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Improving Your Writing and Howling at the Sky

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I’m in my office, here, and catching up a few student emails before I teach. I’ve got thirteen minutes to tell you something important.

If you want to take your writing to the next level – if you want to get better at it, it’s going to hurt.

See, growth hurts. My daughter told me this morning she is getting growing pains in her gorgeous long legs. At the time were watching Pokemon and one of the little monsters had evolved. It was frustrating for the poor monster because he couldn’t fight the way he always had. He was getting very upset indeed, banging into trees and howling at the sky.

My MA student hasn’t charged into any trees, but I’ll bet she’s done her share of howling. It hurts to give up on a certain way of writing, even though you know it’s limiting. Sometimes your way of writing will have got you such a long way that it’s painful to admit that it needs to change if you are to go any farther. You have to put down the old ways of doing things and just trust that you’ll be able to find a new way that’s better. For a moment, you are standing there naked, without any technique at all…or at least that’s how it feels.

The Pokemon was okay. By the time my daughter’s school taxi arrived, he’d learned how to use his new form and fight a whole new way. My MA student is going to be fine, too. In a few years, she’ll be publishing books and winning prizes and I’ll tell you her name. And my daughter won’t be growing forever. Her bones and nerves will settle down.

But I’ll be growing forever, and so will you, if you want to be the best writer you can. And sometimes, I promise you, you will howl at the sky…

It Doesn’t Look Like Work

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It doesn’t.

And sometimes, it’s not. I have times when I really should be writing, but instead am, say, on Pottermore (SkyNettle11176, Gryffindor, 14 1/2 inch Holly with Phoenix feather reasonably supple).

My husband knows when I’m slacking, and so does my agent and writing group. They’re also the only people who know when I’m working so hard my eyes are bleeding.  The rest of the time…writing is something that people know I do, but they don’t know (or care) when. Only my close friends really understand why I’m such a crap mate. I don’t have time to remember birthdays properly. I hardly have time to remember my shoes. When I’m on a roll, I’m leaving parties just as everyone else arrives. I’m saying goodbye and thanks for dinners when I’m still swallowing my dessert.

For something that doesn’t look like work, and sometimes isn’t, it sure takes up an awful lot of time and thought.

I think, really, that I’m working all the time. But I don’t think, really, that anyone is going to believe me…

It Comes Back

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Where does the writing go, when it leaves us? It does leave us, that’s for certain. Some days, weeks, months, years even, we can’t write a word. We sit and wish for it, and nothing happens; and if we force it, dreadful things drip out of the printer…things we wouldn’t let a dog see, let alone our agents or editors or writing friends.

Perhaps there’s only so much writing that can be done at once on the planet, and we have to share it around. Or maybe we need those fallow times, those yearning years, in order to do the work when it comes back to us.

It does come back.

I’m writing this at Easter, on Good Friday, that great dark Christian feast of the slain man-god. Today is all about being reviled and rejected. Today is about being found wanting, and no-one coming to help you, and being spindled and thrown away.

But it’s also about faith.

I have no idea why we have to go through the dark days of want and worry. But I do know one thing…the writing will come back. Believe in it and in yourself; and watch, and wait.

 Here’s Some Easter Inspiration – Click here to listen

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Running it Out

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It’s nearly midnight and I really should be asleep. There’s no guarantee the new puppy will sleep through the night and I have (of course) lots to do tomorrow. But I wanted to share something with you before I close my eyes.

I just finished watching Moneyball, a very good baseball film. We watch lots of baseball films in our house…and we have quite a little baseball library, too. 

I love baseball. There’s something about the moment where one person is under the falling ball/batting with the bases loaded/pitching for the last out.  If he catches it/gets a hit/strikes out the batter, he’s a hero. If not, he’s a total schmuck. It reminds me an awful lot of the writing life. Sooner or later it comes down to that…you and the great game. Will you score, or will you strike out? 

I was too terrible at baseball to play softball in the long American summer breaks, but I had to play in school. Our PE teacher soon learned to frisk my glove for books. He was always urging us to run out every ball. I was placed far in the outfield, where my total absence of athleticism could do the least damage, but even so, a hit ball sometimes trickled my way. ‘Run for it!’ he’d scream.

Honestly. The other fielders were way faster than I was and could actually throw the ball once they’d caught it. Running after a ball I knew I couldn’t throw and taking it away from worthier teamates seemed stupid . 

‘Why didn’t you run out the ball?’ the red-faced coach would demand. 

‘I didn’t think I could catch it.’

‘Try! Run out every ball, even if you don’t think you’ll win it. One time you will, and it will all be worth it.’ I can see the poor man now, labouring to explain the concept. In vain, I’m afraid. I never, to my knowledge, ran out a ball. 

