New-Book Nesting

I've been seized by the getting-into-a-new-book phenomenon of MAKING SPACE FOR THE NEW PROJECT.

This is quite a strong urge. I liken it to what pregnant women do in getting a house ready.

So I just walked into my office with a treasure that took me many stores to find: a cabinet of the sort that's used for filing mail for the different people in a small business. There are 24 boxes in this rectangle, each slightly larger than an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper, and it cost $8.99 at the Goodwill. Please note the photo to the right.

This is where I'm now going to file the notes for the various chapters of the biography I've begun researching: of an obscure but weirdly fascinating painter of the early 20th century. Right now about 30 pounds of notes are piled up in one drawer, which is about to become impossible for finding anything in.

In a few minutes, I'm going to get this item dusted off, glue some felt pad to the bottom so I can get the envelopes out from under it and not scratch the floor. Then start sorting by chapter and topic. At that point, I will know that this new book is WELL AND TRULY LAUNCHED.

(I also intend to get a new trash can: one with a lid on it, so that I'm not looking down into my trash all day.)

These things are not frivolous and they're not procrastination. For me, they're essential to move into this next stage.

Turning a Journal into a Book

(This post is a handout for a panel I was on Saturday about The Writer's Life at Peace College in Raleigh, for the spring conference of the NC Writers Network. Instead of actually handing out these sheets, I've placed them here, for anyone who might be interested.)


How to find the book(s) hidden in your journal


*Look for the quest. A story is one main character in search of something specific and crucial, the efforts to reach the goal, and the obstacles that get in the way.

*Let your journal entries jog your memory. Remember the events you didn’t write down…the little details, bits of conversation, things that might not have seemed important then but in retrospect might turn out to be a significant part of the story.

*Let the writing in your journal be the starting place for deeper exploration. Even if you already told all, ask yourself: what was really going on then? what was I trying to do? what was my most urgent motivation?

*Remember that it’s the obstacles that make the suspense in the story. And that it’s the hero/ine’s efforts, rather than a perfect outcome, that create a satisfying tale.

*As you continue writing in your journal, be sure to put down sensory information, and specific details. That’s what will bring the experience back full force. To say “this afternoon was nice or dreary or amazing” does not take a reader to a particular day with particular weather, it doesn’t recreate how it was to be there. But if you say that rain was pouring off the edge of the roof, the house smelled like gardenias and burned cookies, and you just heard a sputtering that sounded like a motorcycle shutting off in your driveway, then you have the material to recreate how it was that day, whether for a book or your own memories.

What to Write About?

(This post is a handout for a panel I'm on, Saturday, May 20, at Peace College in Raleigh, for the spring conference of the NC Writers Network. Instead of actually handing out these sheets, I'm placing them here, for anyone who might be interested.)


Find The Writing Topic To Inspire Your LASTING PASSION

*FOLLOW A LEAD, no matter how flimsy. If something about a piece of green glass or the memory of a coffeehouse in Krakov has an uncanny appeal, free-associate on paper. Let that take you where it will.

*Understand that SMALL DISTINCTIONS MATTER. What we wind up passionate about is very particular. So pay attention to those distinctions. You may not care about Egyptian history, yet be drawn to know everything about the pharaoh Hatshepsut. Is it the tea or the rose on the teacup that touches your soul?

*Before you go to sleep, tell yourself you’re going to DREAM of what you’re most called to write. The moment you wake up, write down every detail you can recall, whether the dream seems to have any value or not.

*NOTICE: What do you spend most of your time thinking about?

*WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE, if you couldn't fail? (somebody else wrote this line, don’t know who)

*Without looking, PUT YOUR FINGER ON A WORD in a book. Write about that word and what it evokes for you. Do it several times, perhaps over a period of time, then look back at any themes or images or phrases that recur.

*Write and write, following where WHIM takes you, all the while keeping the writing to what is experienced through the senses. They’ll get you to the good stuff.

Sidewalk Blogging and Elisabeth Chant

I'm on my way home from two days of research on a biography of a painter, a book project that I began in the fall, and have just gotten back to after a bout of novel revisions.

On the road the last two and a half hours, I pulled over to check e-mail and chat on my laptop in a little town I knew had a wireless network on its one downtown street.

This feels like a nice break, sitting in the cool on a park bench between an insurance agency and an ice cream shop. I've been living in 1922 for the past two days, the winter my subject arrived in my hometown of Wilmington, NC. My 57 year-old heroine (my age, too, as it happens) was walking on Jan. 12, 1922, from the train station in Wilmington to the "prestigious Hotel Orton." I was trying to find out what she saw on those few blocks. Not easy!

Now I'm back to technology. And so I'll take an Internet approach to this work:

DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF A PAINTER NAMED ELISABETH CHANT? IF SO, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH.

The Birth of an Art Opening.

All week as I've sat at my computer, I've watched an art show being assembled in the adjoining rooms.

