fraiser (Just Jemi) asks us to consider our writing fears.

Who’s Cool

My next post is going to be an indepth psychological analysis of evangelicism and how it relates to writing. (Betcha can’t wait!)  But in the meantime here’s this nugget of wisdom from the Four young ones.

Er (4yo girl): ‘Boys think they’re cool but they aren’t cool’

R (7yo boy): ‘Boys think they’re cool and they are cool’

Ev (8.5 yo boy) to  girl:

‘Girls think they’re cool. Some girls are cool but you’re not one of them.’

Baby (1.5 boy): ‘Cool, cool’

R to older brother: ‘You’re cooler than me, way cooler’

Me: ‘Are babies cool?’

Baby: ‘Yes,  shoes’.

5 ways to be a writer when you’re not writing.

When you're not writing, get into your writing mind

You may burn to be a writer, you may understand that it is your true calling and be prepared to put in the hours tapping away on the keyboard or scribbling with your pen but depending on your work situation and personal/family circumstances, there may be stretches of time when you are not able to be physically present with your manuscript. It’s still possible to be in your writing head and to progress with your story or piece even when away from it.

1: Let things simmer (incubation 1)

Psychological research has identified incubation as one of the key elements in creativity. Incubation is defined as ‘a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time’ ^[2]. Seabrook Rachel, Dienes Zoltan (2003). Incubation in Problem Solving as a context Effect (Wiki)

Incubation is the period between your conscious and practical outlining of your piece and the point where you come up with the hook or the usual slant on your proposed story. It’s the time when all your ideas mingle and coalesce and form unusual associations.

Writer Louise Wise recently commented on this blog Once I’m in my writer’s head my best writing has come from cooking the family dinner, wiping a 5 year old’s runny nose and mopping up a grazed knee! Somehow in between all that I’ve written a lovey dovey scene! Multi tasking? No sweat!!

Let things simmer

Sometimes when you are finding it difficult to begin or to progress with your writing you may just need to give your ideas time to incubate. While going about your daily chores, travelling, listening to music etc you can still orient your mind towards your writing project and with a sort of Zen wait and watch approach be receptive to new ideas rising to the surface of consciousness. By placing the elements of your story into a pot and letting it simmer you may find resolutions to your sticky writing problems, you may find an exchange between characters rising fully formed from the stew or a plot angle from a real news story attaching itself successfully to a stuck place in your novel.

2: Get the pot really hot: Engage in a cultural activity (incubation 2)

One writer I know makes it a policy to set aside time for regular cultural trips to museums, art galleries, music recitals, readings, and dance shows. Exposing yourself to a hotch potch of creative ideas allows you to come at stories from different angles, to experience them through a number of senses, to see the world upside down and back to front. Benedict Carey in the New York Times recently wrote on How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect. The article outlines psychological research which shows that the human brain strives for order. Exposing it to the bizarre makes it work harder to make sense of the world and preserve narrative cohesion by identifying patterns. Thus ‘disorientation begets creative thinking’. So while you are immersing yourself in a flood of fascinating ideas, your brain will be working to find a common thread and the juxtaposition of unusual ideas may result in a unique story or piece of writing.

3: Remember and record your dreams (incubation 3)

We all dream, whether we remember or not. Freud made a career out of the Interpretation of Dreams as part of his psychotherapeutic technique. It is true that our dreams may carry many of our conscious and unconscious concerns. Dream interpretation also suggests that many aspects of our dreams can be symbolic. For example a dream of a bath, can mean a tub, or a vessel that carries something important. I am not convinced that we can be absolutely reductionist about our dreams. Any analysis should be done broadly. I believe that our dreams are our subconscious efforts at creating narrative out of our experiences, fragments of memories, subliminal cues, peripheral inputs. We are programmed to make sense of things, to tell stories and our dreams do that while we sleep.

Record your dreams when you wake

It is the narrative genius of dreams – making sense out of the utterly bizarre – that makes it so worthwhile to try to recall and record them. It’s not often possible to do this and if we are woken suddenly our dreams often retreat out of reach. However I did, for a time, keep a dream notebook and with practice was able to write down many dreams.

