Dating Myself- Finding The Joy In Writing Again

Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”       The Talmud

 

How many of you sit at your computer and stare at a blank screen? Perhaps you have words on said blank screen, but you know it’s total crap.

I would suggest you go on a date with yourself.

Julia Cameron, who is a noted Hollywood screenwriter and director, wrote The Artists Way. It is a gem of a book. I’ve pulled it back off my shelves because I desperately need to do something different if I ever want to get back on track to being creative.

Before I begin with the meat of this article, I’d like you to get to know me a tiny bit so you can see that the writers here at Muse Tracks are the same as all of you struggling to find the road (and stay on it) to being an author.

Well, here goes…

I am a dabbler. I have a closet full of pencil sketches from copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings to pen and ink creations of my own imagination. I have watercolor paintings stacked at my mother’s house I dabble in textile arts and have woven, crosstitched, needlepointed, and even threaded fabrics through my paintings. I love to paint walls and decorate- my house is an ever changing canvas. Photographs clog the memory banks of my computer. Cooking is a total creative outlet for me and travel feeds my soul. Through all of this dabbling, I have learned quite a bit about the arts and am a lover of museums and artists from all walks.

While I’m a dabbler at all those things and have had varying successes at them, I consider them fun endeavors. It really doesn’t matter if I’m any good at them or not. I simply create.

Did you notice something missing?

I never once mentioned writing. I realized this while I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. We were talking about things we enjoyed and writing wasn’t on the list. He questioned me about its absence. I couldn’t answer him during that conversation, but it’s been waddling around in my head like a drunk duck ever since.

The Artists Way is a wonderful book that first and foremost gives us permission to be creative. It empowers us to delve into the fanciful, explore the beauty and remember that we are not whole if we deny this side of our being. (OK- I now officially feel like Earth Mother holding up a peace sign.) However artsy and spiritual this book may sound, the message is one that I believe everyone should hear. Is it fear, guilt, jealousy, or some other force that limits your beliefs in yourself? What causes you to self-sabotage? (My specialty) We have our own unique answers built on our own unique lives. Julia Cameron provides exercises that offer ways to inhibit the roadblocks we throw up for ourselves.

One of my favorites is dating myself. Basically, the advice is to spend time with ourselves nurturing and refilling the well of creativity.  Tomorrow I will attempt to have a date with myself all day. There will be no TV, no computer, no radio, no electronics of any type, no books- just me. The day will be spent in my garden, sitting on my back porch with a pad and paper, and visiting with my friends. I might go to an artist’s shop to wander the aisles or I might drive up to my brother’s lake house and sit on the dock. I will not think about the rest of my life. I want to remember the joy I had when writing was also simply about creating. Somehow it became about editing, publishing, marketing etc. Those issues are important, but are meaningless if it dive bombs the writing. Writing was fun, wasn’t it? It was a wonderful place to get lost in another world with characters who told us a fabulous tale. I want to get back to that.

God Got My Attention

 

God got my attention.

And it was difficult.

From January of last year to now, there have been a series of events that scream,  ”Here’s your wake-up call. Don’t be a moron!” Bear with me as I ramble.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the grind of day to day living that we forget about “living”. Our time is broken down into a series of tasks and micro managing our minutes. Meetings, children, bills, spouses, significant others, deadlines, housework, jobs (…and the list goes on and on) fight for our attention every single moment of every single day. It’s no wonder that we escape to our worlds on the page! But even doing that can take a toll on our brains and body.

I feel overwhelmed just writing that last paragraph. How do we do it all- it’s mind boggling. So what’s my wake-up call? Life is finite and things can change in the space of a heart beat. I don’t know why it took a whole year of events to get me to realize that statement. I mean, I knew it, but I would brush it to the side like an annoying fly.

This past year, my cousin was surprised by a triple by-pass and his wife had a double mastectomy, a young friend and her baby were killed in a car accident, my neighbor was diagnosed with sarcoma and has undergone radiation treatments, her husband has tongue cancer, a close friend was diagnosed with ALS and is in the final stages- we only have 15minute visiting windows, my best friend’s daughter had a baby and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer (she’s 22), my best friend’s mother was killed in a wildfire(it’s been a very hard year for her), and this week our very good friend and Muse Track guest blogger, Will Graham, had a stroke and surgery on his carotid artery. (He’s fine and recovering nicely.) The icing on this questionable cake is the fact that I turned 50. Not a bad thing by itself, but coupled with the events swirling around me, it acts like a very loud alarm clock!