That said, have a look at this Martha Graham quotation. 

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action; and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. You must keep that channel open. It is not for you to determine how good it is, nor how valuable. Nor how it compares with other expressions. It is for you to keep it yours, clearly and directly.

If that’s not running out every ball, I don’t know what is. I might not have listened to my poor PE teacher on the baseball field, but I certainly have taken his wisdom on board in my creative work. 

Get in the habit of keeping the channel open and doing your work the best you can. Run out every ball, even the ones you don’t think you can catch. One day, you’ll surprise yourself and feel it hitting the palm of your glove. 

 

Get Into the Groove

~ doctormimi ~ 1 Comment


I’ve been reading a dog training manual. I’ve been reading it as if it is the sole text on which I am to be examined for an life-changing certificate of achievement. It is 8 days until the puppy arrives and I am already starting to change my daily routines, to leave time for letting him out in the morning and for Andy to do the morning walk. I’m already planning to go to my office for two/three hours five times a week, rather than for six/eight hours twice a week.

Babies, whether human or canine, like routine. So does your writing.

When you set a regular writing time, something magical happens. All the ideas that come to you randomly (while in the middle of a busy supermarket, or just as you are about to pick up a friend to go out to dinner) begin to come to you during your writing time. It’s as if your muse learns when you will be available, and begins saving itself for when it has your full attention.

This means that your word count goes up; meaning that you have more to work with and to edit. You also begin to enjoy your writing time more;  because it’s not quite so painfully slow, it feels more like play. And all this means that you can finish earlier, and give yourself more time to, say, walk the dog, or go to the movies, or make something delicious to eat.  Your writing begins to work better in your life, then.

I’m not the first writer or writing coach to tell you this, I’ll bet. Flaubert advised being ‘regular and bourgeoise’ in your daily habits, Dorathea Brande talks about this extensively in her seminal 1930’s writing guide, and Stephen King, in his wonderful On Writing also encourages it. I think the reason we sometimes hold back is that we are culturally conditioned to think that regular writing is somehow of less value than spontaneous writing. If this is your fear, consider the words of Peter DeVries, ‘I only write when I’m inspired, and I make sure I’m inspired every morning at 9am.’

When’s the next time you’ll engage with your creative practice?

Adventures In Data Loss

~ doctormimi ~ 2 Comments

 

It’s not easy, sitting still and not looking while a nine-year-old paints your face. She’s not overly careful around the eye area and she tends to drip a bit… You have to just breathe out, close your eyes and enjoy the ride.

I’m not one of those Americans that thinks ‘it’s all good.’ I think the relentless positivism we’ve been asked to assume over the past few decades is actually harmful. Cancer patients that don’t get better can feel they’ve not been thinking the right way, or praying hard enough…people can be exploited and not have the language in which to express anger with the conditions in which they work… However, I don’t think there’s any point in being miserable, either. Sometimes you just can’t control things, or you let things slip out of your control.

I have a whole little lecture I give about data storage, about how to save daily iterations of your novel and how to back it up weekly both on a data key and by emailing the files to yourself. But, like anyone else, when I get terribly busy, I sometimes get lax. This week I lost 5,ooo words of my new book.

It happens.

It happened before computers. Hemingway’s wife was bringing his stories to him, as a nice surprise, when she left them on the train. Hemingway was still mourning those stories, some twenty years later, as the best things he’d written.

But I’m not so sure. My 5K took me through some very difficult technical things; another shift in time for the entire main section of the novel… a shift in my narrator’s voice, as she recalls things from two years earlier…an explanation as to how and why her community lives the way it does…  I’m dreading trying to write it again. It might very well be worse. But it might be better, too.

And anyway, I didn’t sign up to this kind of life with the idea that I would have everything under my own control. I became a writer, much like I sat down for my face painting, in a spirit of adventure.  I think my face turned out fine, for an evening at home making pizza. I think my writing life is more interesting and exciting than if I’d kept doing jobs I didn’t like. Hang on, we’re still moving, and who knows where we’ll go…

Here’s a soundtrack for the blog, since it’s Friday night. Click to hear it. Hope you like it…

 

For more about positivism and the harm it can do, read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Brightsided. 

 

A Bit About Failure and Rejection

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Here I am at my most vulnerable. No, not because it’s the first thing in the morning and I’m not wearing makeup. And not because I haven’t yet got up and found my dressing gown. Because I have a book going out to publishers.

