Writing For The Sake Of Reading.

I've always loved and hated in equal measures every part of the writing process: the beginning, the end, the editing, the drafting, the plotting, and everything in between. But something has changed for me. I don't love and hate all parts of the writing process in equal measures anymore.

When it comes to working on final drafts, the scale is tipping precariously close to despise/despair.

 I was talking to a friend the other day about how my writing process has changed and even as I said that I didn't really know how true it was. The more serious I become about my writing, the less indulgent it seems.

In the beginning of the story when there's only a few characters and an idea and I'm stumbling through the dark it will always be completely indulgent, only because I know I can fix it later. I don't think that part of my process will change.

The final draft, though, has changed. It's that promise I made in the beginning to fix the story. And unlike my other books, with BIB I now feel compelled to actually fix it. Now I have to trim away the excess and make a story. Suddenly I find myself laying face down on my bedroom floor, listening to Fleet Foxes and thinking about things like  "Plot" and "Character Motivation" and "Pacing" and "Structure."

Words like that make my head ache. The size of my book makes my head ache. The thought of both finishing and not finishing this book makes my head ache.

Part of me wants to go back to writing the way my earlier books were written: full of needless and excessive details and letting my characters kiss in the rain even though it's cheesy and doesn't make sense since it's summer. Part of me wants to go back to writing for the sake of writing. Writing because my sanity depended on it, because I couldn't do anything else, just because.

Another part of me, a much smarter part, the part that's thinking about "Plot" and "Character Motivation" and "Pacing" and "Structure" is shaking her head because she understands and accepts that I don't write for the sake of writing anymore. I write for the sake of reading.

I write the books I want to read and hope that someone else will want to read them too.

What do you write for the sake of: writing or reading?

Food for the brain. I want to hear your thoughts. Happy Almost-Friday everyone. I'm going to turn off Fleet Foxes now and get to work.

Music: "Helplessness Blues" by: Fleet Foxes BIB book one playlist.

Creative Research

*Note: this post was written sometime last week when I got a job working with a bunch of petition people with too much energy. You know those people who knock on your door in the middle of dinner and ask you to sign their petition because it's for a good cause? That's them. And you know that person standing behind them with the pained expression? That's me.

I'm dreading going to work today. I started yesterday. I know all the reasons I should be grateful to have a job, the biggest one being that it's so freaking hard to find one nowadays. But it's hard to remember to be grateful when I'm standing on top of a hill in the cold, at night, with a big sign in hand and a heart attack looming.

This reminds me not only how out of shape I am, but that I'd rather be at home clicking through my DVR recordings than power walking up a hill. But I had a revelation standing on that hill. As I stood there thinking about my DVR and mentally writing my will in case my heart really did combust in my chest, a train zipped by on the tracks a few feet away from me. If you've ever stood close to an ongoing train (a fast one), you know what it's like: like the world is shaking and screaming and ending and that question about if the world will end in fire or ice is suddenly redundant because you understand it will end in lights.

It only took a few seconds for the train pass me, but it left me with a thought, a moment of clarity: I had two choices. One, I could stand on top of that hill, huffing and puffing, and hating my job. Or two, I could follow that train with my eyes until it disappeared and then file the whole experience away for later. In fact, I could make my night one big experience to file away for later.

Sure, it was cold and I was tired and I couldn't breathe. But I was also in a part of town I'd never seen before and there was so much to see. There was the train, and over there was a tiny forest of trees, and over there was an alley and an abandoned warehouse.

It's not that hard to figure out which I chose, the huffing and puffing or the "seeing." I'm a writer, and among the many gifts we have or acquire is one gift that I think supersedes the rest. I call it creative research. It's different from regular story research, where you take notes on things like how long rigor mortis takes to set in (three to four hours, and twelve for maximum stiffness; just in case you were wondering. Maybe you weren't.) or eighteenth century weaponry. Creative research is the taking notes on life, usually as it happens.

I can't be the only person who has ever walked into a hospital and started taking mental notes of everything I see: the people staring vacantly at magazines in the waiting room, the kid running up and down the hallway, the really cute male nurses who smile shyly at you when you check out their butts. I can't be the only person who opens the cupboards and drawers near the beds, like I'm taking inventory. So I might press a button or two on the computer when the doctor isn't looking, just to see what's behind the screen saver. Don't pretend like you haven't done it.

