Energy Cycle/Courage Cycle

This morning I was struck for the first time by a pattern: I realized I have much more gumption later in the day than I do in the mornings. And that has been true for as long as I can remember.

The energy version of that idea is familiar, that there is a daily pattern of peak and low energy periods for each person. You know, everybody is "a morning person" or "a night person," etc. I've always held that I was a "lunch person." My energy level in the course of a day is actually pretty even.

What does form a daily pattern is my PEAKS AND LOWS OF COURAGE. In the morning, hard phone calls and hard projects are intimidating. I procrastinate (I've read that that's nature's way of getting desk drawers cleaned out.) I answer e-mail.

After lunch -- now, for example -- I'm starting to feel pretty capable. By late afternoon I'm on fire, and do what needs doing without a moment's hesitation. And then by about ten o'clock, I can't see that there's a whole lot that needs doing.

Could be I should stop berating myself for my morning hesitations. But I've spent years thinking everybody else in the world is efficient and fearless all day. I still want to be that way. It sounds so grown-up and productive.

A Writer Taking Voice Lessons

Here's a great example of THE VALUE OF CROSS-TRAINING, recently added to the comments on an old post. From Stephanie Bass:


"I am a writer, and have been taking voice lessons for about four months now. I'm rediscovering how to produce the mezzo soprano tones that made me so happy as a teenage choir member. And, I am working through decades of 'muck' to find the head space and body space for what my teacher calls 'free singing.'

It has everything to do with being bold, being completely taken by the pure expression of voice, simply hearing the tone and letting the body repeat what it hears. In those rare moments when a full, resonant, clear note soars from my throat I feel as if I've been struck by holy fire.

Last week my teacher told me, "the voice HATES IT" when the singer is shy, holds back, cringes in anticipation of getting it wrong. I get my best sounds when I imitate Julia Child-- in her full-bodied, all-butter, drenched-in-cream joyfulness. There's bold for you. And creativity."


Isn't that lovely?

On Waiting to Hear from an Editor or Agent

I hit total impatience occasionally and then it eases off again. The scary thought is that the impatience is going to last until I get a deal. It never does.

But it will crop up again after I get the deal, though the focus will be about the next stage of publication. Never-ending, but at least it's only occasional.

Yesterday morning was very frustrating. Today I'm cool.

Office Napping

I've read that SHORT NAPS while you're processing a problem can help creativity. And that pondering while lying down leads to solutions more quickly.

This morning I took that to an extreme: lay down on the rug to close my eyes for a minute and woke up three hours later. My phone had even rung and that hadn't stirred me. I found I'd slept through a monthly lunch group a friend and I started years ago; a few folks with shared metaphysical interests, a gathering we call Mystic Pizza.

Think I must be tired. I didn't take a break after finishing COBALT BLUE because I was so eager to get to the biography I've begun. And of course my work with other writers continues as books come and go. Also, two dear friends have had health crises in the last two weeks. One is now fine; one is over the worst. In any event--as most of us usually can say--"I got a lot going on."

POST-NAP, I feel less fuzzy-headed, a little feeble, not necessarily more creative, but then I never feel the process when my imagination is doing it's best work. It's always something I notice after the fact.

Southern Dishes for Southern Authors

Technically I'm a Southern writer, but I don't write about the South in the rural way that is usually associated with Southern writing.

My feeling is that there are many kinds of Southern. In fact, we've had towns here for a long time. And I like writing about places like India, anyway. The research gives me a good reason to travel.

Still, I've lived in North Carolina all my life and when it's time to break for lunch, I most often go to the nearby K&W cafeteria for Southern vegetables cooked the simmered-with-fat way I grew up on.

Today was a particularly good day at the K&W. My office partner, author-artist Carrie Knowles, and I celebrated her birthday there. The menu?

I consumed:
fried broccoli
lima beans
watermelon
sweet potato pie
sublimely sweet iced tea

Carrie celebrated with a slice of pudding-y chocolate pie with a fluffy white topping.

Some years ago I attended a small dinner for a visiting author, the wonderful short-story writer Lorrie Moore, of NY and Wisconsin. It was one of these Southern affairs, and dessert was a mammoth, meringued piece of lemon pie.

A half hour later, Moore was upstairs in the auditorium reading a short story to a sizeable audience, when, apparently to her surprise, she came upon a section of the story that was very witty and ironic on the subject of a similar meal, including a daunting piece of pie topped by a snow bank of meringue. She winced. I snickered and glanced around for my fellow diners.

A funny moment. At the same time, that was an excellent piece of lemon pie. So was today's sweet potato "tart." Good fuel for this afternoon's literary output. I recommend it to anyone.

Writers and Artists Seeing Ghosts

Do you suppose that artists of various sorts are more likely to have encounters with ghosts than other people are? (When I first wrote that sentence, it sounded like writers encounter more ghosts than people.)

