Morning Pages

I'm writing about one of my favorite tools for writers and anyone else who wants to plug into their creative side today at The Unpredictible Muse.

Please stop by and add your thoughts to the discussion.


It's all better with friends.

Dream a Little for 2012

This post originally appeared at Meanderings and Muses, the wonderful blog of Kaye Barley. Because it's almost 2012, and a lot of people are thinking about what they want to accomplish next year, I thought I'd re-post it here.

Happy New Year.

DREAM A LITTLE

One day, I quit dreaming—and it took me over forty years to figure it out.

At some point, it became easier to turn my back on a dream, to let it fade, then to not be perfect each step on the way toward making that dream a reality. (Perfection is really a stupid concept, but that’s another topic.)

What I had, when I quit dreaming, were flat goals. Goals that belonged to other people. Goals I committed to for some reason: to keep my job; to make a loved one happy; because everyone else had a similar goal. They weren’t wrong, they just weren’t mine.

A few weeks ago, while writing my morning pages (if you haven’t read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, what are you waiting for?), I recognized the little girl who used to dream (with a certain amount of fearlessness) had stopped, and I began work to get her back.

I heard this as recently as last week: “Unless it’s specific, with a timeline, it’s not a goal. It’s just a dream.”

Just a dream.

A little belittling to dreams, if you ask me.

I’m not saying my life for forty years consisted of dull days and a series of tasks. Far from it. But I am saying I missed the richness—the possibility—dreams provide.

How do you keep a soul in your goals? Inspiration in your perspiration?

Dream.

I’ve decided a dream is a little like a new idea for a novel. I toss it around for a while. Turn it over. Is it something I can build a whole story around—a life around? If it feels good, grabs me, then I begin to plot it out. Or, for those of you are more of a “live life by the seat of your pants” kind of person, dive in until your dream begins to take shape. If the idea has staying power, it’s full speed ahead.

The best goals begin as dreams. The best dreams are your dreams. Dreams that fill your soul. They demand you go after them. It’s your pursuit that makes the dream stronger and turns it into (gasp!) a goal.

Before you kick yourself for not accomplishing everything on your list in 2011, consider whether those things were your goals or someone else’s. And before you begin to contemplate what you would like to have happen in 2012, dream a little.

CR: Just finished reading an ARC from Debbi Mack. It was terrific. Be looking for Riptide in February!

It's all better with friends.

Perfection Perspective

We have all seen a perfectionist at work. Someone who dots and crosses all the right letters and always leaves a room tidier than when she walked in.

The psycho serial killer on television who always lines his pencils up just so on the desk and considers everything in his bizarre and whacked world to be squared and precise. In control. Perfect.

As a former Weight Watcher's Leader, I know that another form of perfectionism relates to body image. "If I can't be perfect, why bother?"

But none of these describe Peg Brantley. Even though I learned as a child that if I was going to do something, I'd better do it right. And even though I was told that while babysitting the neighbor's kids, I'd better clean the kitchen and dust and vacuum and do whatever else needed doing in the house (and do it right), I felt I had a good handle on the difference between doing something right and being a perfectionist.

So I thought.

When my friend, Kel, and I had lunch yesterday, I realized that releasing a book by the end of the year just wasn't possible. I mean, it's September. So I told her next spring.

And then, this morning, while writing my morning pages, it occurred to me that not only was I doubting myself, I was doubting God (who I love to believe is my partner and makes things go well) not to shoot for the end of the year.

Naturally, I felt bad, but that's an entirely different discussion.

I decided to challenge myself, wrote that I needed to finish the first draft of Rough Waters (the story I'm working on now) before I began editing Irrefutable Proof—just to make sure I had a handle on RW before setting it aside for a bit.

I decided I wanted to have the first draft finished by the end of the month. All systems were green. I got that goose-bumpy feeling we all get when we've made a decision and are ready to charge, full-steam ahead.

I wrote these thoughts down and then said something to the effect that it had become important to me that my first drafts not be, as Anne Lamott calls them, "shitty first drafts", because then it's almost like writing from scratch when I go back to edit. (It isn't of course, but hey . . . my rationalizatin is able to twist things up just as well as the next guy's.) I was telling myself that I needed to do it right, completely negating the fact that it is after all, a first draft.

