Hard to believe, but it’s already Thursday again. Most of the contributors of the Writer’s Retreat Blog participate in the weekly meme, Thursday Thirteen, so every Thursday we link to the individual sites of each writer’s TT. Hopefully, this helps you get to know each of us a little better. This week we’ve got:
Kathleen – 13 Vacation Happenings
Liz – 13 Working Woes
A. Catherine Noon – 13 Steps to Organize Your House By the End of This Weekend
The writers of the Writer’s Retreat Blog have agreed to contribute essays to our series called, “Wiley Wednesday,” in which we will share our thoughts and opinions about the craft of writing. While we’ve all agreed to this, I’m not entirely sure that I’m qualified to be any sort of authority on the subject. I am, however, full of opinions. So let this be my disclaimer. These are my thoughts and musings only. They may not bear any relevance to the real world. I’m not really a writer (yet), I just play one on the internet.
Musing About the Muse
by Elizabeth Anne
It’s already been established that if you want to be a writer, you need to sit down and physically write. Period. End of sentence. There’s no way around that, no magic formula to somehow put your words onto paper without you doing the work. I think most writers understand that premise. We may whine, cry, and procrastinate about it, but we understand – at least at an intellectual level. The stumbling block that prevents many of us from actually putting pen to paper is a bit less clear. While we want to be writers, we also want something a bit less tangible, a bit more artistic. We want to connect with our readers. We want to evoke emotion. We want to be story tellers. But where do the stories come from? Just what is that elusive muse?
Several years ago, I saw the play, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I remember being struck by the power of one of the first scenes. In it, the narrator asks a room full of kindergartners, “Who knows how to dance? Who knows how to paint? Who knows how to tell stories?” After each question, the entire group has their hands in the air, excitedly trying to share their artistic talents with the world. The scene switches to a group of adolescents and adults who are asked the same questions. None of them admit to these abilities. Instead they offer embarrassment and excuses about the idea of even trying.
So if this play has accurately portrayed our society, and I believe it has, what happened to our artistic side as we grew up? Where did the stories go?
I believe that we are all born with an innate ability to tell stories. I look at my own children, and they were making things up and “playing pretend” even before they were able to talk. Their imaginations are in overdrive so much of the time that they can get confused about reality and have nightmares about the monsters they’ve made up. They tell anyone who will listen about their princesses and talking animals, their heroes and villains. I can also remember being the child who constantly made up stories and begged people to sit down and listen. Those stories don’t just magically disappear as we grow up, do they?
Maybe all these questions shouldn’t be about the stories. Perhaps we need to take a look at ourselves instead. Bear with me as I play amateur psychologist for just a moment. Erik Erikson, a famed psychoanalyst known for his theory of social development, asserts that as small children we strive to achieve autonomy and initiative. In other words, we are striving to be who we are for ourselves. Through the school and teenage years though, Erikson states that we struggle with inferiority and role confusion. At this point, we are concerned about where we fit into our world and what our peers think of us. Is it coincidence that when we start trying to fit into “the real world,” we lose touch with a bit of our creative side?
So, if we have trained ourselves to hide our creativity as a way of fitting in with society, how do we get our stories back? It seems to me that we need to turn back the developmental clock a bit, and rediscover who we are when we’re not trying to be what we think the world is telling us to be. Precisely how do we do that? Well, if I had an easy answer, I’d be more than happy to share it. Unfortunately, I think every person has to find their own solution, and I’m still struggling to find mine.
But all is not lost. Even if we never complete that quest to find our inner child, I believe we all see glimpses of our creative self, often when we least expect them. If we can learn how to listen, perhaps we can find those elusive stories again. No one can do this for us, and it is a step that seems essential if we want to really write. Even famous, prolific, bestselling authors have to start with an idea, and they all seem to find those ideas in different places.
J. K. Rowling states that she tries to put herself in a place where the ideas “can come out of my head.” She goes on to say, “For me, the most idea-producing situation is to be sitting in a fairly quiet corner of a café, looking down at a nice blank sheet of paper, with a big mug of tea slightly to the left and a new pen clutched in my right hand.”