The writer part of my brain will milk as much creative research out of a situation as it can. It isn't concerned with the fact that Bee is lying in a hospital bed, drugged up and covered in dirt because she fell off a mountain while biking. I am concerned with this, but the writer part of my brain is not. The writer is wondering how much pain Bee is in and if it can be conveyed in words.

Sometimes I'm ashamed of this. Sometimes I forget how useful it is. Sometimes I love it. But regardless of how I feel about this part of my brain--the part that will try to spin everything into a something that I can use in a story-- I need it too. My writing is better because of it.

I'll probably never enjoy this job, and I'll never smile while I power walk up a hill, and I'll never enjoy carting around a sign as tall as me. But when I think about the train and the alley and the forest and the abandoned warehouse, when I think about how I now have the pictures in my head of what these things look like and can come back to them later, I don't dread tomorrow so much.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Music: "Chicago" by: Sufjan Stevens

Choosing To Write

Some writers say that they chose to be writers, that it's not possible for writing to choose them. I've never agreed with this because, quite frankly, writing is hard; so hard that if I'd had a choice, I probably would have gone with something that didn't make me want to poke pencils into my eyeballs, something a little more glamorous.

Maybe I would have been a rockstar, I know at some point I wanted to play the guitar and be in a band. Or do something adventurous and humanitarian like be a philanthropist. I could see myself trekking through the Amazon jungles, looking for exotic plants to cure the common cold. But I'm not. I'm sitting on the floor of my bedroom thinking about my characters even as I type this.

I am a writer.

I don't believe it's that clean cut, just getting up one day and saying, "hey, I'm going to be a writer." But then, it also is, to an extent. That's where it gets confusing. All writers, ultimately have to decide that they are going to write. In fact, I think we have to decide twice.

First, we decide to write.

Then, we decide to keep doing it.

Two choices.

I decided to write when I was nine and sat down to pen my first story. I decided again when I was fifteen and had about 95 half-completed stories under my belt. It's that second decision that counted the most, it's what got me through my first completed novel, as crappy as it was it was done and it was mine.

That second decision drives me everyday. It made me finish a second book and start a third. It keeps me going when I'm sitting in the dark, staring at a blinking cursor with no idea of how to make it move.

With that said, I believe that writing chose me, as it chose you, Other Writer. The ideas come--in the early hours of the morning when we're half asleep, they come during a phone call from a friend asking us to hang out--most of the time when we want nothing to do with them. We don't ask to be nagged by persistent characters caught in love triangles and century old curses, we don't choose that.

What we do choose is the part where we roll out of bed and stomp to the computer before we've even had coffee, where we tell our friends "not today, I'm writing." This is the choice we make, even as we're thinking "Good God, man! Couldn't this damn idea wait until after my alarm went off/after dinner with *insert friend's name* ? They were gonna pay!!"

The writing chooses us, but we have to make the choice to choose it back.

Small Beginnings Part 1: Mrs. Gardener

Last year, I took the SAT for the first time. Despite being a writer, I was so sure I would bomb the writing portion and then the humiliation of that would cause me to bomb the following English portion. And then because I still count with both hands (and sometimes both feet) , I would bomb the Math portion, and ultimately become a failure.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I opened up that little booklet and read my writing prompt, which basically asked me what I thought was more important, creativity or logic and reason. Um, hello? This is probably the most indulgent question you can ask a writer. The answer is so obvious. It's like they were asking me if I would prefer laying on a tropical beach with Leonardo Dicaprio or reenacting the Titanic. And no matter how cute Leonardo was in the Titanic, we all know he dies in that movie. So, I'm taking the beach.   

Needless to say, I didn't bomb the writing portion. I wrote my essay about my fifth grade teacher and how she changed my life by assigning a creative project, thus explaining why I thought creativity was limitless, which explained why I thought it was more important. While I wont be sharing my essay with you guys, I am going to share my fifth grade teacher.

Her name is Mrs. Gardener and she is still the best teacher I've ever had. I think what made her such a wonderful teacher was the fact that she was dedicated to her job. That dedication showed in everything she taught me, and I'll always thank her for that, because it makes a difference. At least, it did for me.

