Writing Time

Why Keep a Journal

Here's an excerpt from the book I'm working on now,  Kicking In The Wall: A Year of Writing Exercises for Fiction, Memoir & Personal Essays. If you do the exercises I'd love to hear if they worked for you. 

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"The journals are a way of finding out where I really am…They are not dependant on the muse…They sort of make me feel that the fabric of my life has a meaning. What often seems fairly meaningless, like weeding a patch in the garden, when I write it into the journal, it sort of becomes something else."  –  May Sarton

                                                     

– Write about the fabric of your life. Be literal or think of it as a metaphor. Is your life fraying, stretched, or tucked in tightly? Cotton, wool, silk, polyester, cashmere? Are buttons missing or is it covered with sequins? Ironed or wrinkled? Or maybe – a coat of many colors?

– Write about a time your life unraveled.

– Write a list in your journal of ten ordinary things you did yesterday. If you don’t already keep a journal, start one today.

Kicking In The Wall

Just before the holidays I sold a proposal for another book entitled Kicking In The Wall: A Year of Writing Exercises for Fiction, Memoir & Essays.  I'm at work on it now and New World Library will published it in Spring 2013. The title comes from a quote by Patti Smith:

“I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in.”

– Patti Smith

The friend who gave her the advice was Sam Shepard.

(The photo above of the wall I took on a boat cruise going through the locks on the Danube.) 

Author Central: The Return of You-Know-Who

Amazon has this cool new thing for published writers called Author Central where you can click on Book Scan Highlights and discover not only how many copies of your books sold through Amazon the previous week but where they sold. (A shout out to you Salt Lake City for buying all those copies of CHERISHED over the holidays, and Waco, Texas - thank you!) Courage & Craft had a nice little revival early in December (another thank you to any of you who bought a copy!) Of course on some days Book Scan Highlights are less cool, more like depressing. Some days you just clutch your head over the sales numbers and wonder how to crank up interest in your book again. So you blog about your book. Yes, the Marketing Whore has returned. 

If you have a friend who has recently lost a pet and you'd like the perfect book for them - buy a copy of CHERISHED. And if you haven't lost a pet but just love good writing, buy a copy. The essays are by Anne Lamott, Carolyn See, Thomas McGuane, Jacqueline Winspear, Mark Doty, Jane Smiley - and many more – the very best writers I could find and talk into writing essays or letting me reprint already published essays. And some of the essays are very funny inspite of the subject - All are filled with love and will move your heart.  

Advice About Publishing

Some good advice via my publisher Marc Allen and the New World Library blog.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

"Five Steps to Writing Well and Getting Published" by New World Library Publisher, Marc Allen POSTED BY NEW WORLD LIBRARY   I read an article by Gary Provost a while ago where he outlined the steps for writers to take to get published. I thought it was brilliant, and adapted the words a bit. If you follow through on each of these steps, you WILL eventually have a published or self-published book!  (1) Learn to write well. Learn to express yourself clearly. Study the art and craft of good writing. Learn the difference between a semicolon and a colon (or else don’t use them). Learn to revise and polish your work — good writing usually involves more rewriting than initial writing. (2) Write from your heart and soul. If you’re just doing it for the money, I don’t want to even hear your idea. The project should come from the deepest wellsprings of your life; it should be something you’re passionate about, something you’ll want to keep focusing on long after the book is in print. Otherwise, why invest so much of your time and energy into it? (3) Study the market and the business of publishing. Become knowledgeable in your field. Learn how to make a good clean submission, with a clear, clean cover letter. Be friendly with publishers! Be on your best behavior. They’re considering you as a potential partner — and who wants to work with a jerk? Publishing works on the partnership model, not the dominator model. So be nice. (4) Learn to sell. If your work is worthy of publication, it has something to offer readers. It has something to interest publishers. What is it? Learn to sell without being pushy and domineering — remember, you want to create a partnership with a publisher. Show them you have something valuable, without being shy, and without being aggressive. (5) Be persistent. Keep on writing. A science-fiction writer I heard about wrote and submitted stories for 25 years before he finally got published. That’s persistence. Once you’ve submitted something, follow up a month or so later. Make sure they act on it, and don’t just let it sit in a pile somewhere (which is all too common — I’m guilty of that myself). Hang in there. As Bert Lahr said, “If you stay on the merry-go-round long enough, you’re sure to get the brass ring sooner or later.” Write on! Marc Allen is a renowned author, composer, and speaker. On the day he turned thirty, Marc cofounded New World Library with Shakti Gawain, and as the company's president and publisher, he has guided it from a small start-up operation with no capital to become one of the leading publishers in its field. He has written numerous books, including The Greatest Secret of All, Visionary Business, The Millionaire Course, and The Type-Z Guide to Success. He has also recorded several albums of music, including Awakening, Breathe, and Solo Flight. He is a popular speaker and seminar leader based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

Finding Plots

Life does not come neatly packaged in plots. This is one of the many, many reasons it's so hard to be a writer. Not only do you have to write but you also have to figure stories out - who wants what and why, who did what, and then – what does it all mean. 