Sara Douglass, arguably the best selling Australian author of all time, offers this advice. “I take a bath. To access your subconscious you need to be warm, relaxed and generally, utterly mindless. I find taking a bath works nicely for me.”
Stephen King has a different take on finding his muse. He has been asked these questions so many times, that he now quips that he gets his ideas from “a small, bloodthirsty elf who lives in a hole under my desk.” But he goes on to say that you can find ideas anywhere, if you’re willing to look at something that seems ordinary and ask, “What if?” He says that to write you must often seek out your ideas, rather than waiting for them to come to you. “Waiting for inspiration can become a long wait.”
I’m certainly not in the same category as any of these people. I hesitate to even call myself a writer, but I am learning to get more in touch with my inner muse. For me, ideas tend to strike when I am doing a mindless, routine task that keeps my hands busy. Washing dishes, folding laundry, and crocheting are a few of the tasks that seem to work. I have a friend who comes up with all of his writing ideas while running on a treadmill. I believe everyone must go through a bit of trial and error to see what works for them.
So, it seems that the stories may not be so elusive after all. Instead waiting for ideas to miraculously sprout from some outside source of inspiration, we must learn to pay attention to what we already have. We are all born to be storytellers. The stories haven’t gone away since we were children; they’re still inside us, waiting to be heard. If we pay attention, we may find that our muse is actually speaking to us all the time, we just need to listen.
~~~~
Here are links to the websites of the authors quoted in this blog.
Stephen King, Sara Douglass, and J. K. Rowling
The Night Is A Harsh Mistress
by A. Catherine Noon
Chapter 2
The phone rang, startling her a little. “Rachel Carmichael,” she greeted without looking at the Caller I.D., her cigarette bouncing in the corner of her mouth. She slipped off her shoes and shrugged out of her jacket. The gun went on the desk for a moment until she could unload and clean it and she moved around behind the desk.
“Missus Carmichael?” The voice sounded young, and panicked.
“Speaking. Who is this?”
“Missus Carmichael, this is David. David Greene?”
Rachel almost fell getting into her office chair. David was the name of the missing teenager. Her luck couldn’t be this good, could it? “David,” she said more warmly. “You’ve worried a lot of people, David. Not least of which are your parents.”
“Are they okay?” David asked wildly. He sounded breathless and not as relieved as Rachel would have expected.
“Are your parents okay, David?” she echoed, mostly to buy time to think. “Of course they are. They’re very worried about you.” She paused. “Where are you?”
“No!” David shouted. “I can’t tell you that,” he said more calmly. “I just need you to stop looking for me, okay?”
Of all the… “Your parents hired me to find you, David. You’re underage and missing. That doesn’t give you a lot of options in the eyes of the law, you know.”
“You’re not the law, though, are you?” David countered.
That seemed to Rachel to be a little too astute for a fourteen-year-old. “What makes you think that, David?” she hedged.
She heard his panicked breathing on the other end for a moment. “Please,” he whispered. “Please, just stop looking!” The line went dead.
“David?” she called futilely. “Dammit!” She resisted slamming the phone down only because, if she broke it, she’d have to replace it. What she really wanted to do was throw the stupid thing out the window.
She sat back in her chair and put her legs up on her desk. She caught the ash of the cigarette before it landed on the carpet, but only just. She finished that one and started another one without getting one iota of inspiration.
She fished out the contract from her inbox, the one that Doug Greene and his mousy wife Constance signed. Mr. Greene’s signature was loopy and illegible, the scrawl of a busy man. Mrs. Green’s was more controlled, precise and neat. Rachel ran her fingers over the signatures absently. They both were indented slightly, like they had been pushing down with some pressure when they signed.
What that meant, Rachel had no idea.
Dammit! She hated it when cases refused to be clear. Why would David want his parents to stop looking for him?
Then her mind, up until now fuzzy with the desire to sleep, kicked awake.
The first thing David asked wasn’t ‘Why are my parents looking for me,’ like most runaways would ask. It was, ‘Are my parents okay?’ Why wouldn’t they be? What would make David worry that his parents, who did the expected thing of hiring someone to find their precious teenaged boy, might not be okay?