As all stories start--Once Upon a Time, Mrs. Gardener handed out an assignment to the class after hanging three paintings on the board. She told the class to choose one and then write a story about it, which didn't sound all that fun to me. But her enthusiasm for the assignment was contagious. It was almost as if she was inviting me into a secret world, giving me a set of keys, and telling me "go ahead, open the door."

I rode on that enthusiasm all the way home and wrote my very first story. I don't remember what the painting I chose was called, but I do remember that it had to do with a book being eaten by vines. From that I got 12 wide-ruled pages about a girl whose mom drove her to the library and told her to make some friends, and in an effort to do so, she befriended a girl working at the checkout counter and ended up checking out a book that was said to be haunted. She then goes home, opens the book, and the vines reach out and pull her into the book, trapping her forever. I know, I think it's pretty brilliant, too.

I wrote this laying in the middle of my bedroom, writing so fast that my words were illegible. Sometimes, I think that I'm still laying there writing, only now, I'm older and the stories are different and I'm typing on a laptop. Sometimes, I believe that Mrs. Gardener really did hand me the keys to a secret world and once I went in I never came back out.

Small Beginnings

Other than myself, there are a few people that can be held accountable for the fact that I became a writer.

1.) My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Gardener.

2.)  My twin sister, Bee.

3.) My mother, who I still call Mommy. 

There has been a lot of people who have supported me and believed in me and my writing over the years, but these three people are the people that actually got me to sit down and write. Whether it was their words or their actions, it changed my life forever. And every time I think about where I began this journey, I come back to them and the small but important part they played in my creative life.

There's not enough space in the world to describe how they changed my life, but I'm going to try and contain it in a few posts throughout next week.

Until then...have a great weekend everyone.        

Single Minded Writer Syndrome

Single Minded Writer Syndrome plagues thousands of writers in the world. Every ten minutes another writer is diagnosed with Single Minded Writer Syndrome...

I might have made that up, but it gets my point across. I'm not alone, and neither are you! There are other writers who forget life outside their books and walk around their houses with dark circles under their eyes, unbrushed hair, and a tea cup permanently attached to their hand. This isn't pretty, but I've never met a writer who looks cute in the throes of Single Minded Writer Syndrome.

SMWS can last anywhere from a day to a few weeks. I think how long it lasts is however long it takes the writer to realize they have it. The reason I'm writing this post is to talk about my own bout with SMWS. You may have noticed my absence for most of last week, that's because I spent that time catching up on homework that I'd either procrastinated on or forgotten about. I know what you're thinking: how does someone forget they have homework? And honestly, I don't know. I can only blame it on SMWS.

My brain usually says "After I do this assignment, I can go write," this is rational and normal. In the midst of SMWS all that rationality gets thrown out the window and my brain starts chanting me to the office: "WRITE WRITE WRITE!!!Whatthehellareyouwaitingfor?!!"  And me, seduced by all the pictures of future scenes in my head, I give in.

Without realizing it, I gave into this voice for most of April. Everyday was a race to the office. In the morning it was always "how fast can I shower, make coffee, and stuff that toast in my mouth?" and then when that took too long: "What about multitasking? Can I eat toast while I shower?" I was so caught up in my book that everything else fell away, nothing was more important than getting the next word, the next scene, the next chapter.

This mindset can be beneficial in small doses. In big heaping doses it becomes destructive (I'm using myself as an example).

So, how do you recognize the symptoms and what's the cure?

I'm not sure I could accurately write all the symptoms of SMWS without asking Bee and my mom what I'm like when "I crawl under my rock" (when I'm in my office 208994 hours of the day). So, I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions for that one. In fact, I would suggest you ask the people around you what you're like when you get "in that mood." They'll tell you the truth.

Anyway, once you realize you've contracted Single Minded Writer Syndrome, the only way to get over it is to type one last sentence, close the word document, and step out of the office. Immerse yourself in the real world again...and brush your hair, your computer might not judge you but other people will.

First chapters and cheesecake

I have a twin sister, Bee. I have mentioned this before, but for those of you who are just tuning in, I felt the need to say this again, just so there isn't any confusion. She's not just my sister, she's my twin sister. But that's not the point.