Does "getting it right" mean it has to be perfect?

After writing this bold new plan down (and almost sabotaging it in the same breath) I opened up The Artist's Way (which I highly recommend) to read.

One of the things that TAW has taught me to be open to is the wonder of synchronicity. These are all from Week 7 (highlights are mine):

Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead.

We correct our originality into a uniformity that lacks passion and spontaneity. "Do not fear mistakes," Miles Davis told us. "There are none."

Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results.

To the perfectionist, there is always room for improvement. The perfectionist calls this humility. In reality, it is egotism.

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough—that we should try again.

"A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places," said Paul Gardner.

If you want to know how messed up I can get if I don't pay attention, my post for Friday on Crime Fiction Collective is about procrastination.

Go figure.

It's all better with friends.

The Artist's Way

You know I'm appreciating this book more and more. If you don't have The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron sitting on your shelf as I did, put this on your list of books to check into.

Here are two bits I've read this week I especially loved:

I like to think of the mind as a room. In that room, we keep all of our usual ideas about life, God, what's possible and what's not. The room has a door. That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light. Out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them there. The ideas we are comfortable with are in the room with us. The other ideas are out, and we keep them out.

And this:

My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

This morning, in my morning pages, I brainstormed some ways to bring the book I'm writing to a more satisfying ending than what I've managed to come up with so far. I think I may have done just that. And, I also had the most amazing moment related to a completed manuscript I have that will make it oh-so-much better. Of course, it will require a complete re-write, but I was sort of looking at that probability anyway.

OT (but not so much): Because of a sore ankle, I've been trying a little yoga in the morning. Trust me, I'm horrible at yoga. I can't get through (yet) an entire session, and the moves I do get through are horrible imitations of what the instructor is doing. But still, I work at it a little. And even with my feeble attempts, I've noticed I'm a bit more limber each time, and I'm sitting up a little more straight at my desk. I might have to practice my poor yoga moves in the middle of the day!

CR: Dying for Justice by L.J. Sellers.

It's all better with friends.

Morning Rituals

At the moment—this moment—I love my morning time. Well, mostly. Except when it's hard.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been faithful at one thing for sure. My morning pages. The Artist's Way encourages even the busiest among us to get up twenty minutes early (for me it would take thirty minutes. Just sayin'.) and write out three full pages, long-hand, in a pretty much stream-of-consciousness style. The idea is to begin to identify your Censor and kick it to the curb. And at the same time, connect with the huge and immense creative center so many of us block. It's not always easy, but it's never wrong. Week Two gave me a big clue, but I needed to get through Week One to understand.

The processes and background in TAW keep me filled with trust that it will ultimately yield to good things. So I'm plugging along, sometimes getting an aha moment, sometimes just glad to finish the three pages. Trust really is a big part of this.

Thus far, I think I've uncovered that I'm a little leery of uncovering anything that might release my driven side, and well, there's always the comfort in the status-quo, even if it means staying in that stuck spot I've been comfortable in for so long. If you've done the work in TAW, maybe you know what I'm talking about.

Aside from TAW, I'm LOVING, LOVING, LOVING Elizabeth George's Write Away. Her process gives me so much hope. I guess, in the end, there's a part of me that craves a certain amount of structure. And her stream-of-consciousness plotting had me practically jumping up and down in our courtyard this morning. She gives insight to a process that doesn't seem stifling.

In the meantime, LoML is putting together an amazing road trip for us. Can I just say I love his wanderlust? His romanticism? His never ending interest in the world around him?

CR: Dying for Justice by L.J. Sellers.

It's all better with friends.

My Date With ???

So, did that get your attention? You know I'm totally and completely in love with my husband. You're wondering . . . "What the . . . ?"

Here's your answer.

I'm working through The Artist's Way. I've been doing my Morning Pages (designed to put my Censor Snake in its place) faithfully.

Morning Pages are a daily event, but there's another assignment. You must take your inner artist on a date once a week. Before I proceed (and OT), I was reminded of the weekly dates LoML and I had back when he was still working. I want to engage those again as well. A special time when it was just the two of us. A special few moments every week.