That didn’t really have an answer yet. But Rachel was determined it would. She got up, resolute now, and got ready for bed. She set the alarm for eleven and turned off the ringer to the phone. At least the rent was paid, so she could afford to take a day or two looking into the Greene’s background.
Besides, she thought as she had a final cigarette before bed, you could never be too careful about your clients. It paid to know who Mr. and Mrs. Greene were, and why their fourteen-year-old would be worried for their safety.
Rachel got under the covers on her couch gratefully. She finally had a case worth waking up for.
I just finished reading Emily Ryan-Davis’s, All the Trees in Pearl. Set in Colorado in 1868, it’s the story of a woman who travels across the country to marry one man, and ends up finding another. The attraction is evident from the start and you don’t have to wait long to get some steamy sex scenes between our hero and heroine.
The characters themselves were a little contradictory. The heroine sways between being perfectly proper and a lustful lady. The hero is equally undecided between being harsh and unforgiving or the perfect prince. Most of the story fit the ranch/western feel of the setting well, although there were a few things that didn’t seem to jive with what I think of as being typical of that period.
However, this is an erotic story and the sex was very hot! It is frequent, non-monotonous, and has a very real feel to it.
I’d definitely recommend All the Trees in Pearl as a light, fun read, with plenty of heat to back it up!
“It’s bad luck to see the bride in her wedding dress, Jack!” Annie insisted from her side of the door to her apartment.
“Then go take it off, I won’t mind,” he said in his most intimate voice. He heard the lock turn and Annie’s running footsteps as she retreated to the bedroom before he could catch a glimpse of her in her gown.
Entering slowly to give his flustered fiancé a chance to change, he wandered past the kitchen and glanced inside. Their wedding cake stood on her large butcher-block table, pristine and white. Cake decorating tools lay scattered across the table, including a full tube of frosting. Annie worked in a bakery and had just finished making their wedding cake herself. She had done a damn fine job if he was any judge of cakes. Picking up the tube of frosting, Jack squeezed a small amount onto his finger and licked it off absently.
An interesting thought came to mind; this frosting would be good for decorating more than just cake. Carrying the tube of frosting with him, he headed toward Annie’s bedroom and pushed the door open just in time to see her slam the closet shut.
“There, now you can come in,” she huffed.
Jack noted that in her haste to conceal the gown, Annie hadn’t yet removed her bra and a half petticoat made from crinoline designed to make the skirt full. Without the gown covering it, Jack thought his blushing bride looked like a meringue – fluffy, sweet, and quite edible. He crossed the room and reached behind her to expertly unclasp the bra with his free hand.
“Show me how this thing works, Annie,” he said, holding out the tube of frosting but focusing his attention on her bare chest.
“What?”
“How do I make those little peaks of frosting, like you did all over the cake,” he repeated. “Like this?” he began, and squeezed out a small dollop of creamy goodness onto Annie’s breast, then another and another. After he had formed a neat row he leaned forward and licked it off suggestively, his eyes meeting hers with intensity.
“Jack, you’ll make yourself sick if you eat all of that frosting, and you’re getting it all over my petticoat!” she giggled.
“Let me worry about my sweet tooth,” Jack reassured her. “And I’ll take the petticoat to the dry cleaner’s, don’t sweat it.” He proceeded to spread more frosting across Annie’s soft skin and anticipated his tasty treat.
*********************
Later that day, Jack handed the garment bag across the counter to the clerk at the dry cleaning store. “There are a set of silk sheets here that I’ll pick up in a week or so, but the petticoat I’ll need for tomorrow morning. We’re getting married at noon, is that going to be a problem?”
Opening the bag, the clerk answered, “No problem, Sir, we’ll have that ready for you.” Inspecting the material, the woman asked, “May I ask what kind of stain this is?”
“Cake frosting,” Jack replied. “My fiancé decorated our wedding cake herself.”
“But how did she get frosting all over the petticoat and sheets?”
“A gentleman never kisses and tells.”
