Category Archives: Inspiration

Movies: Writers on the Big Screen

Writers are, of course, always involved in movies. That does not mean that they are always IN movies. Over the years they have found their way onto the big screen in roles both big and small (not necessarily authors themselves, but writers as characters), but there are two movies in particular from the previous decade that are my all time favorites: Stranger Than Fiction and Finding Forrester.

As a precursor to my review of this Stranger Than Fiction, I have to admit that I was not a Will Ferrell fan before this movie. In small doses in some of his SNL stuff, I found him funny, but his movies were mostly over-the-top for my tastes. I can’t remember when or why I first watched this film, but I fell in love with it almost as soon as it started. Will Ferrell is supported by a brilliant cast including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and Emma Thompson, but it was Ferrell’s acting that impressed me the most. His character, Harold Crick, is sympathetic, vulnerable, intelligent, reserved, slightly awkward, and totally lovable. By the end of the movie you’re rooting for him to overcome everything. How does this relate to writing? Because Harold Crick suddenly starts hearing a woman’s voice narrating his life and eventually realizes that he is a character in a book. At first he’s willing to accept this in a general sort of way, but then the narrator says, “Little did he know that this simple seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.” He goes on a search for answers and meets a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman) who helps him do two things–1) realize he needs to start making his life the one he’s always wanted and 2) figure out who his author is. Eventually he comes face to face with his author, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), and her assistant Penny Escher (Queen Latifah). As you can imagine, the author is completely shell shocked to realize that her character is a living breathing human being. Throughout Harold’s struggle with his possible insanity, you follow Karen through her struggle with writer’s block as she searches for the perfect death for Harold Crick. She talks about inspiration and writing with her publisher-hired spy/assistant Penny and you can see in the two characters the opposing views of creativity. Penny supports the structured use of prompts and museums as sources of inspiration while Karen believes “anything worth writing” comes “inexplicably and without method.” Overall, this movie is a beautiful look at creativity, truth, authenticity, love, writing, writers, literature, cookies, and men’s fashion accessories. 😉

Sean Connery is brilliant. The first movie I ever remember seeing him in is Indian Jones and the Last Crusade in which he played the father to Harrison Ford’s Henry “Indiana” Jones. This is another one that I can’t remember how I first watched it, but like Stranger Than Fiction, I fell in love immediately. The debut role for Rob Brown who plays inner city kid Jamal Wallace, this movie depicts the story of a young man wasting his potential and an older man hiding away from his past and the world. Sean Connery is reclusive William Forrester who has lived in New York since his teenage years. He watched from his window (earning him the nickname “The Window” from the local kids) as the neighborhood he grew up in deteriorated around him. He seems content to live out his life in his apartment, but then Jamal’s friends dare him to climb into The Window’s apartment and bring something back as proof. William startles Jamal during his examination of the rooms and Jamal retreats quickly, leaving his backpack behind. Soon after, Jamal sees the backpack hanging out the window and retrieves it, noticing only after he gets home that William has edited all of the writing in Jamal’s numerous notebooks. Intrigued, partially because Jamal has never shown his writing to anyone, he returns to the apartment. At first the two exist in an uneasy truce, but eventually Jamal convinces William to become his mentor. What he doesn’t know at first is that William Forrester is the author of what many consider the great American novel of our century. Simultaneously, Jamal’s intelligence has been uncovered by the world at large in the form of standardized test scores. These scores are high enough to attract the attention of an exclusive private school which accepts Jamal on an academic scholarship. Once there, however, Jamal has to battle the preconceived notions of what he should be capable of achieving and figure out how much he is willing to risk to stand up and fight for what he knows is right. Beautifully tied together and wonderfully acted, this movie also features a young Anna Paquin as Claire Spence, one of Jamal’s school mates (and eventual love interest). This film covers a broad range of writing related topics including inspiration, expectations, criticism, and whether it’s better to write for yourself or for the world.

The point of this rambling post? If you’re a writer or even just a devoted reader, you can’t miss these movies.

Writing: Why You Need a Routine

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As a caveat to this article, I have to point out that this is something I am struggling with. The thing is, because I struggle with it, I see very clearly why it is important.

Twyla Tharp, a world famous dancer, choreographer, and writer, says that creativity is a habit. Your body gets used to certain patterns of behavior like going to the gym, brushing your teeth, or getting up for school or work in the morning. The more you practice these routines the more automatic they become and the easier it is for your body to slip into habit without any conscious effort on your part. This is a fascinating mechanism and one that is not only applicable to the physical.

