Collaboration

I had a wonderful experience earlier today.

I met with two phenomenal women to work on a project together.

I don't always like working in collaboration with other people. In fact, most of my life I hated "group projects." These two women, however, are those rare sorts with whom I am compatible in strength of personality and in interests.

Elaine is the "critique partner" whom I hooked up with through Georgia Romance Writers. Her women's fiction novel is coming along nicely. She's just missing two chapters at this point, before she can declare it finished...well, finished except for a re-write and polish. At the moment, due to the fact that I haven't been actually working on my novel--I've been concentrating on school related writing--I'm acting as her sounding board and cheerleader. She's my cheerleader too.

Jessica is my partner for a school project. When we got hooked up due to the fact that we both volunteered to redesign a particular website, I didn't know her very well. However, we've hit it off. We believe it's because we're both pretty out-going and opinionated.

Jessica owns her own copy of Dreamweaver, I don't, so we've gotten together outside of class to huddle over her computer. Elaine is a web writer/designer and she met up with us to help us with some tricky bits--like moving a paragraph up the page. We tried for an hour last Thursday, and just couldn't fix it. Of course, once Elaine showed us what we were doing wrong, duh! It turned out to be a simple fix, but we are both new using Dreamweaver and just hadn't been able to figure it out.

So here's a shout-out to both these phenomenal women. Thanks to you both for being great creative partners.







Oh, we were discussing Barbara Winter's book, Making a Living Without a Job. It's one of my favorite books. I'll discuss more about it later.

Where creativity lies

Even after swearing to myself that I would blog everyday, I missed yesterday. Missing blogging=missing writing. Oh, I did do something constructive, I've begun reading my book on travel writing, which is a class that I'll be taking during my study abroad trip to Tunisia. So it wasn't a completely wasted day. But I didn't get any writing done.

It was such a weird day though. I overslept, waking up at 10:30 in the morning. I sleep in that late about once a year. Once I did, I remained off schedule and felt weird the rest of the day.

Part of feeling weird the rest of the day had something to do with the fact that I've been sick with an earache. Earache=pain+dizziness. Pain is one thing. Not being able to stand up because I'm dizzy is another thing altogether. It's been going on for almost 2 weeks now. Mostly I'm better. Thank goodness, because I've got a heck of a plane ride coming up in a week. But my ear still feels weird--like I have a finger stuck in my ear pushing on my eardrum. I don't know how much more decongestant I can take and remain on planet Earth.

This blog entry will actually have to be about the writing I did day before yesterday.

I felt that day was very successful.

I got lots of pages done, completing my memoir and an exercise or two that I had to turn in for memoir class.

The scene in my memoir that I mentioned previously--the one that was too much summary and not up-close-and-personal enough--I never fixed to my satisfaction. The moment about which I was trying to write was so personal, and, let's face it, so naked (I'm not speaking figuratively here), that it was a little bit more than I could write for review by a teacher. Interesting that I think that I could write it for publication (faceless masses) but not for someone I see in person.

Just like I don't think I could post that memoir here, since my sister could possibly read it and there are moments in there I wouldn't care to share with her. (It's not about you, Beth, but let's just say I mention "the McMillan tummy.")

However, I'd like to share the following with everyone, because of what happened during the writing. I was attempting a writing exercise requesting me to write with sensory details about a place that I knew well. During the writing, I was so "into it." For me, "into it" means that I get a sensation of my brain sinking down, so that I feel like somewhere in my head, I'm wrapped in a protective blanket. Everything around me, the sounds, the smells, the motion, receded. I lived once again in the place that I was writing about, which is the living room of my stepmother's house. I wrote it as if it were last summer, before my dad passed away. When I write this way, I'm reminded of when I was in acting class, doing sense-memory exercises.

So here is the piece:

----

In the Quiet

I sit in my daddy’s big leather recliner and just listen to the house. It’s not often that I’m alone here and it feels uncomfortable. The leather is cool on the back of my legs and the breeze from the fan above blows cool air on my knees and shins. I’ve always loved the feel of a softly blowing fan. It helps me relax a bit.