Hello boys and girls, I am Dawn and I will be your blogger for today! For my first post, I thought I’d review a favorite book of mine. Halfway To The Grave, by Jeaniene Frost, is an urban fantasy romance starring Cat Crawfield. I’ll try not to spoil the ending for you, but I’ll give you a brief look at the main characters and the plot.
Cat’s mother (who you will despise and pity) was raped by a vampire at what we assume is a young age. She kept Cat and so the whole town treated her horribly for being an unwed mother. The fact that she filed a report for rape, is apparently of no concern to the townsfolk. This is the ONE thing in the book that galled me. This is set in the 2000’s, yet her family and the whole town acted as if it was 1950.
Anywho, back to the story! Cat’s mother raised her to believe that she was half evil and that all vampires were completely evil and should be killed. Cat killed her first vampire at 16, and continued to do so with her mothers full support. (Can you tell why I don’t like this mother??)
So one night, while out killing vampires, Cat picked the wrong guy. This was a master vampire who quite easily overpowered her. Bones is a vampire bounty hunter who forces her to work with him. He trains her ruthlessly and together, they work to take down a group of killers.
I’m afraid that is all I can say with turning into a squee-ing fangirl and ruining the story. The plot was full of twists and turns and the voice of the story was excellent. I could not put the book down till it was finished. This is actually one of the few books I have ever read twice, and the only book I’ve read more than twice. My copy is now worn and tattered and dogeared at so many places I’m afraid I’ll have to start using tabs and color codes!! The writer managed to pull out a “new” vampire story, which gets harder and harder as time goes by. I was very impressed and will definitely be picking up the sequel, One Foot In The Grave, when it comes out this April 29th!
Every Friday, we will post links to a collection of flash pieces written by our contributing Authors and guests. They may be related to the same prompt, they may be randomly assembled, they will always be enjoyable.
This week, we give you a hodgepodge of stories:
Kathleen
Sleeping Over: A short, romantic piece about a young couple’s evening together. Enjoy!
A. Catherine Noon
Green: An entry for the March Flash-A-Day competition, the prompt is “Green.” That’s all, just green. Come see what to make of it when a thief and the police clash over green.
Gwen
Colors: A picture-inspired sci-fi piece.
Dawn
King Cassioux: A short flash piece from the mans POV.
In 1992 my husband and I purchased ten acres of land with a 103 year old Victorian farmhouse and milking dairy, forty five minutes from Melbourne. The dairy had not been in working order for many years and the whole property was in extremely poor condition. It was an animal refuge when we bought it and many of the animals were looked after in the house, it was so run down we virtually had to gut it and then scrub and disinfect everything before we could live in it. But this place had atmosphere, wild gardens, beautiful flowers and masses of potential. So with a whole lot of excitement, enthusiasm and not much money left, we moved in.
Even though we were still relatively close to Melbourne our water supply was tank and bore water and a very beautiful dam (pond). We soon discovered that the dam leaked and by summer, when we needed it for fire fighting, it was empty. Fortunately we never needed to put out any fires.
So, when you live in the country you have live stock and that seemed like a great idea. We got ourselves a rooster, whose name was Graham and then his ‘egg’ laying lady, we named Louise. We eventually got him his very own harem of hens and named them ‘the girls’, there were just too many to name individually. From then on Graham always seemed to have a smile on his beak and egg production was at a premium.
Real free range eggs are the best to eat, so fresh and rich. Some of those eggs weighed in at 90gms each. That is large, very large for an egg and an amazing achievement for any hen. Occasionally I would hear shrieks coming from the kitchen, because someone had cracked open an egg only to find a chicken fetus floating in the bowl. After a couple of experiences like that, I found it difficult to get help when I wanted to cook with eggs.
Our next animals arrived when some very generous people gave us two lambs, Lamb Chop and Lambert. They were still young enough to be bottle fed and our girls just loved that chore; we never had to ask them twice to do that. Those lambs had free run of the garden day and night and often played on the wooden veranda, clip-clopping noisily with their hooves, often waking us before dawn. Eventually they got to be too big and dangerous.
