New book highlighted by Chip Scanlon

Great post today on developing a theme for a piece and it highlights a new book that is getting raves in the press.

Sons of Mississippi

Also, a writer friend has started a frugal living blog.

Leah Ingram

Yes, busy day. Still writing, but my thoughts are so scattered because I am working out a writing schedule for my summer.

Did finally get to watch Marie Antoinette from Netflix and absolutely LOVED it. I read multiple books about her this past winter, so seeing her come to life (even if I cannot stand Kirsten Dunst) was fantastic and Versailles is gorgeous. Kirsten did a good job, but I still can't stand it when she talks. She is a perfect image of Marie Antoinette though, and I did like Sofia Coppola's approach. Very good.

Keep Moving Forward.

More from Boice.

Busy today. So I'll give you a great quote found at the start of Boice's chapter 2.

To capture what you experience and sort it out . . . you must set up a file. . . . Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implication, show yourself how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The file also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot "keep your hand in" if you do not write something at least every week.

(C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination [2])

Which will serve as a great segue into the persuasive writing thoughts I wanted to write about.

Keep Moving Forward.

The Roots of Marketing

All hail Cicero.

In How the Irish Saved Civilization, author Thomas Cahill outlines how the great literature was passed on to us by Irish monks who acted as scribes, but his discussion on Cicero caught my eye.

But we are made uncomfortable and bored by Cicero's elaborately coaching us in all the tricks of his trade--the many techniques for convincing others to act the way we want them to. For Cicero, "to speak from the heart" would be the rashest foolishness; one must always speak from calculation: What do I want to see happen here? What are the desire of my audience? How can I motivate them to do my will? How shall I disguise my weakest arguments? How [shall I] dazzle my listeners to they are no longer able to reason matters through independently?

Cahill continues,

The techniques of the successful politician, the methods of modern advertising--the whole panoply of persuasion is to be found in Cicero. The figure closest to him in our own age might be Dale Carnegie, who advised that every single word and gesture be calculated to "win" and "influence." However squeamish such advice may make us, to the ancients it made perfect sense.

What does this mean for writers?

More on Cahill tomorrow.

Write Before You're Ready

Okay, so this is harder than it sounds. And I overwrite by hundreds of words. Four pages of crap later, I think I hear something in the writing that could serve as a lead.

Other writers struggle with this: Susan Wise Bauer (see blogroll) wrote a million words for her first book in her four-book series, cutting about half of them; Anne Lamott writes page after page after page of sardonic comments for a single restaurant review, and then cuts it all out mercilessly in her next draft. It's that flinging of the spaghetti onto the cupboards in order to see what sticks.

For me, it's anal retentiveness. What comes out is what I suppose people expect me to say and then once that's out, I realize what I truly wanted to say.

For example, hubby is filling out an application for this training program and must answer five questions. The first of the questions are strained, forced, and generic. Then he gets going on question three and I'm impressed (and I already knew all the information anyway).

It's just how humans download, fling, and crap all over the page until the real deal shows up and connects, sticks, or is washed in the gentle cycle, leaving the gold nugget of expression that actually says something.

So go and write. Even if you scrape all that gunk off eventually, you will begin to see a glimmer of gold in there. I promise.

Keep moving forward.

Writing A Bit At A Time

So am reading for 15 minutes this morning out of my Anne Lamott book (current inspiration book) and just relaxing and letting my brain wander and I remembered something from ten years ago that was pivotal to the essay I'm writing (this essay will be developed into a book, so I really needed to remember these events).

I captured the idea with a quick 100-word section into the word document I've set up for this essay.

I am now sitting here grinning from ear to ear.

This is how it is done, folks. This is how Anne L writes, how every single writer I know gets the beef that is their writing.

And today there are donuts and I cleaned my office last night. So I'm feeling great.

Happy Friday. I'm off to work on a paper for my job and after work meeting a fellow writer buddy to talk shop

Have a great weekend.

More About Writing

Loving this book by Boice. Between he and Anne Lamott, I actually wrote yesterday (and it wasn't bad) and I am ready to write more today.

More from Boice,

[There are] two common ways of motivating ourselves to write, waiting and then working under deadlines, [which] speak volumes about writing problems. The first way, waiting for inspiration and mood, symptomizes the most innocent understanding about finding motivation: the belief that good writing must be spontaneous. And so writers wait, passively, for the inspiration that would suddenly make them want to write. The most common result of passive waiting is barrenness. Tillie Olsen, author of Silences, provides an unusually memorable description of waiting and not writing:

“These are not natural silences—what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)—that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot. In the old, the obvious parallels: when the seed strikes stone; the soil will not sustain; the spring is false; the time is drought or blight or infestation; the frost comes premature."