The dark brown paneling that wraps around the den, interrupted only by big windows and French doors, is the same as when my mother and daddy built the house. The furniture pieces-- sofa, two recliners, guest chair, and television--are in the exact same places they’ve always been, although these are my stepmother’s furniture picks, not my mom’s.

I wonder if I’ll still be coming to the house in another year’s time.

I wonder, if, after my father passes away, my stepmother will sell the house.

The quiet is not really quiet. I notice it when the air-conditioning compressor turns itself back on. Since Daddy is so sick now, the house is kept much warmer than he used to find comfortable. The air-conditioner doesn’t need to work as hard as it used to. It doesn’t cycle through as many times per hour. I hear the refridgerator hum from the laundry room. It’s older than the kitchen fridge. That’s probably why I can hear it instead of the other one.

I notice that the slightly rancid smell of cigarettes still hangs in the air, even though my stepmother has begun insisting that she and daddy go outside to smoke. I wonder if they really do, when no one is visiting, or if my stubborn father refuses. Lord, he refuses to quit smoking, even though he now must drag an oxygen tank along behind.

A multi-colored carpet has replaced the sea green one that my stepmother used to have on the floor. The sea green rug replaced the red shag that my mother had laid down. A pale leather couch replaces my mother’s tweed brown one. My mother’s guest chair has been replaced by a love-seat. I wonder if Judy would be surprised that she had nearly duplicated my mother’s furniture placement? It’s one of the things we never discuss.

I know that Judy has never loved the house like my father does. I remember when he and mom were having it built. My father remarked that this was the first and last house that he’d ever build. He planned to die here. I suppose that’s why he fought so hard for it in the divorce, and why Judy could never talk him into moving. Once he’s gone, what memories will the house hold? Will it be forever haunted by his presence? Or will that be only in my mind?

-----

Reading back over the above, I realize that I really wrestled with verb tenses in this short piece. Hope I corrected them all, and am not embarrassing myself here!

Have you ever tried to analyze where in your brain or body your creativity lives? I'd love it if you shared you thoughts with me.

Bout One

So yesterday, I resolved to keep a journal of my writing--of my creative process. So today, I'm attempting to keep that resolution.

Writing yesterday went fairly well. I'm still wrestling with this memoir piece. When I had my rough draft critiqued by the class, I was shocked at the feedback--which was generally positive. I was thankful for that, no doubt. But only 2 reviewers said that it seemed unfinished. They are the only 2 who caught onto the truth.

The memoir is about how my body image has always messed with my head. In the last five to ten years my body has caught up with my body image.

When I was a teenager and young adult, I thought I was fat. I wasn't, but I thought I was. When you spend 5 hours a day in a leotard, hanging out with Olympic quality gymnasts, that can mess with your head. Gymnasts are always comparing their bodies to others, thinking they are not good enough. For many, that results in anorexia. For me, I essentially gave up on being thin enough and became what I thought I was.

Now I wrestle with my writing and my weight. And I've hit the age where it's tough to get weight off. I know what I need to do to jump start weight loss. I need to exercise more. The aching knees aren't so thrilled with the idea.

I think that the memoir is in decent shape to turn in, although one scene I have glossed over with summary really needs to be turned into one that's much more specific. I'm finding it difficult to be that revealing about a moment in my life that has had repercussions for decades.
The good news is that I DID write yesterday, not just for the grade, although that does come into it. I'm writing this piece for possible publication. It's a first person essay about weight and body image, so I think it could work in several magazines. 90% of the headlines at the newsstand are about weight. I know most of them are "how to take weight off" articles, but I think that there's a market for this.

