NaNoWriMo Tips: Mind-set

Here are a couple more tips. First, more for us women:

I believe it was Barbara Cartland who had a daily beauty regimen scheduled as a break in her writing, which obviously didn't slow her down one bit as she penned 723 books. I remember her having a facial one day, a mani-pedi the next, a mask another, a hair treatment to follow, all-over moisturizing, and so on. Pick your favorite.

Water does a body good, so drink up, too. Indulge in your own at-home spa treatments now or each day of November or both. I have a small clear plastic container filled with manicure items on my desk. It reminds me to make time to pamper myself even just five minutes daily.

Second, for any NaNo author:

Is there something bugging you that you have been procrastinating about? Like me, do you have a truckload of nonworking electronics that needs to be carted off to Best Buy and/or the city dump? Before writing this post, I wiped down seven sides to six doors just here in my office, kitchen, entryway and laundry room area. It took all of fifteen minutes and I'm still smiling at their shining surfaces.

You don't want worry or guilt interrupting your creative process, so if your mind seems to be nagging you about something, just go do it.

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

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Speaking of Writer's Block . . .

I've never had "writer's block" because I'm an author.

And here's the distinction in both my mind and as paraphrased from the words of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: An author creates, like God (check out Webster's yourself). A writer . . . writes.

Think of the terms "ghostwriter, screenwriter, copywriter." All these wonderfully artistic souls are for hire in general. Not that they can't also be authors, but these three terms are strictly for when they are working under someone else's direction, writing around someone else's creation.

For ghostwriters, they take the idea from the source (the person who hired them) and carry it to fruition. For screenwriters, they usually take a novel (again, someone else's baby) and reduce it to a 120-page script for the big screen. For copywriters, they are instructed (by their employers) to write ads for their customers, for instance.

Okay, the previous spotlighted generalities. This paragraph deals with specifics. You could order me, a romsus author, to "write like Stephen King" and my brain would freeze. Same as if you commanded me to write about death in gory details or child porn or concentration camps. First, not my genres. Second, even if you dictated that I write in my own genre--now at this very instant--a romantic suspense short story about a prince and a barmaid, I'd be a petrified, brain-dead, wordless individual.

Because I don't write on demand.

Because I'm not paid by the hour or in flat fees per job.

Because I generate my own ideas.

Because I create from data I am constantly gathering with all six senses (yes, I'm counting intuition).

Now granted, I could write something if forced and it would probably read that way . . . forced. Lifeless. No emotion. Because it didn't have the verve of a story idea that I cultivated and picked myself.

Thus, if I don't happen to be creating at the moment, I don't call it "writer's block." I call it gathering info, letting things marinate, allowing thoughts to percolate a while longer. Research. 

So, be careful what you name things.

Take Abram in the Bible for instance. When God wanted to change Abram's destiny, he changed his name, WHAT HE WAS CALLED. That is why we know him better as Abraham. God changed his wife's name, too. Sarai became Sarah for the very same reason.

Beware what you call things.

So if you think you are experiencing "writer's block," ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I working with a subject or theme or premise I chose myself, which I love, that inspires something in me, whether enthusiasm and goodwill or rage about wrongs to be righted or something in between?
2. Am I on the wrong side of the writer-author line? Like me, I work better solo, in full control, as an author. While I could function in the write-about-this role, I would not be happy and my creative genes would go on strike.
3. Am I affixing a derogatory label (writer's block) when I really need downtime, some influx of new data/scenery and my mind-body-soul are just working off that bad input?
4. Change "can't/won't/no" to "choose not to/maybe later/not now as I've decided to do something more important." Watch for those automatic responses we all tend to replicate.
5. Stop saying "I have writer's block" and that may cure a lot of ills--ha! 
6. Am I working by formula instead of being moved by emotions?

Hope something above stirred your heart as you read this. As always, take what resonates, toss the rest.

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

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The Amazing, Creative, Wonderful, Unknowable Mind

Having just "finished" (are they ever, really?) my debut novel, and feeling confident enough to upload it, added to writing the first draft of the prequel to my debut novel a mere twenty days ago during NaNo, it strikes me as miraculous how our minds work.  One inconsequential decision in one book, led to something I used in the second.  Never knowing how the first connected to the second.

I'm a pantster.  Meaning I go with my gut.  Never plot.  Except for in my head.  Letting things stew, mull, ferment.  Then with a sufficient nudge, I begin capturing my idea more permanently.  If my subconscious sends me a signal to put in, say, a moose, I do it.  Without questioning.  Then forget it.  And wouldn't you know?  Later I grab this brilliant idea passing through my brain cells on this perfect use for that moose, complete with an underlying meaning as well.

How cool is that?

Writing is about discovery.  It entails maybe ten percent participation by the author--sitting down, typing something, anything, to warm up the muse, signaling the conscious and the unconscious minds to start gathering things.  Then while you do what you can with no plan, no safety net, no map, you receive these wonderful nuggets, bread crumbs leading you to The End.

The sheer mystical magical mystery of it all places me firmly in the state of awe and wonder.

I am so blessed to be an author.

