GENREALITY

To write or not to write, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous rejections,
or to take arms against a sea of critics,
and by opposing end them?

I’d apologize to Shakespeare, except that he was a writer and I’m sure he understood the parallel. Like Hamlet’s dilemma in his famous soliloquy, the writer’s dilemma can lead to paralysis by analysis.

Should we create? It’s a risk. We don’t know what the outcome will be. Maybe failure, maybe rejection, maybe success but at too high a cost. It’s safer to do nothing, isn’t it? Except that isn’t safe, either. Who wants to end up regretting the chances not taken, the work left undone, the finished manuscript never sent off?

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”

And there’s the real danger. Too much thought leads to doing nothing at all. But inaction is a choice, even if it’s making a choice by default.

The good news is, we’re always free to make a new choice. If not doing something isn’t working out for us, what do we have to lose by doing it?

Creativity is activity. What creative action can you take today? Will you be better off if you take it? Chances are, the answer is yes. If nothing else, you will have the satisfaction of having done something, which is infinitely more satisfying than sitting around talking to yourself about all the what ifs and maybes. That didn’t make Hamlet happy, and it probably won’t make you happy, either.

What are stories made of? Kites and strings and dragonfly wings. Snakes and snails and puppydog tails. Daydreams, nightmares. Hopes and scares. There’s a lot written on how to write, but where does what you write come from?

It comes from a thousand things you’ve forgotten, from the passions you had when you were five and fifteen and twenty-five, from the stories that captured your imagination and the heroes you identified with, from your hobbies and even from hated assignments you were once forced to suffer through. Anything you’ve ever cared enough about to love or hate is writing material. Injustices that make you seethe are fair game. So are triumphs that make you want to crow. So are all those things that excite and move you but you know nothing about so you’ll have to do some research.

Writing what you know is far too limited. Writing to discover has an infinite horizon. But don’t forget what you know, all the deep truths that come from your lifetime of experience. I know there are monsters under the bed and that creatures can come through mirrors at midnight. Don’t pester me with logic and flashlights. Monsters disappear when you shine lights on them. I know there are endless worlds populated with strange things, and that a whole universe lives in a drop of water. I know the sky can fall and just when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse you’ll discover how much imagination you lack. I know there aren’t always happy endings but it’s not over until it’s over, and every day is another day to write another chapter of your life story. I know heroes are resourceful and determined. I know evil exists from the banal to the monstrous. I know the human capacity for generosity and achievement is miraculous and we don’t give ourselves nearly enough credit.

What do you know? What do you fear? What do you wish, hope, dream, imagine? What horrible or beautiful thing fascinates you? What makes you laugh? What makes you pull the covers over your head? What do you wish you understood or knew more about? What do you wish you could unlearn and forget?

Stories can be structured with all kinds of neat tricks, but the raw stuff of stories is messy as hell. Don’t try to tidy it up. Don’t write the safe story anybody else could think of, the obvious choice anybody could see coming a mile away. Don’t write comfortable and smug stories that couldn’t scare anybody or move anybody to tears or laughter. Write what’s real and true to you. That’s what stories are made of.

One of the more interesting writing classes I’ve taken over the years was one that taught storytelling with Tarot. Before that, I didn’t know Tarot had anything to do with stories, or that you could use Tarot as a tool for plot, character, and more. Even if you don’t have access to a live class on the topic, there are excellent resources online for learning card meanings and basic spreads.

The Tarot deck tells the story of the Fool’s Journey through life, which translates to the hero’s journey in fiction. But wait, there’s more. Each card in the deck tells a story in itself. Beyond that, some cards represent character archetypes while others represent plot turning points. And each card tells its story in symbols and images, the language of the right brain, making the cards a great tool for bypassing the left-brained critic and accessing your creative side.

All of this makes a Tarot deck a great writer’s tool. Even choosing a deck is a creative adventure; I recommend looking at several to see which artwork appeals. I bought a deck intended for children that depicts fairytale characters and scenes on each card. Each deck’s visual interpretation of the cards will vary and one will suit your storytelling style better than another so it’s good to compare.

Once you have a deck, you can use it for multiple creative exercises. You can simply draw a card at a time, and see what story the image sparks. What story would you tell yourself based on what you see? Do a timed writing and tell the story in 5-15 minutes. Lay out a series of cards and see what characters and events jump out at you as you connect the cards into a single story. Then write a brief story summary.

If you are stuck on your story at any stage, go through the deck looking at individual cards to see what images jump out at you. Your non-verbal right brain can use the visual tool to point out what you’re missing; a type of character, a twist, a dramatic event or choice. Or you can pull out a handful of cards that appeal to you and play “what if”. What if I add this kind of character to this scene or story? What if I move the scene to a setting like this? What if I add an element from this image? What if I do a combination?

There are so many ways to use Tarot as a tool to jumpstart creativity and access your right-brained insights for story solutions that I could never list them all. But the next time you find yourself stuck or if you just want a new tool in your box, try Tarot.

By CHARLENE TEGLIA

Lately I’ve been trying to find my motivation. It might be under the couch; write an average of 5 releases a year for 5 years and vacuuming falls to the bottom of the To Do list, so it’s possible dust bunnies obscure it. But from research on the subject, I discovered something really interesting; motivation for physical work can be provided with physical rewards. But when the tasks require cognitive skill (and believe me, even writing a bad book takes a boatload of cognitive skill), rewards fail.

It turns out that what motivates people to flex their mental muscles takes a combination of three things; autonomy, mastery, and meaning.

Autonomy is sometimes hard to come by in publishing. Sometimes it feels like writing by committee. This varies significantly depending on contract terms and agent involvement, but I know from experience that knocks to my autonomy send my motivation scuttling to some unlit corner.

Next comes mastery. That’s a good one for writers because it takes a very long time to master all the elements of fiction plus the mechanics of writing. It can take a lifetime, but not if you continue to do the same thing. And then a writer can find themselves choosing between writing the next book the-same-but-different to satisfy readers’ and publishers’ expectations, or doing something different that might fail horribly but will provide the writer with a chance to master some new aspect of the craft.

Last and most baffling comes the drive to do something meaningful. What is meaningful? Just defining it can lead to headaches. But the work has to serve some purpose beyond filling the hours from getting up to going to bed and getting a paycheck, or motivation quickly ebbs. I wrote a novella in two days to donate to charity because the cause had great meaning for me. Meaning can come from many places. Maybe the meaning comes from exploring a theme, resolving a question through story that you can’t answer yourself. But the work must have meaning or the desire to do it won’t remain constant.

Autonomy. Mastery. Meaning. Without these, there is no lasting motivation. The carrot and the stick will work to a point, but when they fail, look for ways to gain autonomy, mastery and meaning in the work. They’re the things that make the work worth doing, because mental skill costs us more. It has to give us more in return, or the price is simply too high.