It is HERE! FREE PDF

There are times when every writer needs something beyond feedback   - not editing but guidance, not suggestions but clarity.  They need discovery.  These are the times for a RiverWords session. RiverWords is a new method for writing groups focusing on growth for the writer. The FREE PDF that gives a quick guide to RiverWords sessions is available for download on my website here:

RiverWords PDF

The full-length workbook to guide groups through the entire process, and explain the origins and ideas behind these techniques is available to purchase on Amazon here:

A River Of Words: A New Method for Writing Groups

On Making a Mess

NOTE:  the launch of the FREE PDF for writer’s groups in two days,

On saturday, October 29th - watch here for a link to the free download!

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Recently, a friend of mine was shopping for new furniture for her home office and brought a catalog with her to our coffee date.  As she thumbed through it while I perused the menu, she gasped and slid the catalog across the table to me, pointing to a picture in the catalog of an ‘ideal’ office with the banner “Make this YOURS!”  She tapped the picture, and I looked down.  

“Wow, that’s beautiful!” Gleaming surfaces, curved edges, handy nooks for papers and

supplies, beautiful hangings on the wall.

She grinned.  “Wouldn’t you just love to have that as your office?”

“No.”  I said, without thought, without hesitation.

She sat up, pulling the catalog back to her as though I’d offended.  “Why?’

“I couldn’t work there.  Too sterile.  I like funky.”  And went back to my menu.

Space - the space in which you write - is important to writer’s process.  While not the most important element, (perhaps), it is essential to mindset, to concentration, to the spirit of the writer herself. I’m not saying that a space such as that in the catalog photo is bad for writers - I’m saying it’s bad for me as a writer, and that each writer should be very careful about how they choose, structure, and respect their writing space. We’ve known about this for a long time.  Virginia Woolf wrote about the necessity for a woman writer having ‘a room of her own,’ (though I actually disagree with part of her argument), and the majority of the writers I know are jealous of and protective of their space for writing.

Students in my writing classes have often told me that having a good place to write is a major obstacle for them - noisy roommates, crowded housing, etc.   I’ve gone through with them an activity

which has them think about the last time they wrote something they liked …. Where were they?  What did they like about the place?  What did work?  What didn’t? ….until we narrow down the elements that work for them and find a way to recreate it.  Perhaps a dark booth in the corner of a coffee shop, or a bench in the park, or, remarkably, for one student, a table at McDonalds.

The point is, as with so many other elements in the creative act, to PAY ATTENTION.  For me, the moment came in watching a scene in the movie White Palace.  The main character ( a very young James Spader) pulls a dust-buster off the wall of his host’s house, and opens it, exclaiming “there’s no dust in the dust-buster!” -- a moment, which, in the film, is transformational for the character.  That moment stayed with me a long time.  I had spent a long time trying to be “neat” in my writing space, organizing and stacking, filing and sorting.  “Writing,” a teacher named Peter Elbow once said, “is a process of making a mess and cleaning it up.” Looking at my own process, I realized I was cleaning it up before I’d allowed myself to make the kind of mess that real lives and real humans create. Ever after, I did not worry about the organization or cleanliness of my writing space.  There were much more important things.

My space is filled with large old well-distressed oak table that once belonged to my late sister.   In the middle of a story, it will be stacked with books and pages, notes and pencils, computers and reference works, scraps with snatches of dialogue, sketches I’ve made of characters or their world,

and likely my soup-bowl stacked on top of my breakfast plate.  I recognized some time ago that funky old furniture fits my character, soothes my working-class spirit (which comes from my upbringing), and gives me a sense of history I find essential to developing my characters.

I like funky places.  I like funky people.  I like working-class people (in spite of objectionable images of them promoted in the media, tv shows, and by certain directors - one of my main objections to Scorsese).  I like the sense of history, of struggle, of the human spirit, embodied in the old, scrappy furniture that I surround myself with.

That works for me.  It may not work for everyone, but the point is to figure out what that environment is for YOU, and do everything in your power to create it.  Maybe you need clean clear open spaces to create that sense in your mind and open the door to creativity.  Maybe you need McDonalds, to surround yourself with the comings and goings of people and families to remind you of the wide variety of the human heart.  Maybe you need dark corners to help you peer into the other worlds you want to create.  Whatever it is, make it YOURS.

2 Must-Do Strategies to Beat Writers Block

NOTE:  The FREE PDF for writer’s groups (and the accompanying book-length handbook) are in final editing, just days from being posted - all permissions received.  Look for posting within 10 days.

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“The writer seeks, and then must deal, with empty time.”