The point is that she is amazing!! I do not tell her this enough because half of the time I just want to wrap my fingers around her neck and...well, you know. But something happened yesterday.

She made pumpkin cheesecake!

and

She gave me my first chapter!

I would have been happy with the cheesecake, but in typical Bee fashion, Bee knows what I'm thinking before I do. So, two cups of coffee, two slices of cheesecake, two cups of tea, and a melodramatic speech about how I don't know why I bother, she finally says "Tell me where you left off, I'll write it for you."

I know what you're thinking, you think she actually wrote my first chapter and handed it to me polished and shiny. She didn't. But she may as well have. She stretched her fingers, rolled her shoulders, did a few more stretches, and started typing with this determined expression on her face. Bee isn't a writer, she isn't a reader, she doesn't even like libraries. But she is amazing. Did I mention that? I think I did. Anyway, by the time she was done and I read what she wrote, I was smiling. No, I was laughing. I realize now that this is probably the reaction she was aiming for. But at the time, I was just so amused and slightly astonished at how she somehow managed to tell me without saying it out loud that I was overthinking everything.

And I was.

I think that is why I've always had trouble with my first chapters. I told Bee yesterday that I don't want my first chapter to be "good" or "great!" I want it to be "Excellent!!!!" So this is where I set the bar for myself and aim to touch every single time I sit down to write. Having this standard in mind, I write a sentence and dissect it. I write another and dissect it. The process repeats itself until I really just want to delete everything I've ever written and start chasing Life Long Dream #2 : become a ballerina. Then I realize it's too late for that and my knees crack when I stand and that, too, goes out the window. And it's back to Life Long Dream #1.

I'm starting to realize that I might just set the bar for myself a little too high. I mean, it's one thing to strive to do the best you can, but it's something else entirely to strive for perfection. If I'm being honest with myself I can admit that I have perfectionist tendencies. In my defense, though, I'm not always aware of them. That's what Bee did for me yesterday. She made me aware that I was so hooked on getting it perfect, that I was questioning everything I wrote, and by questioning everything I wrote, I was building up problems within my story that didn't exist.

So, I know better now. And hopefully this short little tale can be a precaution for some other writer sitting in a dark room, struggling with their first chapter...and eating cheesecake.

I will eventually share with you guys what she wrote and what I wrote. But we'll save that for later.

Writing habits--the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

I've been writing for a long time. Nine or ten years, to be exact. But what just hit me is that while I've learned a lot, there is still so much out there that my little writer brain hasn't even touched yet. It made me wonder if we writers ever really stop learning and just start knowing.

*Wait a beat of silence*

I just realized how stupid that was. To know everything would imply perfection, and no one is perfect. Not even if you're J. K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer or Oprah. Though sometimes I wonder if Oprah might just be some alien from a different planet that's so much more awesome than ours, thus giving her super-awesome-alien powers that allow her to do a million things at once. But that's besides the point. The point is we never stop growing and learning and so I wanted to talk about writing habits; the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good
These are things that we should all be doing.

1.) Write Daily.
I don't care if you're tired, or if a new book came out that you just-cannot-put-down (City of Fallen Angels, cough cough). I don't care if your fingers fall off, then you should probably write with your toes. I don't even care if your dog ate your story. Writing daily is essential, see why here.

2.) Storyboarding.
Every writer writes differently, and I would never presume that just because something works for me means it works for you, too. But this works. Trust me. If you find yourself staring at a blinking cursor wondering what the heck happens next, you should probably make one of these. While it wont give you the answers to what happens next, it will keep every single thought you had about your story so organized that it'll make finding out what happens next easier. To make a story board all you need is a white board, sticky notes, and dry erase makers. I could go into all the details and steps but they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so...

and again, every writer is different, so your storyboard doesn't have to look like mine or anyone else. See all the jumbled writing on the right? That's how my mind works.

3.) Cookies, Doritos, and doughnuts. Not necessarily in that order.
Do I even have to elaborate on this one? Tell your body and your personal trainer that it's for "creative purposes" and if that doesn't work, tell them it's "Brittany's orders". And then do five jumping jacks to lessen the guilt.

4.) Family = free cheerleaders.
Give me an A, give me a B, give me a They-have-no-choice-but-to-love-anyway! So don't shut them out. Tell them how your story is going, tell them you love them when they buy you cookies for "creative purposes."