Life is a gift from God. We don’t always use that gift wisely and sometimes do things to screw it up royally, but it is still our gift. Here’s the trick- we don’t know how long it will last. I know there are things I can’t control. I can, however, watch over my body and feed it physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s something the big guy upstairs has been nudging me to do for quite awhile. Nudging is putting it mildly- He’s been hitting me over the head with a baseball bat to get my attention.

I started with the basics:

-I’ve lost 26lbs so far. Weight Watchers is my new best friend and she’s been very easy to hang with.

-I walk 3-4 times a day. I found I enjoy moving better when I do several short breaks rather than trying to do a marathon.

-I take a stretch break every hour I’m at the computer. A few minutes of yoga stretching does wonders for the body and mind.

-I make sure I’m getting enough sleep. One of the first things Will said when we visited him in the hospital was that he was lightening his stress load and working on getting more rest.

-I’m meeting friends to simply visit more often. Visiting is a lost art in this complicated, fast paced world of ours.

-I’m kissing my husband more often. This one might sound strange, but it’s fun and brings us even closer when we take time out to have quiet moments.

-I love to laugh and smile. I try to take a few minutes on You Tube to watch a funny animal video, a comedian, or hysterical animal voiceovers. I’m cracking up and my day seems lighter!

-I turn off all noise makers and electronics in my house for 15 minutes most every day. When was the last time your house was totally quiet and you weren’t staring at a screen? This is when I try to listen to what God is teaching me. Not always easy, but so worth showing up for!!

This isn’t rocket science. This isn’t even new advice. It’s a gentle reminder for you all to be good, really good, to yourselves. It took a jarring year and a birthday milestone to rattle my priorities. I’d like to say that I’ve got it all under control, but that would be a lie. Hopefully I’m developing tools to “stop and smell the roses” and not get totally sucked back into the grind.

I wish for all of us to be happy, healthy, and peaceful every day. It’s a stretch, but it can be done.

 

PS. I started off wanting to write an article about how to stay healthy while being a productive writer, but this is what came out. I hope this resonates with some of you and we’ll get back to tips on being a healthy writer another time.

Let Me Steal Your Book!

Publication – is the auction of the Mind of Man.  ~Emily Dickinson

 

By:Stacey Purcell

I would like to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was an author who wrote a novel. This novel took two years to create, many dollars spent polishing their work, sleep lost worrying about their story, and hundreds of hours taken from their families and friends. This creative endeavor came at a high price.

The author persevered and finished. Hooray, a novel is born. Now what?

Now they spend months, maybe years, sending it out to agents and editors. More money, more worry, more time away from their “life”. Perhaps it works and they score an agent/ editor. Perhaps they decide to publish it themselves. Whichever road they take will require more of everything including ulcer potential. (And they say writing isn’t glamorous!)

One way or another, the book is published and available for sale. Their hard work will now pay off.

Not so quick. The book goes on sale at 10am. By 10:30 it’s offered for free at a variety of web sites and the author won’t ever see a dime. And they lived happily ever after…..

 

Unfortunately, instead of being a fictional piece of writing, this is more like a documentary. Music, photography, art, scientific discovery, books (and the list goes on) have all been stolen from their creators. I believe this not only hurts the creator, it hurts the economy and damages the driving force of what makes most countries thrive. Nations are built and maintained by the innovators, the creators of the next new thing to make our lives better- whether it is a new source of entertainment, a breakthrough in medicine or a streamlining of a business.

“Intellectual property is one of America’s chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace, yet Inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws.” Rep. Goodlatte

If the reward for that hard work is stripped away, the innovations will slowly fade away as well. We compromise our health as a nation.

There are two Acts before our governing bodies that are designed to help protect the theft of intellectual property. SOPA and PIPA (Stop Online Piracy Act and Pro-IP Act/ Protect IP Act) Both are designed to do more than the current “safe harbor” system that is in place. If a creator finds that a web site is offering their material without their permission, they must submit a notice telling them to take down the material and then the site is given a certain amount of time to take it down. SOPA would override the “safe harbor” system and “allow a judge to immediately block access to sites that are found guilty of hosting copyrighted material.”

SOPA is a bill that expands law enforcers and copyright holders ability to fight online piracy. Actions, through this, could include barring advertising networks and payment companies, like Pay Pal, from doing business with the site in question. They can also require Internet service providers to block access to these sites.( At the moment, the most we can hope for is that a web site in another country will positively respond to our request to take down our books. Law suits would be completely futile.)

As with any other major change, it is difficult. Vehement, passionate arguments can be made for both sides. Companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, Twitter, FaceBook, Zynga, Mozilla, eBay, and LinkedIn posted an open letter to the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives outlining their arguments stating that SOPA would stifle creativity and innovation on the internet that has created many jobs. It also said that it would be a threat to our cyber-security. (Not sure I understand that one.) Yahoo has also reportedly dropped its membership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over their support of this bill.