On one occasion the larger sheep, Lamb Chop, charged my husband and took him to the ground; repeatedly butting him. As he tells it; he couldn’t get away from the sheep because one of its back legs was caught inside his sneaker. He escaped by getting a neck hold on it with one hand and punching it in the face with the other, until it staggered away. Frightening experience for a city boy.
Not surprisingly, both sheep ended up on the end of a butcher’s hook and then in my freezer. But they had the last say even in the pot, the meat tasted terrible! We were told later that the reason they tasted so awful was because there was too much testosterone in the meat. Who would have thought!
We also inherited some semi-tame animals left over from the refuge. One little ring tail possum in particular, loved to be hand fed slices of pear, orange and apple while dangling from the water tank near the back door. But he never got tame enough to let any of us to pat him, probably for the best as they have sharp claws and can be quite vicious if startled or frightened.
We also had visits from not so welcome wild life; very large spiders as big as my husband’s hands, would sometimes stray into the house. They were so old and slow and gruesome to look at. If I was alone with the kids, I was the one who had to dispose of them. I was not at all brave and many times I killed them because I did not have the courage to pick one of them up and take it outside. To this day I can not pick one up. Unfortunately, I still have to kill them if hubby is not around and I feel sad when I have to commit spider murder. It just seems an affront to Mother Nature.
We have not lived there for eleven years now. We live on a tiny little parcel of land, in a tiny house, in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. But I have some amazing memories of being a country girl for five years.
Hard to believe, but it’s already Thursday again. Most of the contributors of the Writer’s Retreat Blog participate in the weekly meme, Thursday Thirteen, so every Thursday we link to the individual sites of each writer’s TT. Hopefully, this helps you get to know each of us a little better.
This week we’ve got:
Gwen – Wheels of Glory, or…not
Kathleen – 13 Sites I Added to My
Google Reader this Week
Liz – The Not – Quite Silence of My Home
A. Catherine Noon – 13 Astronomy Websites
The writers of the Writer’s Retreat Blog have agreed to contribute essays to our series called, “Wiley Wednesday,” in which we will share our thoughts and opinions about the craft of writing. This is my essay for this week. I hope you enjoy!
In Search of Prolific
by A. Catherine Noon
Writing is a lonely pursuit. We can work with each other to an extent, but it ultimately comes down to applying oneself to the page or the keyboard. In order to do this, we have to suspend disbelief in our right to communicate, and trust that we have something worthwhile to say. Even if we are our own audience through a journal, we need to be able to let ourselves put thoughts down long enough to capture them, even if later we might decide they’re silly or unworthy. But in order to have written something, it’s axiomatic that we must, well, write it.
There are many reasons why we have trouble with writing. There are just as many theories as to how to overcome it. I have found many of them to be silly or, worse, damaging. Applying a left-brain, ‘you must do this,’ approach does not work long-term. Writing, like the practice of any art, is an art, not a science. In science, we have the Scientific Method to tell us how to proceed. (Top scientists in their field will tell you that those who advance a field are just as much artists and I believe that. I speak here of the work of science, the general day-to-day experiments and theses that must be done in the course of a scientist’s day.) First, we have a theory. We test that theory. We record the results. We see if the successful results can be duplicated. These are standardized rules that have been agreed upon for decades.
Writing, sadly, has no such mantra. There is no bank of writerly ideas that one can plumb and then write an automatically good story, not to mention a commercially viable one (which is not necessarily the same thing, though many times it is). In order to sustain any long-term creative endeavor, we need to have something to say. And therein lies the rub.
How does one come up with something to say? First, one needs to believe that whatever one wants to say is worth saying. Worth writing down. This is a surprisingly tough hurdle for us to surmount. When we’re young, first and second grade, we are, by and large, blabbermouths. We have opinions on everything (those of you with that age of child will know what I mean). Even comparatively “quiet” kids can go on at length (dare I say, “ad nauseum?”) about a topic that interests them. Then what happens? My personal theory is institutional schooling happens, where we’re critiqued and only good, nice, well-lined up little soldier thoughts are appropriate. Messy, creative and goofy thoughts are discouraged. Whether or not I’m right, something happens and we muzzle ourselves. We need to learn how to prize that muzzle off ourselves and begin, slowly at first but with gaining momentum, to start communicating again.