My office is in an old Victorian home owned by my good buddy artist-writer Carrie Knowles,pictured here. The downstairs contains my office and her Free Range Studio, where the mantra is "Creativity should have no boundaries and dreams no fences..."

On Sunday, May 21, a week from Mother's Day, she's holding her first opening in this (Raleigh, NC) building we moved into early last fall. And YOU'RE INVITED. Carrie's a printmaker, and doing gorgeous pieces that use photos she made of cobblestones in Brussels, where her son is a classical musician. In these prints the stones seem to float.

For a thoroughly verbal sort as I am, it's a rousing thing to see, as I work, new prints spread out all over the floors drying, to watch the work go through various stages, and see the show start to come together. It sparks my own imagination to see all this going on around me. This work of hers is evocative and surprising, good qualities to have around when you're writing.

Next Sunday's party is open to the public. Come look if you're in this part of the world. It's at 410 Morson Street, near the Capitol, 1-5 pm. A handbag designer will be showing here at the same time. And I'll be here as a guest, with my own office neatened up a bit.

Access to Creativity

Artist Patricia Roshaven asked in a recent comment here how I get access to my own creativity.

In the course of working with other folks, I've put together dozens of tricks for doing that, but I'm going to ponder here what I regularly do myself to GET TO THE DEEPEST, WILDEST STUFF:

1. I start work, in my case, writing. The result may be awful for a while and then get better. And ideas emerge while I'm working.

2. After working--maybe later in the day--I do something physical and mindless: exercise, take a shower, eat lunch, do the laundry, run errands. After I've been writing, ideas pop up when I'm doing something physical and routine.

3. I've learned this one only in the last year: Keep a little sign on my computer that helps me remember the point of what I'm writing: insofar as I know the point. This may seem obvious, but what I write seems to come from preconscious material, and it slips away very easily. Here's a post about the therapy session I had that brought me to a breakthrough on this.

4. At times when I've felt gripped by fear, I've taken short breaks every hour and read something that helped me keep the floodgates open: in writing the first chapter of Sister India, I kept stopping to read a couple of pages of Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind. At another point when I was feeling shocked by what I was writing, I read bits of an autobiography by a friend, Lucy Daniels, With a Woman's Voice, which was startlingly personal and disclosing. I kept thinking: if she can do this, I can surely keep on spinning this fiction.

5. Having lots of toys and visual stimulation has helped me when I needed to write an ad on a deadline. (I used to do a lot of this kind of work.) Also, meditation has worked well for this: read the basic information, then sit and not-think about it for half an hour. Several times I've opened my eyes and had the idea present itself full-blown.


Part Two of Patricia's question was: what causes creativity to stop for me. One word answer: overwork.

Please suggest some of your own creativity tricks in the comments section, if you will.

The Good News Blues

Used to be that at the completion of each draft of each book, I'd go into a three-day emotional hell that I referred to as POST-DRAFT NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.

This was like an amplifed version of coming out of a movie into bright daylight: *light too bright
*sounds too loud
*real world appears badly managed and in need of a wash
*irritants become infuriating
Fortunately, I seem to have gotten over that.

This weekend, I surprised myself with a writerly emotional phenomenon that I'd forgotten: AGENT-LOVES-MY-BOOK JITTERS.

As I boasted in my last post, my agent reported Thursday that she's quite keen on my novel. She's enthusiastically sending it out.

So this weekend, I spent much of Saturday BERATING MYSELF for:
*being too fat (false)
*being out of shape (somewhat true)
*wasting a lot of time (mostly not true)
*house in a perpetual mess (mostly true)
*berating myself (true)

Of course, I barely thought about the novel and its future at all.

On Sunday came STAGE 2 of the jitters:
*mind calm
*painfully tense neck

Still no thought of book going out this week to editors.

Today, Monday: So far so good, which will likely continue. Working tends to distract me, which is a damn good thing.

Some Book News

My agent called yesterday and she's excited about the revision of my novel COBALT BLUE that I finished and Fedexed two weeks ago.

This was what I wanted to hear: serious enthusiasm. I feel and she feels that the novel is really working after this last five-month go-round (Lord, let it be the last go-round before a sale!)

So now she sends it out. Please send it selling vibes (much like healing vibes) to help wing it to a soft landing in the lap of the publisher who will love it and provide it an enormous promotion budget. Thanks!

Authenticity

One of my heroes, the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, said this about authenticity:

THE PRIVILEGE OF A LIFETIME IS BEING WHO YOU ARE.

Takes guts to let the truth show, though. Especially in a piece of art that goes out into the world. That difficulty, on the face of it, doesn't make a lot of sense. Because nothing is more satisfying.

Well, maybe a happy marriage; but that too requires being authentic. In fact, so do most things that are worth doing.

So, as far as I can see, there's really not a lot of reason to hide out in a false persona. Except for the cost in courage, approval, awkward moments, and sometimes cash. I tell myself these are all short-term problems, and I'm convinced that this is true. But moment by moment, damn, it can be scary to venture out unguarded, and without apology.