Focused Practice for Writers #1

Practice is the primary tool to developing our art into something better. Some say it takes ten thousand hours, others say a million words, but all of it means the same thing: In order for us to get better we have to invest time. In the interest of investing our time as writers better I share a technique I learned from Howard Tayler, author of Schlock Mercenary and member of the Writing Excuses Podcast, at LDS Storymakers 2013. It is called Focused Practice.

Focused Practice is when you work on a skillset in any domain and you identify the things that you are not good at, and instead of building shortcuts around them you focus your practice efforts there. For our purposes the domain is writing and storytelling. And I know what you are saying, "I'm no good at complex plots," or "I don't want to tell that kind of story." And all that may be true, but the idea is to seize control over these skills.

Listen to Howard talk about
Focused Practice here.

Tayler boils down a concept Carol Dweck, a Stafford professor, teaches: "If you believe a thing is within your control you're more likely to exercise control over it."

When I do focused practice, I spend fifteen minutes typing as quickly as I can with the focus of developing one skill. This works better than trying to develop all my writing skills at the same time.  As a writer who is looking to serve other writers, I wanted to share three writing prompts that have helped me in my own focused practice:

I rewrote a chapter from
this "Words of Radiance."

1. Rewrite the work of an author you want to imitate word for word.
Tayler comments that in order to utilize focused practice best we need to have a mentor. Unfortunately sometimes we don't have a critique group or mentor that fills that role for us. In my experience we don't always have mentors or critique groups to help us. This exercise can help us that problem. Taking a writer you admire and writing out their prose word for word can be very helpful. You'll have to ask yourself why they made the choices they for verbs, nouns, and perhaps most importantly when they use adjectives and adverbs. Upon finishing this exercise compare some of your writing to theirs. Without the luxury of a real life mentor you now will be able to recognize some of the places that you want to develop your skills.

2. "Write the other."
Nikki Giovanni, a famous poet who teaches at Virginia Tech, states, "Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit they don't. I want to be clear on this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writer's write from empathy." Take a real life situation that you can empathize (or even better one you can't) with and write from the perspective on one of the people involved. This will help you to get outside yourself and see world differently. There is not one morality in a good story, there should be at least two, and in more complex stories you'll need even more.



3. Use a picture for inspiration
If anyone looks at my Scrivener set up, they will find thousands of inspirational pictures like the one to the left. The novel I am currently working on has been inspired by several pictures like this. So the focused practice to engage in here is to create a story based off of this picture. It doesn't have to be the best story in the world, you are just looking to allow your imagination to move in different directions. Have fun with this prompt.

For the next month these will be the types of practice I will be focusing on. Next month I'll post another three.

Addendum for those writing with A Round of Words in Eighty Days: As for my goals, though I've been writing a lot I am still less than halfway done with the short story I am working on. But the most important thing I have to remember is that every word I write brings me closer to the end of the story. I might have to practice meeting deadlines, but more importantly I have to practice finishing stories first. If I can't finish a story, I can't meet a deadline.

"Writing is the hardest thing you will ever choose to do."

Jayrod and Jenny on Graduation Day

It's time. Time to wipe the dust off this blog and start making it good for something again. Its been a while and I'm grateful that it has. Not because I don't like sharing my thoughts, but because I needed to do some things for me that were more important than being here. Some of those things included joining a twelve step group, saving my marriage, earning bling for my college graduation, and culminating in that graduation. Words fail to express how much it means to be a college graduate. I know this work will change the lives of my wife and children in time.

Of course you didn't come here to listen to me brag about myself. Because let's face it that's pretty damn boring. However seeing as I graduated nearly three months ago that story might be worth sharing. But it isn't. I was depressed for much of the past three months and it crippled me. I sat at work waiting for someone to come in and talk to. And as soon as that picked up I found what I thought would be a great new job. Unfortunately they closed three weeks after I started with them. I soon found myself taking care of my wife after a major surgery, and when I wasn't taking care of her I played Skyrim. I played until I got tired of being depressed. (Note: A sign that your depression isn't clinical is that you can do something to change it.) So I put the game system away, started reading again, and most importantly I began writing again.

Few things have been as difficult as the choice to begin writing again. I stopped around the time I graduated and by that time I hadn't worked on any fiction in nearly a year. I had written plenty of poetry, and too many essays (one essay is too much) but no fiction. That's not a bad thing, except my favorite thing about writing is telling stories. And for some reason I had run out of stories to tell.

Bret Anthony Johnston wrote a book called
"Remember Me Like This". Go buy that book.

And I had to figure out where to start if I didn't think I had anymore stories to tell. I realized I had stories I hadn't finished so of course I hid and played Skyrim and tried to forget I wanted to be a writer. I realized I was afraid after a while, and I couldn't really place why I was afraid. It wasn't until I stopped playing games that I understood. I was afraid because I know "Writing is the hardest thing you will ever choose to do" (Quote by Bret Anthony Johnston). And I wasn't sure I had it in me to do it again.

This past Monday, I was released as the president of a writers group I was a part of. And I found myself so overjoyed that I came home and I wanted to write. The desire to create became stronger than my fear of the words. As I write this today I have written nearly for a week straight. My sentences haven't been perfect, and my ideas still struggle to flow, but I am putting in the effort. I am giving my creativity a chance to flow.

Writing is the most difficult thing we can choose to do. Because as Nikki Giovanni says, "If you wrote from experience you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy." And following empathy to write takes us away from the comfortable. It leaves us to choose to look at tragedies such as what Robin Williams chose to do and get in the same space as he lived and come to understand how depression and Parkinson's Disease drove him to that choice. That's no place any of us wants to go. But thats where the story with meaning will be found.