5.) Confidence.
When you get up in the morning, take some time to grab this and shove it in your pocket. Carry this with you everywhere; to the bathroom, to work, to the office. Never let anyone take it from you.

6.) Write Freely.
If you're passionate about it, write it. When it comes to writing, where your heart leads you is probably the right direction.

The Bad
These are things you should not do...like ever.

1.) Compare and Contrast.
Unless you're in English class, you'll want to avoid this. It never turns out well, you will not get a gold star or an A. There will always be someone who writes better than you, and there will always be someone who doesn't. If you focus on either, you will start doubting yourself or your ego will expand to Godzilla proportions. The trick is to be fazed by neither.

2.) Call writer's block, Writer's Block.
If you don't call it by it's name, it does not exist. All the power is in the name, people. Let me tell you why. Once we say we have writer's block, it's like we accept its existence and the fact that we can't change it. So we wait, and wait...and wait for it to leave. But in doing this, we waste precious time and creative juices watching bad reality tv and feeling sorry for ourselves. If we refuse to call it by its name, that means we refuse to give up, we refuse to accept the fact that we're suck. I'm starting a movement to de-name writer's block. I have a feeling this needs its own blog post.

The Ugly
These are worse than the bad.

1.) Hi, my name is Suck.
These are days where your writing sucks and you suck and life and the universe and everything ever invented sucks (with the exception of cookies, Doritos, and doughnuts). There is no cure for these days, you must just Step Away From The Computer.


There's tons more Good, Bad, and Ugly. But I can't think of anything else. Feel free to share if you think of something.

I found the secret to writing

Yes, you did hear me correctly. I have discovered the secret. So, brace yourself, this is going to blow your mind.
The secret to writing is to Just Do It, Just Write. That's it; it's that simple and that hard. It's not a secret at all, when you really think about it. But I didn't know this. It made me realize that there are probably a million other writers, newbies and pros alike, who also haven't figured it out yet, who keep asking the question: "how do they do it?"

I'm going to tell you.

It sounds so easy (Just Do it, Just Write). But all you writers out there know that this isn't the case. You hear all your favorite authors talk about how you have to make a routine and stick with it; how you have to guard your writing time; how you have to dedicate yourself and show up for the job even when it's the last thing you want to do and the-world-is-ending-O-M-G-this-is-torture. And they're right, imagine that. You have to do all these things. You have to get up and drag yourself to the computer and that damned blinking cursor. You have to drink endless cups of tea and coffee and forget to eat. You have to wrack your brain and then come up with nothing, and then start wracking again. And you cannot stop. You have to keep going. It sucks and then sucks some more and then...yes, more sucking. You wonder why you even bother and if it's too late to opt out and become a go-go dancer. And then, all of a sudden, in the midst of all the suck, the clouds part, music starts up, and it doesn't suck anymore.

Yesterday, the very foundation that I built my writing career on shifted. Actually, that's too light a word. It flipped upside down. My writing has always come in great bursts of muse-induced inspiration where I could write for nine hours at a time only to then not write for another week or two. I told myself that I was covering so much ground during those nine hours that this pattern was okay.

Last night I figured out that it wasn't okay, and that I had it all wrong. Most days the muse doesn't show up, but I think I speak for all you writers when I say that on the days it does, it's like Christmas and New Years and Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras, all wrapped up into one adrenaline, sweat-soaked, caffeinated package. It's the days that the muse is gone, though, that really count. Sometimes those days are good, sometimes bad, sometimes they're simply okay. The point it to not shy away from the office just because the muse isn't waiting for you there. You might only write 3 words, you might write a 1,000. But every single one of them count.

I don't know if it's just me, but on the days where the writing isn't coming smoothly, I do some of my best thinking. Because let's face it, if you can't write, you're just sitting and thinking about writing. I think about my characters and why they do the things they do, I think about that one comma and if it really needs to be there, I think about plot and structure, and every other messy detail that comes along with writing a book. These days days count.

The days where inspiration is pouring out of your ears count.

Everyday counts.

The moral to the story is what they've been saying since the beginning of time: Just Do It, Just Write. Like right now...why are you still reading this sentence, GO!