Artists Unite

For the past week I’ve been surrounded by all things Green. John Green, that is. I’ve been a fan since the Looking for Alaska days. I saw him speak at the Century Plaza shortly after I read that at a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference. Quiet and unassuming, I remember. And funny. When I saw Fault in the Stars at B&N a few months ago while trying to decide how to use a gift card, I picked it up. Good choice.

Even though I write young adult fiction, when I read John Green he seems to be writing a different genre, more evolved somehow. He seems to capture something I find elusive and I’d explain what that is except since it’s elusive, I struggle. I often close his books, saying out loud to anybody who happens to be in the room, “You, John Green, are the master.”

And while I love his work in general, I think Stars is my favorite. It feels like it comes from a place of pain inside him. I since that with authors, when they’re holding back. I find it brave when it’s there. While he gives the author disclaimer in the front that it’s a novel and he made it up, the thing that doesn’t feel made up to me is the rawness of emotion.

When I picked up the recent Time magazine to read the fascinating cover story “The Transgender Tipping Point” featuring Laverne Cox from my all time fave, “Orange is the New Black” series, there he was again. (I’m looking at Orange and I get Green.) In the article, Lev Grossman wrote about how Green’s Stars emanated out of a stint he’d done as a chaplain in a pediatric cancer center. Yep. Pain.

Then came the film release which was an amazing adaptation. We saw it last night and I definitely cry-cried. You know, that gasping-for-air-as-silently-as-possible-while-wishing-I’d chosen-to-skip-the-mascara crying? That’s the one. I thought back to Grossman’s interview wherein Green was on set watching his novel come to life. When a scene happened, all eyes turned towards him to observe his reaction. While he said he didn’t play a role in input, that felt like collaboration at its finest to me.

In between the bookstore, the Time article, and the film, I happened to be watching Ellen and there was Ansel Elgort who plays Augustus Waters talking about the film. (How he got through the whole interview without mentioning John Green was personally insulting to me.) He talked about how as they’d go from city to city promoting the film hordes of people would be there. Green had both tapped into the young adult consciousness and become, along with his brother, a social media genius in the way he’d played out the book tour. (The movie “Chef” is a “how to” on that, by the way.)

Watching creativity manifest in this way inspires me. First, in the mind of a true artist like Green. Then, in the process of creating visual art with the film. Choosing what to play up and take out is such a skill.  Next, in the acting of the character Green imagined. It’s pure magic to watch it all happen and I’m grateful for the artists that make it their lives to make magic.

 

True Words

Anne Lamott said something like if people didn’t want to end up being made into bad characters in her books, they should have behaved better. I always thought that was kind of funny, not that I’d ever use pen as sword.

But recently I was talking with a writer friend and realized I’d totally done it subconsciously. I’d killed off this person (and not in a very nice way, I might add) that had definitely annoyed me. I felt bad. What struck me most was that I totally missed it.

That’s just part of the fun of fiction, I guess. How often do you read a book and wonder if the author knows what she is revealing about herself by being quite possibly unaware of that. Writers are brave people that way. They know that they reveal their truest essence in ways they may not see, yet they do it anyway.

This is true even in non-fiction. I’m working on a couple non-fiction projects and am noticing that staying neutral is a challenge. I wouldn’t have thought that. Fact is fact. Yet, we all have a filter of some sort and even interpreting fact moves through it. Movie critics are probably the best example of this. Their reviews feel very much apart of their core personality to me.

There’s only one answer. Be nice to the writers.

Happy 50, Jamie!

Today I turn 50, and while I’m certainly taller now, some things don’t change. I still love kids, dogs, and blankies. I still actually have this afghan that my grandma crocheted about 90 years ago in that awesome 60s color combo.

I recognize that it’s quasi-culturally unacceptable to celebrate your own birth publically in a blog, but it wouldn’t be the first time I turned my head on the norm. That happens more and more the closer I get to 100.

I love birthdays–other people’s and my own–because they mark the day we decided to show up to this amazing adventure. I feel like it’s only right to celebrate each physical moment we have here on earth, be utterly grateful for the day it started…to grow, to stretch, to soak up each sunrise and sunset, to serve others and by so doing, serve ourselves most fully. So between the happy birthday phone calls, I will shamelessly hum the birthday song to myself all day long, not in an egoic kind of way, but in a grateful to have dropped by kind of way.