I don’t recall the first time I saw the above quote, nor do I remember it’s source.  I do remember that, when I first saw it, I knew exactly what it meant.  We writers will bemoan endlessly the lack of time to do the writing we need to do, and then, when we have it, find any number of other things to do instead - laundry, errands, dusting, organizing files, alphabetizing books or CDs or recipes - anything to avoid the challenges, the discomfort, of facing that blank page and the endlessly-blinking cursor.  We are world-champion procrastinators and apologists.

And we know it. In those alone moments, when there is no one to whom we need to justify our

inaction, we look at that cursor, or the blank page, and we know we could put down a word, two words, a thousand of them - if only we could get over the fear.  

And here I am to say:  GET OVER IT.

As a popular meme says, there are two steps to writing a novel (or a story or an article):  Step One:  start writing.  Step Two:  There IS no step two

I’m not saying the fear isn’t real.  I’m not saying it is not paralyzing and debilitating. It is.  So is the fear of a woman going into labor, or a soldier going into battle, or of any of us going into a job interview, or a first date, or a dentist appointment, for Christ sake.  The empty page is as frightening to the writer as any of these, and yet….. And yet, it is the only way to become the writer you want to be.  So you must find a way to do as I said:  get over it.

There’s lots of advice out there on how to do that - strategies, tricks, mental training, meditation, finger exercises --- strategies ad nauseum.   They are all fine, but won’t get you to the page until you do two things:

BE BRAVE..

Yes, easier said than done.   There is, in my experience, one fool-proof way to help anyone find their courage.  Joseph Campbell, the mythologist and philosopher, once offered it as advice to his students:  consult your death.   We are all, at some point, leaving this earth.  When it is over for you, what kind of person do you want to be remembered as? (Yes, I know I ended a sentence with a preposition - get over that, too.) A friend of my sister (also a writer) once said to her:  “Do you want to leave this earth without having said what you need to say?” They are the same sentiment.  Some writing students have told me that

they have nothing to say worthy of readers attention, and I always tell them the same thing:   I don’t believe that.  Every person - every person - on this earth has a perspective that is entirely unique.  No one - not a single other soul - can think about things, see things, react to things in exactly the same way you can.  And, further, you have no way of knowing who that perspective or thought might be useful to.  Stop hiding your gifts out of fear.  

And, second:   DO IT.

Sit down every day and write words - word after word after word - on your paper.  You will fail.  You will fail mightily.  You will get rejections, editors remarks will pierce your soul.  But if you truly wish to write, that is the rite of passage.  As Hemingway once said - the world breaks everyone, and afterwards, some are strong at the broken places.  If you want to be a strong writer, you must face those broken places, open to them, and put their story on the page - every day.  

What the truly great writers tell us, if we really listen to their words, is that the world doesn’t need a writer who is market-savvy - the world needs the hard, brutal, soul-wrenching, beautiful truth.  This means finding what you have to say, the one thing that is yours to say, and then bucking up your courage and saying it.  Be brave.  Do it.

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Launch date for the FREE PDF and “RiverWords” book:  October 29th.  Look for the link here and on my website.

Notes on Being Nowhere

(See notes about the upcoming FREE download at the end of this post)

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For several days, every time I think about writing, I’m haunted by an image from many years ago:  my father, who died when I was a young child, picking through a pile of discarded parts at the city dump outside my home town. It’s only the flash of an image, like a still photograph - his smile, his hand reaching for a curved piece of metal - a bicycle bumper - the collar of his jacket, the twinkle in his eye.  My parents couldn’t afford bicycles for all six of us kids, so he found parts others didn’t want,

scoured the dump, found more, and built three bicycles - three that served all six of us through our childhood years.  He painted them, and the one I inherited when my older sisters were done with it was the blue one.  It was, during the late years of my childhood, my favorite thing on earth.  I felt like I could go anywhere, do anything when I was riding.

When I see that image of my father, the bent bumper frame in his hand, it is not those feelings of freedom I feel.  It is, more than anything, a sense of understanding - a vision of another human being motivated in ways I know.  I am, in that flash of a moment, in the presence of a peer - a parent, doing what it takes to find a way to give his child something good, something that opens up childhood in the right ways.

What makes that image so essential is connection.  A connection, a deep understanding of a person who, for most of my young life, I had believed was wholly beyond my capacity to understand.

“There are days,” a fictional character once said*, “when we are simply nowhere.”

Every writer knows that feeling.  In point of fact, in the writing of this blog, I have said it to myself (well, said, “I am nowhere”) half a dozen times.  In recent months, I think most of the country knows this feeling - events spiraling out of control, beyond our ability to affect them, leaving us feeling impotent, frustrated -- nowhere. It is the national disease of our time, and one that writers are intimately familiar with.  