Habits are the result of well-used neural pathways in the brain. Word association is a perfect example of this. When you hear the word blue, what is the first image or word that pops into your head? Is it ocean? Car? Eyes? Sky? Whatever your particular association is, it is due to the fact that you most often think about the color blue in connection with that thing. These pathways form when you perform events in a certain sequence. The more you practice a particular task, the stronger that particular neural path becomes. The stronger the connection, the less time you’ll spend thinking about a task before (or while) accomplishing it.

By establishing a consistent writing routine, you’re teaching your brain what you expect it to do. The routine can be portable (meditating for five minutes while listening to a specific song) or stationary (opening your laptop/notebook while sitting at a specific table in your neighborhood coffee shop). Your routine can be set by the clock (it starts every morning at 10 a.m.) or chronologically flexible (wherever you have a block of time to set aside in your schedule). Your routine can be whatever you need it to be, but certain actions must remain the same each time. You must train your brain to know what’s coming when you turn off your cellphone, grab a package of M&Ms, and open your word processing program. You must make it habit to write when you walk to the bakery down the street, buy a cup of tea, and open your notebook. The more you practice this routine, the easier you will find it to spend less time thinking about writing and more time writing.

I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That’s a great gift.
Twyla Tharp

Inspiration: Rory’s Story Cubes

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I have heard of countless ways to spark inspiration. Using the images on tarot cards, eavesdropping on public conversations, searching through public photo albums, etc. As many stories as there are in the world, there are ways to think them up. This one, though, is one of my favorites.

Packaged in a small orange box are nine, six-sided dice. Each side contains a different image. Each image could be interpreted in a hundred different ways. The result? Millions of combinations. And almost as many ways for a writer to make use of them.

The inside of the box describes a game-style setup where dice are rolled and then divided up among group of players. The group comes up with a general theme (“The Beach,” “On an Airplane,” “At School,” etc.) and then take turns adding to the story with something related to the images on the dice they hold. This is a fun game and definitely a good ice breaker (especially at a writer’s conference!), but what if it’s just you? Personally, I look at these as an alternative to writing prompts.

When I feel like writing something new, something unrelated to the stories I’m already working on, I roll the dice. I choose at least three images and try to combine them into a story. Now, as a personal challenge, I limit myself to one handwritten page. I have the tendency to make things overcomplicated and let them develop further and further until I have another novel idea on my hands. It’s good practice and it’s fun, too. Below is an example of one of my prompts. The images I picked were fire, a bee, and a key. I have very little idea what is happening in these characters’ lives outside of this moment, but the moment is very interesting…

The phone call woke me up, but it was the voice on the other end that shook me to the core.

“There’s been a fire.”

I bolted up, the sheets so tangled that they almost choked me. “Where?” I barely breathed. It wasn’t possible. I didn’t have that kind of luck.

“Bee’s place.” Ted’s voice cracked. “She never got out.”

Bless the stars. She’d finally managed to do it. She’d always said she would go out in a blaze of glory, but I hadn’t thought she was speaking literally.

“Jesus Christ.” I heard Ted start sobbing, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t meaningless except, “Do you need me to come down there?”

“No,” he gasped and started coughing. “No. I don’t want you to see this.”

I was already up and getting dressed. “It was a rhetorical question, Theodore.”

He couldn’t even argue with me. I said goodbye as I stepped onto my porch and there it was. As promised. I slowly picked up the envelope and took out a key and a note.

Take care of my Teddy, Beth. He’s a good boy, but he would never understand. I hope this will help.

Love,
Bee

For only $7.95, I think it’s more than worth it. You can get them at Barnes & Noble in their games department and probably most local bookstores that carry games, or order them online from a variety of places.

Writing: Your Life and Your Work

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When doing it on purpose I have an extraordinarily hard time writing about my life. I find that the more I concentrate on memories of events, the more they elude me, alter, or take on new significance. And it’s also sort of a personal preference, honestly. Writing about my own life makes me uncomfortable. But I recently realized that this doesn’t mean a gosh darn thing to my writing.