On the writing front, I had a great conversation with my friend Lois last week. We met at my first SCBWI meeting in a classroom inside Pacific Palisades’ Lutheran church where Lin Oliver did a workshop on humor. I liked her right away, better than anybody in the room, and we’ve been friends ever since– through moves, kids, through writing triumphs and challenges. Lois has many talents, but one I’ve always admired is her allegiance to daily writing schedule during first draft stage on novels. I can drag it out, distracted by life and a myriad of legitimate excuses. My first novel took me a year for a first draft, and 3 for one million (exactly–I counted) revisions.

But with the way the stars are lined up right now, and the shift I feel in my own patterning, we set a goal: I will do something on my current novel every day, even if that’s simply to open the document. It’s just time to establish a good first draft habit. (I will be on blog break next week while my hubby and I celebrate, but I will take my laptop and I will AT LEAST OPEN my document every day!)

The first night I started my new habit I went up to my desk (since it was not my carpool turn) and opened the document. I heard the kids get in the car and take off, knowing I had a solid 2.5 hours before they’d be back and hungry for 10pm after-practice tacos. In what seemed like 5 minutes, I heard something outside the office window. They were back. I seriously thought they’d forgotten something. I looked down at the time. It was 9:40! I’d lost all track of time. I remembered–that’s why I love writing. I lose myself there, like in the garden when I’m playing in the dirt and time stands still.

So far, 100% success for the week! Thank you, Lois, for always being there for me, letting me be there for you, and sharing this writer’s journey which is full of so many twists and turns. It’s friends like you that make it so much more fun to live on this planet and travel this journey.

With this goal, even today–between my Cyntergy class, massage appointment, humming the birthday song, and family dinner–I WILL open Intuition. The end.

Thanks, Matthew McConaughey, for the Epiphany

I had an epiphany this week. I think it started when we were watching “True Detectives,” a new HBO series my husband and I can finally sink our teeth into. McConaughey plays the best role I’ve ever seen him play, including his stellar performance in Dallas Buyer’s Club. Something was different about this role. He shines in a way his other picks have not allowed him to shine. The satisfaction he feels playing Detective Rust Cohle is palpable, and it makes watching it so satisfying. The energy comes through.

When I think about the writings I’ve loved, I can feel it when the author is having the same experience as McConaughey in this role. It doesn’t matter whether the writer is a poet, a blogger, a teen writing a paper, or a kid writing a poem for his mom. I can feel it when the person poured themselves into the words and they are not just a mere combination plate of syntax and correct punctuation with a simile and metaphor thrown in on the side. These are the writings that move me.

I can also feel it on the writing side which is why I like blogging so much. I don’t blog for my Ego’s sake, or my web presence, or to show off how to spell big words or just pretty literary quips. If those were my primary motivators, I’d quit in about 5 minutes. I blog because I’m really moved by something and want to put those feelings into language because that’s my playground.

This is also why I have to work on novels I’m passionate about, not ones that follow a formula and fit nicely into a commercial genre in the bookstore. If the feeling isn’t there for this 90% kinesthetic girl, the writing is going to be shit. On this, I’m clear.

This idea seems so basic, yet struck me so profoundly. Thank you, Matthew McConaughey, for the moment of clarity. It’s a good reminder of where my heart needs to stay.

Sacred Space

Some people fantasize about exotic trips around the world. Others crave fame, or recognition for their work, money, or admiration for their educational and professional accomplishments. Here’s what I fantasize about, right here to your left: sacred space.

The idea of sacred space is as old as man. It’s a concept I’ve seen played out by the Native American’s in beautiful ways. When I was young, we had a friend who was the matriarch of a Northern California Native tribe. Her daughter was the tribal shaman for a period of time. The daughter would go up to a mountain top (a place no non-tribal person could ever go) and she would stay there overnight while her mother kept guard on the ledge below doing ceremony. They knew this space would help accelerate the healing that needed to take place between tribe members and they gave it great respect and reverence.

