Editeyes

The book is out! The Right Sisters was published in June and our book launch is August 14 in Sonora.

Ever since the project was finished in late April and the manuscript went to the publisher, I have felt strangely afloat. At first, I told myself it was OK to just write in my notebook each morning. Giving myself permission to write about anything was fun– for a while–but rather quickly it wasn’t enough. I wanted more focus. I tried writing to prompts. I followed guidelines in some writing books. I liked the results, but I still had the sensation that I was on raft floating aimlessly on a big wide ocean.

So I applied for some freelance jobs. I got every job. One involves writing web content for sites like eHow and Answerbag. Another involves writing longer research pieces for clients. The third is an online writing tutor gig. Meanwhile, I still have my local assignments to write theater reviews and feature articles for regional magazines.  I also write for KleenSlate Concepts–the company run by my writing buddy Julia with whom I partnered on The Right Sisters. Now I feel spread too thin. I have piles on my desk, and I’m confused about which task should take priority.

I think I need another project! What about you writers? Are you project oriented or do you prefer more freedom, like that found in daily notebook writing, or do you enjoy the challenge and variation offered by freelance writing?

Tags: Free Write, Writing First by ph
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Bloggers everywhere having been posting resolutions for 2009 for over a week. This post–eleven days into the new year–and the lack of posts for about 8 weeks, decries the need for a writing resolution, or more specifically a blogging resolution.

I recently worked on the content for my friend Cherie’s business web sit–The Yoga Loft. I gave her a package with edited content for each page as well as suggestions about design. I also suggested that she revitalize her site’s blog and gave her a list of ideas to get her writing. It was a pretty good list, if I do say so myself. Here are the suggestions:

Post at least once a week, preferably 3 times a week.

Write short posts, a paragraph is plenty.

Here are ideas about what to write:

·       Recommend a yoga related book you are reading;

·       Explain an insight you had from your reading;

·       Post a quote, like the ones you read in class, with a citation;

·       Write about the focus of your yoga instruction during a week;

·       Quote a student;

·       Post a link to an Internet site and explain why you think it is relevant;

·       Announce an upcoming yoga event, both ones you are going to and ones you wish you could attend;

·       Post a picture from class, name the student and describe what’s happening;

·       Discuss an insight you got from a piece of music, your kitties, a swim workout, your garden, etc.;

·       Write about a trip out of town, a visit to your mother, your nephew, a hike—especially when you have to cancel class, students want to know what you are up to.

·       Write about food, the co-op, your chicken’s eggs, the terrific meal you had at someone’s house or a restaurant;

·       Write about how eating effects your practice for better or worse;

·       Define terms;

·       Tell a story about when you were first learning yoga, something you learned from a teacher. Pass on the knowledge (story telling is the BEST tone for a blog);

·       Anytime you have the urge to send a message to several friends via email, consider posting it on your blog, even if you are simply forwarding a site, copy the link and explain why you think it’s important, interesting, or funny.

As I was reviewing the list with Cherie, I realized that it would behoove me to listen to my own advice. And though the list was for a yoga blog, it was easily adaptable for my own purposes.

But I still didn’t start posting on my blog again. Then I had one more idea.  I’d invite Cherie to be my blog buddy. I’d say:

“Let’s agree to post at least once a week. Then we can encourage/support/cajole/shame each other into posting regularly. What do you say Cherie? Are you game?”

Tags: Free Write, Writing First, blog-land by ph
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According to Chris Baty, the creator of NaNoWriMo, “The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is lack of a deadline.”  That’s why the plan to write a novel in a month works so well. The event creates a deadline. To reach the deadline and the goal of a 50,000 word novel, you have set the pragmatic goal of 1667 words per day.

This is my second year signing up for NaNoWriMo and the power of the deadline is what brought me back. In early October, NaNoWriMo popped into my head as the perfect solution to help me through a considerable layer of procrastination.  I needed to get started on a book-length project I had agreed to work on. My friend Julia had done a great deal of research on modern women inventors and I had agreed to worked the material into a cohesive package. It occurred to me that I could create the book she was looking for if I sat down and organized the material at a rate of 1667 words per day–the daily rate when one signs up for NaNoWriMo.

I’m working outside the box of NaNo this year because I’m not writing a novel; I’m working on a non-fiction piece. The contest is so personal that it allows such freedom.  Nobody is watching me to say I’m breaking the rules because the entire motivation for this event is intrinsic. Just because I signed up, I feel a compelling urge to write at least 1667 words every day. Though I know people who have not signed up but are working as if they had, it took the formal step of logging on to the NaNoWriMo site to call this urge forth in me.