One tool I have found enormously useful here is Morning Pages, an idea talked about by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way. The idea is that you roll out of bed and onto the page, thereby evading the Censor. You write three pages. Why three? I saw Ms. Cameron speak recently, and she answered this question from the audience. She said that three seems like a good number, not too much, and not too little. People in her classes seem to be able to do them regularly. As a student of her work, I agree. Three pages doesn’t seem like too much, and it’s enough for me to get the “gunk” out of my head and onto the page. Sometimes I get diamonds in the process, sometimes just mud. But it’s on the page and, suddenly, I have something I’ve – gasp – written.
Another tool I like is from Natalie Goldberg in her book, Writing Down the Bones. She suggests setting a goal for oneself, like fill up one notebook a month. She then goes on to point out, if it’s Day 27 and you’ve got nothing, then you have a lot to do between the 27th and the 31st. Gulp. What a way to trick the procrastinator! It’s okay to put it off all month (and believe me, I’ve done that on occasion!), but by the end of the month, look out! Caffeine and Denny’s, here I come. I once wrote, fueled by two mochas and dreadful coffee, until about 2:30 in the morning at my local Denny’s. The service staff is surprisingly accommodating to the lonely writer. And man! You see the weirdest people at that hour of the morning. Why, I could tell you stories!
Exactly!
That’s yet another tool. Josip Novakovich, in his book The Fiction Writer’s Workshop, suggests going out to a café or restaurant and just observing the people there. Then write down what you see. You don’t even have to have a story to tell. Just, “there’s a blonde at the table next to me, eating cherry pie.” You might wonder why she’s eating pie. Maybe she just left her husband. She’s an alcoholic out late. She’s a spy. She’s an alien. Or, she’s a blonde eating cherry pie, and it’s the business man in the table near her who’s the spy. Poof. You have a page or two or more of observations, peppered with speculation and silliness. But that’s what makes the story.
A word about “mood.” A lot of writers have told me they don’t “feel like” writing. But my argument is, writing is a verb. An action verb. “To write.” Means, put pencil or pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and put down words. It is not, “to emote.” “To wait until inspiration strikes.” “To sit, staring, drooling even, until the words come.” It’s “to write.” That’s all. It’s that simple. All the drama and foo-foo about the rest of it, is drama and foo-foo. Not pertinent. In fact, it’s a good idea to put all that stuff down on the page. Perfect fodder for the morning pages, as a matter of fact. “I feel poopy today. I don’t want to write.” Then write three pages about why you don’t want to write.
Someone once asked me, a little desperately, is that all? Three pages is what makes you so prolific? I told them that there’s more to it than that, that it’s all about the exercises in the Artist’s Way and other things, but after having an opportunity to think about it I think the answer is a little bit that the three pages are a secret. Not “the” secret, because I don’t think any one thing we do is it, it’s the combined influence of all we do that alchemizes within us. But I do think that three pages is a magical elixir that, over the course of days and months, can alter your experience of your creativity. I can tell you that I have done them since 1995 and they have completely overhauled my life, not just my writing. Other things have helped too, but when I am stuck and haven’t written my pages, I can feel it. If I sit down and write them, something subtle happens and I feel better. I may not get THE ANSWER, boom!, but something does begin to shift and move around and flow.
There’s a great prayer that Julia Cameron shares with us in The Artist’s Way: You take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity. Regardless of your concept of deity, this is a potent affirmation. If you disconnect yourself from needing to do it well, or perfect, or right, or grammatically correct, you are able to just do it. “It” doesn’t need to “be” anything other than what it is. Is every word I’ve written since 1995 gold? Of course not. But I’ve written a huge amount, and some of it is gold. I average 100 pages a month in journal work. In March, 2008, I wrote over 30 short stories and two novellas, as well as did a structural overhaul on my novel. I am positive that this work could not have been done without the Morning Pages and other groundwork that I’ve done. There’s no secret to it, but there is work. No drama, but story.
Trust yourself, and write. Or, don’t trust yourself. But write.
That’s the secret.