Naysayers state that it will threaten online freedom of speech, threaten users uploading content, have a negative impact on websites that host user content, it’s a general threat to web-related businesses, it’s a threat to internal networks, and threatens open source software. They agree that something has to be done about this piracy but think that the wording is too vague and is open to misuse.

So who’s right? I don’t know. I can only share what I think- I believe the spirit of SOPA is something that is desperately needed. Right now, the creator has to hunt down rogue sites, craft a letter and hope for the best. I know of an author who took it a step further and also contacted all the advertisers and host of the web site stating she would make it public knowledge that they supported online piracy by placing their businesses on said site. It seemed to work for her. So now we not only have to try and write books, juggle our private lives, and learn how to be marketers, we have to be internet sleuths and strategic blackmailers.

The spirit is right, but what about the wording. So much of it is in “legalease”, it’s difficult for a lay person like me to tell. I don’t want a community like they have in China where everything is censored or blocked. Would SOPA allow that to happen? Well, when they figure it out and put it in plain English- I’ll let you know.

 

 

If you are interested in this issue, this is a nice place to start.

 

http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/

Just another manic Monday…

The brilliance of what we do, as writers, is that we don’t have to play by the rules.

Well sort of.

We get to make it all up as we go. We get to change the balances of power, reinvent obstacles, and pretty much make the people in our lives (books) suffer in ways we can only PRAY doesn’t come around as bad juju, or Karma, and bite us where the sun don’t shine.

If only we could control real life so eloquently.

Ah, beach, hot sun, cabana boy with a drink in hand… I digress.

I realized recently, that I was projecting my own stresses – into my writing!

It hit me when I was editing. I LOVE my current WIP. The character is so much fun. He’s smart and savvy and fifteen, so everything about him screams hormones, mistakes and rebellion.

He’s so achingly confused and determined and scared and, and, and… political?!?

Yeah, that’s the same reaction I had while editing. My character, Arlin, actually had a 1 1/2 page internal with himself about the policies surrounding the ranking system in his government.

Um, yeah. Note to self… no writing after reading political drivel. E-V-E-R!

Here’s where we have to be careful not to project ourselves in our characters. I know I resemble the Tasmanian devil at times when the politicians are up to no good, but Arlin doesn’t. Whether I agree with something, my character has to have his own opinion and I have to give him that voice. His own voice.

We’re the same as our characters, but entirely different – and that’s how it’s supposed to be!

Dressing the Part – Corsets, Torture, & Voyeuristic Pirates

Song of the Day: Pain by Three Days Grace

The woman, a complete stranger, left me winded, dizzy. Like a thief, she stole my breath away and along with it, my good sense. Reining me into her designs armed with nothing more than a scrap of leather.

What’s this all about?

Since my passion is writing fun, steamy, adventuresome pirate romances, I’ve been toying with the idea of dressing the part – for appearances and book signings, of course. Last week, I visited a boutique, The Spotted Pony, in historic Old Town Spring. The shop specializes in Renaissance and pirate paraphernalia, including authentic clothing. Its proprietor is a saucy sort, old enough to be my grandmother and sharp of tongue. She was eager to help me once I explained why I was shopping in her unique store. In hindsight, she might have been too eager.

She produced a leather corset from behind the counter. An investment, she insisted. Now, I recently lost 40 pounds, but when she said the corset was a size 30 in the waist, I laughed. She suggested it was too big. I disagreed considering I couldn’t get the damned thing to latch around my ribcage. I wondered if I might have peeved the woman for chuckling as she slapped down on the counter a corset the next size smaller. She was either a witchy woman ready to deliver spite upon me or a tarot card short of a complete deck.

She had me unlace the corset while she rang out another customer. When I misunderstood and removed the laces instead, she chastised me with a wag of her finger and the shake of her head. Hey, in my defense, I write about taking these things off, not putting them on.

I followed her to the not-so-private dressing room. Ironically, I shared the space with a life-size cutout of Will Turner from the Pirates of the Caribbean. Not that I minded. After finally attaching the first button (I swear it took five whole minutes!), I was drenched in sweat. Oh, but we had only just begun.

The crazy proprietor tells me to turn around so she can lace me up. Tugging away, she tells me she has arthritis and may not be able to tighten the corset completely. Really? Imagine, if you will, the scene in Gone With The Wind with Mammy lacing Scarlett’s corset. All that yanking and cringing … I’m holding onto the door jam, giggling like a crazed fool, as the lunatic conducts torture with her arthritic hands. I half expected her to brace her foot against the wall for leverage as hard as she pulled. It’s all fun and games until someone cracks a rib.