There are, of course, many common themes, what may be called Archetypal stories, and these may as Jung suggested be common universal concerns. As a novelist we aspire to make explicit these universal stories. Our dreams can present us with unusual paths through our personal material that can give us an original voice when dealing with those themes.

4: Pay attention and Notice Difference

Decide to take notice (or notes) of things. I have spoken about this before but compared to children, for example, we take so much for granted, we are rushed, preoccupied etc and don’t take the time to notice the small details surrounding us, the details that can make a reader catch their breath with delight.

Psychology also tells us that we are attracted to people who are similar to ourselves, we are also programmed to gather evidence to support our own theories of life and notice environmental cues that feed into our preoccupations. For example if you are buying a house a drive around the neighbourhood will have you noticing all the For Sale signs. If you are into cars, you might take note of what is parked in the driveways. We need to make an effort to see things differently, to pay attention to the kinds of people we normally disregard, to take an interest in a different aspect of a scene, to watch or read something we might normally never consider.

This puts me in mind of an entertaining BBC comedy quiz show called Have I Got News For You. One of the quiz rounds is the fill in the missing word round. Phrases are taken from a guest publication. The guest publications chosen are a esoteric and ecletic mix including Welding and Metal Fabrication Monthly, Barbed Wire Collector, Hairdressers Journal International, Vacuum Cleaner Collectors Club Newsletter. While some examples are hilarious, these publications go to show that there are so many specialized interests out there, some you may never have imagined. What kind of people are interested in these sorts of things, what sort of lives do they lead? Aspire to see difference where ever you go.

Inspiration at the washing line

5: Finally find Inspiration at the washing line (Inspiration 1)

/in the car wash/emptying the dishwasher/having a shower

I don’t think there is a reason I chose washing related examples but it’s at moments of mindless activity where our garrulous consciousness coasts into automatic and goes quiet  that the subconscious gets a chance to speak its mind. I knew many years ago that I wanted to be a writer but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to write about. It’s true to say that the experience of years provides material. It strengthens associations and references that lend depth to writing. However I have discovered since I decided to just BE a writer that you can write about absolutely anything. And it’s at the washing line that all the phrases, news items, emotions, characters merge together and instantaneously throw out several fascinating ideas.

Why the washing line? It’s peaceful. I am momentarily (and I mean momentarily) away from the clamour of the children. It’s usually pleasant, uplifting weather (the reason I’m hanging out the washing in the first place). There may be a fresh breeze or bird song. The action of hanging out the washing is repetitive and soothing and requires little concentrated brain power. It is here that the fruits of all that incubation are realised, I become inspired and I find my way through. I trace the narrative thread of the line until a story falls from the bright blue sky. A man with an obsession with weeding is an emotional tyrant who bullies his wife. A pigeon’s coo reminds me of a time and a place and first love. A jokey remark made to one of the children becomes a possible children’s picture book story.

I am a writer in my head, in my dreams, in my outlook, in the middle of my chores. I nearly trip over the washing basket as I run back inside to find a pen to pen the ideas in and prevent them from getting away. So don’t sweat when you can’t be writing, get into your writing head, feed your subconscious and let it do the work for you.

What I want to say to you – a Novel-in-Waiting

It may take a while but this novel is coming

Theme

I want to say that we choose a path and that maybe it’s the right one and maybe it’s the rightest one and maybe we’ll never know. I want to say that sometimes you feel that you are living the wrong life, that this isn’t who you are, that you could have been more, done more, that there are all these skins. The skin between this life and the parallel universe, the skin between people who will never quite see out of the same pair of eyes. There are the moments in time when you feel you are mapped right on top of another person, see eye to eye, see through each other’s eyes.

There are times out of joint. There are times when you wake up and things aren’t quite right. You wake up and the sky is still dark, or a June day turns black, or you go out and there isn’t a soul in the world walking and everything is white. You come out from a coma and realise that you have lost several weeks of your life and nothing will bring it back. You missed your 40^th birthday, so you aren’t really 40. You received a job offer but weren’t able to accept it. You might have begun elsewhere. You come home and find out that he gave some of your stuff away. Or you don’t recognise your clothes, your tastes, your husband. The blow to the head makes you ask what are the choices you made and what the hell are you doing.

