Stillness and the Open Door: Living Alone vs Living With Others for a Writer

A few days ago,  a picture of my late husband came up in my “memories” on Facebook.  I re-posted it, as I had been thinking about him a lot in recent days.  I was surprised then, when two people who had known us and lived in our house back then posted lovely memories of him and of living with our family, and I also received private messages from two others about memories the picture had evoked for them of those times at our house.  I’ve often talked about our “crowded house” from the days before he became ill.   Over the years of our marriage, many people - some colleagues from work, some friends from volunteer or interest activities, some family members - came to live in our big communal home when they were without other places to stay for one reason or another.  Some just needing a place to stay for the few months between college and grad school, some between jobs or between moving, some in hopes of joining our family, some fallen on hard times, some just because they needed, for a time, to share expenses, and some taking shelter from stalkers or abusive partners.  Some stayed mere days and I don’t remember most of them;  many stayed for weeks or months, or, in some cases, even years.  

Each and every time, they brought different energy, different contributions, different problems into our home, but all of them live in my memory.  I think now of Tim, Lester, Gina, Sarah, Gilbert, Paul, Mary, John, Donna, Christopher, Denise, Ed, Wilson (and family), Ruth, J.T., Eric, Scott, and my oft-in, oft-out sister Jean Marie - I think of all of them with affection, and remember the laughter around the dining room table, the shouting up two flights of stairs, the veritable mountains of cloth on the laundry room floor, and the constant music and motion of such a household.

Since my husband’s passing, I have also lived with others from time to time - some family members moving back with partners and/or children, some friends on hard times, some just because.  In those years, I’ve lived with Berg, Shawn, Jinny, Madison, Rose, Amy, Denni, Kayla, Emily, Hannah, Daymon and Iris. Not to mention, while in Africa, Paige and Digna.  

I have also lived alone.  The first four years after my husband’s death, and from time to time in between, and all of the last year, I have been alone in my home.  This brings an entirely different energy, and, any time I live with a roommate or have others living with me, I feel more appreciation of those alone times, and struggle with the adjustment.   I have been fortunate that (almost) all of the room-mates, house-mates, co-habitants that I’ve lived with over the years have been congenial, fun,

respectful of boundaries, and have left me with pleasant memories.  But even the most pleasant of co-habitants cannot give back the comfortable solitude, the daily stillness that living alone brings.  The sense of deep inner quiet that the outer world cannot reach.

I do miss that.  Every time.  

I grew up in a similar household - six sisters, two Cuban foster-sisters, and a string of foundlings my mother would take in from time to time - a loud, raucous, chaotic Irish Catholic household.  In those days, I would simply leave - go out for long walks, find a park bench or perch on top of a hill just outside of town, and simply sit - alone, quiet, undisturbed.  It was in those times that words began to come to me, and I began to write. Then, even back at my desk in the noisy house, I could disappear into the stillness between myself and the page.   Living alone is conducive to a strong relationship with your page, to the kind of concentration and focus that helps to structure a story and weave a plot together, that allows you to know a character and sink into their thoughts.  

Living alone has seemed to me, from time to time, to be the ideal situation for a writer.  And for me.  And yet, I keep gladly opening the door to others to live with me.  I have, over the years, received many messages from people grateful for the times that open door was the thing they needed.  Every time someone (or several someones) stepped through, I struggled with the loss of that stillness, sometimes for days or weeks, sometimes for the whole time they were there.  But in my mind, I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.

Do I, in the early mornings, wish for days of the solitude, the stillness, the inner and outer quiet?  Certainly.  But mostly what I feel, as a person and as a writer, is a sense of gratitude for all of those with whom I’ve shared time and space, meals and laughter.  Gratitude for the company, the compassion, the lessons learned in cooking, building, logic, and life;  gratitude for the experience of difference, the lessons in the wide variety of humor, the discoveries of passions I might otherwise not have known.  Gratitude for all the things I learned and observed:  a young man’s pain over a troubled childhood; the struggles of a budding artist; the joys of a love found under our roof; the poems read out loud to each other; time spent with two friends knee-deep in laundry, sorting it out and laughing; the spontaneous dances in the living room; the boys and men, girls and women, children and couples who shared with us, laughed with us, cooked with us, and grew with us.  A closed door would never have generated those memories.  I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.  

