GENREALITY

Laura Nutt Coen…you are commenter #6, and that means you win the $15 Amazon GC. You have one week to contact me to claim your prize.

I’m brain dead. Yes, it happens when I spend too much time thinking about a story. Does this happen to you? I know some people think and think and it helps them. They line up all the details and possabilities and character traits before they even sit down to write. Some people do it on paper and call it plotting, some do it in their mind. Me? I find there’s a perfect balance to how much I can think about a story or character before I start writing.

If I don’t think enough, everything (characters, plot, story) is flat.

If I think too much, my brain goes into overdrive and all I see are holes everywhere.

The key is knowing when it’s time to start writing. For me anyways. I missed the right time to start on an idea I love. I’ve thought about it too much and now all I see are holes and problems. So I’m shoving that idea to the back of the line and moving on to the next.

In the meantime I spent yesterday (Monday) draining my brain so I can refill it with the next idea. Draining it meant I went to see a brainless movie. (Step Up 3d..what can I say? I love Twitch!) I had dinner with the family. Then I watched another brainless movie Triple X. (Love Vin Diesel too)

The last thing I did…write a list.

I picked up a book when I was in Vancouver a couple weeks ago called My Listography; my amazing life in lists.

Each page asks you to write a list about something else, and I’ve really enjoyed it, so I’ve decide to share it with you all. Todays list was 5 people I’d like to meet. (Not counting me fellow Genreality authors, who I’d love to meet in person.)

My picks, in no particular order:

Johnny Depp (actor)
Jeremy Piven (actor)
Janet Evanovich (author)
Lynn Viehl (author)
Scott Murdoch (Photographer)

Who would be on your list?

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*sorry I’m late…I made the mistake of trying to upload over 400 photos to my online backup server last night, at once, and while it worked, it pretty much froze my internet for anything else, so at 330 AM I decided I’d post this when I woke up and went to bed*

What I learned on retreat…or should I say in retreat?

A few weeks ago I posted about going on a roadtrip/writing retreat with a buddy. It was something I’d been looking forward too for a long while. You see, my plan was to spend June and July focussing on other aspects of my life so that in August I’d be ready to re-focus on writing with much intensity. (I’ve come to accept that unless I’m intense/passionate about something, there is really no point in me even attempting to do it. ) As with most things in life, plans go awry.

June and July were full of stress and drama for me. So much so that I realized that if I was going to get serious about my writing again, I needed to leave the night job. Most people have Day Jobs, but mine is a night job for 2 reasons.
1) I work nights at it, not days. (Waitress/bartender)

2) Writing is my day job.

Yes, I claim writing as my day job even though I haven’t been doing a whole hell of a lot of it lately. See Carrie post yesterday about Time management to get an idea of what I might’ve been doing.

As you know, there is more to being a writer than the actual writing, so I’ve been keeping busy with plenty of things. Writing a bit here and there, promotions, planning, and researching for new projects. PLus, I’ve been trying to organize some of my previously published stuff to make available electronically. I mean, if it’s just sitting on my computer, why not give it a try and see what happens, right?

So, the plan was to get that stuff done, and focus on some other things in June and July, then in AUgust, starting with the retreat, I could work on my new project. Well, the night job sort of ended up taking over my life for the summer, and I spent the first five days of the roadtrip/retreat simply decompressing because I had to work 13 of the 14 days before we left. The first days of our trip were on the road and even though Delilah maintained a three page a day quota, I simply drove, listened to music and thought about writing. (Okay, and spent time talking visiting family and shopping on Granville Island in Vancouver). Once we got hunkered down at the lake to write, I still couldn’t make myself do it. I walked the lake and played with my camera and thought about writing some more. By the time I finally got into work mode at the lake, it was time to leave, so I didn’t get much actual work done.
One of the things that relaxed me the most was that I’d given notice at the night job. It’s time to make writing the #2 priority in my life (#1 being my health).

So, I’m happy because I have one week left on the night job, then I’ll be able to focus more on writing! YAY!

So, lessons learned, again. Just because you’re not at work, doesn’t mean your not working. You need to be sure you’re taking a day off from all work every now and then, or your passion for, well, everything, will dry up fast. And the passion must be maintained. I say this because what Carrie said yesterday about being productive when she was still working was also true of me-before I quit to write full time. When I first started out, and I was driven to succeed I worked fulltime, and wrote every spare moment. Then I quit work to write full-time, and my writing productivity slowed so I could concentrate not on writing, but on career. One of the reasons I went back to the night job was because I thought it would help me find that passion to be super productive again. It didn’t. The only place to find that passion is deep within, and if you lose it, then nothing will get it back but time spent refilling the well. At least that’s true for me.

