ABCs for New Writers - "L" is for Love Your Process

For some of us our relationship with our creativity is of the love/hate persuasion. I for one often have bursts of creative flow and other times my river runs dry. It’s not writer’s block per se; that’s a whole different animal. This is that sinking feeling like you can’t lift your hefty rear off the couch to create anything, not even a quiche, that would appeal to an audience; least of all your very best friend. The feeling is horrible and leaves your wheels spinning. Idea after idea comes into your brain and just as quickly as they pop in, they poop out.

My Love Letter to My Process,
"Sweetheart, thinking of you keeps me up at night!"

Yes friends, creativity can be a fickle lover. But I have found that if you have a process, a method to your creative madness, you can accomplish more by loving it.

Just like a sprouting tomato plant in early spring, if you nurture it, tomatoes will come. Same with your process, if you care for it, play it music, weed the weaker ideas out of your fertile creative field, nourish it with encouragement, entertainment, and education (sounds like another post); your little creativity seedling will grow into a creative process that by enjoyment, not habit, will yield fists full of well written pages.

My process changes from project to project. I wear many hats in my life and my career, so defining a beginning and end point, like the trained project manager I am, is how I get started. Defining a start and finish, as I said, differs by project. Since we are talking in this context about writing, let’s take a work of romantic women’s fiction. This is on the outset a work of eighty to one-hundred thousand words. Aside from drawing character sketches, and plotting, and research I know that I can work and hour to an hour and a half a day and will typically average 1,500 words in that timeframe. My starting point is doing the math – using today as my start date I figure how many days it will take to write the minimum, in this case 53.3 days, and I draw a darling caricature on my calendar on the block for August 8th that depicts me doing the happy dance. Then, I get to work.

After defining a project frame, which gives me a goal, a deadline I am driven to meet, I write the first scene. I write longhand at first just to get the initial idea on paper and the juices flowing. Once I get a feel for where I’m heading with the story, and who the characters may be, I do the leg work – definition, research, plotting. I schedule interviews with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) who can help me with the things I know nothing about like the differences in being a circuit court judge in 1950 versus present day. All the while I write.

As a new writer, have you developed your process yet? Have you tried two or three different ideas but nothing seems to fit? Let me know and maybe I can turn you onto trying something new.

Until next time, I remain Unstoppable.

Love in Five Parts – Part III – For All the Men I’ve Loved Before

Are you ready for this? This is like the most intimate 20 minutes I have ever spent in my life. No joke. Sit and relax and read about the men I have loved, how they have influenced me, and where I’m headed. Ready? Here we go…

True love has found me three times in my life. No, I haven’t only enjoyed three relationships. I’m talking the real thing. That thing folks hope for – true love. My first true love I met when I was fifteen. He was so incredible that I dumped my boyfriend just because he was brazen enough to bow up at him in public. Through ups, downs, breakups and reconciliations we married, divorced, married and divorced. Walking through fire wasn’t enough to keep me away from him, but the threat of becoming a Molotov cocktail was enough to make me realize there was more to life than fear.

The second great love of my life taught me about romance and how real men treat real women. He held me when I broke down, made love to my mind, body and soul, challenged me to always be the better person, and to love with my whole heart. He taught me how to see myself the way he saw me and understand that a loving touch in just the right place lights me up like a fire cracker (minds out of the gutter people – my “g” spot is in the small of my back).

I’m still reeling from the pain of losing the love that lowered my guard and produced the most amazing little girl EVER. I can still remember the first day he knocked on my door and how he looked in his butter yellow cotton shirt and faded blue jeans. Or how we used to kiss for what seemed like hours finally forcing ourselves apart so we could go to work. The look on his face when I walked down the aisle, when he held his little girl for the first time, when I surprised him for his 40th - there’s nothing like those unforgettable loving moments.

All of these men have taught me so much about myself. In fact, I think first and foremost, they’ve taught me who I am but they have also shown me what I want. I can’t imagine ever opening my heart to another, other than my daughter and family, for a long time. When and if I do that’s it; no more doormat. And boy is this guy going to have to be something special. He’s going to have to be a real man, someone who can hold his own in life and with me. A man who knows where to touch me, how to kiss me, how to appreciate making a wrong turn or wrong decision and learning from it, a reader to my writer, a cook, a partner, who loves to laugh and doesn’t pick or criticize, who feels secure in himself and safe with me. He will have his own interests and will want to include me, and will in turn accept and be interested in mine. God, let there be a man with one green eye and one blue who smells of chocolate chip cookies and whose favorite shape is a silver, five-pointed star. God, let there be that family man.

Join the conversation. What loves have influenced your life? Are there particular qualities in your man, woman, or the partner of your dreams that you cannot live without?

Trying desperately to get back into the groove, I am still Unstoppable and still end in Start!

ABCs for New Writers – “H” is for Harness Creativity

It’s funny, when someone uses the term “harness” in my brain it conjures up the image of a cowboy lassoing a mighty stallion. I must have been a cow poke in a former life. I also envision “harness” as something you do to energy or atoms; capturing it in little glass jars like fireflies.


But, when I speak in terms of harnessing creativity, I am telling you to liberate it. I know it’s an antonym. Are you wondering how to do it? Well, in my case and that of a number of other writers I know, you get the opposite of BICHOK (butt in chair hands on keys) and do a little hard labor. There’s nothing like some back-breaking hard work to clear your head and get the creative juices flowing again.

Oh, so that’s too much to ask? Okay, hit a road block or writer’s block and see if you don’t change your mind. Dolly Parton has been known to fast - yes, I mean stop eating - in order to get her creativity revved up and has written entire albums full of heartfelt songs while consuming nothing but fruit juice. Who wouldn't with the promise of a cheeseburger once finished?



My friend and critique partner came for our weekly check-in on Friday and we talked about how good it was to step away from our respective WIPs and do a little physical work. Pam tore her house apart and painted both her son’s room and her piano studio while on spring break, and emerged with new direction and ready to get back to work on a project that had been threatening to go into the recycle bin. I have taken on a very intense gardening project that involves five raised beds, two sections of patio and surrounding flower beds. It is an undertaking but one I needed to pull me away from my recent lack of enthusiasm over my WIP.



An unstoppable garden under construction.
If I stop now I have a mosh pit.



Talk about getting derailed (March 16, 2011). It happens sometimes – life – and it takes away from everything a writer holds sacred – time, passion, fervor – all gone replaced by the burdensome weight of sadness, anger and frustration. It takes time to get creativity back on track, so liberate it in other ways and keep feeding your soul. Go fishing if you have to. Take on a new workout routine. Get physical. I promise it will make slipping off track much easier to deal with emotionally.

Tell us something about you. What kind of heavy lifting gets your mind off your troubles? Do you ever find yourself lacking enthusiasm over your WIP (whatever it may be)? How do you liberate creativity?

Until Wednesday I remain back-broken and dirty but Unstoppable.