Accidental Inspiration

I go to other artists for inspiration to move my writing along. Sometimes for technique, sometimes for ideas and sometimes, just to get my bum in the writing chair. I was researching something this morning and found these wonderful quotes by Isabel Allende on Brain Pickings: 

This one inspires me to get to my writing even when I’m not in the mood:

“I start all my books on January eighth. Can you imagine January seventh? It’s hell. Every year on January seventh, I prepare my physical space. I clean up everything from my other books. I just leave my dictionaries, and my first editions, and the research materials for the new one. And then on January eighth I walk seventeen steps from the kitchen to the little pool house that is my office. It’s like a journey to another world. It’s winter, it’s raining usually. I go with my umbrella and the dog following me. From those seventeen steps on, I am in another world and I am another person. I go there scared. And excited. And disappointed — because I have a sort of idea that isn’t really an idea. The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up.” 

This one reminds me to use economy of language:

“I try to write beautifully, but accessibly. In the romance languages, Spanish, French, Italian, there’s a flowery way of saying things that does not exist in English. My husband says he can always tell when he gets a letter in Spanish: the envelope is heavy. In English a letter is a paragraph. You go straight to the point. In Spanish that’s impolite. Reading in English, living in English, has taught me to make language as beautiful as possible, but precise. Excessive adjectives, excessive description — skip it, it’s unnecessary. Speaking English has made my writing less cluttered. I try to read House of the Spirits now, and I can’t. Oh my God, so many adjectives! Why? Just use one good noun instead of three adjectives.”

And here is wonderful advice for new and well established writers (something my last editor reminded me to do more of):

“It’s worth the work to find the precise word that will create a feeling or describe a situation. Use a thesaurus, use your imagination, scratch your head until it comes to you, but find the right word.

When you feel the story is beginning to pick up rhythm—the characters are shaping up, you can see them, you can hear their voices, and they do things that you haven’t planned, things you couldn’t have imagined—then you know the book is somewhere, and you just have to find it, and bring it, word by word, into this world.

When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it’s full of mistakes and repetitions. It’s good to avoid that in literature, but still, a story should feel like a conversation. It’s not a lecture.”

Because I’m often inspired by the quotes of other artists, I put together a journal with the quotes of writers, artists and musicians; one for each of 30 days. A perfect gift for those who like to put pen to paper. It’s light and handy for those ideas that come at odd moments.It's on Amazon.

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Central Coast Writer's Conference

Always a fan of the Central Coast Writer’s Conference, it didn’t surprise me that I loved it again this year and have lots to share. Today I’ll focus on some important points that impressed me from author, Jonathan Maberry:

[JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times best-selling and multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning suspense author, editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. He was named one of the Today’s Top Ten Horror Writers. His books have been sold to more than two-dozen countries.]   

  
He says:

• Writing is an art, an intimate conversation between writer and reader. No one can write in your unique way.  
• Publishing is a business – of selling art and has no obligation of selling the best or of not selling the worst. The challenge for a writer is to work within the publishing world in a way that allows him to continue doing his art.
• And never mix up the two in your mind.

Your art comes from within and no one can duplicate your exact life experience and expression. As an artist, you’re not in competition. And sales are no indication that you are or are not an accomplished writer. 

Writers may find it difficult to accept this concept, and I think it might be one of the reasons for some of the depression that can plague a creative. If you’re not monetarily successful, you feel like a failure—like you suck! And if you are monetarily successful, you sail high, maybe with a bit of ego, but it doesn’t mean you’re a good writer.

Only you can define what success is for you—and it may not be tied to money. What are your goals? Define them clearly. Why do you write? When you put on the writer hat—what do you want to achieve? And when you put on the publishing/marketing hat, the business hat, what’s your goal for monetary success and how do you plan to achieve it? 

Maberry says a working writer should be willing to write anything—any genre, short story, blog post, script, etc. He advised, “Write anything you think you’re not good at.”

He thinks that we, as writers, mythologize the process of writing, and that we need to treat it like a job. As an entrepreneur business person, show up at the same time every day and produce. Give yourself a word count which you can easily reach each day, and then reward yourself when you reach it. (You can obviously raise that word count as time goes by, but it should be a goal you can reach without stress.) His suggestions:

• Post content on social media every day.
• Spend 50 minutes of each hour writing and 10 minutes on social media.
• It’s your job to learn craft.
• Read the top 6 books in your genre and deconstruct them.
• He recommends using the Donald Maass workbook for each of your novels; Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook.
• Do your craft at the concisest speed you can (if you have the business of publishing in mind). One book a year is preferable to keep your writing business flowing.

Now, the panel of screenwriters and authors on Friday night all agreed that the creative process is whatever works for you.

• Know what you’re a fan of, and that’s what you should write.
• The stories that take hold in you, those are the ones you have to write. They grow inside you and evolve, rather than you just making up scenes to fill a novel. 
• Peter Dunne (Emmy and Peabody Award-winning producer and writer); “Ideas find me, I don’t go looking for them.  
• Use sleep; break your problem down to its smallest piece, write it out before bed, then sleep on that (not literally, but hey, that might work even better).    
• Gene Perret (Comedy writer) on writer’s block—“Writers are the only people who name an illness after themselves.
       
  Now go forth and create!

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What do you struggle with most, the art or the business? Post in the comments.

The Cracked Pot

I was out in my garden this morning, enjoying the coolness in the air before the day heats up and the colors and shadows fade. I took a picture of my favorite cracked pot. Here is an Indian parable to accompany it:

The Cracked Pot

A water bearer in India had two large pots. He hung each on the on ends of a pole he carried across the back of his neck. One had a crack in it, while the other was perfect—always delivering a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house. But the cracked pot arrived half full, the rest of the water having leaked out on the way. 

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishment and saw itself as perfectly suited for the purpose for which it was made. But the cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfection and miserable that it was only able to accomplish half of what it had been made to do. 

One day, after two years of what it perceived as bitter failure, the cracked pot spoke to the water bearer by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself and I want to apologize to you.”

“Why?” asked the bearer. “What are you ashamed of?”

“For the past two years, I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out on the way back to your master’s house. Because of my flaws you have to work without getting the full value of your efforts,” the pot said.

The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot.  “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the side of the path.” 

As they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took special notice of the sun warmed wildflowers along the path and felt cheered. But at the end of the trail, the pot once again felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and again it apologized for its failure.

The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path and not on the other pot’s side?” 

The cracked pot pondered this.

“That’s because I knew about your flaw and took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them for me. For two years I have picked these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. If you were not just the way you are, he would not have such beauty to grace his house.

Moral: We can all be useful, despite our perceived defects. Find your defect and make it a strength.