Eating the Elephant

And other good, hopefully inspiring stuff.

Have you ever felt completely hopeless about writing an entire novel?

Does completing a novel seem so daunting a task that you simply cannot see yourself ever getting one written?

That feeling, coupled with having to support a family, made me swear off writing a novel for almost a decade. I just could not imagine finishing a project that seemed so big, while also having a job, or any kind of life. Short stories were one thing, but:

How could I write an entire novel?

“How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.”  ~ Anonymous

The way to write a novel is simply to sit down every day, and write some of it. It’s so simple. It seems like it should be obvious this is how they get done, and yet, for years I struggled with the overwhelming bigness of getting a novel written.

In The Artist’s Way Julia Cameron recommends writing what she dubbed Morning Pages. This, by any other name, is simply writing every day. Whatever you want to call it, writing every day is key to getting the flow of ideas and words going.

“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.”  ~ Louis L’Amour

Here’s another issue that haunted me during those unproductive, frozen years: Didn’t I have to have an outline? A brilliant concept with the plot twists and subplots, all thought out in advance and laid down like a road map? Surely writing a novel required some higher form of genius that I wasn’t capable of manifesting. I had to have the whole thing thought out before I started, right?

I’d never previously had a plot thought out for any of the novellas or short stories I’d written. They’d always occurred to me as I wrote the first draft—which, by the way, was part of my excitement and delight in writing them.

But a novel was a much bigger, more complicated thing, and all The Experts were shouting that I had to have an outline. (Well…not all of them. Just the really loud ones.)

It wasn’t enough that I had some characters that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

It wasn’t enough that I wanted to see what they would do, what choices they would make, in the world I imagined them in.

I had to have a high premise and plot points. Simply wanting to discover the repercussions of my characters choices, for good or evil, wouldn’t cut it.

Completely erroneous thinking, as it turns out.

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  ~ E.L. Doctorow

Here’s what I discovered: Plot is what happens when you sit down and write. The plot to your novel will show up if you do. It has to be excavated in pretty much the same way an archeologist digs up long buried bones. And once found, in the act of writing the first draft, the writer’s next job is to simply scrape and brush away everything that is NOT THAT.

It would have saved me so many wasted years if someone had just told me this. Okay, someone was saying it. Julia Cameron certainly was. And Diana Gabaldon’s always been open and honest about her process.  But I didn’t hear them over those other people shouting and waving their arms.

So, now I’m telling you: If you aren’t a genius—and most of us aren’t—just bring your excitement to your special writing place and sit down and write about those characters you love so much, and that fascinating world that they live in. Every day. It’ll be okay.

Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.  ~ Anne Lamott  (AKA, Blessed Patron Saint of the Shitty First Draft)

If those two obstacles weren’t enough, there was this other damn thing. (Isn’t there always?) Every time I sat down to write I could only squeeze out 2000 or so words, and as often as not they were just so so; not polished and filled with awe inspiring metaphor like the novels I loved. I mistook this as proof that I wasn’t a writer. I mean, I didn’t have what it takes, obviously. Otherwise what I wrote would be brilliant, light-filled, like all those published novels, wouldn’t it?

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.”  ~ James Michener

“The first draft of anything is shit.”  ~  Ernest Hemingway

I believe I will end my post here, rather than attempt to add anything to Hemingway’s wisdom.

I hope this helps. XO

Now, what are you doing sitting here reading my blog? Haven’t you got something better to do?

The Place of Forgetting

Imagine for a moment if you will, being in a place from which there is no escape. A place where no daylight enters. No sweet smelling breeze stirs your hair. No birdsong lightens your heart as it falls upon your ear. You will not be fed, nor given water, though perhaps you find a trickle of water running down one of the rough, cold unseen stone walls of your prison and lap up the liquid. But that only prolongs your torture, because now you will live until you starve to death. And that takes weeks.