All blood flow had been cut off to my brain, my vision blurred with the spinning of the room. Breathing had become a luxury and came only in short gasps. Good grief, by the time she was done, my boobs, which is one of my better assets, were eye level. I needed mirrors and a guide dog to walk across the room. No doubt the contraption was created by a man. Speaking of which, this is when I noticed the twenty-something man lingering by the same racks he’d been browsing before we started this cruel and unusual punishment. Hmm…

Perfect! the delightfully batty shopkeeper claimed. The lack of oxygen must have caused a momentary lapse in reasoning because I agreed. I bought the “investment”.

The things we do for our craft.

Have you ever dressed the part for your stories or bought something to help inspire you? Let me hear from you, but speak up. I can’t hear you over this heavy breathing.

If I Tell You…I Will Kill You

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.  ~Truman Capote, McCall’s, November 1967

 

By: Stacey Purcell 

Before we get to the last half of the remarkable Sue Simon (Ultra Counterintelligence), I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with all of you.

For the second time in as many months, I am at a funeral today. It was another young person in another car accident. No one should die in their early twenties. No one. It’s just not right on so many levels. But life happens. The good, the bad, the ugly. Life is a mixed up puzzle that I try to unwind only to find another piece missing. Maybe it’s supposed to be that way. Being only human, I cannot fathom God’s plan- nor should I.

I also celebrated my 5oth birthday yesterday with some remarkable friends. Seeing as I’ve now joined the ranks of being truly middle aged, I’ve decided to be happy in the face of this tragic death. Why? Because I have blessings that multiply with each breath that I take. Death is but a momentary separation and I choose to be in the here and now. Be happy, my friends. Find your blessings- they are there!

 

Let’s get back to Sue Simon!!

What’s a two man carry?

 I was asked a couple of times by airport security to “find something better to do than pick up men outside the bathroom” when I was intently watching for my partner to come out of the Men’s room. More than a few times, a good partner of mine and I would pose as a married couple. If either of us made the bladder error of going to the bathroom on the airplane, the other was busy talking to seatmates. I’ve walked back with women taking my hand because of my brain tumor or congratulating me on my pregnancy or my autistic brother’s upcoming wedding. Since we didn’t want to blow cover, we had to work with the shenanigans of the other. I admit, in retaliation, I’ve told people my partner is a deaf mute and other pranks.

A two man carry is literally when two people are carrying information that needs to get to its destination so much so that if something happens (ie.death) to one person, the other can go alone and deliver it. Spooky, but exhilarating. Two man carrys, when stuck at a hotel and having to get adjoining rooms with a common door, was interesting. **Information on the floor between rooms and him in bed under threat of bodily harm from me.

Okay- when the movies have the macho law enforcement guy is handcuffed to a briefcase, I want to scream out laughing! The POINT is to be clandestine, not scream your actions. “Hey everyone! I have really important stuff in my briefcase you could probably make a lot of money from if you bonk me over the head and cut my hand off!”

 

I know you can’t use names or places, but were you ever in danger at any point?

Yes

 

For Your Eyes Only?

Hollywood spy jargon. Real documents are more specific like “For Sue Simon’s Eyes Only” or ‘For ICEBTS project Eyes Only”. Like a lot of Ian Fleming’s writing, it had double meanings and usually sexual so my guess is that the woman was for James Bond’s eyes only and I don’t mean to play Parcheesi with.

 

What’s a dead giveaway that something big is happening on the hill or at secret installations?

On The Hill, it is a well known fact that when some big legislature is being mulled over they send out for pizza. Pizza being a euphonium for Chinese food etc. The pizza guys know what’s up.
If you think about it, for a facility that is supposed to be clandestine, you have to add in the law of taking the easy path. People pick codes that do include their birthday and people get hungry and don’t want to go get food all the time. So they send out. What is not suspicious about delivering 15 large pizzas to an unmarked building? Why are their huge bus shuttles leaving at all hours of the day and night from a small town into the desert?

 

How long have you been writing and what prompted you to start?

I’ve always written even as a girl. I would write little books using as many words of a certain letter of the alphabet. I did not get through the entire alphabet, darn ‘x’! Since middle school I have journaled so I have lots of self blackmail, uh I mean adventures to draw from.

 

Anything else we should know about Sue Simon black ops to children’s writer??