Olsen also hints at origins. What begins as a natural silence often becomes an unnatural silence because passive waiting invites blocking. The longer we wait without readying and motivating ourselves, the greater the tendency to lose ideas, momentum, and confidence. And as unfruitful delays grow, so does dependence on tense, impatient, and unrealiable spurts of motivation that foster eventual barrenness and disappointment.

Doesn't that feel horribly familiar? The waiting and passive sitting as you think about the huge process of writing or think you have "to be ready" to write.

Boice's rule #2: Begin before feeling fully ready or inspired (because motivation comes most reliably in the wake of involvement).

I am so at rule #2.

Keep writing.

Writing calm.

I love how Robert Boice opens his book, How Writers Journey From Comfort and Fluency,

It was such an environment--a comfortable home, a fragrant garden, an evening walk with gay sisters, an encouraging word from a father who praised and peddled her manuscripts--that put into Jane Austen's novels a fresh air of peace, health, and goodwill, and that gives to her unhurried readers a quiet satisfaction hardly to be found in any other novels. She had learned that the day itself is blessing enough.

(Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Napoleon)

And then Boice continues,

When we write with both calm and confidence at hand, we work in an ideal state of motivation, one marked by patience and enthusiasm much like Jane Austen's. Without this combination, writers too seldom find their work appealing and comforting; instead, they force writing with a hurried pace, a lagging confidence, and a lingering malaise. As a rule, poorly motivated writers remain ambivalent about writing and inconsistent at turning intentions into actions. The result is misery, silence, or both.

I find even this first paragraph a breath of fresh air. I hear endless stories about scrambling writers working their last nerve trying to finish a book, essay, story, or copy project. They talk about sweating blood and they delight in being miserable. I always wonder about those kind of reports, similar to what ran in the New York Observer a few weeks ago: My Book Deal Ruined My Life.

I read the piece, but was a bit disgusted at these authors' myopic egotistical blatherings.

I kept saying, "yes, but you are writing a book!" and wondered if they truly hated it that much.

I get a lot of comments on this blog that I choose not to publish and a few came in yesterday scoffing at my claims that people should take a few moments from each day to write rather than holing themselves up in a room for months at a time (similar to the writers featured in the Observer story).

I'm only chronicling my journey through writing. If you need to be more miserable than me, go for it. But don't try to convince me how to write a book, go write one.

More writing talk tomorrow.

A Writer Can Change?

So I'm reading Robert Boice's How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure and low and behold, a writer can change how they approach writing.

In the words of my British colleagues, brilliant.

Everything I've been spouting about on this blog in the past three months is certifiably true. You don't get an uninterrupted stretch of time to be a genius. Genius is snatching time from other things. You don't suddenly sit down and create a masterpiece; you work solidly on a masterpiece for an extended period of time (think J.R.R. Tolkien). You don't change the world by talking about the writing you intend to do; you only do anything substantial for the world by actually writing it.

So with that, I am off to write.

Keep Moving Forward.

Exciting Weekend

So, is Tony Soprano still alive? Is Paris Hilton still in jail, or secretly staying at her mansion under police supervision?

What a great way to sum up the weekend.

I don't care.

I drove out of state to visit my niece (and her mom and dad, my sister and her hubby). It was a great visit and my niece is growing up too fast. I made great time getting home last night, which was a wonderful improvement over Friday's solid traffic jam.

Chip Scanlon highlights his summer reads here from 2004. I'm still inspired.

I'm reading a lot of books right now. Probably one of my biggest lists this year so far. But this month I will have a ton of reading time, so I'm looking forward to making steady progress.

Writing update tomorrow!

Isn't There Any Real News Today?

Besides Paris Hilton?

So she got herself out of jail and back home. Although the fact that the court is dragging her back in about 45 minutes is quite humorous. But, methinks everyone is too obsessed with Hollywood trashlets.

Moving on . . .

Chip Scanlon over at Poynter highlights Anton Chekhov's advice on writing (he influenced many writers, including Mansfield, Hemingway, Joyce, and Raymond Carver) and his advice became the precursor for Strunk and White's handy little book The Elements of Style. Chip's review is well worth a read, for any writer, whether just a blog or a full-blown writing career.