Sometimes it helps to be given some clues to get started, so I'm going to give you the bones of a story that started in my own backyard so to speak. I live next door to an urban beach parking lot which has been the scene of a number of dramatic incidents (the time a guy drove his truck on to the sand drugged/high and then tried to attack two cops who came to check him out which resulted in the entire Santa Monica police force filling the parking lot four minutes later, a palm tree set on fire, a few couples using their cars as bedrooms, the tent lady who fed the sea gulls, not to mention all the weddings that take place on the sand, etc.)

But here's what happened last Sunday. I was reading up in my bedroom and I heard some people fighting right below my window. I looked out and it was a young couple in a car both flinging the F-word at each other. This is not unusual in my parking lot. But I watched for awhile to make sure no one was getting violent, and then I went back to my book (1Q84 by Harucki Murakami which is riveting) and forgot about them. About fifteen minutes later I looked out the window and there were three police cars and the man was being held against one car by a cop, and the woman - wearing terrific looking boots - was talking to another cop.  What had happened?  Did she call 911 from the car? Was she a girlfriend? Wife? Hooker? Had he threatened her? How did their fight escalate to the point of calling the cops so quietly and quickly?

Then everybody drove off - he in one police car and she in another. 

Their red Lexus is still in the parking lot two days later with the sun roof open. And here's the detail that could spark a story about this couple: in the car on the dashboard there's a single wilting red rose. 

Twists and Turns of One's Own Work

And then one morning (after a good night's sleep, a short session of yoga and a two mile run, and fueled with coffee) you sit down at your desk and dip back into your manuscript - and you think, hey, this isn't as bad as I thought it was. This happens over and over again to writers - we're doing something that's personal, difficult and scary (what if I keep writing and no one wants to read it? etc. etc. etc.). It's the nature of the business - ups and downs, twists and turns, plus the occasional bullet hole of rejection. (Above photo was taken on Burma Road in Montana.) 

FYI: I'm teaching a two Saturday workshop on writing the Personal Essay at UCLA Extension in early March.  Class is limited to twenty students. Come join us. (I'm a firm believer that writing personal essays is the best way to launch a writing career and to get published.)

 

Writer's Angst

Okay, so the holidays are over. (A friend pointed out that I was running around my house last week muttering "Okay, okay, okay.." as I clicked off things on my To Do list.) And today - as no doubt most of you are - I'm back to work. Or trying to work. Trying to read one more time the final copy-edited version of my new book. Words cannot describe how boring it is, what a disappointment from my original idea. I really loved the book until I had to read it about five hundred times. The sound of my own voice on the page makes my head hurt as I attempt one more reading of the damn thing. The little tracking balloons from the copy editor show how little I really know about grammar. 

I do have some good news though that I'll post soon - but right now I don't want to spoil my self-indulgent fit of writer's angst by telling you about it. 

Happy New Year!

From the whole gang - (R.'s family birthday party two days after Christmas.) 

Blessings & Joy

Nelson and I wish all of you blessings and joy for the holidays. Give books, read a lot, and don't forget to write in your journal.

Then Again...

I got lots of books read on the trip to Europe. My favorite was Diane Keaton's memoir, Then Again. It was like having a real heart to heart with your smartest, most honest, funniest girl friend about what's really important in life. I loved the structure of it - back and forth between her life and her mother's, quoting from her mother's journals. I also read a novel by one of my very, very favorite writers of non-fiction, and hated it. It had no plot, an insufferable main character and felt oddly self-indulgent. There's an strange sense of - and I'm searching for a word for this - encouragement? - in reading an author you love who writes a book that you don't love. I'm inspired to go back to my not yet sold novel and give it another go. 

Thanks for all the sweet comments about how perfect it must be to write on a river boat cruise. As with all perfection, it didn't last. I got the flu, then R. got the flu, and then we had to fly back to L.A. from Budapest. The trip from hell. But L.A. has never looked more beautiful, nor has being home ever felt so good. My book deadline had to be pushed back a week,  Christmas cards have yet to be written, we just got the tree today - five days before Christmas, and all the presents we meant to buy in Budapest never got purchased, but we're home. Sometimes you have to go faraway to realize how wonderful that is.

 

On A Boat

 

The silence of this blog has been due to an overload of stuff – holidays, teaching, family. You all have your own version of this stuff. (If it's keeping you from your writing you're invited to vent under comments.)

Right now I'm on a boat in Germany - on the Danube which is not blue, but dark and gray from the winter sky – and the lovely thing is that there is nothing to do but work on my book. A number of friends and family members have suggested I'm nuts to be working on a vacation. Even other passengers on this boat are now eyeing me suspiciously. When we dock they all leave to go sight seeing and I stay hunched over my computer in the lounge. But one guy said to me that he too was a writer and he's been getting up at four every morning to write. 

 

A Thanksgiving Blessing

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

 

For each new morning with its light,

For rest and shelter of the night,

For health and food,

For love and friends,

For everything Thy goodness sends.  

— Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 

from Adrian Butash’s Bless this Food: Ancient & Contemporary Graces from Around the World. (Published by New World Library)