Oddly enough, I chose to join a twelve step group because I have spent my life avoiding my own feelings. I'd shared empathy with others, but not with myself. I reached for the stars, but misunderstood my own heart. Those who hear the poetry I write that is about me tend to say that it has power that my poetry about other people lacks. I think thats because its hardest for me to find compassion for myself. And that's the choice that I have to make to write.

Today is August 17th and I am jumping back into where I was a couple of years ago as a participant of A Round of Words in Eighty Days (#ROW80). I realize they are 49 days into the challenge, but I need a network of folks to write with. So here I am.

My goal for the next week is to complete a short story I have been working on since NaNoWriMo 2012. That is the only writing project I am concerned with at this time. I'll share a short update on Wednesday with some more musings. Thanks for visiting.

Teaching Materials for Writers Ink: Unblocking Creativity

Sometimes in our lives we embark on journeys that are incredible. Sometimes they completely terrify us. I recently began a journey that does both to me. I began a writing organization on my campus at Weber State University. You might ask why would I do that? It mostly has to do with the fact that I recognize that our teachers shouldn't be solely responsible for helping us to develop our skills as writers. The following is the contents of a small booklet I made for a class I taught on Creativity today. It is my hope that the ideas expressed here will help other writers to learn craft or discover resources that can help them become better writers. Enjoy!

Unblocking Creativity

What is Creativity?

According to the Oxford Dictionary creativity means: relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. Hopefully you asked after reading that: So what? I know I did. Creativity means something different to each one of us. This personal meaning is what drives us to create and what one of the goals of Writers Ink will be to teach you to protect. But that is a different lesson.

I define creativity as the playground of the mind. We take materials and we create music in words, build worlds in imagination, learn what it means to touch a star, and some few of us will use creativity to cure cancer. Hopefully our creativity will allow us to change our world with as much impact as that team of scientists will.

What gets in the way of our creativity?

Make a list. Really make a list. Some of the things you will see on mine is: Fear of rejection keeps me from creating; I believe that being creative is a luxury I can’t afford right now; and I’m so tired of this project I’m working on that I’m done with it. I don’t know if these sound familiar to you, but I know that there tends to be a pattern with most of our reasons for not creating. That pattern is our self. We are the force that gets in the way of our creativity. So in order to embrace our creativity & develop creative confidence we have to stop getting in our own way. I’m not saying that our reasons for not creating aren’t valid, but it is our responsibility to learn how to work around them.

Tools of our Trade

As writers we must recognize that we are developing skills to enable us to build cohesive arguments, create resonating phrases, and open minds. Among the first skill we must develop is how to create ideas.

Again, make a list. Find out what you already use. Following are some of my tools:

1. A Commonplace book: A place to hold all my good and bad ideas
2. Research on my subject matter
3. My memories, your memories, fictional memories, & dreams
4. Brainstorming (Alone and with trusted friends)
5. Quotations, Art, Driving, and Showers (Places of inspiration)
6. Writing Prompts or Focused Practice

Your list of tools may be longer or look entirely different than this. And that’s okay. Now go share your list with another writer and increase their tool box.

Expressing Creativity

Of course you came to this to learn how to keep your creative flow. I like to think of creativity as a well. A well must be nurtured and taken care of if it is going to give us water throughout our lives. One of the dangers of allowing ourselves to get in the way of our creativity is that we can dry up our well. Thankfully if we tend to ourselves again we can refill our creative wells. Following are four ways we can help keep our wells full of creativity.

1. Pay attention to and explore the world around you. Have you ever seen a picture or quote on Facebook that you thought was awesome? You see things like that when you are paying attention. Take the time to collect quotes and pictures or anything else that inspires you. These put water into the creativity well.

2. Open up, be vulnerable, recognize emotion as a source of energy. This is hard. Sometimes we experience feelings that we don’t want to. We can even create experiences of emotion using music, smells, and watching memorable films. When we as artists are authentic about what we feel it can fill our well.

3. Creativity isn’t an event it is a lifestyle. I have found that the muse only regularly visits the consistent. Remember to keep writing. This is most difficult when you feel blocked. That’s okay keep writing. Having more than one creative project at a time helps with this process. The waters of creativity flow best when we live in such a way that we consistently are working on creating new projects.

4. We must embrace loss and develop creative confidence. Of all the steps this is the most difficult. Artists must endure rejection and loss throughout their lives. Does it hurt? Yes. In my opinion it always should, because we have become numb to inspiration when it ceases to hurt. Embrace the pain. Develop your skills so well that you can have confidence even in rejection. This will help you be resilient enough to keep putting your work out there to make the world a better place.

Creativity as a Journey

Now that we are finished with this class you know everything there is to know about creativity and you are ready to create worlds without end, right? Perhaps. Hopefully this has simply whetted your appetite with some tools to develop your creativity and habits to help you develop the lifestyle. Below you can find resources to help you as you continue on the journey to discover greater creativity. Including the resources I used to create this booklet. May the muse visit you often.

Resources for Creativity

The Artists Way written by Julia Cameron 
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp 
Kick-Ass Creativity by Mary Beth Maziarz 
The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley 
The Gift by Lewis Hyde 
Drawing out the Dragons by James A. Owen
David Kelley’s TED talk: How to build your creative confidence 
Julie Burstein’s TED talk: Four lessons in creativity

The Celebration of the Death of DOMA

Taken from George Takei's Facebook Page

The caption to the left is similar to how I looked when I turned on my computer yesterday morning to see some of the best news I have seen in years. The Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA had been put down by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional. For those of you who are unfamiliar with DOMA, as I once was, it is a law that was signed by President Clinton. Simply it mandated that if a same sex couple got a civil marriage or a civil union that other states did not need to recognize that. Such as a same sex couple that got married in Massachusetts moved to New York the state of New York would not have to recognize that relationship as legal. Not only did DOMA make it difficult for same sex couples to be able to move where they pleased, it made it difficult for them to travel and retain their rights. Such as if a same sex couple would be on vacation in Florida and they were in a car accident the family of the injured party would have rights to visitation of the injured, but the spouse may not have rights of visitation and could even be asked by the family and the hospital to leave. These are the kinds of situations that make the end of DOMA worth celebrating.

