Staying Fresh as a Writer...

...means writing until you are terrified. It means writing when you have something to say. It means writing with tears streaming, or your teeth clenched, or your door closed, or with no worried glances at the phone from your Great Aunt Muriel to complain.

It means finding the truth, and rewriting until it's right, and most importantly it means knowing your hero or the people your hero loves can die at any point.

I just read this post from Maggie Stiefvater called Why We Love Writers Who Treat Us Bad.

I was musing today that the old saying that women love guys who treat them badly holds true for authors too. 
Before you start to snort and through your lattes at the screen, bear with me here. I started thinking about it this weekend because of the response that BREAKING DAWN is inspiring amongst readers. For those of you who live under rocks, BREAKING DAWN is the fourth installment in Stephenie Meyer's YA vampire saga. Even if you don't read them, you oughtta know what they are. Anyway. I have not read the 600 page beast which just came out this weekend, but I have read the hundreds of reviews which have appeared on Amazon and on blogs. The upshot is this: in the final book of the saga, Stephenie Meyer gives readers everything they could've possibly wanted for the protagonists. A happy marriage, a healthy baby, everyone's in love, no one dies, and they get to stay in town because the main character's dad is cool with his daughter being a vampire (I warned you there were spoilers).
And the readers hate her for it. I mean, the reviews could peel paint. These people are not just unhappy, they are out for blood. But why? They got everything they wanted, right? Everything is perfect! Every thread is tied up! Everything that every reader has ever lusted after for those characters was granted.
But we don't want that, do we? Nay, as readers, we want the author who won't call us in a timely manner after that first date, who makes us pay for lunch, and who makes eyes at our best friend. Let's compare the Breaking Dawn reaction with J. K. Rowling's series. She kills Dumbledore. She kills one of the Weasley twins. She kills Sirius. There are bodies flying left and right. Nobody gets what they want. But at the end of the day, there are no legions of fans shouting that J. K. has ruined the series. They moan "why did Sirius have to die!?" but not "what was she thinking when she killed him?"
Or how about my favorite movie trilogy ever, the Bourne movies? (sorry, Robert Ludlum, I haven't read them, only watched 'em). In the first twenty minutes of the second movie, they off Jason Bourne's beloved love slave in a ruthless and expedient matter. Do we scream and throw the remote? Nah, we rend our clothes a little and say "poor Jason, come to my house, I'll comfort you" and then we watch the rest of the movie and the next one back to back and we love them.

We don't want authors to treat us well. We hate 'em when they do. Complain as we might about a beloved character dying, hell hath no fury like a reader who actually gets what they think they want. 
Note to self: kill someone off in the next chapter of my WIP. 

K, now I want you to watch this video.

When you are done, watch a few seconds of this. It's the same group. The same song, and it's beautiful, but it's not the same.

This one is safe. The sound is clearer, but they are in a completely different location, and it's sung with far less passion and heartbreak. The story isn't as powerful, which means the music isn't as powerful. It's still fantastic, don't get me wrong, I love these guys, but to me, it illustrates the difference between writing with acoustics, and writing in a safe place.

The echoes from that church, man. Just brilliant.

Things only echo, if the walls are raised.

Write something that scares you. That's how you'll stay fresh.

~Sheena (and Maggie Stiefvater, and The Lone Bellow)

Breaking the block

It happens more often than I'd like that I wake up on a Thursday morning and realize that I once again forgot to come up with a blog post. Well, I may have some bad tomato karma (up yours, fusilium crown and root rot), but apparently the gods of blogging are smiling on me, because today I found this post on how successful writers deal with writer's block.

I've read some of the advice in the article before - taking a walk often works for minor writer's block for me - but I hadn't thought of this one piece of advice from a  New Yorker writer:

"A thing I do, if writing isn’t going well, is to write out something I really love, like one of Keats’ odes or a bit of a poem by Elizabeth Bishop or even a few sentences from Woolf or the Gospel of John. It’s nice to remember what can be done with words always but especially when it seems like you can’t seem to do anything with them."

I've gone through writer's block. It was during a rather dark period of my life overall, and I don't really like to think about it all that much. In my case, the solution was to just start writing something silly – a story that I liked, but I had no interest in ever publishing. And I never did publish it, and I never finished it. It was some silly thing with like twelve main characters. And by the time I finished writing the outline and the character profiles, I got bored with both that story and over the idea that I couldn't write, and was able to move on to other things.

More recently, I've learned that the first step to confronting any fear, is to bring it out and treat it to the bright light of day. It's kind of amazing how frail and weak those long-held fears can seem once we gain the courage to actual air them out.

My writing fears want me to know that I've never written anything good in my life, that no one will ever like what I write, and that I'm not going to have a good time working on my writing tonight.

And really, when I look at those words on their own, my writer's block is kind of a whiny jerk, and not interesting or powerful at all. That's not to say that I won't forget this next time I become insecure, because long-learned fears aren't so easily rooted out.

#492652795 / gettyimages.com

What ridiculous things does your writer's block try to tell you?

Olympian Effort

I love the Olympics.

 I always have.

This is me
 in the
Paige Turner Era.

 So much so that when I was a kid, I used to pretend I was an Olympic Gymnast named Paige Turner. 

(For realsies. I was born to be a Proser.) 

I don't know exactly what it is I love about the Olympics. Maybe it's the pageantry, or the history, or the fact that every nation is joining together in peace to try to be their best. Or maybe it's the Olympian's themselves-- dreamers who've sacrificed so much for this one day, for one race or competition, and success or defeat is one stuck landing, or step out of bounds, away.

I think writing is like that. There are more Prosers out there than there are Pros. More writers will not receive medals, or awards, or even shelf space than there are writers who will.

And that's okay.

In fact, that's kind of awesome.

I tell my kids all the time that I believe in them. I tell them that they can do anything they want to do, be anything they want to be.  Rock Star? Absolutely! Doctor? Sure, I'll just pay for that medical school with my imaginary shoe box full of money. Olympic Gold Medalist in swimming?  Yes, but that means you'll have to learn how to actually put your head under water, Child of Mine.

Truth is though, they probably can't do everything (Brilliant and perfect though they are). 

Am I helping them by lying to them, or am I hurting them?

One of the problems that happens when people believe in you, is that their belief turns heavy when reality starts poking in her head. It can  start to feel like you aren't working to achieve a dream for yourself, but because your teachers, or parents expect you to. And then, when you can't, or even when you don't want to do your dream anymore, it feels like you are failing them.

 There is nothing so soul crushing, I've found, as realizing you aren't being everything your parents and teachers dreamed you would be.

I've started to change my words. Now, whenever my children say they want to be something, I say, "I just want you to be the very best YOU you can be."

Do you think, even for a second, that the slowest Olympian's parents aren't beyond proud of their child? Can you think, even for a moment, that the athlete who places last, or who doesn't qualify for the final race, isn't an Olympian? 

 An Olympian isn't an Olympian because of a medal they wear. What makes a person an Olympian is the effort that brought them there-- the sacrifices, the heart, and the stubbornness.

A writer isn't a writer because they've been published either. What makes a person a writer is the effort, the heart, and the stubbornness that they won't give up. What makes a writer is...writing. Simple. So often our dreams, and the dreams of others reflected on us, can get in the way of the words. So often, fear of not achieving dreams, and often fear of ACTUALLY achieving our dreams, gets in the way of putting words on a page.

Advice for today: stop focusing on the pressure of the podium, and just be your best. Have fun. Break the rules. Go crazy.

We can only do the very best we can, so be proud, because your best IS enough.

~Sheena