Last night I had dinner with another novelist who told me the story of her experience with spirits. And that of a writer-friend.

A high percentage of the artists I know have seen apparitions, or had some other physical encounter that they matter-of-factly attribute to a ghost.

In a way, I'm envious. I've never met a ghost--though I did see a ball of light rise off the head of a reiki teacher once. I've enshrined that experience in my memory.

I do love to write about mystical subjects.

In my novel Revelation, a liberal preacher hears the voice of God, seriously, and his skeptical congregation thinks he needs psychotherapy.

In Sister India, an American woman living next to the Ganges develops in a crisis a sort of personal omniscience.

A lot of my interest in this stuff is wishful thinking. On the other hand, when I heard last night about my friend's experience, I was glad I wasn't there.

There's a writers retreat nearby where four novelists I know have independently had extremely spooky experiences. I have an interest in going; and I may do it. I'll certainly take a friend.

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.

The Artist's Career at Lake Junaluska

Last weekend's 3-day workshop at Lake Junaluska was about artists of all sorts increasing audience, income, and time for creative work. The photos are some of the artists and this old Methodist mountain retreat in the NC mountains where we met.

There were a couple of dozen of us and we left there wildly excited, full of ideas, and each carrrying
one overriding lesson: set your goal as high as you can imagine, and then develop a detailed step-by-step plan for how you can use the resources you have to start moving yourself in that direction.
The big lesson was that simple. And yet how many artists of any sort put together such a plan?


The idea is that each small step you take toward your goal opens some new resources and wider possibilities. And when we run up on the inevitable setbacks and fits of nervousness: just STAY WITH YOUR PLAN.

I set as my goal to sell one million copies of Cobalt Blue and all my other books. I do have a plan--and I've begun. Will keep you posted.

Feel free to post here any similarly immodest goal of your own. (The workshop was run by Creative Capital and sponsored by the NC Arts Council.)

Hypnotic Exploration

A note to women in central NC: my mesmerizing husband, psychologist Dr. Bob Dick, is running a seminar at our house this Friday on hypnosis and women's issues: which of course always include creativity.

I attended one of these self-hypnosis seminars of his not long after we got married, and, because of a trance experience there, the next day started work on what would become my first published novel, Revelation. Bob's contact number is 919 929-1227. We live in a log cabin on a pond out in the woods of eastern Chatham County.

The photo to the right is of Bob and me on an Alaskan exploration.

Stunned by Wisdom, Ambition, and Fatigue

The fatigue is mine. The wisdom came from the Creative Capital workshop I attended in the NC mountains this weekend.

Over this past winter, I wrote a lot of posts here about the one-day class I took with this group whose purpose is to help all kinds of artists, especially the most experimental ones, learn how to make money at a professional level and have the time and independence to do their best work. The workshop was sponsored by the NC Arts Council.

I said this before, but I will brag again. My income increased 82% in the four months after that workshop in December compared to the same four months a year earlier.

So I went back for the 3-day class. It was extremely valuable strategic career planning. That may not sound sexy. But the income that these teacher/artists were making sure did. And it was pretty fascinating and exciting when I started working with some seriously high-priced planners on how to arrange for my just-completed novel COBALT BLUE to sell a million copies.

It was also intriguing to see a couple of dozen other artists show their first-rate work, and see their plans get bigger--and more do-able and detailed.

I'm hoping some of those folks are going to comment on this blog about their art and accelerating careers.

I'll have a lot more to say about mine, as you might imagine. And be back with some pictures too, once I get my mind unpacked.

Shipping the Manuscript

Just shipped my book to my agent. After first going all the way to the copy center without bothering to take it with me.

My first two novels--Sister India and Revelation--are stories about people daring to to be bold on behalf of what's most important to them.

This new one Cobalt Blue is my own act of daring. It ventures into some raw sexual territory--and into sacred sex. The scenes are absolutely integral to the story and the character; and it's a serious novel, has ambitions. Nonetheless, I'm a little worried about what my mama's going to think; and curious about what it will feel like to have this book out in the world. My agent, when she first read the first chapter, said, "This is quite a story, Peggy."

Final Copy?

Four minutes after midnight Good Friday; actually Saturday morning technically. I'm printing out what I'm hoping is my final copy of my new novel COBALT BLUE.

I just spent a couple of hours going through and getting rid of what I'm told is my excessive use of words including: now, again, so, and sardonic. What does that say about my book? I'm not sure.

I have great hopes, confidence, actually, in this novel. Long-term anyway. I do hope it flies on this time out, though. I'm eager to get it to my agent before the publishing industry slows down for the summer. She'll have it by the end of this coming week.

Maybe I'll follow the industry's excellent example then and slow down for the summer myself. I'm not really sure I want to. Guess we'll see.

Happy Easter, Passover, Holi (that's Hindu) and Spring.