There is an old joke which has recently resurfaced as a social media meme:  “I’m a writer.  Fair warning:  anything you say or do I may use in my stories.”  While few of my characters feel directly based on this multitude of people I’ve known and lived with, every living breathing character who lives and loves and struggles on my pages -all of them- in some way or other,  walked through that open door.  Whether they are literally based on people who have lived with me, or just grew from the broadened knowledge of human-ness that came from so much life under my roof.

I will always find solitude, will always find my way back to the long days filled with comfortable deep stillness of mind, body, and home, and within that stillness, will always be an open door.

Two Things That Should be in NO WRITER'S Skill-Set

I've been absent from this site for a while - Life intervened, and so did Writing (with a capital "W").  I have just sent to a group of five first-readers the first-draft manuscript of my next book, "The Map of Faith," and am waiting to hear back from them.

Waiting, i.e. "patience," is not in my skill-set.

I kind of stink at it.

This isn't anything new to those who know me, especially my  children.  But, I find ways to cope.  Today, in realization that either I had to do something about it or be in danger of rivaling Neilsen families for logged television hours, I took action.  One of the things that has always stimulated me is to get my lazy self into a new setting.   I do this a number of different ways.  I have moved more often than anyone I know.  (I've lived in my current town for 16 years, and, in that time, have lived in twelve different places.)  I will go somewhere I've never been before - which,

in recent years, has included DC, Cancun, Dublin, London, Windhoek, Ongwediva, New Mexico, and other places I can't think of right now. Or, I will change something smaller - re-arrange my house (I can hear my kids groaning), go to writer's retreats, or just hit the road without knowing where I'm headed.   All of these things work.  Usually.


Today, after a couple of weeks of "slump" after finishing that first draft (the second book in a trilogy) I got in the car, yellow pad and computer in my shoulder bag, and drove to the first coffee shop I could find, ordered a mocha, and sat down, thinking I would write a blog post.  I wrote nine pages of backstory for book #3 in the series, after nearly three weeks of not being able to write anything.

Change is good.

I know not everyone agrees with that.  Writing "tips and tricks" lists always have the suggestion that you make it a rule to have a routine, and stick to that routine, to keep yourself writing regularly.

Rules are also not in my skill set.

I believe that they are probably not in the skill-set of most creative people.  Or shouldn't be. There should be only one rule:   no rules.   And perhaps "change is good."  (OK, so two rules).

As I sat in the coffee shop this morning, pounding out nine pages of backstory for book #3, framing the story, feeling the characters rise and stretch from the nap I'd forced on them, I knew that each day when I go to write, I'm going somewhere different.  Today, a coffee shop;  tomorrow, perhaps the neighborhood bar (which opens for breakfast and has good coffee).  Or maybe the library, or a McDonalds.  I'll go wherever I land each day, and leave when my fingers are itching with story.  So, perhaps at 2:00 in the morning I'll end up at the cafe tables inside my local 24-hour supermarket, writing through the night.
Tips and tricks lists, (and books, and lectures, and classes) for writers are wonderful.  They've helped me many a time to finish a piece or get over a block or find a character's voice.  But, really, all you need if you you can write is to listen to yourself.  Whatever it is that feels like it's holding you back, get rid of it, or at least get away from it.  If your 'writing routine' isn't working, change it.  Change the place, or the time of day, or the media you use.  (Sometimes just switching from the keyboard to pencil and paper has saved me).  The basic advice (call it a rule if you must) is simple:   pay attention.  

From Zen masters to counselors, to bosses, your third grade teacher to your grad school adviser, it is something they have all - always - been trying to get us to do.  PAY ATTENTION!!!