You have changed. Your young children who pick up on the smallest things, who feel separation like ivy being torn off a tree, they no longer quite recognise you. You look like my mummy they say but they have this impression that she’s gone somewhere. She is in the fairytale hospital because they have never been there, or that you went to heaven which is that lovely shop in between Tesco’s and the Butchers where they sell scented candles and play the music with chimes.

There are the lost children, the ones who were wanted and never were, the ones who had to be given away, the ones who disappeared, if only from memory. There is the child inside ourselves, there is the version of our childhood we tell ourselves that may or may not be real. There is unreliable eyewitness testimony, there is the laying down of memory, there is the retrieval the altered contexts, the differing standpoint like the observer effect on Heisenburg’s electrons.

Back-Pats and Explosive Stats

Just back from a mother and baby conference weekend where the baby speakers had us enthralled and the mummies went ga ga over the plush surroundings. It was a meeting of the hardworking volunteers of the fabulous Cuidiu (caring support) organisation for parents, particularly of babies and small children. If anyone deserves an award it is the volunteers of all kinds the length and breadth of the country who are making life-changing differences to ordinary people through their self-less efforts.

But speaking of awards it would be churlish of me to delay any longer in accepting my first blogging award, presented to me by the lovely Barbara from Serenity Space whose blog is an oasis of peace and all things wholesome.  She gave me the award and some very kind words about my blog. It is a condition of the award that I pass it on so I would like to present it to:

Crime writer Sam Blake for the excellent new blog Blood Red Ink. As well as documenting the journey she has made with her crime and romance novels she has some excellent writing tips which are well worth reading and re-reading. The site also looks fabulous.

I would also like to highly recommend the following sites

This itch of writing

Inky Girl

Help I need a publisher

But see my blogroll for other excellent sites.

In accepting the award I need to mention – for reasons set down at the beginning of time and known only to the creator -  seven things that I like. These would be:

Finishing a nice hot cup of tea before it starts to cool

Picking raspberries

Galaxy bars

The moment I know I’ve nailed a story

Pink blossom against blue sky

Brown eyes and long eyelashes

Witty banter

Oh my Goodness, I nearly forgot. Can I add dancing?

And stones, really should be top of this list, I have a fascination with stones, the colour, the shape, the type, the feel. If you visit my house there are collections of stones all around the house.

Receiving this award is timely evidence of a groundswell of good feeling towards and awareness of my blogging efforts. Thank you Barbara for recognising these efforts. Thanks also again to Debbie (Inky girl) who almost singlehandedly exploded my blog stats last week when she tweeted a link to my Procrastination post. Have a look at this

Exploding stats

Yeah. Awesome. The graph begins to rise when I join twitter and the exponential growth occurs when my Procrastination post was retweeted by more than thirteen people following @inkyelbows recommendation.

All in all I am delighted to be reaching out and connecting with people, receiving and giving comments and I will endeavour to continue to deserve the given accolade and try to provide informative, inspirational and compassionate content.

Five ways to procrastinate procrastination

Would love to write but my pet giraffe needs walking

I’m going to write a post on procrastination but first I need to make a cup of tea, check on a few emails, update my twitter feed, clean the bathroom and take my pet giraffe out for a walk. Oh and the keyboard could do with a bit of a polish.

Right. Sorted.  So here are five ways to get yourself started:

1: Set yourself small, achievable, immediate and visible goals.

Don’t make your molehills into mountains that you haven’t the resources to climb. Don’t panic about ‘finishing your novel’ or short story. Tell yourself you will write 100 words in the next half an hour. Make sure your aim is achievable for you at your current stage/ability or you will only dishearten yourself if you don’t achieve it. Your aims must be bitesized and easily digestible.

Don't let ambition overwhelm you

On her excellent writer’s resource site www.Inkygirl.com Debbie Ridpath Ohi invites you to sign up for a 1000 word a day or 500 word a day challenge. You can choose the goal that best suits you and she is open to setting up even smaller challenges to suit your circumstances.