However not everyone in the Union will see this as a matter worth celebration. Many people in California donated thousands of dollars to make certain that Proposition Eight passed. And when it did lawmakers were faced with a group of people who proposed that it may be unconstitutional. This is what made DOMA and Proposition Eight so controversial: the fact that people said they wanted X and the Bill of Rights said people should get Y. This is what the Supreme Court among others has been trying to sort out for years since all this began back in 2008. Now that it has been declared unconstitutional there are groups of people who are upset because the Supreme Court did not vote in favor of the people. Instead they elected to give the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community their rights. This is why I celebrate.

However I need to make a confession to you. I am a Mormon. Mormons did much of the funding for Proposition Eight in California. I do not agree with their choice despite some of my beliefs being the same as theirs. I believe that religious marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman. The purpose of that marriage is to have a relationship that lasts longer than our lifetime here on earth and into the eternities before God. None of the doctrine I have read has ever led me to believe that God offers that same opportunity for those of the LGBT community. That is the primary reason why I am against religious marriage for the LGBT community. However civil marriage which is the legal form of the union which is recognized by the state and federal government I believe is crucial to the livelihood of this nation if we want to continue to brand our nation as the land of the free.

The United States of America was established to offer religious freedom to the puritans over two hundred years ago. During that time we have had to redefine freedom multiple times. First we had to figure out what it meant to give the natives freedom. We hurt them as individual nations by taking their lands, corrupting their culture, and expecting them to peacefully respond to our demands. I do not need to describe to you that this went poorly. Next we had to deal with the issue of slavery. This issue lasted much longer because of the belief that blacks were less than human at one point. With the Emancipation Proclamation we purchased a peaceless surrender of the slaves. Over the freedom of slaves we started a civil war, we instituted the Jim Crow Laws, and we oppressed blacks for another hundred years after they were granted their “freedom.” Today we face the issue of Gay Rights and we are responding to it in much the same way we did with same grace and sensitivity that we have with these other issues. We as a people are undereducated about it, fearful of it, and unwilling to recognize in what ways we may be wrong about how we are treating our fellow human beings. Same Sex Marriage is only one of a multitude of rights that the LGBT community is fighting for.

In my celebration of the Death of DOMA I am committing to becoming more educated on how to help support the rights of the LGBT community because I do not want to repeat the mistakes of our past. As a young black man, I still see discrimination towards me and I’ve seen it towards the LGBT community as well. And personally I hurt, because I know they hurt. Civil Rights isn’t about protecting the definition of a word that doesn’t need protection. The definition of marriage changed in the Oxford Dictionary already. And marriage in the context of what the LGBT community is working towards has everything to do with legal rights and nothing to do with trying to take the domestic comfort of the families of heterosexual couples. This is about making us as a people living according to the values that we state in our Constitution to stand by. If we are seeking the Life, Liberty, and Happiness of all the people in our nation then we by definition need to give to our people the same rights that they can be with those they love, take care of their families, and build our nation into the beacon of freedom that it claims to be.

I end this blog with one of my favorite songs. It is by Mackelmore and Lewis and it is called Same Love. I believe if we raise the rising generation to hate themselves, fear the judgment of others, and polarize themselves and others on the issues we face in our world we will fail them. We owe it to ourselves, and our children to educate ourselves that we may be full of love one for another and live in real freedom.

Moving up by a NaNo-meter #1

Howdy folks!

I am currently at a 9530 words as I write this.  I'm pretty excited to be at this point keeping a steady pace of writing.  This year has been so much more difficult than last year was, but rewarding in new ways also.  Perhaps because last year all I had to worry about was writing during my time off for the most part.  But now I'm home and all the responsibilities of being home are cutting into writing time.  This killed me during both Camp NaNoWriMo events earlier this year, but something about the main event is different.  It is simply that I've chosen to find a way to make this a lifestyle here, not just a flash in the pan event this time.

Writing as a lifestyle has been the dream I've been chasing for some time now.  And during events like NaNo you have the support and community to help you develop it.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to develop a habit of writing these first twenty seven days.  So far I have been able to anticipate when I might miss a day, and I've written four out of these first five days.  No small task, let me tell you.

Because this month is really all about learning how to write more frequently and reach deeper for the stories within us, I figured that I would share some of the things that help me to reach my wordcount goals for NaNo and what I've learned over these past five days.

1) Don't be afraid to rewrite a scene if it doesn't feel right.

Sometimes when we are drafting we write a scene and just try hard to get it to fit what we want to have happen in the story.  During NaNo they often tell us to not bother doing any revisions to our work.  And I have to say, that's silly.  Keep the words, they are important, but rewrite the scene.  Don't let yourself get into a place with what you are writing that you no longer like it because you are writing so fast that you aren't invested in your story.  Remember that you are writing to become the best writer you can be.  Rewriting is a part of that process.  You might say that there are other writers who haven't needed to do that.  Guess what, likely your not going to be one of them.  And in reality they could have given us better writing if they did revisions.  That's just the nature of the beast.

For me this has resulted in some great things already.  The first scene I tried writing just didn't feel right at the end.  So I decided to rewrite it.  Funny thing is I discovered during the rewrite the voice of the story.  With the voice I began to understand the main character better and found myself wondering new questions about him.  Particularly what made him give up his faith.  I'm hoping to discover that this month as I write him.

2) Don't be afraid to write things that don't have anything to do with the story you are working on.

This sounds like advice that is weird doesn't it?  But we all need a break from some kinds of writing.  I use blogging as a break from writing fiction.  Oddly enough this break gives my mind a rest from the challenges that fiction forces me to face, and I am able to remember for a little bit, why I began this journey.  It isn't because writing fiction is easy.  It is because I enjoy it, in every moment of its difficulty.