What strikes me as I think of this is that, in order to truly leave that feeling, that emotional/psychological trap behind, you must actively choose to be somewhere.  You cannot just wait for events to unfold and hope for the best, you cannot be passive, just as writers (the real ones) know they cannot just wait for “inspiration.”  To be passive is to surrender.  Writers know this - they know they must power through that fiction known as “writer’s block” to find the words hiding behind their fear.  Athletes know it -- they know they must power through that very real phenomenon known as “the wall” to get to their best performance.  You must be somewhere.  You must take a stand, write the words, run the miles, and stand up.  

Here’s where I stand, here is the ‘somewhere’ that I am:   I stand with Standing Rock, who are protecting their lands and the water that all of us must have from the inevitable (yes, it is inevitable) poisoning that would result if the oil companies win.  I stand with Black Lives Matter, because to stand against them would, in my view, be simply inhuman. I stand with my brothers and sisters of Asian, Latina, Middle Eastern, African, and Native American heritage who are not asking for special treatment, but only that their lives be lived with equal safety and opportunity as their Caucasian fellows.  I stand with the LGBQT community, because having the freedom to choose how we identify ourselves and who we love is essential to the very nature of a democracy.  I stand with my sisters and brothers who practice the peaceful religion of Islam, because we were founded not as a Christian nation, but as a nation of religious freedom. And, I stand, without hesitation, without question, and in the face of my own very real fears, against all those who would oppose equality, who would oppose justice, who would promote fear and hatred.

How to make that stand is a much harder question.  The ‘how’ is the source of the fear, the frustration, the sense of being nowhere felt by so many in this country, on all sides of every debate or action.  We make choices when we do this - which is what brings me back to that image of my father at the dump, eyes twinkling over his find of a bent  bicycle bumper.   He had returned from serving his country during the war, a war during which his country unjustly imprisoned Japanese Americans, while reviling Hitler for imprisoning Jews; a war during which The House UnAmerican Activities Committee** ruined lives of American citizens while ignoring their first Amendment rights; a war during which we became the only country to ever use nuclear power against another country.  He had returned from this service and chose to be in this life the kind of person who stands up; once he simply quit his business when his partners were considering a course of action my father felt would be unfair to customers and he could not convince them otherwise - simply resigning, returning home and taking  his family to the drive-in, until finally his partners relented.  He chose to be a good person in his community and in his family - a good father, a good husband.  In that moment of joy at the dump, with the bumper in his hand, he celebrated not only the find of something that would make his children happy, but the life of connection

to others, lived out while standing up for what you believe.

For him, in that moment, no dis-empowerment existed, no frustration, no fear over the rampant evil in our world.  He lived a life of connection and clear, solid principles, and he practiced that according to his gifts - his gift of an extraordinary skill at fatherhood, of natural and beautiful connection to others in his life, of seeing them all as equals, including the clients of his business that he stood up for that day.   He lived according to his gifts, and never wavered in his belief in what was right.

It is that lesson I put forward for my writer friends, my activist friends, my friends of both Democrat and Republican persuasion (I am, myself, an Independent and a centrist, and have always been, defining what both of those mean on my own terms).  Live according to your gifts. I do not have the power, nor the skills, to impact change in all of those things I stand for.  I have no skill (and want none) at politics or community organizing or revolution.  What I do have gifts for are the written word, persuasion, and teaching.  I am not a particularly brave person, and I have real fears about what these stands could mean for me.  I have been called brave, but I have never felt brave. During the first Gulf War, when I practiced Islamic covering for many months in support of Muslim women in our community, I felt fear regularly, but took it as an opportunity to teach.  When I have stood up to Union practices I opposed, or unfair practices by a Homeowner’s association, or destructive policies at the school where I teach, people called me brave, and I was afraid.  I don’t know - and likely never will - what impact any of those actions had on the long term.  I do know that I was frequently thanked by others in those battles for giving voice to their opinions.  I work with words - it’s what I do.  

It is what all writers do, whether reeling under the weight of writer’s block, or spending hours at the keyboard with words flowing.  The things for which we stand come out in the words, whether through fictional characters dialogue and actions, or nonfiction essays.  Be sure, as you write them, that you honor those people in your lives like my father - standing in the dump, holding what treasures you have, and using them to make life better.

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NOTE: This is not a political blog, and this post does NOT signal a move away from that, but sometimes there are things that just have to be said.

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NOTES:

* the "fictional character" was Sam Seaborn in an episode of "West Wing"

** a committee which some recent leaders have suggested, horrifically, that we need to re-establish

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FINALLY: A note of apology to those awaiting the promised free download of a GuideSheet for Writing Groups. Due to copyright issues, the free download and the full-length book (which will be available in paperback and e-book on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites) must be posted at the same time. The delay is due to being sure all permissions are in place. While verbal permissions have been received, we are awaiting the formal permissions before posting, which should be soon.