Scanlon on Chekhov

Do You Procrastinate?

Here's an interesting procrastination test:

Procrastination Central

I scored 30 out of 100. I'm a below average procrastinator, which surprised me very much. I think I may be too hard on myself with my to-do list. I do need to work on my goal lists and "granulating" down my big projects into doable-size pieces.

Cool, yes?

My Inability to Write

Oh the genius of Anne Lamott!

"Not that my mother is not a real person, but whenever I show her a copy of my latest book, she gets sort of quiet and teary, and you can tell that what she's feeling is "Oh, honey, did you make that yourself?" like it's my handprint in clay--which I suppose in many ways it is."

(from Bird by Bird)

I'm reading two of Anne's books for the one-thousandth time (Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies) and oohing and aahing all over again. After reading Anne Lamott, I stand mute, with nothing to say . . . or write, for that matter. Everything is quiet. But then I think, "hey, I need something to aspire to, don't I?"

Of course! The difficulty for me is describing things like she does--learning to write in such a way that people want to run up to her, grasp her hand, pump it furiously, hoping to gain some of her wisdom the longer they are in contact with this master of art.

It's a tall order, after reading such a writer. How the heck am I going to do this?

Ah yes. Anne reminds me.

". . . [A]ll I have to do is to write down as much as I can se through a one-inch picture frame."

(also from Bird by Bird)

Keep Moving Forward.

Busy day.

I need to update my WIP meter.

Just working on an essay and waiting for a promised article assignment to come through.

Cake

10,111 / 70,000 (14.4%)

Keep Moving Forward.

Reading to Writing Ratio

Interesting tidbit on the MFA from Seattle Pacific U from Nancy's blog.

He suggests we aim for 100 pages of reading at a minimum for every 100 words of writing!

That is an incredible standard. A tall order even for this reader.

The Hills Are Alive

I'm officially addicted to Pandora.com. Any song you've ever loved is available. Even some songs you've never heard for that matter.

It's overcast and gray in Seattle today. Everyone's kind of disappointed. But it's a good way to keep the students focused on school. Because of all the weather we had this past winter, they have an extra week of school this month!

I just got off the phone with my boss and am waiting for my first batch of work. I'm really excited to get started. While I wait I am reviewing their style guide and starting to read the new American Medical Style Guide, 10th edition. I have put this off for, oh I don't know, two months?

Last night worked on an essay and began slowly reviewing the 11,000 words I've alrady written on my WIP. I need to make new WIP meters. I'll do that today.

Hubby and I are talking about being overwhelmed right now. (We both are a bit with school.) I went back to the War of Art, but also remembered I need to lower the theshold and quit trying to be amazing. A little bit each day is the goal.

Keep moving forward.

Lost in the Intranet.

Today is my first day on the job as a full-time medical copyeditor for a publishing company in London, England. I am on a team of editors working on a joint project between the London publisher and a large American medical company in the United States. The only thing changing is that I now work for the London company and not myself. Otherwise, I still work from home, during the same hours, using my own computer, but for one company instead of several.

Isn't that a great change? It was a bit nerve-wracking for me, because after twelve years of freelancing, I spent the past two weeks turning down project after project. (Also, to make this change easier, I raised my freelancing rates considerably and that helped the freelance project offers slow down.) I still have a few very good copyediting clients and I can still fit them in during my non-employed hours.

So, I made that transition. Whew. Now, I'm blundering about on the London company intranet and downloading style guides and handbooks and figuring out the process. We have a ton of work to do this year. I'm really excited to be on the team (they are scattered throughout the United States and England and Scotland). And of course, delighted to be doing medical copyediting (my favorite thing as an editor).

Onto my free-time favorite things: writing and school.

The writing has begun. I am so rusty at this. I can tell that I've spent too many of my recent hours copyediting like a mad woman. I stare at the blank page (a client has asked me to write catalog copy for a new travel alarm clock) and I blank. And I mean completely; there is nothing in there to draw from. But I woke up this morning with the copy half-written in my head; bless a good night's sleep!

I will get better and faster at this writing thing because I'm not going to be cramming in copyediting (70 hour weeks the past month to finish everything before today), and that is so very good for my brain. I'm also studying my pile of college exam textbooks and hope to take my first test in July.

Off to study style guides. I will update my WIP word counts later today. I was able to add quite a bit to Cake today.

Keep Moving Forward.

Friday Fiver.