Signing up for a group challenge makes you feel part of a common endeavour and strengthens your motivation, particularly if you share your experiences with others.  (Once you’ve finished your target wordcount!)

2. Use the Twitter Carrot Approach

(Instead of Twitter you can insert Facebook/Chocolate Cream Bun/Favourite TV show)

When you are avoiding a task, you often substitute it with one that seems vital/useful or is just plain fun. For me, of late, my displacement activity has been Twitter. It’s a wonderful way of networking and building up relationships with other writers and mothers, a reciprocal mine of valuable information, a venue for support and encouragement. But you can inadvertently fritter away precious writing time on this other ‘vital’ activities such as checking email, texting, checking facebook, looking out of the window and just getting a..(insert whatever it is you fancy).

No tweets until you've finished your homework!

After years of careful testing and validation (procrastinating again?) I have developed the Twitter Carrot Approach. I set myself a number of words after which I can have a set number of tweets or length of time on twitter. A tweet must not pass my fingertips until the set number of words is completed. In this instance you must again ensure that you goals are achievable or you will end up sad and lonely. (Cue violins). If you have been good and achieved your goal you can reward yourself with an activity of your choice. And if you’ve really been good you can find me on twitter @alisonwells)

3. Free yourself from self censure and fear

Guilt and fear are the antithesis of achievement and creativity. (Unless you want to write about a guilty and fearful person). You may fear that your work is not good enough, that you don’t have the skills, that what you have written is a heap of rubbish, that you will never sell as many books as Dan Brown. All of these may be true. Or not. And even if they are true right now, just by you being there and working through the crud you are improving inch by inch. (As an aside, I found out yesterday that the moon is literally inching away. It moves away from the earth by an inch every year.) I digress. I recently summed up my philosophy in a short, tweetable motto:

Intention, even ultimately unrealised is an optimistic orientation towards success

The fact that you have turned your head or hand towards writing, that you have it in your focus, that you are making an attempt, that you are sitting in the presence of your manuscript means that you are baby steps closer to realising your dream. The only way it will actually happen is if you jettison the guilt that you are not as far as you wanted to be, or that you should be doing more. This will only make you panic and stymie you. You need to accept where you are with it and move forward as best you can. Even if you feel you are going backwards, you have still learned something from the attempt. If you read one of your creations with horror you know you won’t go down that dark alleyway again.

Just keep stepping forward little by little and you will soon have come much further than you think.

Create a ritual that is about getting yourself in the zone

Create a ritual to get you started

So much of our learned behaviour (and our memory) is cue dependent and is developed by way of association with other behaviours or triggers. Parents will know that routines can settle babies and reassure older children (and prevent murders on the school run). It can be difficult for us to switch from one aspect of our lives to another (especially if one of the aspects of our lives keeps running in and saying ‘Mummy….’ or twirls you around on your office chair). No, even when you get into your writing space, with the kids or whatever packed away (into a lockable holdall, sorry) it may take some time to settle back into your story or novel or to connect with your subconscious, its ideas and associations. (For more on how to get into your writing mind see this.)

Leo Babuata explains how a morning ritual can help you become a more productive writer. I would also suggest that you need to include some form or relaxation activity during the day where ideas have a chance to percolate. Recently my relentless sticking to an arduous early morning and evening writing routine left me drained and bereft of any new inspirations. Often a step out to hang the washing is all it takes to give me a breath of peace and perspective that gets the ideas swirling.

Whether it’s a cup of tea, a walk, a favourite notebook, a warm bottle of milk, putting on your lap blanket and your fingerless gloves, find out what guides you into your writing mode and settle yourself in to your writing session.

5. Remember its nice once you get down

It's nice once you get down - honest

Growing up on the Irish Atlantic seaboard (despite being in the Gulf Stream) a decision to swim in the sea was accompanied by a feeling of trepidation and inertia. It was always so cold as we gingerly edged our way out into the waves. We could feel goosebumps forming on our skin. But once we threw aside our caution and got our shoulders under and took a few strokes it wasn’t so bad. After a while the feeling of being in the water was delicious and I have wonderful memories of diving under the clear water, being completely immersed in otherworldliness and peace.