I can't say that I was able to sit at my computer and have the words come flowing out of me. I came to my computer and wrote a bit. I got up and wandered about the house. I wouldn't let myself do the dishes even though they needed to be done, because cleaning house, especially doing the dishes, is one of my favorite avoidance techniques. After letting the dog out, and microwaving a meal, and eating the meal, I finally sat back down at my computer and wrote a bit more. Then I got up and "needed" to go to the grocery store--actually I did, to get dog and cat food and I WAS out of microwaveable meals. I finally came back to the computer and wrote a bit more.

When primetime TV came on, I HAD to watch Gilmore Girls (my favorite TV show of all time--I love the witty dialogue and pop culture references). But I printed out the draft and made revisions while watching House. I still need to type them up, and fix that one scene, but I have time to do that today.

I wish I was one of those people who had better "bum glue." At the moment, my bum glue is fairly weak, but I'm celebrating the fact that it's getting stronger.

The Mystery of It All, Or, What's Weight Got to Do with Writing?

I think that I will start using one of the steps of EG's process, and start keeping a journal of my writing. In her book she mentions that while writing a new novel, she not only keeps a journal, but that every morning, she rereads part of the journal she kept for the previous book. It reminds her that she has gone through this process, and overcome the same sorts of problems, before.

I think for me, if I journal about the day's writing that I plan to do, that I will be able to warm up my brain, get into writing mode, and possibly use this forum to work through some of the problems that seem to stop me from writing at all.

I've tried the breaking it down into small pieces thing--it helps, but not enough. I've tried to just start...you know, when some writing tomes say you're not a writer if you avoid it. (I'm talking about Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. I HATE that book. I DO NOT recommend it. It's written by one of those writers that want to keep writing an exclusive club.)

One reason I love Ralph Key's The Courage to Write so much is that it shares so many stories of very good, very famous writers who have trouble with writing. One writer had his butler lock him in his office (outside of his home) with no clothes! Now, that's incentive to get your pages done. Write x number of pages today, or never come out, unless you want to walk down the street naked. Of course, I don't make enough money to pay for an outside office, much less pay someone to lock me in without my clothes.

I hope by the time I do make enough money with my writing that I won't still need someone to lock me in!

Right now, I'm struggling with my memoir for my creative non-fiction class. I'm scared to write it, for the only thing I've thought to write about is my relationship with food and my body. And let me tell you, it's a pretty twisted relationship. Anorexics get all the attention--poor things, they have a disease. Fat people are just jeered at and blamed for their own poor health. I'm overweight. I'm not as fat as some people, but according to the weight tables of the Centers for Disease Control, I'm obese. (Don't know how, when I'm 5'4" and less than 200 pounds. I wear either a size 14 or 16. But whatever.) The problem is that I've always had trouble with body image. I thought I was fat when I wasn't. I thought I was fat when I wore a size 8, and then a size 10...See where this is leading?

So now that I do have more weight on me, I hate my body even more. So writing an honest memoir about it is difficult. I don't even know how to end it. People want uplifting, triumph of the spirit endings, but I still wrestle with my weight and my body image, just like I wrestle with my writing. My teacher said I needed a resolution whether triumph or despair. It can't be triumph, or I'd be healthier. It's not despair either, since I refuse to just quit and gain more weight. So where's my ending?

Honesty is hard. And confusing. Just like I don't understand why I have to wrestle with my creativity, I don't understand why I wrestle with my weight. I know that I'd be healthier if I ate less and exercised more (especially the exercise more part). I know that I'd be a better writer if I wrote more...so why do I find my mind blocking both of these things?

A mystery still to be solved.

I'm stuck!

I'm in a weird funk right at the moment.

I'm really stuck.

I enrolled in the Professional Writer's Program at KSU in order to

• become a better writer
• make writer friends with whom to bond over writing and share work
• learn new skills that will pay off with a new job
• become a better writer

So, my problem is this: All semester long, I've been feeling really overwhelmed and I've been a real grade grubber--worrying more about the grades that I will make on my assignments than what I was learning. There have been times this semester that it really made me vicious! (Of course, I'd say 80% of the vicious thing was PMS. PMS hits me now like it did in my 20s. At least I don't actually yell at people anymore. I snarl at people, hide away in my room and write angry e-mails.)