This NaNo I am attempting to write several short stories.  But the longer I'm working on it, I realize that I'm not going to get to more than the one short story I'm working on.  Much of this has to do with the fact that I'm going to write about this character's childhood to inform myself about it.  I'm going to take the time to really get comfortable with this character, not just on the superficial level, but I want to know him as well as I know myself.  Because a character that well developed has power to drive a story on their own.  And because he is a major character in my novel it will just work to inform that also as I write.

3) Butt in Chair Hands on Keyboard everyday.

Last year during NaNo I didn't write everyday.  I would slack off because I thought my brain needed time off.  And during those times I underwent a period of just feeling disoriented, not because I didn't need time off, but because I wasn't approaching it in a balanced way.  We usually make time to talk to friends everyday, our spouse, pray, or read.  What makes writing different?  The fact that it uses up so much brain space?  Or perhaps because it is hard.  The other things we do everyday aren't hard. But the reason they aren't hard is because we do them everyday.  By doing them everyday we reduce their difficulty and increase our skill in doing them.  Thus the only way to make writing a lifetime habit is to BiC-HaK everyday.

4) Believe in yourself.

Nobody else can really believe in you until you do.  NaNoWriMo has such great energy because literally people from all over the world come together to belief that they can write a draft of a novel in a month.  Each person comes with a different idea of success, willing to work hard to achieve that.  Do you understand what kind of power is found in that?  And that power isn't bound to just NaNoWriMo season.  It lives within your fingertips each and everyday.  It takes hard work, time, and consistency to develop that power into a future.  It doesn't matter whether you are a neurosurgeon, a musician, a homemaker, or a businessman it takes those ingredients to find success. I want to apply these ingredients to make myself a writer. You can too.

You probably got to the end of this post saying, "OG, we knew all that already. We heard that in our writing class, or on Writing Excuses, or at the last Writing Conference we went to."  That's cool.  I'm just another voice telling you the same kinds of things you already knew and needed to hear again.  Honestly I'm just trying to egg you on for the adventure ahead.  I find myself to be the very happiest in my life when I am writing.  It just makes the rest of it all make sense.  I just hope I'm not the only one who feels that way (and even if I am, I'm not going to stop).

Thanks for reading if you're just trying to support me this month, and if you are a fellow NaNoer, take some of this advice to heart and move in the directions of your dreams.  It might take us a year, two, or even ten, but writing is less about the words and entirely about the ideas we can grapple with and trying to make our writing as perfect as our ideas.

A video on how to make our words as awesome as our ideas.

This is the OG, finishing the day at a grand total of 10652 words. Peace!

P.S. Due to Blogger being a pain, there will be a revision of picture and video sizes later.

NaNoWriMo #2 Getting my Groove Back

Weber State's Nontraditional Student
Literary Journal T-shirt design for the year.

Life has been crazy the past few months.  I was on the right track.  Working with a writing group weekly, a president for chapter of a professional writing organization, and a managing editor for a student literary journal are all things that should have meant I was doing something right.  Right?  I have what (I think) most writers would dream of if they were trying to build their resume.  Yet over the past few months I’ve lacked something: Perseverance.

I'm the President of the Wasatch Writer's Chapter now.

I stopped writing with my writing group and blogging weekly a few months back.  Why? I could give you all sorts of reasons.  I got busy with school.  I worked on my addiction recovery.  Our house flooded.  But none of them strike at the real heart of what is going on with me: “I’m not making writing a priority.”  I haven’t blogged, I haven’t worked on anything new, nor I haven’t been to my writing group, because I haven’t made them priorities anymore.  And if I want to be a professional one day, I need to incorporate writing into my daily life in a healthy way.

So after two attempts at Camp NaNoWriMo this year with spectacular failures, I’m signed up for the Official NaNoWriMo event this year again.  I did it because I need a community to help me make my writing a priority again.

A twitter writing community.

You might wonder why a person who is super busy with school, married life, work, a literary journal and an organization to manage would want more on their plate.  Quite simply, if I’m not writing the other writing activities in my life have no meaning. How can I inspire anyone to keep writing if I’m not doing it? How does my urging people to submit to my literary journal have integrity if I’m not writing? How can anyone in a writing group with me feel my criticism is valid if I’m not in the trenches with them?  And most of all how can I look myself in the mirror and say I’m a writer?  Bottom line, I can’t.  So I’m going back to where I began last year and finding the strength I learned there to continue this journey.

Another Online writing community.

A few nights ago I had plans of using the novel I wrote last year and finishing it off for my NaNo piece.  It is even on the website still.  But last night something clicked, if I want to really be in the fray with everyone I need to be doing something new.  My words need to suck.  My head has to be in the clouds.  And it is hard to get to that place when what you are really doing is editing an older story.  So I decided to do a NaNo of short fiction.  I figure I’ll get through roughly six to seven short stories by the time all is said and done.

This also supports me for the most important goal of my young writing career at this point.  Preparing to go to Clarion West.  At the end of the month I’ll be taking one of the pieces that I have done and polishing it up to send in to Clarion West to see if they will accept me as one of the writers in their 2013 workshop.  

Read this book!

Clarion West is a science fiction and fantasy writers workshop that is focused on helping writers belonging to minorities (women and ethnic) learn better what it takes to be a writer.  I learned about them a few years ago in Orson Scott Card’s “How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.”

I will graduate in a year, and at that point I'll need to be working full time and doing writing on the side until I publish.  If I wait longer to attempt to go to Clarion, I'll be professional and Clarion wants us as writers before they we are seasoned professionals.  So I am going to take the plunge and learn from the masters this summer.