Once back on the shore, the pleasure of heating up again was wonderful and the satisfaction of having been out for the swim was immense. We felt refreshed and ebullient and always assured the reluctant that ‘its nice once you get down.’

You know you want to write. You know how good it feels when you start to get words on the page, when you create a fabulous phrase or a cracking character. You know how you tingle when you read something you have written and know that ‘This is really good’. And if and when you get published and someone tells you that your writing is wonderful or moved them or changed them in some way it feels great. Remember all those feelings, recreate them in your mind, then you will know why you have to just get down to writing, as fast as you possibly can.

Procrastinating postscript.

I was going to write ‘Ten ways to procrastinate procrastination’ but I realised that by doing that I would be procrastinating writing my novel. And in reading this, you may be putting off something you may be supposed to be doing. So if it’s writing you’re into, start now. Write 200 words of heartfelt gobbledygook and then another 200. After that you can have a biscuit or one tweet. And once you’ve done your 1000 words, come back to the comments and let me know how good it feels. Don’t take too long.

Five fives for inspiring the mind

Use the five fives to inspire you

The overarching theme of this blog, as you know, is head space. In the context of my endeavours as a writer this in particular means the kind of head space that will engender creativity, that feeling of flow that connects you with the wellspring that is your subconscious and your memory, allowing you to draw on it as you develop your characters and their stories. The space in your brain where slumbering synapses flicker alive, stirring up old thoughts or rememberences but connecting them your current context so that they become fresh and novel.

I am lucky that I have a wonderful physical space in which to write, a dormer room that looks out at trees and is the most tranquil room in the house, elevated as it is from the tramp and everyday clatter of the four young children. What is difficult is finding the temporal and the mental space to ‘chill’ and take breath before embarking each day on a current project, novel-in-progress or story. I have begun getting up at 6am to give myself that temporal space but mentally and physically the frantic pace of life, particularly since the schools term began has left me a little flat, unable to breathe life into myself, my characters or stories.

There are many excellent writing exercises out there for helping you overcome writer’s block or generate creative ideas. (I am aware as I write, I don’t mean to imply that writing isn’t about hard slog and writing even when you don’t feel inspired). Last night, overcome with tiredness but feeling cut off from my writing life, I sat in bed with a notebook and ask myself to consider these Five Fives.

FIVE FIVES Writing exercise for clearing the fog/mental fug

1: Write down 5 people who interested you lately

2: Write down 5 unusual dilemmas

3: Describe 5 phenomenon (social, natural, psychological, etc) that fascinate you

4: Detail 5 striking places

5: Document 5 emotional reactions that struck a chord with you or surprised you

Look for the texture

Do the exercises quickly and without censor. The aim of this exercise is just to slow down the mind and to orient it to take note. A good example of this process is in my poem Now where the panic of the everyday is contrasted by slow observances. Your aim in using this exercise over several occasions is to achieve greater and greater subtlety in your observances. When describing a place that interested you, you first might say ‘Paris’ or a ‘local train station’ but as time goes by your observances might become more detailed, such as ‘a pebbledashed wall with a lovely texture’, or ‘The rafters of the station roof where pigeons were tightrope walking’. This exercise may help you pay attention when out and about in daily life. When considering the ‘emotional reaction’ or ‘people’ exercise you may find yourself taking note of people in conversation and their facial expressions or physical characteristics and mannerisms that make them unique.

The five phenomenon that I listed were ‘The Twitter Community, An unexpected flash of light (the bulb of one of the lights in the room later blew), Transparent Fish (from a national geographic magazine), Geysers and Death Valley.’  I realised I could use the symbolism of the transparent fish in a short story I am writing about a woman who feels that she is leaving no lasting imprint on the world. The other locations and experiences might well end up as landscapes or images in other stories.

The 5 dilemmas of course are fabulous ways to generate plot and motivation for your stories, they give you an immediate hook around which a story sometimes begins to coalesce almost by itself.