While working on my Prince Charming project, I slowly began to realize how much of my life has ended up in this book. Not that it’s anything close to autobiographical (thankfully–Tabitha’s life gets awfully complicated), but I’ve noticed characters that are similar to people I’ve known at one point or another. Situations I’ve encountered and sayings I’ve heard are popping up too. Maybe it’s because I’ve set the story in my hometown, maybe it’s just past time something from my personal history made it into my work. Or maybe whether you want it to or not, whether you do it on purpose or not, your past will worm its way out of your mind and onto the page. What you experience in your years on the earth shapes the way you look at the world and the way you look at the world shapes the way you write about it. It’s automatic, subliminal, and impossible to avoid, but do you really want to?

That strand of reality that unconsciously runs through a novel or story, that iota of emotional truth that screams, “Yes. Someone has lived this. Someone else knows what this feels like”… That truth, that relatability, runs through all those books that really touched you. The ones that you remember for years and you recommend to everyone you meet. How do you manage it, though? Do you decide to tell your story and create a novel as an allegory for your life? Basically, what I’m trying to figure out is which is better: purposefully using what you know or letting what you know have its purpose by using you? I don’t know for sure. Do you?

Edited to add this quote I just found:

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
– Goethe

It seemed so relevant, I couldn’t not post it.

Revision: Starting From Scratch

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Sometimes, all it takes is one well placed comment to make you look at your story/essay/novel/etc. and go, “Man. I can so do better than this.”

I know because it has happened to me over the past couple of days.

Sometimes, better means a revision, editing a point of view error or plot hole. Other times, better means putting aside treasured sections of work because they simply don’t belong anymore. On occasion, better means re-envisioning your entire body of work, keeping only core ideas or plot points, and starting from scratch.

It is a painful decision to make and one that may make you question your sanity (at least, I know that’s what I’m doing right now), but if you can honestly look at your work pre-publication and say, “I can do better,” then you owe it to yourself to make the sacrifice. I mean, do you really want to put your name on something you’re not obscenely proud of?

I know I don’t.

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Writing: Making Use of Newfangled Technology

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There are so many options available to writers today that sometimes we lose sight of the benefits these technological advances can have for our creative sides. Smart phones, for example, have almost eliminated the random clutter of scraps of paper on my nightstand. Now when I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, I send myself a text or open a new memo or (in the case of my beautiful ipad) go directly into the document and type away. It’s a glorious thing and I love the feeling of knowing that all of my random thoughts that don’t apply to any one story are no longer scattered around my bedroom but neatly organized in a document titled Random Pieces.

There is, however, a downside. With these devices comes a million other ways that you could use them and a billion other things you could distract yourself with if you aren’t careful. I got a new phone today (a Samsung Fascinate which, so far, I highly recommend), but that means that I’ve spent most of the afternoon changing settings and adding apps and before I knew it I’d wasted one of my only afternoons off this week.

The point of this rambling blog post? Use your technological resources to their full potential, just make sure your technology doesn’t end up using you.

This post made possible by my Verizon Smartphone. 😉

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Writing: Exploring New Territory

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So, my novel is out with publishers again and I get a text message from my friend Lani Woodland asking me if I want to contribute to a young adult paranormal anthology. Well, sure! Why not? Only problem? Deadline is in two weeks and I have nothing that could even loosely fit that description in the works right now. I tell her I will try to think of something and let her know if I can’t and then I go about my business.

The idea popped into my head at work one morning (waaaay to early in the morning to be at work) while I was listening to my iPod. A Kate Nash song followed a couple of minutes later by a Silversun Pickups song started a spark in my head. I wrote down the title and the one sentence that popped up out of the flames that spark started and let the fire burn for a while (by force really. I was at work, remember?). Later on in the day, I open a new document on my iPad (which I absolutely adore, by the way) and let the title and that one sentence transport me into another world. As is my tendency, I immediately saw the potential for a novel in the story that was flowing onto the page, but I had both a deadline and a word count limit to work under so I held myself back from all those tantalizing subplots and backstory scenes. And you know what? It’s going fabulously. I’m already over word limit (but, really. 5000 words? Was I ever known for my brevity on a page?). I may miss the deadline (really short timeframe! But I’m trying!). But no matter what happens,I’m back in the creative saddle working on something I’d never have come up with otherwise. It feels fantastic.

Perseverance: For Anyone Who Has Ever Dreamed A Dream

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In her most recent post, Janet Reid, Literary Agent, pointed me toward a blog post by Toni McGee Causey. This post is inspiring, beautiful, and everything that is good and magical about following your dreams.

Go read it.

Seriously.