You are in the place of forgetting. A place from which there is no leaving. Your bones will lie here long after you breathe your last. You know this because you have tripped over the rattling bones of others who have languished here before you. Yes, and you’ve smelled the stench of the rotting flesh of those who are not yet reduced to bones. Smelled them, and dear God, even felt them, as you’ve circumvented this place, trembling hands outstretched before you in the dark.

You are in an oubliette. So called because those who are thrown down here are not thought of again. They are forgotten.

Castle Bouillon in France

In medieval times this was a fairly common way for someone who displeased a powerful noble to meet his end. So of course I had to have an oubliette in Sword of Mordrey. And of course someone (I’m not saying who) winds up there.

One of the most famous oubliettes from the medieval era is in the castle of Godfrey of Bouillon. Duke Godfrey was one of the principle leaders of the First Crusade. He eventually became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after it fell to the crusaders in 1099. He must have really wanted to fight in this war, because he pawned his castle in Bouillon to get the funds to do so. Castle Bouillon was one of the most desirable strongholds of its time. Nearly impregnable, with its triple barbican and crafty moat.

It has a perfectly wretched oubliette. It’s a windowless underground chamber, accessed through a hatch  in the ceiling. No provision was made for getting back out.

In modern literature and movies two of my favorite oubliettes are the one in the novel, Hannibal Rising, and the one in the movie First Knight. In Hannibal Rising the oubliette is a long well in the floor of a castle dungeon. Thomas Harris makes it especially haunting though, by the mention of a single word, scratched onto the wall at the bottom: Pourquoi?  (Why?)

The oubliette in First Knight is a deep cavernous room…with a high, narrow pinnacle that is reached by a removable drawbridge. Guinevere is deposited there, the drawbridge is removed, and there she languishes, on a platform from which there is no escape—unless you consider jumping to your death an escape.

And you might. You just might, after thinking about it for long enough.

Okay…back to you.

I know I’ve left you down in the cold dark. So imagine now:

A metal hatch creaks open in the high ceiling above you. It’s me. I poke my head down into the hole and thrust a knotted rope down into the darkness for you to climb up. (I do hope you’re in good shape.) You tip your face up to me and shield your light-deprived eyes from the sputtering torch clutched in my fist. A skittering of tiny nails in the lurching shadows at the very edges of the pit makes you jump and grope for the rope.

Yours are not the only eyes grown unused to the light, you see.

No. Don’t look around. You don’t want to know who…what, shares the pit with you. Just climb. Climb fast.

Writers: Have you come across strange settings/places in your research that made their way into your novel?

Readers: What settings most fascinate you in the novels you like best?

5 Reasons For Writers To Read

Reading will give you an edge on the opposition

I sat across the table from a guy who looked to be in his mid forties. He told us he was writing a spy novel. It was filled with action, he said. He’d come to this particular group because he needed feedback and wanted others to read what he’d written so far, and tell him where it was going wrong. He hoped he wouldn’t have to read too many other peoples’ work—he didn’t have a lot of time, and honestly, he hadn’t ever read very much. He didn’t enjoy reading.

I tried not to laugh. I looked around, but couldn’t find anything handy to throw at him.

The twenty or so other writers in the library meeting room stared at him in thoughtful silence. Then a young woman of about nineteen or twenty chirped up to say that she didn’t like to read either. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t like to read, she amended, it was just that it took her so long to finish a book that she lost interest, and so she never finished very many of them. She concluded that she was probably just too busy to read.

I felt my nostrils twitch.

You do realize you have to read to be a writer, I said.

The young woman looked at me as if I were a hydra and one of my heads had just bared its teeth.

The man looked first sullen…then his expression changed to dismissive. He refused to look at me. What did I know.

But my statement seemed to have unleashed the hounds. The stunned writers around the table all spoke at once. In a less civilized world I might have witnessed some violence,  a spanking, or an eye gouging. I think it is written somewhere: maybe in Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People; “Don’t walk into a room full of writers and admit you don’t like to read.”