Of course this is all based upon whether or not my stories are good enough.  This is where you the few who are still paying attention to this blog come in.  I need people to help me hone my work.  If you would be willing to help me with it I would appreciate it if you would leave me a comment below letting me know you would like to help me critic some of the stories I come up with.  Usually I wouldn’t ask for help, but there are eighteen slots for Clarion each year.  And I need all the help I can get to figure out what I can do to make my stories the best I can.

As always thanks for reading.  And I’ll be back on Monday to tell you how I’m doing for NaNoWriMo and fill you in on where I am with the goals I have established thus far.  This is the OG, Peace Peoples!

The Writer's Lifestyle & the Laws of the Harvest

I remember years ago when I read Stephen King's On Writing the sentence I hated most in that book: "You must not come to the blank page lightly."  I realize now that he wasn't accusing me of that, but telling me what I shouldn't do, but for some reason when I read it I know I felt, "You haven't brought your best work to the blank page yet.  You're still just doing it lightly.  Stop and start over."  And it was that which made me so angry that I devoured every last word of the rest of his book.  It was a very good book, but I still didn't understand what coming to the blank page lightly meant until recently.

As I've been working on "Crimes of the Umbramancer," I realize there are times that I have come to it very lightly.  I've come to the blank page writing out of obligation.  I've come to the blank page writing out of need.  I've come to the blank page writing out of fear.  And you may sit there and say that that's not coming to the blank page lightly, but I would have to disagree, because I know that when obligation, need, or fear are the primary motivators of my writing that it sowing seeds for later writing.  And when the seeds sown are seeds that eventually drive people from writing, the writing is light.  It didn't lay seeds that could reach into the soil of life and build a lifestyle.  It didn't lay seeds that could reach the depths of the concrete jungle of publishing and build me a career.  It didn't lay seeds that could touch the hearts of an audience that would care about what I wrote.  I approached the blank page lightly.

By John W. Lawrence

During NaNoWriMo when I originally wrote the first draft, I never sat down one day and came to it lightly.  Instead I came with hope, love, and enjoyment of what I was doing.  I started out blogging that same way.  But it has been hard and I'm still learning lessons about what it means to come to things "lightly."  Recently I came across a quote that really got me thinking though, from a book called The Seven Laws of the Harvest.  I would like to share those laws with you in hopes that they help you as much as they have helped me since I ran across them.

Wild Rose Seeds

Let's start with the first law: We reap only what has been sown.  What does this mean for us as writers?  It has a lot to do with the emotional sets we choose when we go out to do any writing project. If you write out of obligation, what you are sowing is that you want to write out of obligation.  That can create positive pressure to write, but what if it doesn't?  What if you find yourself unable to write because you are obligated to do it?  I think this often happens to us young writers, because we want certain things to happen on a specific timeline.  We obligate ourselves to write instead of enjoy our writing.  We stop enjoying the process, the adventure, and the story and get caught up in all the details such as "I have to take that adverb out", "That isn't going to be realistic", or my personal favorite "This isn't good.  I should start over."  Stop sowing obligation and start sowing joy again.  We write because we love it.  Some of us will be able to make a living off of it.  Others of us will entertain our children with our stories.  All of us should be invested in making a life out of it.  And life is meant to be enjoyed.

White Wild Roses

The Second Law: We reap in same kind as we sow.  If you want wild roses you plant a wild rose seed, not a rose seed.  If you want a thoughtful research paper for a paper on genetics you do good thoughtful research on genetics, not research on how many hours it took you to get to the end of Halo Reach.  If you want to have a book loved and read by many, you spend the hours writing that book.  What you sow will be the same kind when you go to reap.  And you cannot reap the full benefits of something you did not sow.  When you cook the microwave dinner you don't reap the benefit of the feeling of having cooked a meal for your family, you reap the feeling of convenience.  It has been my experience that we sow what is easy and complain during the reaping season about not getting the rewards of sowing something hard.  If you really want something beautiful, you're going to have give hard work to make certain that it comes to pass.

The Third Law: We reap in a different season than we sow.  So many things in life come so easily. The internet equals instant knowledge.  Our microwaves equal instant food.  Our televisions equal instant entertainment.  But we so frequently forget that in those endeavors we are reaping the reward of what someone else sowed.  And when we buy into that thinking, we forget that to really get the best things in life we have to give them time, nurturing, love, and work to bring them to life.  Writing a good novel is like raising a child.  We sow the seeds and a child is born.  Then it takes eighteen to twenty years of work to make certain that child becomes a good person.  The season of sowing is eighteen years away from when you reap the full benefits.  A good novel requires the same kind of dedication and love.  (Just hopefully not eighteen or twenty years worth.)

The Fourth Law: We reap more than we sow.  Think of a single seed of corn seed.  If you plant this you will get one ear of corn that has at least 600 kernels.  So the yield you get for each seed of corn is at least six hundred fold.  An acre at 84 rows of corn will plant at least 22,000 stalks of corn.  And if you consider each stalk to only give you one ear of corn that becomes 13,200,000 kernels of corn.  So the return on what is sowed is huge.  It gives you good reason to practice.  And make sure you do all you can to take care of what you have sown.  Because when the time for harvest comes, you are going to be pulling in a lot more than what you put into it.  And that is a beautiful thing.

The Fifth Law: We reap in proportion to what we sow.  Back to the corn analogy, if you only sow a half acre of corn at 11,000 stalks and only get 6,600,000 kernels you got what you deserved.  You can only reap what you actually sow.  A master pianist didn't get that way because they played piano once when they were a child.  No, they had to practice and work at that talent until they nurtured it into a gift that could touch lives and enable them to find an audience to listen to their music.  Writing is the same way.  We reap in proportion to what we sow.  Our seeds are different so some of us may reap the benefits of writing poetry for our families.  Others of us may make careers out of our writing.  What makes all the difference in the world is the fact that we sow enough seeds to get the return we are looking for.