Writing: The Advantage of Pen and Paper

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With all of the gizmos, gadgets, and greatness available to us today, a lot of people have forgotten about the basics. No, I’m not talking about a Word program with no frills, I’m talking about the way Dickinson and Austen and Wollstonecraft-Shelly wrote. I’m talking about writing a first draft from beginning to end with a pen and paper.

Now I know that there are a few automatic concerns:

1) OMG THE ENVIRONMENT! – Yeah, I know. Use recycled paper and write small.

2) I MIGHT LOSE IT! – A true concern, especially for those used to saving copies on multiple hard drives, in e-mails, and on a friend’s PC, just in case. But then maybe this will be good exercise for your brain! Now where did I put my pen…?

3) BUT THEN I CAN’T EDIT AS I GO! – Exactly.

I recently started working on the first draft of a new story (I’ve honestly lost count of how many I have going at once). When the idea came to me I was at work and, since I work in a book store, I couldn’t exactly sit down on a computer or with my phone and type up the scene. So I grabbed a few pieces of scrap paper and began to write. On my break I worked on it even more, piecing together the papers and writing up the entire beginning scene. When I got home, I had two options: type it up into a word document or continue writing it by hand. Against my usual habits, I decided to write this story by hand.

The experience has been liberating.

I’ve heard from a hundred different people that you have to turn off your inner editor when you write your first draft. Just go with the flow and ignore the changes she suggests! I thought I had managed to do that, but now I realize I wasn’t even close. I know that making changes in a written manuscript are incredibly time consuming and can get very complicated–especially when you’re writing in bound notebooks instead of loose-leaf paper. Because I know this, it is so much easier to lock that editor in a cage and give her something else to keep her occupied. The comparative silence in my head is amazing.

I’m not saying that my writing has suddenly improved tenfold or anything like that, but I’ve come to see that writing an entire first draft by hand is an experience every writer should have. I know that a lot of things I’ve written down will change or disappear entirely. And that’s okay! For now, I’m listening to my characters and letting the story go where they take it. They’ll be plenty of time to direct them later.

Writing: Critique Groups

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Some people are incredibly private when it comes to their writing. Even some of those who are on the path to publication (or have already been published) eschew showing anyone other than their paid editor their book before it is in printed, bound, saleable form. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the most common is fear. And of the most prevalent fears is the fear of a story being stolen.

I can’t say I am completely immune to this particular fear. I have shied away from putting my stories up in online critique groups and writing communities in response to stories about authors suddenly seeing their stories in print under someone else’s name. The problem is that no one I’ve spoken to can point out even one particular case of this happening. Where is the evidence?

Eventually, I got over my fears–part of that had to do with the fact that I actually joined a wonderful online critique group (Critique Circle, for anyone interested)–and recently I even created a group of my own.

But the point of this post isn’t fear, it’s why critique groups are incredibly awesome.

Have you ever worked on a math problem for a long time and gotten so turned around by the numbers that you can’t figure out where you went wrong? But then someone comes along and points out your mistake in two seconds? Sometimes that’s what a good critique can do.

You are God in your character’s universe. Both omnipotent and omniscient, sometimes it’s hard to realize that not everyone sees your world the way you do. By bringing in an outsider, you get a whole new set of questions you have to answer, different expectations to meet, and a different reader to satisfy. By bringing in several, you’re getting a sampling of your future audience and you learn ahead of time which points of the story some readers disagree on. By bringing in a critique group instead of a paid editor, you’re saving money. I know I’m totally broke. 😉

Besides, it’s fantastic to have someone to talk to about the characters, what’s working, and what they want to see.

So how do you go about forming a critique group? Here are some tips that may help.

Keep it relatively small. If more than four or five writers are involved, individuals receive minimal attention.
Find people whose work you find interesting. Critiquing a 500 page novel that you hate isn’t good for anyone, honestly.
Work with people who will be honest but constructive. Vindictive or hurtful comments are not going to help you revise, they’ll just shatter your self-confidence.
Lay out the ground rules early. How much time does each story get? How long do readers have to respond? How often will you meet? Will the meetings be in person, on the phone, or online? In what format do writers expect to receive their comments?
Stick with it! You’ll only benefit if everyone in the group is willing to put in the time to make it work.

Do you think a critique group is for you? There are plenty of ways to meet writers interested in forming one. Online forums, conferences, flyers in college English departments, local writer’s clubs (check your local library), coffee shops, book stores. The possibilities are limitless. So, go! Find those who share your passion and help each other make it toward the finish line. I have a feeling you’ll be glad you did.