Or maybe that was the bible…

Anyway, here’s what I believe: If a person wants to write they had better LOVE reading. It should be right up there with your top two or three favorite things to do. Eating, sex, reading. Or maybe: Eating, reading, sex. Something like that. You should have stacks of books all around you at home, and be reading through them like a paper mulcher chews through logs. The library, bookstore, or on line book buying joint should be your hallowed place.

Why?

1. You’ll probably actually enjoy writing, if you like to read. (And writing well is hard, so you better enjoy it.)
2. It will be a whole lot easier to learn how to write if you’ve digested 1000 or more good books.
3. You’ll  know what’s been done before, and how it was done.
4. It will keep you from making a fool of yourself.  (This one’s not true…I just wanted to have 5 reasons.)
5. It’ll keep you from getting your ass kicked by other writers. (This one is true.)
   

   Reading makes you sexy and smart

Ideally you need to have read many, many books over the course of your life. The reason for this is because you will have absorbed technique. Things like story arc and transitions, dialogue, and the fine balance between narrative and action. You will learn what works (from the good books) and what doesn’t (from the bad ones). These lessons are much easier to learn through osmosis than by being taught in a classroom.

You will have a huge bank of knowledge of what’s been done before to draw upon. And this knowledge will guide you. That nifty beat sheet will already live in your soul, and everything you write will automatically be holographically tested against it to see if it holds up…as you write.

If you’ve read widely, in many different genres, you will have a much broader knowledge base. And this will serve you well, enriching your writing, no matter which genre you choose for your own novels and stories. The best reads often contain elements of many genres.

A writer who doesn’t like to read is like a painter who doesn’t like to look. It’s like a musician who doesn’t want to bother to listen. It’s like a potter who doesn’t like clay. It’s like a gardener who doesn’t love dirt. It’s like a chef who doesn’t like to taste.

I get that some folks don’t like to read. But if you don’t enjoy books, why write one?

Go make a movie, or something.

Your son the famous painter might see you reading, think you look nice, and paint you

Check out these great links.

Here’s what Diana Gabaldon has to say about reading for writers.

And here’s what Joshua Becker over at becoming minimalist is doing to get a few books read this year.

Showing Up

When I got up to write this morning I really wanted to go back to bed. The house felt cold, the floor felt hard and cold beneath my bare feet, and outside as I stood waiting for Zeus to have his morning pee the night felt dark and damp and like any sensible person would be tucked up warm in bed.

Inside the house my husband sat in the big green over-stuffed chair in the kitchen, having his morning cup of coffee. He looked grumpy; he tweaked his back playing golf a few days ago, and hasn’t felt well since. After giving him a hug I made my cup of tea, measuring sugar and milk, then sat down at my computer.

My first feeling was that I was too tired to sit here and write…wouldn’t it be much nicer—not to mention easier—to just give in to the feeling and go back to bed? Did I really need to be up at this hour? I could always write later. (Not true, later there would be clients to deal with, emails and text messages, phone calls, and the muse silencing intrusion of bright sunlight.)

I opened the piece of Sword that I am currently working on and read through yesterday’s rewrites. It all bored me. The writing is fine, it’s just that I have read through this piece umpteen times and I’m sick of these rewrites. As I downed my first cup of tea these thoughts ran like a low murmur in the background. It took energy to ignore them, let me tell you.

Tired of working on the same piece of writing I have been for days, I opened a piece I had earlier in the week culled from the novel and saved into my rewrites folder. I had had some idea of deepening one of the main character’s flaws, of actually giving him a previous alcohol problem. (Bear in mind this is during Medieval times, so there wasn’t a lot of knowledge about this sort of thing back then, and certainly no A.A.) But I couldn’t think of how to work this in to the story line, and yet still have the reader feel sympathetic toward him, and believe in (or even understand) the transformation that occurs in him.