So, my promise to myself after being on retreat…I will never let my well get so dried up again. I will remember that in order to be productive and passionate. I must relax and take time off and away from the computer on a regular basis, to maintain my passion and drive.

One thing I know I’ll be using to refill my creative well from now on is more photography. In the comments tell me what you do to refill the well and be entered to win a $15 Amazon gift certificate. I’ll post the winner of the draw next week.

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Since I’m into trying new things with my writing right now, stretching my creative muscles and all that, I’ve been looking back at some of my own earlier stuff. That means some of the articles I’ve written as well as stories. I found a file from an online workshop on Writing Dynamic Scenes that I did a while ago, and it really hit home, so I thought I’d share the first part of the lecture here.

From the workshop:

I’m going to start with What does Dynamic Mean?
There are a few definitions for this word, but for our purposes it means “stimulating development or progress”. That definition is KEY. Dynamic scenes must move the story forward and/or show the reader something important. I say “and/or” because some writers will tell you every scene Must move the story or plot forward, but I don’t believe that. There is more to a good story, and more to a dynamic scene, than plot and story arc. Stories are about characters, and we should never forget that.

That means that a scene can still be integral to the story without actually moving the plot forward – but if it doesn’t advance the plot then it has to have another purpose. Character development for example. Description is not a valid purpose. Showing us what a normal uneventful day is for your character is not a valid purpose. If you have a scene in your story where the heroine is showering or doing laundry, she better be having a revelation of some sort that is important and stimulating to us as a reader while she’s doing these things. Make sense? (feel free to ask questions in the comments if you need clarification)

This may seem stupid, but the first thing you need to do to write a dynamic scene is ….write the scene.

Yes. Seems like something I shouldn’t have to tell you, right? Well, I’m telling you this is the first step because too often writers, old and new, get too wrapped up in thinking about what they ‘should’ or ‘should not’ be doing to write freely – and writing freely is a massive component for writing dynamic scenes. You can’t ensure a scene is dynamic until after you’ve written it, so free your mind of any rules or restrictions, stop thinking so hard about using descriptive words and sparkling dialogue and just write!

This last paragraph is what really hit home with me. You see, in trying new things lately I’ve started to really doubt my own skills and storytelling ability, and it’s stalled me. I’ve sat and stared into space or at my laptop, I’ve walked for miles thinking about what I wanted to write. I’ve gone to sleep and woken up thinking about storylines and plot holes and where I want my new project to go.

I’ve put so much pressure on myself to ‘get it right‘ that I’ve forgotten the first step in doing that is ‘get it written‘.

Funny how it’s sometimes so hard to remember the simplest of lessons.:oops:

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I’m so excited. It’s almost time for my yearly writers retreat with my friends. Okay, so all but one friend has cancelled this year and I’m disappointed in that, I’m still very very excited for it.

This year it will be myself and my buddy Delilah Devlin in a house on the lake in the Seattle area for 5 days. What do we plan to do while we’re there? Eat, drink, and write. That’s it. The whole point is that there’s no phone, no internet, and no distractions. Unless you count the lake a distraction…which it can be if we let it.

This year will be different from last year in more than just the fact there will only be 2 of us. It’s different because we’re roadtripping to Seattle instead of flying. Delilah lives in Arkansas, and she’s flying up here to Alberta, and driving to Seattle with me. She’s never been to Canada so I told her I’d show her some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. We’ll drive through Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper as well as spend a day or so in Vancouver checking out Stanley Park and Granville Island before heading across the border.

Once we’re in Washington we’ll spend the first day stocking up for the week and getting settled in. We’ll share our plans and set goals for the week so that our focus can shift from ‘travel’ days to ‘work’ days mode. Then we’ll spend the next 4 days writing, talking about writing, planning career steps and sharing dreams for the future of our careers.

If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. The goal is to get as much work done as possible in a short amount of time. I know I have a project I really want to get going on, and I’m hoping that I can knock out at least 100 good solid pages in those 4 days. Since I won’t have internet access, Charlene will be posting for me next Tuesday, and after that I’ll be back with you- and I’ll tell you exactly how much work I DID get done and share some tip son how to plan your own retreat.

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Since I’ve been sharing about my own issues lately, and because I’m not quit ready to talk about any new projects I might be working on, I’m going to share more of my journey with you. This past week I was going over my own blog posts from the past few years, just sort of reliving my past career path, planning my future and thinking on what I want from my career…some of my old posts really resonate to this day. This one was written in March of 2004, about two years after I started writing. Rereading it did my heart good, so I thought I’d repost it…see what y’all think.

I never planned to be a waitress all my life, but just after I turned 30 I realized it could happen.
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