Tryptophan Brain and Other Mysteries

Thanksgiving snuck up behind me and coshed me on the back of the head. That's my excuse for my not blogging lately - and I'm sticking to it. I mean HOW did we get to the end of November so quickly? My kids keep asking me to buy candy canes and I REFUSE. I am not ready for the holidays. It may have to do with a certain hurricane, or it may have to do with a doubling of clients in the last month or it may even have to do with the crit/beta reading I'm doing. And I have a rather large writerly question to wrestle with. I'm just to busy to have holidays right now. Maybe we could move them to February? I mean, nothing is happening in February. It would be so much more convenient.

So Happy Thanksgiving.

After the turkey lethargy has left me, but before I let my kids drag me to the Christmas Tree farm, I will be blogging on Giving and Getting Crits. Both activities are an art form, I'm finding. And sometimes damn tricky to accomplish.

In the meantime, I leave you with a few books supah agent Barbara Poelle recommended to me. I'm  excited to dig in to alternate realities that do not include Black Friday. What are you reading during the holidays?

Is Writing a Luxury?

Before Hurricane Sandy came in and screwed up my life - sending us out of our house for 8 days and causing me to rant, then cry, then apologize on the phone with my electricity provider - my husband and I went to a wedding.

It was a fabulous wedding, as only second marriage weddings can be. The bride was beautiful and self assured, the groom was handsome and relaxed. There was no drama*, just a damn good party with friends that I hadn't seen in too long.

One of these friends, Nancy, I haven't seen in years. I used to work with Nancy at the New York Times doing events and in addition to being beautiful and cosmopolitan (down to her bones New York chic) she was a cabaret singer and a professional at the top of her game. Then she decided she wanted to be a cantor. She wanted to study for five long years to follow her passion. She gave up the NYT, she gave up singing gigs in piano bars. She worked her ass off.

We exchanged hugs and updated each other on our lives. My update looked like this: Moved to Pennsylvania; wrote a book; wrote another book; (eventually) got an agent; went on submission; earned a master's degree in 50 shades of rejection. I finished by telling her that I sometimes felt guilty, getting to do what I'm passionate about. I said I knew it was a luxury to write, when it is not (currently) helping our household's bottom line (though I am a fierce couponer, dude.)

Nancy is usually a composed soul, but she wasn't having any of this argument. Her voice was emphatic (maybe due to the mojito) when she declared that it was NOT a luxury to follow your passion. Even if others have to make sacrifices for you?, I asked, thinking of my husband, my kids when I'm in the writing cave, when I'm off limits, when I'm despondent that things aren't going well. Yes, she said. Even when others make sacrifices. Don't we sacrifice for our families too? Isn't it a give and take? Don't belittle the value of following your passion. Don't underestimate the good that can come from making yourself happy. It's not selfish to be happy, if your happiness grows into more happiness for your family - spreads out to encompass everyone like a big ole happiness Snugli (I'm paraphrasing, Nancy would never say 'Snugli')

I see what she is saying. I really do. But the voice in the back of my mind reminds me that Nancy doesn't have kids. She doesn't have a husband right now. Of course she has responsibilities and people she loves. But her immediate familial duties - kinda light. Is she right? Or are we just in different places?

It's a moot point. I'm not giving up writing. But I can see a time, in the future, that I might need to make a choice.

So what do you think? Is writing a luxury? A necessity? Both?

*No drama that I saw, anyway.

My Messy and My Neat

Right now, I'm invincible. Every day, it seems, I can write. The dread pirate writer's block has not reared it's nasty old head. I credit two things with my success: First, I only have a small window of time to write each day. This means the timer on my phone goes off and I have to hare off to pick up littlest from pre-school or hot foot it to a conference call before my writing can sputter to a stop. Nothing concentrates the mind like a deadline and having one or two hours a day to write makes me more productive than if I had oodles of time (at least I think it does, I haven't as yet, experienced oodles of time.)

The second thing that is helping me avoid writer's block is a two pronged approach I call Messy and Neat. When I feel the molasses creeping into my words, when I feel like the momentum is congealing and I might be in trouble I deploy the Messy button.

My Messy looks like this: I start writing something ridiculous. I let the stupid idea that popped into my head flourish like an ugly print on a button down shirt. Example: I had Mop looking through her dad's old journals and suddenly drug cartels, jaguars and mayan temples exploded into my head. These three ideas, you might be happy/sad to learn, did not make it into the book ultimately, but I didn't tamp them down. I went there. I let the stupid idea out into the light of day because I fear no stupid idea. It's not a waste of time (though it might feel like one while you're doing it - give over to the experience and don't worry about the stupid, is my suggestion.) For me, I was able to maintain momentum and exorcise some dumb ideas in the process. As a bonus, writing these scenes brought me to something else that I did use.

Now to my Neat. For me, Neat is about getting out of the tyrannical shadow of 50,000 other words. Words are shy things and sometimes, they need alone time. They don't always flow freely when they're attached to their many brethren. If I'm feeling the scene isn't flowing or is somehow soft in the middle (you want your scenes to have six pack abs, narratively speaking.) I open up a brand new document and paste my scene, warts and all in there. Maybe it's the clean, clear space of the new doc, or maybe it's just a psychological shift, but it works for me. Without the heavy weight of the rest of the story, the words flow more freely and the middle tightens up nicely.

So what methods do you employ to keep writer's block at bay?

Greetings from the Writing Cave...Now Go Away

I've been sequestered in my writing cave of late, occasionally coming up for air to tweet about scenes that are soft in the middle, or giggle at the internet meme of binders full of women.

But mostly I've been writing my ass off. I've been clocking about 1-1.5k a day. That may not seem like very much, but I only have about 3 hours of writing time a day and part of that time is spent drinking coffee and staring out into space. It's amazing to me that I can write nearly as much a day now, writing a fairly tight first draft, as I did doing NaNoWriMo when I was throwing words up against the wall to see what sticks.

This leads me to two separate but related questions:
1) Are you doing NaNoWriMO? Why/why not? I'm not doing it this year, and probably not ever again. While participating definitely was the springboard for me to get serious about writing, ultimately, I agree with Maggie Stievater (who's RAVEN BOYS audiobook I am OBSESSED with)- what you gain by getting your arse in gear and writing, you lose by having to go back in and heavily alter/edit/rewrite what you didn't have the space to think properly about in the first place. Read Maggie's NaNo thoughts here. Bonus Question: What do you think?

2) What does your writing cave look like? I thought I'd be the kind of person who needed 'things' to get me writing. Like, a lucky pencil, or a special coffee mug. I even bought a pair of silver owl bookends (before I actually started to write, when I thought I might like to write.) But none of those kinds of things help. I write anywhere and everywhere, as long as there's music. Library, Starbucks, screen room, dining room table, bed. Right now, I'm a beggar who can't be choosy. But how about you?

All Hallow's Read

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker, but books are the coziest by far. So give someone you love a scary book for All Hallow's Read.

What's that? You say you've never heard of the holiday?

If Neil Gaiman says so, it's a real holiday.



This year, I will be giving the following books to my loved ones on this super spooky holiday:

For littlest, who likes to say she sees ghostes for real:

For eldest who asks why zombies can't dance, I put The Cramps Zombie Dance on her shuffle and this book in her hands:

To my Dearest Husband (not to be confused with my plain ole Dear Husband, I guess,) I will be giving him:

Because it scared the bejesus out of me and because I'm currently reading the sequel:

So, what will you read this SpookTober? What will you give for All Hallow's Read?