Does that list of reasons that I enrolled in the program contain "make good grades?" No, it does not. But put me in a classroom, and all the old bad habits that I developed in decades of trying to win the approval of my parents and teachers rather than learn anything pop back up.

Recently, I've decided to re-dedicate myself to what I really want to do: write well. I also need to keep in mind that writing often will lead to better writing.

I'm a writer, right? So why do I have to remind myself to write often? Because, like all weasly grade-grubbing types, I worry about being judged. Worry about being judged can stop a creative person from actually practicing their creativity. Boom.

I've got only 1 week left to finish up all the projects that I have due for my classes this semester. I've been sitting around worrying about them rather than taking my own good advice and working on them bit by bit. So now, I'm back in my familiar panic mode, hoping that I can get them completed. I look back on old work and think "this really could have used another polish." And the stuff that I'm about to turn in will need another polish too. But I really haven't left myself a lot of time to do that.

So, wish me luck. I'll turn in something. I just hope that it passes muster. With me. I have to remember that I'm writing for me...not just for a grade.

Book recommendation continued

I should never try to post when I'm tired. Turns out I can't think. Ignore my previous post, please.



Elizabeth George's Write Away
As I was attempting to say in my previous post, this is an excellent book on writing. It deals in ideas, but it also deals in specifics.

I'll quote from chapter twelve:

All that I've shared with you so far begs the real question: How do you write it? It being the book. "One word at a time" is the coy answer (like the incredibly helpful response I heard a writer give a student aksing how to write good dialogue: "Open a vein." Now that was really useful.). The answer I prefer to give is this: If you see your novel as a collection of causally related scenes, you just write the book one scene at a time.

She spent previous chapters explaining the term "causally related scenes." She spends the rest of this chapter outlining how she has put it to work in her own writing, and how she sees it put to work in the writing of others.

I love the quote above, because the "open a vein" crap is the kind of "advice" that some writers give, hoping to enhance the mystique of what they do--to claim that they can do it, because they have the touch. Obviously, mortals like you can't do it. Baloney! Writing a book is a skill, like playing tennis. The more you practice, the better you get. Some people end up winning Wimbledon, but you don't have to win it to make your living as a tennis player.

I admit that there are books that are better than others--that some writers write more inspiring prose than other writers. Just like Tiger Woods has a touch that not all other professional golfers have. Not all of us are destined to win the Masters more than once, or to win Nobel prizes in literature. But we can probably tell a damn good story that other people want to read.

What else do I like about the book?

• She divides the book into useful sections: Overview of the craft, The basics, Technique, Process, Examples and Guides
• She starts every chapter with an interesting quote from a journal that she has kept when writing each book. (She explains about keeping a journal when writing a book in the Process section.)
• The Process section rocks! (IMHO.) The chapters in this section are: Baby Steps First, the Value of Bum Glue, and Tidbits from Q&A. We all know the value of "bum glue." She explains it with humor. I read this section first, just for a little inspiration. I got a lot of inspiration.
• Once again, let me repeat: concrete details.

You know how you've heard "the universal can be found in the details." Details are what keep a reader involved. It what makes every actor's performance worth watching. It's what makes art interesting. (Really, if you don't know what makes color-field paintings interesting, you must look at one up close--to see the brush strokes, to see the shadows at play, to see that "red" isn't just red.)

Finding Flow

At the same time that I'm reading Write Away, I'm reading CM's Finding Flow. It's interesting to read the two in conjunction. To be in a flow state, you need a task that requires a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses, and immediate feedback.