And give yourself a break.  If the way others are telling you to write, if the way you have been writing, is not working, dump it, ditch it, can it, CHANGE IT.   And don't stop changing it till it works.  For you.

3 strategies To Kiss Writer's Block Good-bye

When I was in grad school, my thesis adviser was an amazing woman.  She could make me feel giddy with pride over feedback of a single word, or, also with a single word, make every fiber of my being want to hide in shame.  She was demanding;  every week I had to, in addition to my regular studies and any other obligations I might have, turn in to her a packet of writing that she would consider worthy of a week's effort.  She brooked no bullshit - I recall once laboring for hours over a research and study plan, which she glanced through, laughed delightedly, and said, handing it back to me.  "What total bullshit.  Start again."  She was also the most supportive and compassionate mentor/teacher/adviser I've ever had the privilege to work with.  She knew that I was fighting to keep focus on my work with a houseful of children, two jobs, and limited resources.  She believed in me, and never let me forget it.  We lost touch after I graduated, and I have missed her greatly.

Starting out your writing life with someone like that is both a blessing and a curse.   On those days when I'm convinced that everything I'm writing is crap, I can remember her face when reading a short story I submitted to her in one of my weekly packets, kicked back in her office, surrounded by books written by masters, she holds the papers, reading quietly, her face soft, until she finally sets it in her lap, looks at me, and breathes out a single word:  "Lovely."   Those moments can hold me up in the darkest of my self-doubts.  On the other hand, when the long days of working alone on a manuscript pile up, and no one is offering encouragement, when for whatever reason and in whatever circumstances you do not feel supported by people who you really think should be supporting you, those days stand in stark contrast to the days when your mentor was right there; reliable, constant, honest.

We all have those days.  (That's my firm belief - if you have never experienced those days of self doubt or sense of isolation, please don't tell me - I don't want to know you).  Mostly we just soldier on, suffer through, with a not-so-healthy helping of self-pity.

We call it a slump, we call it writer’s block, we read endless tips and tricks, articles and books about how to conquer it.  I would say - DON’T.  Don’t try to conquer it, don’t try to make it go away, don’t think of it as something to vanquish.  Think of it as something to use.  

1.  Look into the heart of it.  Face it.  Immerse in it.   If you’re experiencing what we would normally call “writer’s block” - you sit down to write and the words won’t come, then STOP.  Think about that.  Where were you before?  I have found that, when this hits me, it is often because I have lost a sense of the purpose of what I’m writing.  There is something called “The Steinbeck Statement” - John Steinbeck is said to have, each time he began a work, written a one-sentence statement of what he wanted the reader to be thinking or feeling when they finished his story, put it on the wall above his writing desk, and looked at it every day before he began writing, to keep his focus clear.  Your heart knows when you are moving away from
   
   what your purpose is.  You know why you are writing this story, or that novel, or this poem.  Forget what the market says - forget what others around you are doing or promoting - do whatever it takes to rediscover and re-focus on your purpose for this story.  I have gone so far as to throw out 24 chapters to return to a point where my purpose was clear, and, once, even quit a writing group filled with people I loved, to prevent myself from writing a story for them, instead of for the truth of the story.  Once you know your purpose, once you commit to it, the words will, I promise you, return.
2. Paint a fake.  When teaching writing, I often told students about the Steinbeck strategy above, and also often told them a story about Pablo Picasso.  I heard this story from a professor of mine, and am unsure of its attribution.  It is said that Picasso once attended a party hosted by a wealthy patron, and, accompanying him, was a young painter who had been apprenticing with him.  In circulating through the party, they came on one of Picasso’s own paintings on the wall of this wealthy patron’s home, a group of people gathered around it and exclaiming.  Someone turned to Picasso and said, “What do you think of it?”   Picasso looked at the painting, shrugged, and said, “It’s a fake,” then walked away.  His young companion scooted after him in shock.  “Pablo,” he said, “Why did you say that?  You painted that painting, I watched you paint
   