The Sixth Law: >We reap the full harvest of the good only if we persevere; the evil comes to harvest on its own.   Often times when we sow our seeds, we will discover that weeds come in and try to grow along with our harvest.  Even though this can seem bad, we can't stop this process.  The good and bad seeds both desire the same ground to use for their growth.  What we can control is where we nourish and strengthen.  If we spend our time nourishing and strengthening our good seeds until the time comes to harvest we will be able to take the good part and destroy the chaff.  As writers this means we have to invest in our story until we finish it.  If we spend all our time revising, editing, and in other words not getting to the end of our story we will lose it.  However if we strengthen it along the way and learn what we can from the process when we get to the end we will be able to remove all the ugliness we are able at the end.

The Seventh Law: We cannot do anything about last years harvest, but we can about this years.  So you failed last year to get your harvest to come to pass?  Or you didn't get the book written?  Well guess what?  That's okay.  There is this year.  Don't make the same mistakes this year that you made last year.  That is one of the best parts about this entire process.  You learn from it the entire time.  If you learn you reap the benefits of greater understanding of yourself and how you function.  You know what you need to do to motivate yourself to write.  (Like I motivate myself with saying I can have an orange soda each time I write.)  The past is there to learn from, the future is before us to prepare for, and today is for us to act.  Make this year the best you can make it.  Plant hope to become a better writer.  Plant love for storytelling.  Plant an enjoyment of sharing your heart with others.  And as you plant those things this years harvest will be different than last years.

To date this has been the best year I've ever had writing.  And I've loved the majority of it.  I just had to learn a lesson about what it means to come to the blank page with intent to make a story that I love, instead of writing out of obligation to anyone or anything.  Writing is my lifestyle.  I am getting better at living this lifestyle all the time.  And I know that one day, that investment is going to get me what I really want.  An ability to touch the hearts of people with the words I write.

This is two bits.

That's my two bits for this week.  I'd love to hear about your two bits.  Tell me about the kinds of harvests you have had writing.  Good ones, bad, or somewhere in the middle?  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!  I'll catch ya later!  Peace.

The Rain: A source of ebb and flow.

Ever felt like the heavens just opened up and poured out all the pain, worry, and negativity of years upon you? I think that's where I've found myself for the past month. And it has really bothered me. I had wonderful plans for doing Camp NaNoWriMo and JuNoWriMo, work with my writing group, and getting through some particularly hard scenes in my fiction and everything concerning my writing came to a screeching halt as this hurricane began in my life.

I usually write to be able to get through the storms anymore and when the hurricane came I found myself completely blocked. I couldn't blog, when I tried to work on my story it all felt wrong, and piece after piece of my life just fell out of place. And you know what, today a piece just fell that I didn't think I could take. And after a difficult conversation with someone yesterday, the storm should have washed me away. But it was that piece that is washing away in the grand scheme of things that brought me here today to write. Because this is the first time since the hurricane began that I've seen a better tomorrow. Perhaps that means I'm in the eye of the storm. If so that means I need to get myself prepared for the other side, because I'm not about to let myself fall apart for a hurricane that I'm going to survive.

That's why I'm writing today, and I hope that my blocked period of writing is over. But as I think about all this it got me to thinking about why people have writers block and what keeps them from putting words down on the page. In my opinion writers block is a real thing, but it has a lot less to do with our actual ability to write words and a lot more to do with the emotional state that we reside in.

For example I remember hearing on a Writing Excuses Episode (Season 1, episode 16) once that Howard Taylor once had a block when he was writing Schlock Mercenary strip. He was trying to make it work, but he found himself needing to know the mathematics to how fast the space station was spinning. He did that and suddenly he was able to write again. As I think about that it wasn't an inability to write, it was the fact that emotionally he couldn't connect with flow any longer and that kept him from writing.

Ebb and flow are terms that we typically use when we talk about water, but creativity works in a very similar way. Sometimes the creativity is in high gear and beauty seems to come effortlessly, this state is known as flow. We can create because we have done the work, both mentally and emotionally to be able to flow. However there is also the state of ebb. Ebb is when we are preparing for our work, doing our prewriting, researching, and even when we are exercising.  These are times when we are preparing for flow once again. If we stayed in a constant state of flow our work would actually over time get worse because we wouldn't have anything left after a while to give. Our energy would be exhausted, our knowledge would fail, and we wouldn't have any experiences left to draw upon. Howard's experience was one of knowledge, and because he is a professional he realized what was going on, allowed himself the time to be in ebb and once he had the knowledge that he needed he shifted back into flow.

Buy this book.

Steven King describes a similar experience in his book "On Writing." He talks about "The Stand" and how when he was writing it he had a point where he didn't know what was going to happen next. It was the first time he had ever experienced writers block and he had no idea how to deal with it. After a month or so the answer came to him as to what he needed to do and it drove him through the rest of the novel. It was something that he needed to learn about the process of writing that enabled him to make that book so much better. It was simply that everything had grown quiet in his story and he needed to change up things. He changed them with a bomb. Changing the direction of the story was exactly what he needed to do to produce flow.

An effective means of using ebb.

But when you start to think of writers block as ebb it changes things for you. The first thing it changes is that you cannot think of writers block as a negative any longer. You must think of it as what it really is. It is your soul crying at you that you need something else at the moment. Usually it is one of two things. One: You don't want to be writing right now.  And if you don't want to write right now, that's okay. Go do something else. Exercise, read, or do some research. Do something that helps you get in the mood to write. Or it could be number two: You need to pay attention to what you need right now to be able to write. Sometimes you need to do some research. &Sometimes you need to put your life in order. Sometimes you just need time away from your story. When you are experienced you know exactly what you need, but I am still building my library of experiences in writing and that means sometimes I don't know what I need. But it does mean I need to be patient with myself and allow myself the time to be away.