I’ve sung professionally and am more at ease singing than speaking. I’ve sung with the San Diego Opera, Old Glove Theater, Cinnati Opera, Starlight Opera, May Festival and even Carnegie. On two man carries I’ve posed as an opera singer, they rued the day when asked if I really did that with some nasty Wagner. Bwaahahaha
I’m leaving tomorrow to do some writing for sitcoms in California, will spill the jelly beans on that later.

 

I understand you’ve written a children’s book. What are you working on now?

 As I write, it is in limbo at a publisher’s. It’s a children/middle grade book about a society of penguins as told from the penguins perspective. Sort of a Watership Down with humor. I’m also working on two romances. I pitched them at National and they both want them!

 

Thanks Sue!

We’ve enjoyed learning about your adventures and life in counterintelligence.

We Remember… and always will.

I remember where I was ten years ago today…

I can still feel the shock I experienced as I drove home, listening to the news reports…

Today I still feel the sting of tears when I think about the horror that unfolded before our eyes…

I remember thinking how glad I was in that moment to be an American, where this travesty would pull us together, where we as a united people would stand up and say, ‘We’re still here’.

 

We won’t ever forget, we won’t ever stop praying, we won’t ever go silent…

Hold your loved ones, near and far, here or departed, close.

We are America.

God bless~

K.I.S.S. – Another lesson learned by Candi Wall

I hope everyone is well and busy writing, editing, submitting, revising, celebrating… Whatever stage you’re at, we at Musetracks wish you the best.

Some of you may have noticed my absence, others may not.

I’ve had a bit of an uproar in my life recently, nothing too concerning, but enough to keep me from doing what I’d hoped to accomplish over the last few weeks. Big sigh. But what I’ve learned over these past few weeks is something that applies in our writing as well as our everyday lives.

K.I.S.S. a/k/a Keep It Simple Stupid

Simple right? Yeah, okay.

Life is nothing but curve balls, twists, turns, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men…

And so during this unexpected, unwanted hiatus, I tried to keep the irons I had in the fire going.

Job – Check

Family – Check

Chores – Check

School prep – Check

Appointments – Check

Sports – Check

Volunteer – Check

Sleep – Yeah, not so much

Write – Okay whatever

Eat right – Pah!

Exercise – LOL!

Read – Can I do that? Really?

Priorities TAKE OVER our lives!

Not a darn thing we can do about it, and most of us don’t even realize we’ve prioritized our lives until after we’re done with our must-be-done’s and are onto our want-to-do’s. We plug along at our lists and schedules on auto-pilot, rearranging as we go, finagling each unseen activity or issue we need to add into the mix. We do it automatically. Some do it well, some do it mediocre, some (like me lately) just scrape by.

Regardless of how we do it, we scrape it all down to the necessities to keep it as simple as possible.

And we as writers, have to apply this to our writing as well.

And of course we’re not talking about your plot, or revising, or submitting. We’re not even talking about writing. All these things are HARD. They’re supposed to be. Nothing good comes easy or simple, but what we give as our final product needs to be. Readers don’t want to, and won’t, read filler words or sentences. They want movement, purpose, drive and action/reaction. When considering K.I.S.S., taking out filler words, scene and dialog that doesn’t create forward motion in your story is a must!

Consider two sentences:

*Amber didn’t know where the directions on the note would take her, but she had to find out.

*Amber eyed the note carefully, each crudely scribbled word carving another layer of fear deep in her heart until she forced her eyes back to the road.

(I’m tired, so bear with me.)

Okay, now assuming you’ve set the stage for your character, which line screams K.I.S.S. and still maintains the same level of intensity? The second, right? Assuming your readers are already inside your characters head means you don’t have to tell them about her fear, they’re already there. The reader doesn’t need to be told that she ‘eyed the note carefully’, they’re already seeing her in their heads, glancing nervously between the note and the road.

Sure details and setting and emotion are important. But keeping our readers moving along, instead of stalling the pictures we’re painting in their mind’s eye with too many words, is our job. Now wasn’t that last sentence the perfect example of over-writing? Had I went with

K.I.S.S. it would have read something closer to: But keeping our readers moving along, instead of making them skim, is our job.

Share! What do you do to trash the unneeded filler words we always add in the first drafts?

BTW – Next week, I’ll have the awesome Saranna DeWylde here with her novel, The Real Housewives of Mount Olympus. (Click on her name and the link will take you to the Amazon page for her novel!) I got a chance to read this pre-pub stage and it’s a fast, sexy, ultra-fun read that will have you looking at the gods and goddesses in a new way.

She’ll be giving away a free e-copy to one lucky comment. But it gets better, she’ll give away a copy each time we get ten comments!

AGENT SHOP news? Did you see who’s going to be here in September (25th is pitch day)????

LAURA BRADFORD