Many successful writers operate under the principle that they simply have get their bottom in the chair each day and write. Some writers set a goal of X number of pages. During the month of November, there are 125,000 writers who set a goal of 1667 words per day.

The goal is not magical; it’s practical. But the experience of typing those 1667 words day after day is definitely awesome! Having a deadline really works!

Tags: Free Write, Word Wise, Writing First by ph
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Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month: NaNoWriMo for short. This is my second year of signing up for this event which boasts 125,000 participant writers from around the world. In my little corner of the world, I’ve located 6 other WriMos, and we are meeting at local Starbucks this afternoon for a Write-In as well as weekly for the rest of the month.

The purpose of the event is to complete 50,000 words of a “shitty first draft.” This quote is directly from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird and is particularly fitting to the contest’s intention.  Chris Baty, who initiated the event in 1999 with 26 friends, is the first to say that the intention is not to write beautiful, lyrical, quotable prose. The goal is simply to give one’s imagination full rein until there are 50,000 words on the page.

I have to admit last year’s NaNoWriMo was a thrilling exercise in freedom for me. I wrote the worst mystery novel ever, but I discovered so many facets of my imagination in the process and so much about my ability to do concentrated work in a myriad of settings and under all kinds of conditions. WOW!

Of course, I signed up again. I leaped from bed this morning, not early but nevertheless excited to start work on my new book. I filled my new NaNoWriMo mug with coffee (unused until this day), donned my blue chiffon porpoise-print writing jacket, opened a word doc, and typed the title of my book: The Right Sisters.

I’m off and running with 700 words! I’ll meet with my fellow WriMos this afternoon at Starbucks where we will down caffeine and write for 2 or more hours.

Are any of you, dear readers, participating? Please speak up! In the mean time, I’ll post periodic NaNoWriMo updates along with more thoughts on point of view over the next few weeks.

Tags: Free Write, That's Personal by ph
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On my last day in Ashland, I walked with two other women, Kim and Haley, to buy squash soup at Pangea restaurant. All along the way, we read freestyle chalked graffiti on the sidewalks–the late night mischief of our fellow travelers to theater-land. We laughed at the imagination apropos in each line we encountered.

As we waited for our soup, we each spoke about one thing we would take with us from the trip. Haley described being particularly moved by a line from “Our Town” about the swiftness of 1000 days passing.  The gist of the quote was about “realizing life while you live it.” She was going to write in her journal every day for a 1000 days, beginning right then. Kim and I decided to join her in this plan, and we made a pact that we would each write daily.

I’ve written in my journal for 7 days straight. Right from the start, I struggled with whether to write about daily happenings or “practice” creative writing. I’ve written in a journal intermittently for years. For instance, I generally write when I’m on a trip like the one to Ashland, noting emotions, sights, impulses, and plans that arise from being in a new and different place. Whenever I teach writing classes, I write with my students to the prompts I give them. Sometimes, I get on a roll at home and write for several days or weeks using pictures or poems or nature as prompts, but then for reasons unknown I stop this daily journaling. So the commitment to write for 1000 days is challenging, particularly in terms of what to write.

This morning, I wrote several pages about what I should be writing and why I was writing, and then I decided to get one of my favorite books off the shelf– Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones– to point me in a more fruitful direction.  I opened the book and read several pages, and when I came to a segment called “Nervously Sipping Wine” on page 66, I knew I’d found the guidance I was looking for.

Here’s the suggestion that did it for me.  Goldberg recommended for a starting line to “take the first half of your sentence from a newspaper article and finish the sentence with an ingredient listed in a cookbook.” I modified these instructions because I didn’t feel like getting up to retrieve her ingredients. Instead, I copied a line from the AARP Bulletin that was sitting on the end table by my chair and finished it with a phrase from the Columbia Nursery Newsletter also sitting nearby.

Woah!!! From that first line emerged two pages of the best stuff I’ve written in a LONG time.

Try it! It’s a powerful journal exercise not unlike mischievously composing sidewalk graffiti in chalk.  And while you’re at it, join my friends and me in writing in your journal for 1000 days. Maybe we can all do a better job of realizing life while we live it.

If you do decided to commit, how about making the commitment public by dropping a statement to that effect in the comment section here.

ph

Tags: Free Write by ph
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