Considering these two books together, I can help my own creative process. (One goal of keeping this blog is to consider my own creative process, and in doing so, help others solve problems with their own. ) So, in order to increase "flow" in my own creative process I can set clear goals. Of course, there is always a page count or word number goal that I can work towards, but there are other goals I can set too. For example, these goals might be:

• to spend time writing character analyses
• to work out my causally-related scenes
• to revise for verb choice, or to revise to eliminate extraneous words ( I love to start sentences with "Well,")

As I do these things, then I help clear my head of the anxiety that fills it when I am not concentrating on my goals, which in turn, will help me live a better life. (Which is what Finding Flow is really all about.) Bonus!

New Book Recommendation!

I've just found a new book to recommend! Although it's not on "creativity" it's on writing, so it's obviously, it's actually about creativity, just a focused form. And I believe that's sometimes much more helpful...at least for the writers reading this. Maybe not so if you are a painter or knitter.

I've read a ton of books for writers. This is turning into my favorite, because it provides such concrete details. It's not esoteric, touchy-feely, at all. (For a funny take on the esoteric, touchy-feely side of writing, see Meg Cabot's posting here.)

I'm actually lucky to have found it. I browse the writing section of the bookstore 3-4 times a year and I hadn't run across it before. I found it on the bargain table. It was published in 2004. What am I recommending? Elizabeth George's Write Away.

I'll spend more time explaining why later. But I'm beat right now and I'm going to bed.

Finding Flow

Flow Activity
I just picked up a new copy of "Finding Flow" by Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi. (My original copy is mysteriously missing from my library...perhaps borrowed by that friend of a friend who borrowed my other MC book, which I had to DEMAND back....) In FF, MC mentions that there is only so much "attention" to go around. There are only so many things that you can focus on at once. Therefore, if you are anxious or under stress, your attention is focused on the things creating that anxiety/stress and there is no more room to focus on your writing (or other "flow activity").

Re-prioritize
I buy this completely, yet I haven't yet figured out a way to re-focus. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to re-prioritize. I am enrolled in grad school right now, and once again falling into the trap of worrying about grades, rather than focusing on the fun of learning new skills.

But how does one go about keeping priorities straight? I can't tattoo what's most important on my forehead. Even if I did, I'd only see it when looking in a mirror. Or maybe people would stop me on the street and ask me "what the hell?" Which probably would only annoy me, not keep my priorities straight.

Knowing What to Do is Different from Doing It

So how come, when I get under stress, I completely shut down? And why do I let myself get so stressed any way?

I know that this blog is called "Musings on Creativity," but today, it's going to be "Musings on Stress."

Stress sucks. And, at least in my case, is completely self-induced. It's not like I'm a doctor or anything. My best friend tells me that I really need to work on those little voices in my head that tell me that I'm not doing a very good job of things. And this week, she wasn't the only one telling me that I "seem to put a lot of pressure on myself." (I'm probably paraphrasing there...I don't really feel like looking up the direct quote there. I think it would set off those lovely stress hormones raging through my body again.)

Stress is hard on my creative urges--I just sit there paralyzed, unable to cope with life, much less creative projects. And stress will probably kill me. I'm scared to take a "stress test" that lovely thing that checks how bad your heart is. I think if I did, I'd actually have a heart attack. Unfortunatley, heart disease runs in my family. If I don't learn to cope soon, I'm worried that I'll wind up like my dad.

I am attempting to cope. I had my blood pressure checked the other day. It was fine. Really fine. No where close to high. And I've gotten a serene noise generator, hoping that that will help me sleep. I have a habit of waking up at 3 am. I've fallen into the habit of turning on my tv, attempting to let the news lull me back to sleep. But it's been taking me until 5 or so to drop off again. I am sooooo not getting enough rest.

Last night, when I had sworn to myself that if I woke up at 3, I'd listen to "ocean waves and bird noises" to go back to sleep, the local tornado alarms sounded at 3:40 or so. Looooovely. So of course, I had to turn on my tv to follow the local weather. I probably would have been up a long time, but it sure didn't help that I was cowering in the bathroom downstairs. It's not the inner-most room of my house, but I figured it was safer than the way-too-stuffed-for-comfort- closet under the stairs.

So wish me luck with the stress and the sleep thing. ;D