An hour passed. I poked around and played with this little segment of writing, mulling. Soon I was absorbed in the work.

As I sat there, my second cup of caffeine before me (this time coffee), I had one of those startling, sparkling moments of clarity, the kind we writers live for. I could see the thing in its entirety, its perfectness, and the little pieces I’d been mentally worrying, sorting and juggling for days fell into place like the colored pieces in a kaleidoscope.

It horrifies me to contemplate that I might have gone back to bed and missed this moment. That I might have stood up my muse and not shown up for our date. Really, it would have been so easy to be self-indulgent. And if I had, I would have missed this 6am epiphany. And who knows if it would have come to me another time? These moments are so transient, so ethereal. We run after them like children with butterfly nets, and if we are lucky enough to capture them they must be pinned down or they flutter off, and are forgotten.

Happy New Year!

Well here we are, on the cusp of 2012. There’re a lot of weird predictions for the coming year. One is that the world will end, or drastically change sometime in December 2012—this because a primitive culture’s (remembered best for tearing people’s hearts out) calendar supposedly runs out on that date.

Another possibility is it will be because all the planets in our solar system will exactly line up on that day, and it will cause a shift in gravity, or something.

It kind of reminds me of the hoopla surrounding New Years 2000, when the millennium was supposedly going to crash our computers, and throw the world into a stone age tail spin.

It all seems too ridiculous to contemplate. Especially now as my country (the US) is pulling out of Iraq (hooray), but now we are grunting and waving gore clotted war clubs at Iran across the Strait of Hormuz (boo).

I suppose all this has the ‘End Times’ folks excited to the point of running in circles and snapping at their own tails. But honestly, I’m just tired of hearing of all the death and destruction. The predicted doom and war. I am loath to even turn on the news, for fear of what fresh horror is brewing in the world, and about which I can do nothing.

Can’t we all just get along with each other?

There are people dying in the US because they have no medical coverage. Maybe they did once, but then they got sick, and lost their jobs. And then their medical insurer dropped them, and now they can get no treatment. Is that a situation that should be allowed to exist in a civilized country? (Talk about tearing people’s hearts out!) Shouldn’t we be caring for these people, who are after all our very neighbors?

Here’s a brief list of countries that have Universal Health Care:

Australia, Canada, France, Italy, England, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland…the list goes on and on. There are actually something like 33 modern, civilized nations who all have health care for everyone. These are nations whose citizens don’t allow a sick person to die without care in their midst. Isn’t that the very definition of civilization?

We do a lot for people who are hungry in the US. My daughter is fond of volunteering at food kitchens in the valley, of which there are several. And each year the office I work at rounds up food for a nearby food bank. But I still see homeless people everywhere I look. And I am appalled that there are any in the US who go hungry.

But back to the End of the World.

Some people would love to see it happen. They believe it is an event predicted by God, and that it is not only unavoidable, but desirable, because then they will go to Heaven.

But what if we found out we are in Heaven right now? But that we are making it hellish by our actions and our misguided thinking? What if we discovered that there was no other place or time, but that this was the place and now is the time? What if we discovered that God gave us free will, and leaves it all up to us to do as we see fit?

What if God lets us starve people if we want to? Or lets us feed them, if that’s what we want? What if God lets us allow people to die of cancer because they can’t pay for treatment? Or God lets us put a warm blanket around the ill and give them the medicine and the care they need to get well? What if God lets us blow ourselves up over oil? Or lets us figure out another way? (Like talking? Or using our inventive minds to figure out another source of energy so we aren’t dependent on oil?)

What if everything boils down to the little choices we make every day? What if it starts with not swearing and yelling back at the guy swearing and yelling at you in traffic? What if it begins with watching our own reactions to things, and letting some of that anger go? Letting it just dissipate like smoke?  