   that!  Why would you say it’s a fake?”  Picasso shrugged again, took a sip of his drink, and said, “Sometimes I paint fakes.”   Some instances of “writer’s block” have more to do with lack of confidence in what you’re doing.  Sometimes you are working on a story simply because the details, the plot, or a character are so strong in your mind that they won’t leave you alone, even though you have other things, that you think are more central to your purpose, that you’d like to write.  You have choices - you can try to push them out of your head, box up everything or burn all those pages, and hope that all of this will push those insistent pages out of your mind.  Or you can paint a fake - write the insistent story or character until it stops pounding at your brain, and then move on.  Who knows?  Maybe “the fake” will turn out to be the story your subconscious needs to write, more central to your writer’s purpose than you thought.

3) Get over yourself.  The self-doubt that often underlies much writer’s block comes from

unfair comparisons.  Others around you are getting published and you are not.  Or, you are published, but others are getting more positive reviews than you are.  Or, you’re getting positive reviews, but people around you seem to respect other writers more than you.  

Fine.  No problem.

Others are succeeding - that should be a cause for celebration, not a reason for becoming disheartened.  But, we’re human, we feel slighted easily, especially when the work isn’t going well and we’re feeling vulnerable.  

It can be hard (some would say impossible, but I don’t buy that) at those times to remember that all those folks around you who are being lauded for their work (when you feel like a bucket of proverbial crap) had their months and years and days of struggle and doubt and vulnerability, and, here’s the thing:  they survived it.  So can you.

So, while “get over yourself” sounds harsh, it’s really about remembering that you are who you are, you write what you write, and it has absolutely nothing to do with what anyone else has done or accomplished. Celebrate them - then go home, sit at your desk, and celebrate your own self, your own work.

And, perhaps, remember that, when you are down, when it isn’t working, it might just help to invite a fellow writer out for a beer or a coffee, sit together, laugh at and with each other, and just be two humans, both trying to do your best work.

Using Humor in Fiction: CONNECT the Reader

Like millions of others, I was scrolling through Facebook earlier today, and saw a post someone had put up - a joke - told as though it had actually happened to them, but it’s a very old joke:  a man gets hired as a clerk in a store, and, on the first day, is confronted with a very ugly and cranky woman with two children.  He tries to compliment her on her children, saying, “Are they twins?”  When she snaps that  they’re obviously different ages, why would he think they’re twins - he replies “Well I just couldn’t believe anyone would sleep with you twice…”  and he gets fired.

Every time I’ve heard it, the joke has made me uncomfortable, but it also makes me think of a different, and true, story.  When my parents were young, and my mother gave birth to one of my older siblings, they were in a hospital room, admiring their new child, when a nun (it was a Catholic hospital) came into the room, and asked if the child was theirs.  When they said of course, why would she ask, she replied, “Well, I just couldn’t believe the two of you could have such a beautiful child.”  (My parents weren’t always in well with those in the Church).  My father, without losing a beat, quipped to the nun, “Well, Sister, we didn’t do it with our faces!”

The two stories are similar, but there is an essential difference.  In the first one, the person who is not attractive is target, is the object of ridicule, is unredeemed.  In the second, the power comes

from the response my father made - not only side-stepping the insult, but in fact embracing it while turning the ridicule on the person doing the  insulting.

In a piece of writing, humor can serve many purposes - like the “comic relief” on stage or in the movies,  it can give the reader space to catch breath during intense or dark stories, or the humor itself can make a point, or it can reveal much about a character in the way she/he uses humor or reacts to it.  But, as with any element of a piece of fiction, each element must serve the essential purpose of connecting the reader to the story.  So, then, the question becomes - how do we want the reader to be connected?  Do we want the reader to identify with the snarky clerk who gains cultural capital by insulting an unattractive person, or do we want the reader to connect to the person who, once insulted, still claims their own power?