So, if you are in a mental fug, are weary or stuck, try out these exercises and please comment on whether or not you found them useful and why. In the meantime I will try to follow my own advice and get back to putting layers in my stories.

Haven for the Head-Wrecked

Life can be a battle

I’ve become particularly aware in the last while that many of the people I am in contact with in my everyday life both physically or virtually (through twitter or email) are struggling in some way and putting a brave face on it. They are feeling confused, vulnerable, lonely, disheartened, unsure or scared and they are mad and fed up at themselves for feeling like this, for not being able to just get on with things and ‘be normal’. They can sense a stronger, more able person on the inside, a person who can ‘do so much more than this’, a Yes person who wants to embrace every opportunity instead of feeling overwhelmed and losing impetus. I understand these feelings, because I’ve been there at various times in my life, where stresses sent me spiralling, grief left me paralysed and self-doubt knocked me into a deep hole where I all I wanted was someone to throw me some kind of rope I could hold onto. At this time of the year I worry that the long dark nights and short grey days will take hold of me and drag me into a perpetual lethargy that will only lift in Spring.

People have real problems, difficulties at work, at home, with their children, finding balance in their lives. There are real tragedies, losses and readjustments. There are some days that are just plain bad. In these circumstances sometimes all we can do is wait for the passing of time, perhaps just a moment where we take a deep breath, half an hour where we do the things we burn to do always, a day, a week, a month, a year to move away from the pain that holds us by the lungs and squeezes.

There are some things that help:

• Breaking our negative thought patterns:

We reinforce many of the negative feelings we have about ourselves and our circumstances through our negative thinking patterns. Pychological studies have shown that depression can be alieviated hugely by using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy either alone or in conjunction with medication. Thinking habits build up over a lifetime but we can work on them and practice substituting more realistic, helpful and positive thoughts. We can use techniques to control our anger and stop procrastination.

Feeling Good – The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns is a wonderful book with excellent exercises for breaking mood cycles and destructive types of thinking.

• Head space
  

  Create head space by doing what you love

Doing something we love or indulging in our happinesses. On her website Winslow Eliot gathers examples of these ‘daily happinesses’ and on her site Barbara Scully helps us find serenity. It is often difficult to see where we can find time to recuperate, dream, kick back or create but very small changes can make huge differences. I found this recently when I decided to get up at 6 each morning to do some writing, despite having four kids and an almost 2 yr old who wakes in the night. I found that I actually gained energy from the satisfaction of having done something I loved.

• Connecting

My involvement in the parent-to-parent support group Cuidiu since my first child (now almost nine) was born got me through the hair-raising and hair pulling out first years of the culture shock of children. Similarly my writing connections through twitter and writing courses have shown me that my writing struggles are shared with many others.

• Keeping going, however slowly, you are doing well

A step is a step is a step, it’s still progression, and even if you step back, you still learned something from going forward to begin with. Congratulate yourself for your effort.

• Let it out, communicate and express yourself
  

  Let others know how you feel

Tell someone, or talk to others with similar difficulties. You will be surprised at how others feel just the same. Many of the struggles a writer deals with on a personal level may find expression through stories or in journals. In what I called the Book of Joy,  I worked through a troubling period in my life, coming to the realisation that life is two sides of a sphere, dark and light.  We can  see joy more clearly  in relation to loss or grief. This is the theme of my poem ‘If we thought that love was gone.’

Who cares? Plenty.

I write my stories because I want to touch people, to connect with them, to make something resonate within them, to give them words for the feelings they experience throughout their lives. I want to establish a well of common humanity which we can all share, so that we can understand what makes us similar, what can give us empathy for each other. Through my relationships with people in daily and virtual life, at the school gate, in Cuidiu, with relative strangers on Twitter, long standing but unseen friends over email and phone I know that I’m not the only mixed up crazy kid on the block. And I want you to be sure that there are a whole lot of lovely people out there, who not only care and feel, but care and feel for You. I’m one of them and there are plenty more. Here is where it begins and ends, I’m throwing a rope  into the universe to you all, hoping you will catch it and hold on.