I’m not a big one for making resolutions at New Year’s. Mainly because I never keep any of them. I’m better at taking things one day at a time. I’m perfectly imperfect, and I accept that. So if I have a resolution for 2012, it’s that I will try to remember some time during each day, that while I can’t necessarily have much effect on the huge things that are happening in places far away, I can have an influence on what happens right around me. I can let the anxious guy in ahead of me in traffic…and it won’t cost me anything. And I can keep from saying unloving things to those around me. That is in my power. And I can hope (I just love hope, don’t you?) that like the butterfly effect, the energy created by my love will spread, like ripples in a big pond of energy (which after all is what everything is, if you listen to modern day physicists—or any of the ancient masters) and it will have a positive effect that reaches farther than I can possibly know.

Happy 2012, Everyone. Let’s make it a Good one.

Namaste

Christmas Meditation

Meditation is silly, isn’t it? I mean…it’s just sitting there, watching yourself breath in and out, in and out, or maybe thinking one word over and over again…a mantra, they call it. What’s the point? It’s something invented by those funny Hindus. Those skinny guys with the towels on their heads. Those fellas who refuse to eat cows. You know the ones, they like to turn themselves into pretzels like circus performers.

AND it’s unchristian. Especially that yoga stuff. If you’re going to do it at all you’ve gotta call it something besides yoga. Yoga is another religion’s practice. Christians probably shouldn’t do it, but if they must, at the very least call it something different, just to be on the safe side. Like: Yoga for Jesus.

Whatever you do…if you value the status quo…if you don’t want to see genuine change in your life, and perhaps realize who you really are, and how you are connected to every other living thing in this blindingly beautiful world of ours…if you don’t want a (perhaps radically different) deeper understanding of everything, THEN FOR EGO’S SAKE STOP READING RIGHT NOW!!! SAVE THE SELF YOU KNOW!

The self that must drive a certain kind of car, wear certain clothes, live in a certain kind of house in a certain kind of neighborhood, have a certain kind of job, family, husband, dog…or you will cease to exist. The self that thinks that certain other people are, well,  funny. Yep, and probably doomed too.

If all that is important to you, then please don’t read any further. Because what I am going to tell you, and suggest you do, will change you… if you let it.

Still reading? Not scared away?

Great!! <rubs hands together eagerly, grinning> Let’s get started then, shall we?

I’m going to ask you to set aside 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes without any outside stimulation. No phone, no internet access, no streaming videos, ipads or earbuds.

10 minutes.

To Be.

Alone with yourself.

I have an old throw-pillow I like to sit on. But you can sit wherever you like to do this…it requires no special equipment. At first, all you will need is undisturbed silence. But don’t get too hung up on the silence part. If your neighbor is mowing his lawn or running his snowblower, just silently thank him for keeping his yard so lovely and embrace the sound.  We share the world, and so we will hear other people. Eventually this won’t bother you at all.

Sit comfortably. Feel how your body feels. How it holds you…like a container made especially for you. Just sit and feel how it feels to be inside you. Does anything ache? Or feel tight? Does anything itch? Just let it go…let that part of your body relax. Scratch the itch, it’s okay.

Are you breathing? What is your breath like? Is it shallow and fast? Can you deepen it? As you deepen it you’ll find it will slow down a bit. I like to breathe through my nose, cause that’s what it’s designed for, and it keeps my mouth from getting dry. But if your nose feels stuffy and you can’t get enough air, just let your mouth relax and breathe through your mouth.

You may find yourself thinking about gassing the car, or the grocery list, or the project due at work…just let those thoughts go…time enough to think of them later. Nothing needs to be done in these quiet, peaceful, silent 10 minutes. Nothing. 

Do this every day, preferably at the same time. But whenever you can is fine. I like to do it first thing in the morning after writing. Sometimes I do it again later, at my desk at work.

Some truths you may encounter in 2012, if you keep at it: Who you really are. Who all these other beautiful beings really are. Where we really are.

I love you. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Merry Solstice.

Happy Everything.