1. Off for a walk-talk with my favorite neighbor. We talk as fast as we walk and since we're both C.S. Lewis fans, today we'll talk about Mere Christianity and the opening of the Kilns, Lewis' home, in Oxford. Note of interest: Our pastor, Earl Palmer, is a C.S. Lewis scholar and recently was in Oxford for the dedication. Lewis' study in his home was dedicated to Pastor Earl as a gift from our church for his 50 years of ministry at University Presbyterian Church. A few of Earl's books (he has written several) are now on the study's shelves. I would have loved to be there with them all. But I will be in a few months. I think we'll head to Oxford instead of Cambridge to see the Kilns.

2. I am turning in my W-4 form today. Today is my last official day of fulltime freelancing. I'm not done with anything I thought I'd be done with, but this is a day to commemorate.

3. Expedia.com is not the company that has the roaming gnome, ya'll. That's the other guys. I think we should think up a roaming mascot for Expedia, eh?

4. Did not buy any books this week (if we move, I must stop my usual plethora of book deliveries). Trying to spend all my gift cards and gift certificates though, still have quite a few from Banana Republic and Nordstrom. Argh.

5. If you do not use Pandora.com, you are crazy. It will change your life. How long has it been since I heard Delirious singing Deeper. Or Seal. Good memories.

A life of faith requires a continual renewal of faith. I want to say to all of those reading today who have heavy hearts and BIG issues in their lives (health of their unborn baby, job changes, home building stress), do not fear, God walks with you. No matter what you believe, just know He is there.

Keep moving forward.

End of May.

So the raccoon stayed put yesterday. I only saw his beady little eyes peeking out at me once. Need I say this coon is humongous. I just want him to stay . . . over there!

Ah, life in the suburbs.

I am buried filling out employment forms and insurance forms and finishing up multiple projects. I got so much done yesterday only to receive yet another email from a client from way back who is desperate to get their book to the printer. We've been delayed for months and suddenly there's a pile of work and it all had to be done yesterday. So I have to back off other projects yet again. I hate doing that.

I'm frustrated by my schedule in May. It has been nothing but a total disaster. Thus, I am going to have to go back to my biz plan and retrench AGAIN.

Sanity is important in this business, contrary to the stories told by Augusten Burroughs. Not everyone gets to live like that.

Snatching times to write again today.

How is your writing going?

Keep movin forward.

Hiding From the Raccoon.

So there's this rather large raccoon living in our backyard and because I opened the house up to get some cool air inside before the weather heats up, I can hear him rustling around in our back 40 (not acres, just feet, but a very woodsy 40 feet). I really don't want him wandering inside today. Hope he stays in the shade under the trees.

We got our passports yesterday (I know, how lazy are we?) and I put a rush on mine because I just know with all the people trying to get theirs before year end that I will be biting my nails with fear all summer.

I am writing essays in my free time. Very fun pursuit, helped by a great book, Oxford Guide to Writing, which I highly recommend. Decided this morning that I am thoroughly jealous of everyone going to BEA this year and I plan to be there next year . . . with bells on.

Not much else going on. Phone ringing, work to do, and here comes June!

Keep Moving Forward.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

You know how you get super tired sometimes. That's me. I can't figure out why either. So I am talking to myself this morning "c'mon, keep it moving, carry on, let's go" and the title of that wonderful book popped into my head. I need to read it again.

It's psuedo-Monday. Hubby went back to work after a 10-day vacation and he couldn't find his Blackberry anywhere. But last term of school is finally over and the new term (summer term) starts up now. I stood out at our annual Memorial day cookout and talked about the stresses of going to school while working full-time with a college professor. I got some great advice on my impending return to school. I think I'll take it to heart. The professor friend was really encouraging to me, especially about my accelerated bachelor's degree studies, (basically shrinking what's left into the next 12 months and coming in under 5k). Yes, it HAS been done and with all my life experience, should be no problem for me, so now I have to actually study. This summer is the first battery of tests that I can do before I even pick a college (although I have picked a college) and I'll be doing half of it with Todd. He's going to get college credit from some testing too.

I should be farther in my study book, but I'll get there.

In writing news, I'm now a member of WritersView and WVU's Persist and Publish critique group. I'm very excited about both and ready to jump in! I am using Julie Hood's Organized Writer book to plan my very altered business. I also have cleared the way for more writing to happen beginning this Friday, June 1.

WIP status is still waiting on me, but that changes today.

Keep moving forward!