It is a question which, when creating a story, writers should consider with care - what purpose does this humor serve, and how do I expect that the reader will connect with it?  If my reader identifies with this joke, what does the reader then bring back to the story as they continue reading?   

This is not to say that we can’t have a character make a cruel joke at the expense of someone else in the story - doing so can effectively serve to reveal the dark side of a character, but my point is that we must be careful in how we present that - be sure that the reader will see it as revealing character rather than bringing that negative frame to the rest of the story.

Writing humor well is one of the most difficult challenges in writing.  But it is also potentially the most powerful element you can bring to a story.   What do you want the reader to take from this  should always be a question in the mind of the writer.  Careless insertion of humor can damage a story as much as - perhaps more than - taking the cheap shot can damage your image in the eyes of your friends.  Be careful with it.  

Have fun, bring laughter and relief to your stories, but, at the same time, in editing and revising, consider the humor element as seriously as every element of the story - perhaps even more so.

Write Like A River: On Working on 2 manuscripts at Once

A few feet behind my back fence, there’s a stream.  It’s not much to look at - the banks crowded with weeds often waist or shoulder high, the banks themselves so steep that you never actually see the stream when looking out the window or across the fence.  The south side of the whole development is bordered by this stream, and, across the stream is another development.  I hear the kids over there playing in the summer and spring.  Today, that stream is under flash flood warning.  I’ve done what I can to prepare the house and grounds - put emergency supplies in the car, thought about high places I could stow valuable things if I need to evacuate.  

In the meantime, I put the possible (but unlikely) emergency out of my head by working.  My muse has been problematic lately - filling my head with scenes that MUST be written until 1...2...3 in the morning, then waking me at 6 with more to write.  It’s the right kind of problem to have as a writer, but, one does miss deep, unbothered sleep.  The other problem is that I have two manuscripts scattered in not-so-neat piles across my desk.  One is the story, still unfinished (though full in my head) that keeps me up nights, the other is the near-final draft of a book written some years ago, and revised over the last couple of years, now nearing publication.  They are very different stories - one is the story of the multi-generation impact on a family of a mining accident, and the other is a story of one woman’s struggle with her relationships with other women.  

The mining story is the one keeping me up nights, the voices and secrets of this family so real, so insistent on being written.  I have to trust that process - just open, let the words go on paper, not worry about anything but how the story moves.  The other manuscript is finished, but not finished - requiring careful attention to every word, every passage, every spelling - the last and oh-so-important edit before publication.  Two VERY different processes, both of which I am working on at the same time.  And, given the situation in my house today, I kept having the thought that they were, each, like a river.

Perhaps the same river.  The mining story the raging floodwaters, giving you no choice but to get wet, to immerse, to be carried along, and the other the mouth of the river where it joins the sea - each drop coming finally, comfortably home to the sea of origin.  A nice analogy, but what does that make me, the writer?   If I’m in a boat, I have to, for stories like the first, hang onto the sides and just ride the current, but, at the mouth of the river, before it comes home, my net comes out, fishing as carefully as I’m able for any detritus I don’t want the story to carry out to sea.  

I want to write like the river, especially the river today - lashed with rain, swelling with the power of the cold water, rushing along to the place all rivers go.  I don’t really want to be weilding the net, but, as I actually DO that work, the river and all it’s travels become more real.  Each word fished out, each misplaced comma removed, each scene cleaned becomes clearer, more essential.  And it is odd, too - pleasantly odd - how, as I do this work on two separate and very different stories, in a real way they become one.  The heartaches, the secrets, the pains that drive each of the people in the mining story are the same, in every way that counts, as those that drive the woman dealing with her internal struggles over friendship, betrayal, and guilt. It is, all of it, one river.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE:   I don’t get many comments published on this blog, but I frequently get messages via email or Facebook from people who’ve read here.  For all of you - first, thank you for sharing your thoughts and appreciation with me, and, second, please do not worry - if the stream rises, it rises.  I’m prepared either way.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Look for “Locus of Memory” (the manuscript currently in editing) to be available on both Amazon and Nook in late December or early January.  There will also, for two weeks prior to release, be an opportunity to get the book for free on BookGrabbr - watch for notices on Facebook, Twitter, and my website.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Find me on Facebook at:  https://www.facebook.com/judy.c.mckenzie or my Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/Judith-Mikesch-McKenzie-306271749432891/