Some professionals tell you that you need to write through block. And I agree with that.  Just because I haven't been able to make much progress this past month, I've still been writing. Just nothing that I feel I can share with anyone, because I have zero confidence in it. You must be willing to shut the door on your writing sometimes to be able to find out what you need to find your flow again.

For me I have had the hurricane interrupt my life with pain, fear, and worry. It got me to think to ask people about the things I didn't know. It got me to consider whether or not I'm a professional or not. It got me to look in the mirror and make a choice.  I choose to write.  Not because I can't do anything else. I could become a social worker, or a teacher, or even a politician, but none of those even come close to the joy I get out of writing.

So in your journey to becoming a professional, remember that you are going to have ebb and flow. Anticipate it. And find your rhythm, because Writers Block ends the day you understand your writing rhythms. And you can experience regular flow.

Sorry I left for so long. It won't happen again.  I'll be back with you on next Monday with another post. I'm giving myself time to get in rhythm again.  Because I'm going to be patient with myself and give you my best. Thanks for sticking around during my drought. Catch ya'll soon.

This is the OG signing out.  Peace.

War Post: 2nd June Late Mashup & Goals

Good Morning folks!  So this Saturday Morning I am finally getting to my Mashup for the week.  As I was getting ready for it earlier this week I had a lot of things that took place that kept me from getting to it any earlier.  Today is the second day of Camp NaNoWriMo & JuNoWriMo and thus far I'm keeping up with my goals for each day.  Todays Mashup is focused on things that might help folks to get through the next month of writing.  The community of writers is our greatest strength and we must help one another if we expect to make it.  Here's my contribution today.

David Powers King has a guest blogger by the name of Shallee McArthur this week and she's wonderful. Read on at: "Shallee McArthur: The Key to Writing a Deeper Book - Get Outside Yourself!"

Rebecca Hoffman also has a guest blogger who shares about her own writing experiences in: "Guest Post by Cynthia Ravinski."

Ellen Oh, an up and coming YA diversity author, interviews another author about why they write diverse fiction in: "What Diversity Means to Me - Featuring Zoe Marriott."

Angela Ackerman has a guest blogger  giving away a copy of their book Keep Calm and Query On.  Read on and register for a chance to win at: "Keep Calm And Query On + Giveaway!"

Anthony Dutson gives some solid advice about how to set up realistic goals in: "Reevaluating Your Goals."

Adam Gaylord talks about something that is worth thinking about, if you write sex scenes, in: "Who's Up For Some Bad Sex?"

Mary Ann, of the Prosers, shares a compelling blog on why flaws are necessary in characters in: "Even the Noblest Characters Need Flaws."

Jeff Hargett weighs in on the ages long battle of opinion between authors about: "Prologues."

Callie Leuck brings in the big guns with Jamie Gibbs to bring a bit more culture to her blog in: "Guest Post: Adding Culture To Your Fantasy World."

Morgan Shamy, The Redhead, helps us to see the difference between reality and fantasy in: "The Writer Community: Real or Fake?."

Donna K. Weaver has a lightbulb moment concerning how to do Show versus Tell in: "My Epiphany."

K.M. Weiland shares some great time saving resources in: "Resource Roundup: 5 Time Savers for Writers."

Nathan Bradford tells us all about the the war between Traditional and Self Publishing in: "Traditional vs. Self-publishing is a False Dichotomy."

And I'm sorry, I had to post this.  This is from Heidy Murphy sharing stories from soldiers for Memorial Day (And in my opinion, the most important blog of all of these to read).  Please read: "I Remember You."

And now for some amazing music.  If you have heard "Sexy and you Know It" and hated it, give this version a try.  It is amazing!

I told you it was amazing!

The thought that occurred to me is that I should make myself accountable for reaching my goals.  But I also realized that I need to do my goal keeping here in a method by which simplify what I need to do for goals.  In my group therapy we have the meat and potatoes of the program which are called daily's.   And I wanted a way to make certain I keep better track of my dailies.  I do well with writing, and sometimes exercise, but I struggle on day to day goal keeping.  So here are my daily's for the upcoming week.
Daily #1: Eat Three Times Daily.  This looks like an easy goal, but I actually struggle with this, because when I get caught up in activities, I tend to forget to eat.  And myriads of problems actually begin when I forget to eat, so I'm just focusing on eating at a regular frequency through the day.
Daily #2: Sleep Eight Hours each night.I am trying to keep this goal more and more often (except this week has just been terrible for this).  I know that when I get less than eight, everything is impacted negatively for the next day.  I feel sluggish,  achy, and dull and I am less likely to get proper rest the following night.
Daily #3: Write Frequently.This one I'm not aiming for daily on.  I need time to recharge my writing batteries so I plan on doing this one off and on (Even during Camp NaNoWriMo and JuNoWriMo).  I am a social writer so stuff like write ins and writing sprints help me a great deal.  Writing is one of the activities that grounds me and helps me to cope especially when I'm feeling angry or down.
Daily #4: Spiritual Time Daily.Once upon a time I was capable of reading from the scriptures daily and drinking from that fountain was enough to satisfy me.  I've grown a little since then and I guess I need more sources of spiritual food to help sustain me.  I decided to not make this goal about reading, and more about spending time daily thinking about things of a spiritual nature.  A few days this week I listened to gospel music, and today I plan on reading.  I don't know all of what I'll include in this, but I got to change this one up.
Daily #5: Helping out around the House.This is another mundane thing that keeps me sane.  I've started doing the dishes regularly and cleaning up around the house.  Funny thing is that as I do this my wife has become more supportive of my writing, and has started to enjoy more of the housework she does.  It makes all the difference to my healthy state of mind, and it's effects on my wife make this one that I need to keep around to help me.
Daily #6: Frequent Exercise.I've been getting out around three to five times a week for a while now.  I thought the best way to kick this up a notch would be to attempt to find a set time each weekday for exercise.  And I hope to drag my son with me.  He needs the help just as much as I do.
Daily #7: Reading Daily.This one has been struggling for months.  I just haven't been reading much of late.  I have several books that I've started, but none that I've finished for a while now.  So I'm going to set a half hour for reading each day.  I figure if nothing else it will put me in a state of mind where I have more ideas.
The list right now is incomplete.  I'm still trying to find out what things balance me and enable me to get through the more difficult times.  But I'm certain that if I keep at it I'll find my way.  This month, I'm focused a lot on the writing.  Because I am out to win Camp NaNoWriMo and JuNoWriMo.  I three to four hours set aside most days to get some quality writing done and my family knows during that time I'll be unavailable.  (And I won't waste it just to sit online and do nothing.)
That's all for this week folks.  I'll catch you again on Monday with another blog about writing.  Thanks for reading our ramblngs here.  It's really appreciated.  This is the First OG, Jayrod Garrett, saying that  hope you have a a beautiful week and go out and enjoy the sunshine.  And if you have any ideas for new hobbies I can take up, or things I can do to help me establish my new daily order.  Feel free to leave them in the comments.  Have a great day!  Peace!