Right now, people will be reading my work and deciding if they ‘love it enough’ to read the rest. Some will but some, inevitably, will decide they don’t…

Writers have to deal with rejection. If you write seriously, you have to come to terms with failure. You will, nearly always, and almost completely guaranteed, fail with your writing. You may start something and not finish it. You may finish it but not like it. You might like it, but not get an agent to like it. Your agent might like it, but no publishers do. One publisher might like it and give you a measly advance or maybe several publishers will like it and you’ll get a large advance…but not get good reviews. Or maybe you’ll get great reviews, but not win that year’s big prize. Or maybe you WILL win that year’s big prize, but you don’t get a movie deal. Or the movie never gets made. Or it does get made, but it doesn’t get good reviews. Or the movie gets great reviews but it doesn’t win an Oscar. Or it wins an Oscar but everyone says that the book it was based on was rubbish…

There is no end to the ways in which writers can fail.

Right now, in the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, students are competing for the Janklow-Nesbit prize. It’s a prestigious award that can start a writer’s career with a catapult. And the ones who haven’t been shortlisted feel as if they’ve failed. They haven’t even BEGUN to truly fail as writers…that takes years…

And what if all this failure makes you stop writing fiction? Rachael Bloom was on the MA a few years ago, writing about a subject very close to her heart. Her novel never did do what she’d hoped, and, eventually, she founded a charity about the subject; the Rhett Syndrome Research Trust UK. It’s an amazing charity that has raised money for ground-breaking research. Rachael uses her writing skills in fundraising, pr, marketing, etc. There may soon be a cure for this dehabilitating disease that strikes women and girls, thanks to Rachael. Some failure, eh?

 

 

Sharing Work

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I had a bath before noon. That means it’s not a writing day – but I’m still working on my book… I’m going to my new writing group.

One of the great things about teaching is that you tend to grow your own friends. This group is, at its core, an extraordinarily good workshop class I taught a few years ago. Since I’m really having to stretch myself with this narrative voice, I’m eager to get ongoing feedback…the kind I can’t get from colleagues or my wonderful agent. So, I’m joining the group…taking advantage of the skills I helped them to learn.

Showing your work is always a bit frightening. What if you’ve fooled yourself, and it’s completely pants? So it’s good to work with people you trust. That trust is only built up over time…you can only tell if you can work with people once you’ve worked with them. The most important thing, I think, is finding people with whom you can communicate well. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing the same kind of thing, but it matters that you can understand each other and understand what each writer is trying to do.

You need to be fairly certain what you ARE trying to do, in the cut and thrust of workshopping. You have to be ready to learn whose advice is sound on what kinds of issues. You have to be prepared to continually evaluate what people say, and what you feel.

But the sense of camaraderie, the great relief of having someone to talk to about your daily work, the opportunity to have other people helping you with craft ideas…well, that’s such a great relief and benefit that I can’t wait to see them today.

I’d better go and dress.

Too Busy For Words

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Hi. How are you? Miss talking to you.

Book’s going okay. Shared it with my workshop group. Got some good feedback. Feel a lot more confident.

Still got 40K marking/second marking to do. House is filthy. Friend from Prague still with us, bless him. Going to Chicago soon and taking daughter. Got meetings almost every night this week and a todo list as long as my inseam.

Real busy. Crazy busy. Insanely, stupidly busy.

But I’m writing. Some days not showering (see side of hair, above). But writing.

I mean, we’re all here to do something, right? And that’s what I’m here to do. So I’m doing it. Hope you’re doing what you’re here to do, too.

Look, I gotta go. We must have a proper chat soon. I’ll ping you.

Big hug. Big kiss.

Mimi

 

 

 

 

Working Out

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Well, today I went to the coffee shop to write. It went well. I’ve always been able to ignore people, so that was okay, and I soon lost myself in my story. And I must not have been pulling too many funny faces, because nobody pointed or laughed.

My book has so many layers…it’s very complex. There’s the letter my heroine is writing to the bishop. There’s the traumatic memories that intrude on her concentration. There’s her own thoughts and purposeful recollections. And then there are the day to day interactions she has with her people, while she is working on this very important letter.

Fuelled by pots of tea and bananas, I’m negotiating how all of these will be signalled and formed so that the reader passes effortlessly from one to the other and can tell the difference between them all.

It’s terribly difficult to write – which is, of course, why I’m interested in writing it. And I don’t know if it was all the caffeine, or the fact that it seems to be working that made me rather dance out of the cafe in a feeling of heady excitement.

I bought an amazing dress right out of a second-hand shop’s window on the way home. It’s a bit short, but I decided I didn’t care. I’ll wear silver tights. I’ll dance in it all night. I’ll be able to write this book.

I will. I will.