Or visit my website at:  http://www.judithmckenzie.com/

The 4 Best Pieces of Writing Advice on the Web - and One That Isn't There

Sometimes, even those of us who teach writing have to remind ourselves of what is the best advice on writing.  From time to time, I find myself searching for what writers - successful and unsuccessful, famous and obscure, literary and not-so.  In my recent searches, I found the following four to be the best pieces of advice I found. There are links to the articles in which I found all four pieces following each.
So here are the top four (and one more) in ascending order.


4)  Stop when you're at a high point - when the writing is flowing.
I first got this advice from a wonderful book called "Writing the Natural Way" by Gabriele Rico.  This author (Gladstone) puts this particular piece of advice further down his list than I would have done, but  I love his quoting of Hemingway on the subject:

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Many have noted the positive impact of sleep and the mind's Beta-state on creative process, so there's no need to belabor that here. What is worth saying is: take this advice.

There is nothing quite so satisfying as coming to your writing table and knowing just where the scene is going as you sit down.  If you stop at a lull, or a "blocked moment," chances are that's where you'll be when you sit down to write again the next day.  And, of course, Hemingway was right - over the night, the ideas at the height of energy will grown and deepen in your mind, making the writing deeper as well.

The 5 best pieces of writing advice I didn't get in school 


3) Write the book you want to read.  
Seems obvious, but the author here (Chuck Sambuchino)  is quick to caution about the difference between  and, what a lot of would-be writers unfortunately hear:  the book you want to write.  The difference, as seen here, is largely in motivation.  You need, when you get to the bottom of it, to put yourself in the reader's place - what would motivate them to devour a book, to love it, to want to pass it on to others to share the joy?  That is the book you should write, not the one that gets you to an image of yourself as a writer.

What is the essence of a book that makes you want to curl up with it, that keeps you up hour after hour, turning pages - what is the core of that energy, that pull, the story, that draws you in and won't let you go?   The answer will be different for every writer, and it is that energy, that purpose, that you should write to.



The Best Piece of Writing Advice I ever Got - and the Worst


2)  Just Do It
This article (by Sarah Anne Johnson) contains many good pieces of advice, but this one is the most essential.  We writers are a whiny lot - we like to blame lack of writing on everything imaginable - work, kids, bills, a bad cold, a misbehaving dog.  The reality is, however, that  we find time to feed the cats, do the laundry, wipe the kitchen counters, stare out windows, go shopping, etc., etc.  To be a writer  is about making your writing a priority, or, as another contributor to this piece said, make it a way of life.  
Sit down and simply write.  Just do it.
There is even a quite funny meme circulating from the popular television show  How I Met Your Mother's character Barney Stinson on this very advice. (at the left)
(Note: many, many other pieces of advice in this article are also worth reading and taking to heart.)
Get to Work: Writers on the Best Advice They Ever Received



1)  BE BRAVE
Every writer - nay, every creative person - is riddled at some point or at some level of their being  with doubts.  They are the bane of our existence.  We question the worthiness of this draft, or this page, or this sentence, or, for God's sake, this word.  More than that, even, though, we question our own worthiness to write something anyone else would want to read.  So many writing students over the years have said these words to me:  "What could I write that anyone would want to read?"  In this piece, the advice comes from Eudora Welty:  
“No art ever came out of not risking your neck.”  
I tell students that they should think of the last thing they learned to do and ask themselves if they did it perfectly the first time. Universally, the answer is no - it took practice. And so does writing.  We are all going to write things that are bad - that's the risk.  But, in the end, we will find that moment when something we have written touches both us and the reader - we succeed at #3, above - writing the book we want to read. But only if we take the risk.