The desert is also one of these places. Once in Sedona, we had a trail guide take us to sacred sites and perform Native rituals intended to help us see the world in a more connected way. He wrapped a native blanket around us and took us through a guided visualization commonly performed in Native traditions. Just being on the top of a mesa, looking out at the stunning valley of red rock and indigenous plants, with an eagle soaring through the lavender-blue sky, accelerated the experience in a way that couldn’t happen in a Safeway parking lot. The Sacred Space cemented the journey.

A friend and I were recently discussing this idea. She and her dying son had taken a sojourn to sacred spaces all across the country before his death. Each morning over coffee, they would share their dreams. Not long after their journey started, they started having the same dreams, and attributed that to the sacred spaces they slept in.

Sacred Space is palpable. N. Scott Momaday said when you’re in this space, “you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you.” People sense it. They seek it out. They know when they’re in it. And when I’m in it, my creative flow gushes through me in a way it doesn’t show up in other spaces. Building one writing space, for this very reason, is something I crave. (Now, when I write, it’s often on the couch, or at my childhood home where I can get quiet and see the vast green outside, or in some other nomadic location, including my car while waiting to pick up my kids.)

I dream of a place like the one in this picture. A simple place, where I can see out into nature and crack open to that creatively flow. The same space where I can go every day. A place with a desk and a chair and maybe a small bed. I picture Thoreau’s cabin, which we’ve visited on Walden Pond in Boston. (I’ve only recently learned that he and Emerson were friends and Emerson let Thoreau put the cabin on the land as a place to fully commune with nature.) In this phase of my life, I care less about accumulation and more about the simplicity of space, the space that allows me to hear that quiet voice flow through and feeling its breath on my neck.

“If you have been in the vicinity of the sacred – ever brushed against the holy – you retain it more in your bones than in your head; and if you haven’t, no description of the experience will ever be satisfactory.”

― Daniel Taylor, In Search of Sacred Places: Looking for Wisdom on Celtic Holy Islands

Trade Secrets

I’m inspired, intrigued, and aggravated when I listen to other writers discuss how they draft a novel. This is especially true–on all counts–if they’re really experienced and well-published. Somehow, it seems they may hold the keys to the Kingdom of Demystifcation, the magic place writers go to learn how most efficiently to do this whole novel writing thing.

Today, I felt those feelings whip around inside me, a tornado of uncertainty, as I sat and tried to keep an open mind while listening to Simon Wood speak about how he drafts his mystery/suspense/horror novels. He’s a prolific writer, mind you, and in the time it’s taken me to move one novel into the “publisher shopping” phase and start writing a second, he’s published God knows how many books (I’ve lost track), written numerous short stories, has audio books out, you name it. He’s a busy guy and he obviously has some secrets I need to know.

With a mechanical engineering background, he thinks in terms of design which means more of a laid out approach up front. Good idea, I think. Spreadsheets. I need spreadsheets. He gave great techniques, like color-coding scenes to balance protagonist, antagonist and subplot, and identify that you are keeping scene length consistent. Brilliant, I thought (with a charming English accent because that’s how he talks). I must do that straight away.

By the time he was done, I had a whole new approach laid out in my mind. But wait! I tried this last time! I was so organized on my first novel. I had a big master plan and acts and scenes–the whole shebang. In the redraft, I dumped it all on its head completely. The end product didn’t even look like a distant cousin of the first draft.

On my current novel, I have no poster board because I decided I’d just watch the movie unfold. This is more fun for me than the other way and I know the main story well so I figured this wouldn’t be a problem. I like the way my characters evolve and come into themselves in a way I couldn’t have forecasted in an outline. However, detail-wise, I’m floundering, and wishing I had a spreadsheet.

After listening to Simon’s process, I’m inspired to make a few tweaks. I’m grateful it came at this point in my suspense thriller because that’s his genre and he clearly knows his stuff. Hopefully, at some point, I’ll figure out some trade secrets I can share to make the writing process a little less mystifying for other writers.

Procrastination Blog – Which I’ll Get to Right After I Eat

I don’t think of myself as a vintage procrastinator. But when it comes to writing, I can fill up 45 minutes in a flash by niggling around and doing nothing-stuff. (Nothing-stuff: stuff that does not need to be done before I can write.) I’ve mastered it.

I’m not sure I completely understand why. I love to write and lose myself in the movies I flash through my mind. I have fun hanging out with my characters and seeing what whacky things they’re going to do next. I open up my document and in the next two seconds my mind is saying, “Not before you check your email. Not before you pet the dog. Not before you call a shaman and retrieve that soul you’ve been meaning to retrieve.”