Three Points of No Return

"Past the point of no return

the final threshold -

the bridge is crossed, so stand

and watch it burn."

So now that the background music in your head has become "The Point of No Return" from Phantom of the Opera, our conversation today might resonate with you.  The point of no return is something that is common in our society, though we hardly speak of it as such.  Many of the choices we make in our lives can find meaning in the burning Opera House as we hatch our best plans to achieve worthy ends.  Perhaps the problem in such places is that we don't really think of changing our lives forever with certain choices, or that the effects of our choices change other peoples lives forever.  Today I'll only address three, but keep in mind there are far more than these.

The first point of no return we deal with in life is that of birth.  Nobody gets to go back in the womb after they have come out (unless they take the entire womb).  As my wife and I have been married five years this question is thrown at me every so often, "When is Jayrod Junior coming?"  I could answer with the fact that in all my wife's dreams we only have daughters, or talk about our psychological issues we are facing now so we don't screw up our kids later, but the main reason is simply this: We are not prepared to have kids yet.  It is because we know this is a point of no return.  When you have a child they have passed their first point of no return, but as a parent you should be used to this, and you owe it to them to give them the best life you are capable of giving them.

I know a lot of people who are really unhappy in their marriages because they made the choice to have children too soon.  Either they listened to a religious leader who said "It is selfish to not have children immediately after marriage," just weren't responsible with their birth control, or they were so baby hungry that they just couldn't wait.  My wife made a boundary early in our marriage that I have honored stating that until I took care of my issues we would not have any.  Funny thing is that boundary eventually became about our issues.  You can tell us how wrong that is or that we are "sinning," but the bottom line is: We don't care what you think.  We care what our children will think, and we know they will thank us for putting their welfare first.  The poor choices of our parents affected us, likewise as did their wise choices.  We want more wise choices to affect our children.

Another point of no return in life is marriage itself.  Obviously we have stopped regarding it as such, or else there wouldn't be such a high rate of divorce in the world today.  Some folks think of marriage like purchasing a house.  You get a starter spouse this year, to divorce them and later have your second who you hope to keep a lot longer.  But by marrying them you tie yourself to them both socially and emotionally.  It isn't as easy to disengage as just saying "I'm leaving."  You might see this on the outside, but there is emotional trauma underneath the surface, because it was a point of NO return.  Women leave those relationships believing men are all scum, or that something was wrong with them.  Men leave those relationships believing women are conniving whores and think they can treat them as less than human.  Mind you I'm not saying that is what everyone thinks, but trauma of that nature does occur.

I know because when I came home from Iraq the first time, my wife told me she wanted a divorce.  The wounds those words left were deep.  I scrambled to save my new marriage, and found myself failing for nearly three years and each time I heard those words "I want a divorce" I was even more traumatized.  If we had divorced, I would not have walked out of that marriage the same man who went into it.  Because just like marriage, divorce is also a point of no return.   Or perhaps we should refer to these points a little differently.  They are changing points in life.  They are like earthquakes, so life changing that the past looks entirely different to us afterwards.  And we wonder how we survived before that experience.

The last point of no return and perhaps the final is death.  After one dies, there really is no returning.  Not to life as you knew it.  Whether you believe in life after death, or just getting put in the ground, Death changes everything.  It is the final quake that reshapes the worlds of the people around you.  Most of us don't think about death, we just figure that we'll go on living until we die.  We don't prepare for it.  And saddest of all, we often don't live like we are going to die.  I'll repeat that.  

We don't live like we are going to die.  

You might ask me what I mean by that.  The answer is fairly simple.  Over the course of this blog we have spoken about birth and marriage.  These are subjects that have to do with the idea of legacy.  Legacy is what we leave behind after we have passed on.  Legacy doesn't have to do with our will and giving all our possessions away.  It has to do with making the world a better place.  Through our influence, through our children, and through our actions.  To never look at the choices we make in life lightly, and thoughtfully consider what it could mean years from now.  Perhaps that calls for us to live like chess players being able to anticipate what may happen in life five years from today, but how much better would the world be if people took having children more seriously, or getting married more seriously, or took their lives more seriously?  Perhaps I'm just old fashioned in the fact that I want my life to mean something one hundred years from now, and I the choices I make today will shape that reality.  Or maybe, just maybe that is one of the ideals we should strive to achieve.

Thanks for reading my rant.  Hopefully you got something out of it.  Whether to make your life better or to make your fiction more realistic.  I'm Jayrod Garrett, the First OG, and I hope that you navigate the points of no return successfully.  Peace, peoples!

What are some of the points of no return, you've successfully navigated?