I always thought that I couldn't write science fiction, in spite of the fact that I loved it.  Then, a few years back, women in a writing group I was in at the time dared me to try.  I chose to do so during NaNoWriMo, the annual write-50,000-words-in-30-days challenge, giving myself deadline pressure in addition to the challenge issued by my friends.  The resulting book, Somewhere Never Traveled, became the best-selling book out of the seven I have published, not to mention that it freed me to pursue a genre which I have always loved.

All of the pieces of advice in this article (by Maria Popova) are wonderful, and worth reading.

Famous Advice on Writing

And, the one piece of advice I did not find on the web in lists or articles? 

#1-A:  HAVE FUN

Let yourself go - don't take yourself or your writing seriously at every moment.  Let playfulness seep in - not only to the stories you write, but to your choices of subjects and stories and characters.  The book I had the most fun writing, Somewhere Never Traveled, is also my most successful to date (not counting the sales of my two textbooks, which I would not want to compare to fiction sales).  Will it last? Will it meet the challenge of #3, above?  Time will tell, but I have no regrets.  I have never felt so liberated as when I finished that story.  And that matters. 

One Character Development Activity Every Writer Should Try

Have you ever been in a writing workshop where the instructor/leader gives an exercise to do, and everyone gets excited and gets beautiful results they can't wait to share, while you sit there like a dolt looking at your blank sheet of paper? I have. It ain't fun. All of us who write have tried methods, strategies, workshops, etc., that are wildly touted, and just don't work for us. It's wildly disappointing and more than a little humiliating. In my writing classes, though, I tell students not to forget those activities, the ones that don't work for them -- because they might work, later, for something else. I've had that happen to me. I sat in a writing seminar in my graduate creative writing program while everyone went nuts over a mind-mapping exercise, and I got exactly nothing. However, years later, in the midst of a huge block preventing me from finishing a book, I remembered that day, drew a mind map, and finished the manuscript that became my first book, Two Mothers Speak. I don’t usually talk about books on this blog - I’m not a book reviewer;   I don’t review others’ books.  I’ve also taken to being sure any political posts I put up go on my other (personal) blog, because the purpose here is about documenting and sharing a writer’s journey to create, sharing strategies, thoughts, and methods.  But, today, I AM going to talk about a book.

The current manuscript I’m working on has an underlying theme that deals with maps - maps and cartographic terminology function as metaphors throughout the story.  So,  being the insane research geek that I am, early on I immersed myself in learning about maps - interviewed cartographers, dug out 20-year old notes from when I worked in a county map room, and, of course, read books.  I ordered a number of books about maps from Amazon, and, as they do, Amazon made me recommendations on that basis.

One of them was titled Personal Geographies:   Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking.  It sounded like it might be about making “art” maps, and I thought one of my characters would be very interested in that, so I ordered a copy.  Personal Geographies, however, is more of a how-to book on making maps as keepsakes.  It’s fun- there are instructions and color plates and the whole thing is very eye-appealing and inviting.  I was about to set it aside as possibly a gift for someone else when I took a closer look at two of the sections.   Titled, Mapping the Self and Mapping Your Experience, these sections encourage you to use the projects in the book, while suggesting a few more approaches, to explore yourself and your experience - in order to solve problems, relieve stress, understand yourself better, etc.  

It struck me that, while I’d done many similar exercises in the past for myself, I’d never considered them an activity for exploring and deepening a character.  In the following days, I mapped to the outline of a head memories and secrets and trials and joys of one of my main characters.  It’s not particularly artistic, (not the point of it, anyway)  but I came out of it, through this mapping and the both visual and kinesthetic experience of creating it with a much deeper understanding of what drives this person, and what haunts him.

This may have worked particularly well for me for this character because of the fact that maps are a frequent metaphor in this character’s story, but I think it could work in exploring the depth in character’s in any story, and I highly recommend it.  Besides, it’s fun.

A link to the book for your consideration:

Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed Media Mapmaking