You name it. I’ll come up with it.

So today I decided, “That’s it. I’m going to get right to it. I’m not going to shower or anything. Nothing is going to get in my way.”

I set my intention last night, right before my boys announced, “We have a minimum day tomorrow. WooHoo.”

YAAYYYYYyyyyyyyy…..

This means I’m REALLY going to have to get started on my manuscript immediately right after I drop them off. No routine, filled with shower, exercise, contemplation. Nope. I’m not even changing into my clothes. I open my manuscript.

Sure as rain falls from the sky, next thing I know I’m checking my bank balances, reading my email, checking my Facebook notifications, rechecking my Facebook notifications until I got so annoyed with myself I finally knocked out 8 pretty solid pages I like.

My boys just came home from school and here I sit, still in my pajamas. They just kind of look at me with cocked heads and half smiles and don’t say anything. Maybe they think I’m having a breakdown or something, like one of those moms in a Lifetime movie. I’m happy with my pj strategy–they go straight to their rooms and do homework like good teenagers while I sit typing this and feeling pretty proud I finally got to my writing.

I swear I’ll break the cycle tomorrow. Get right to it. Unless, of course, I don’t finish this blog. Or need to eat something. Or need to make tea. Or need to cut my toenails…

Writing tips: Santa’s Good List

My friend, Kevin, sent me this list. It’s not mine. Perhaps you’ve seen it before. One thing’s for sure–you can just never get enough writing tips. (Probably a Pulitzer waiting on the other end if you follow them.)

How to Write Good

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. Avoid clichés like the plague. They’re old hat.

4. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.

5. Be more or less specific

6. Writers should never generalize.

Seven. Be consistent.

8. Don’t’ be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.

9. Who needs rhetorical questions?

10. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

Oh, Santa. You so funny.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

That’s funny!

Is it just me, or is this not hysterical on so many levels?

 

Creativity Blossoms

I’m mentally back on the creative process and you know what that means.

The creative process is not a thing reserved for a select few who convert their first names to initials and write about wizards. It’s a thing that we all have access to and use in many different ways.

How it blooms depends on each of our unique seeds. Where we plant it, how we water it, how we sun it, how we fertilize it also matter. We can amp it up or turn it down, but it’s there for all of us to play with.

This past weekend I was doing one of those things I love most–talking with people and getting to know some friends of friends. It had been a full weekend in Austin with wedding festivities and touristy things. This was Day 3, Sunday brunch out on a patio overlooking the beautiful Austin hill country with a lake in the distance. We got on the subject of creativity which came after that question you know I always get. Wait for it.

“What books have you written that we can read?” There it is, followed by “I hate writing.”

But then the man talked about a class he and his wife had taken. He was surprised he liked it, but found it a great creative outlet where he didn’t usually get a chance to dabble in his more technical job. The class was called “Painting and Merlot” or something like that and the concept was each person got a canvas, a prompt, and a glass of wine. The man said as they all began to paint their “trees” each very unique painting became more and more beautiful as they drank.

First of all, I want to take this class. Next, I wondered, “What is it about the alcohol (substitute chocolate, food, etc.) that helps the creator become more creative?”

There is obviously a trend here if we look at all our creative types lost to addictions of various types. I remember hearing a guy say the best thing you can do for your art is to drink. I remember another one saying that was a horrible thing to say. I guess my curiosity lies more in the question of the “why.” Why does it take shifting the chemicals in our brain in some way to let the creative process open up?

I think it’s because of the Gremlin. That inner voice that mocks whatever it is that is being created. The one that shouts out, “Really? You just published that blog with all those freakin’ ass mistakes? You used “are” instead of “our?” Pretty ballsy, aren’t you?” or “That’s a tree?”

But here’s the thing. We don’t create to be perfect and put out perfect product. We create because it nurtures our soul. We create because it’s part of our natural process that yearns to be activated. We create because there is something that is so uniquely us that it is meant to be shared with the world.

It’s really just part of our job here to go forth and create.Through this process, we blossom. On that note, if anybody finds that “Paint and Merlot” class, sign me up! I’m in the mood to paint a tree.