P.S.
Courtesy of A Word A Day, this was too timely not to share: 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down -- everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off. -Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (b. 1920)

My Novel-Writing Mode

If you are an author, you've been asked before if you are a plotter or one who writes by-the-seat-of-your-pants.  I'm the latter.  Although at first I do have vague ideas about the beginning, the ending, the three try-fail scenes.  But I'm more fluid about sticking with them as-is.  After all, imagination is King and allowed to reign free for the most part with me.  Thereafter, as things jell, my plot becomes more rigid, more set.

I'm definitely a character-driven author (again as versus a plot-driven work).  So I get my stories from people, real-life ones I see in 3-D or ones depicted in magazines or stills--or blogs.  One such photo, that launched itself into my mind and right into a fast blip of a short movie clip, came out of a magazine ad (for what, I do not remember).  But there was a woman in a flannel lumberjack shirt, standing relaxed in front of her open door, coffee cup in hand, gazing at the snowcapped mountains.  That tale still resides in me, awaiting release.

One was a beautiful tan self-assured girl in safari garb driving an open Jeep which passed my DART bus on my way to my less-exciting day job.  I've posted about her before.  I'm still gonna write her story at some time--"her" story in the way my creativity sees it, that is.

I get ideas from TV shows and books and movies, too.  I love Murder, She Wrote (TV series) and J.D. Robb's In Death (book) series.  I love how each protagonist is a good person, trying to do right, amid all the wrongdoing they see.  Plus my first-ever written story, a short-short creation in response to a required homework assignment for my seventh grade English teacher, was a mystery.  So, I definitely have at least one mystery to be written from within my DNA.

While I love my characters I embellish, there are some other loves of mine that I pair with them.  Being an entrepreneurial-author type, I like to choose different careers for my guys in my novels.  So you probably won't find a doctor, a lawyer or an Indian Chief among them.

As for settings, I love my Deep South roots.  So you will see that reflected in my tales.  But I yearn to see Paris, France and other European sites (also found in my genetic makeup), so that is inevitable as well.

Then there are those topics where my own interests lie, so my personal research/learning would end up being info/knowledge used for later books.  Again, I'm tied to mysteries, thus drawn to Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids.  Overlay that with just a general awe over creation itself and you would understand why landscapes pull me so, like sunsets and sunrises, and nature walks and hiking through parks, etc.

If you are a fledgling author, do not despair.  Ideas will come to you as you read a newspaper and ask "What if . .  .?"  What if I took my next-door neighbor merged with my boss and my mother and put this newly created conglomerated individual in this scenario from today's news, what would happen next?  What would the life of my rich (or poor) friend look like from an insider's viewpoint?  What if I took a traditionally male job and put a woman in it?  What if I took a marriage and made the woman the breadwinner and the man the at-home caretaker?

Examine the works of others you love which work on many levels.

I love Firefly (the Joss Whedon TV series--too short-lived!) and the follow-up Serenity movie, not to be confused with the supposed first episode named "Serenity."  I still watch it over and over on DVD.  If you study Joss's character cast, you see a bunch of neat twists and turns just with the makeup of his cast.  You have Serenity herself, the ship, which acts as much as a main character as it does for the setting, the cowboy past comingled with the spaceship future.  Genius.  Double genius.

You have Mal, the ship's captain (a necessary character), but this one is flawed and we love him all the same.  He has his yes-man subordinate, Zoe, who acts as his conscience and will speak up when she feels it necessary.  She's the fighter/warrior married to the wimp-like ship's pilot, Wash, and their relationship is hot and inspiring.  We have the onboard renter, a professional companion, Inara, who secretly loves Mal who secretly loves her, amid all the whore-bashing rhetoric he flails her way, which definitely appeals to the more tormented love seekers who watch the series and may yearn for the Zoe-Wash marriage, but are currently not there yet, still in flux.

To round out the ten-character cast (I'm counting the spaceship Serenity), there is the shepherd, aptly named thus, and this crew is in need of his and His help.  You need a mechanic on any ship, and who doesn't love Kaylee?  She's our naive, sweet, optimistic young girl with the heart of gold.  Her down-to-earth girl-next-door good looks are just as beautiful in their way as Inara in her decked-out, bejeweled, Glamour Shot, model-perfect version.

Jayne is the guy you love to hate.  He's our in-house nemesis that you end up policing even while you are fighting a greater terror, like the Reavers.  Simon and River Tam were a brilliant addition to the cast.  First, it makes for an uneven pairing of the crew/cast, and it certainly added an interesting element to the "Out of Gas" episode.  Second, River is an entertaining conundrum, going from insane-acting person to superior IQ intellect to cockney-accented foible.  She's great.  Third, the brother is a doctor taking care of his patient, but his patient is smarter than he is.  I find him an odd mixture of hero and wimp.  Probably as Joss planned.  Fourth, it adds another element to an enemy to be fought, both within their ranks and from without.

Joss, you are another of my mentors.

Still, for those newbie authors, don't be intimidated by the genius that is Joss.  Follow it like you can do the Eight Archetypes or other external guideposts.  Not to be discounted is the factor of you.  You have no farther to look than inside yourself.  Write about characters that personify your greatest values.  Write about situations where the good guys or underdogs win.  Write about causes you wish to elevate to make the world a better place.  Write about what you love.  Move your readers to care, to shed a tear, to write a donation check, to improve themselves somehow.

You CAN make the world a better place for you having been here.  Do it.  Write from the heart.  Start now.