My planned date for today got squeezed a little bit. But because it got squeezed, it actually expanded. I needed a haircut. Because of my hair stylist's schedule, it was either get there today or wait for six weeks to get in to see her. I'm not stupid. I opted for today.

My planned date was to a wonderful Asian market known locally as H-Mart. I love walking into that space. If you want the suburban grocery shopping experience, you will be disappointed. When you walk through those doors, you walk into a different culture. I love it.

Here's a little list I made today of some of the 'different' things I found and would love to know how to prepare: Lotus root; Pepino melon; Dragon Fruit; Rambutan; Sesame Leaves; Bacha; Nagaimo; Dried persimmon; Mugroot (I so flashed on to Harry Potter); Bellflower; King Trumpet Mushrooms; Enoki Mushrooms; Indian Bitter melon; Whole Kimchi; Acorn pudding; Yellow croaker; Dried octopus; Salmon heads; Snail meat; Sweet Fish Roe; Dried cuttlefish; Dried squid; Beef Blood; Pheasant; Frog legs; Tube squid and Squid Flower. For things LoML and I love—fried Calamari for way more than two people for $2.99, and Wild Caught Sea bass for $2.99/pound.

I was early to my hair appointment by a good 45 minutes (this is where the expanded date begins). And the shop (which had moved since the last time I'd been there) was right next to a little restaurant, the Monaco Inn, which had a delightful patio. I had my Kindle (loaded with an L.J. Sellers book), and opted to have a light lunch, a glass of wine . . . and L.J.

To round it out, I was talking about TAW to my stylist, and lo-and-behold, she's been giving that book away to people for years, but never studied it on her own.

I love when this happens.

CR: Dying for Justice by L.J. Sellers.

It's all better with friends.

Pffft!

Okay, six days ago I marched out my smart self and told you about four books for writers I was going to read my way through.

Yesterday, I parked two of them back on my shelf. Not because they aren't wonderful, but because The Artist's Way was clearly going to demand a little bit more of me than to simply read my way through it. And the third book . . . well, if it doesn't hit the shelf soon, it will at least be read in even smaller bites.

I think I'm going to gain a lot from working through TAW. Of course, at this point, there's a lot of trust involved. And patience. Kind of like when I broke my ankle in two places. I was just this side of surgery. While my head heard what the orthopedic surgeon was telling me, my heart just knew I was gonna set all kinds of healing records. They'd be writing about me for years in JAMA.

Not.

Trust and patience.

Are any of you familiar with TAW? Please someone, say yes. I hate the idea of hanging out there all on my own. It's freaky.

CR: The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

By the way . . . I almost made this a seperate post. If you're looking for a terrific police procedural series, you can't go wrong with L.J. Seller's Detective Jackson. Seriously. I have yet to be disappointed.

It's all better with friends.

Books on Writing

I don't know about you, but I have shelves of books on the craft of writing. Some are terrific, some not so much.

What's important to remember when you buy a book on the craft of writing, is that it won't do you any good if it just sits on your shelf looking good. I know this from personal experience.

So, as a kind of accountability, here are the craft books I'm reading bits from every morning (beginning this morning) while I sit outside in the Colorado sunshine:

The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell. As opposed to craft, this is more about the writing life, and how we can get through it. I'd begun reading it ages ago, but for some reason (probably the need to organize my desk), I shelved it.

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass. I don't always agree with him, but I always learn from him. Again, I'd started reading this one a long time ago and had to pull it off the shelf this morning.

Write Away by Elizabeth George. This one has been untouched on my shelf, but not for very long. George is going to walk me through her process, and I have the feeling she'll hold my hand if I need it.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I confess that this book has been in my home longer than I can remember. Even before I seriously considered writing a novel. Unread. I think because I thought it might be a lot of psycho-babble. But, along with Write Away, it's probably the book I'm most excited to read now. She teaches us how to unblock our creativity. I'm willing to give that a shot.

What books on craft are you committed to reading right now?

CR: Passions of the Dead by L.J. Sellers.

It's all better with friends.