Summer writing

I have the hardest time keeping up a regular writing rhythm in the summer. I could do that thing that moms do where they tell you how full their dance card is and how they have to take everybody here and there and the other place, meeting the needs of the world, but before I even get started with that long boring conversation, I’ll recap. I have the hardest time keeping up a regular writing rhythm in the summer. It really all comes down to that.

It’s by choice. I love the shift in schedule that I feel and being self-employed, I can flow along with the change just like in school when finals meant summer had arrived. That really pertained mostly to grammar school since I started working alongside school at 15 and never stopped. But that feeling…when you knew, after all the field trips to ranches (yeah, I grew up in Cottonwood–what of it?) and days on the green were done, you’d have pure open time to do whatever the heck you wanted. I like to pretend I’m still doing that.

Just putting myself at the keyboard to type my three weekly blogs challenges me in the summer. I’ll keep doing it for that reason. But the main summer writing I get done is the “pre-writing” as Ray Bradbury called it once when I spoke with him at the Torrance Civic Center. What he said stuck and was in essence this: just because you’re not sitting alone in a room at a table banging away on a typewriter (he was old school) doesn’t mean you’re not writing. You’re doing that which informs your writing by living in the world, by looking at the grand oak outside your window and imagining it comes to life at night, covered in fairies. (I ad-libbed there–he actually said the roller coaster down on the beach in Santa Monica and how it looked like a dinosaur in the dusk.)

 

By smelling the summer rain across the meadow. By walking through the forest, and listening to the stories from the towering redwoods in the Quail Hollow Reserve.

 

 

 

From watching your almost 11 year old dog play with the froth of the ocean for the first time on Dog Beach. Through sipping a regional zin in a barn filled with stories with my husband and listening to an old winemaker fill the air with stories while your dog listens at your feet.

I may not excel at summer writing, but I’m good at summer living…

I ask myself three questions every day. I think I got these from Brendon Burchard. I actually put them on my Google Calendar so they pop up on my phone each morning. Here they are:

• Did I live?
• Did I love?
• Did I matter?

I have the hardest time keeping up a regular writing rhythm in the summer.

And that’s okay.

Critique Groups

Accountability. Feedback. Ideas. Support. These are all reasons writers join critique groups. What they get back, however, is so much more.

There is a sort of serendipity that occurs when creative minds come together to create. It’s a collective consciousness of sorts, a group dynamic, where each individual is made stronger by the whole than they would be if they were alone in a vacuum.

Critique groups come in all sorts and sizes. I’ve worked in a variety of them over the past six years. Each is valuable in its own way. It’s really about your needs as a writer.

My first writing group was in Southern California–the Southern California Fiction Writers they called themselves. The critique members came from a larger organization–the Southwest Manuscripters–which was Ray Bradbury’s group at one point. (Every organization needs their star.) I was asked to join by the man who started the group very early on in my writing career. We called him Captain Dick because he ran the group like a military mission. I will be forever grateful for this group which met weekly on Wednesday night, because I knocked out the first draft of my novel to provide ten pages for them each week. Hoo rah. They cheered me on and encouraged me–and taught me how to do the same for them. Accountability.

When I moved to Northern California, I met Linda. Working together was meant to be as we both had a ready draft of a young adult/middle grade novel, and we were both very passionate about our stories. Having this compatibility was like skiing with someone at exactly the same level–smooth, efficient, fun. We met weekly and were able to quickly work through revision drafts of our works in no time. One-on-one feedback was priceless and the timing was a gift. Simply, a gift.

Along the way, key writing partners came into play. Charlie was really what felt like my first editor in looking at my novel as a whole piece (very important since writing groups focus on sections usually). We write in the same genre, and care about the same key issues, which made his feedback priceless. His experience and sensitivity to my voice let my creativity materialize. Other writer/readers along the way are key: Abe, Barbara, Lois, Deirdre. Not groups, per se, put a key accessory to your process.

Currently, I work with Jen and Darbie in what we call the “Tiaras.” (I don’t really know why, but it kind of stuck.) Each of us are working on a YA novel of very different types. Working in the same genre, though, really informs each of our writing. We are able to brainstorm as we are in the same head space. Ideas. They are the first ones I think to call with a writing success (or bump in the road) because they get it. Support.

We meet every 3rd week and each brings very unique gifts to the process. Together, we watch our writing grow, improve, and we are all able to be very thorough and honest with each other in this size group. Each of us is able to bring ten pages each time for the next time and we do the edits off hard copy vs. Google Docs. I am so grateful for this combination of writers because there is something magical in the combination that I’m not sure I can even put into words. It’s almost other worldly.

Each group is unique and so valuable in its own way. There are as many types of groups as there are writers. Where do you go if you want one?

It’s important to really think about what you need from a group. Is it accountability? Is it feedback? Ideas? Support? Then, write it out. Draw out what your perfect group would look like. How many members? What would each write? Contribute? Where and how often would you meet? Get very clear. Then, like with everything else, put it on your vision board (what? no vision board?) or just mentally send it out to the universe and before you know it, you’ll have a group, and you’ll wonder how you ever got along without one.