How Writing Can Surprise You

Writing can trick you. You can think that you're writing about one thing, and on one level you are, but you are also writing about something else.

I wanted to write Joy Returns! because I wanted to capture that moment that I remembered of falling in love with music. But as I wrote the book, I realized that it was also about staying true to your creativity and holding on despite what happens and what other people do. Similarly, when I wrote Kate and the Horses, I knew I wanted to write about the horses that I knew when I was young. I didn't realize that I was about to embark on a journey where I would really explore how I felt alone and different in the world.

I had to write this current book because my cat died, and I promised her before she died that I would. I believe she was pleased about that, but the promise was more so my heart wouldn't completely break. I had a project to do. I wanted to honor her and other cats that I've known in my life. But, as the project has gone on, I'm not sure if I'm writing about cats or about all different parts of me. The book has become a story of figuring out where is home. Two months ago, the day after I handed over the draft to my beta readers, I received a letter from our landlord, announcing a 37 percent rent increase. We realized that we have been priced out of where we live. Mike and I and our cats would have to find a new home. It felt sudden, and it felt like something that I had been working on for months.

I think we have found a new place. We are going to sign the new lease this week. It is in the Gold Country. It happened in a magical way, like a day when the words seem to fly out of your fingers. We were visiting friends there. We just went to see if we would like it. We had no appointments, nothing organized. But before we left after breakfast, we decided just to go see a house nearby. There happened to be men working outside, and they agreed to let us in. I talked to one of them. I told him we had three cats. I said I had been looking at listings, and no one seemed to want a tenant with animals. He told me he liked cats. I showed him pictures of ours on the phone.

When we got home, we filled out a formal application with the property management company, although we don't look that great on paper. It felt doomed. But they called us back in two days. I had actually been talking to the owner of the property. He liked us. They wanted us as tenants. If all goes right, we'll be moving in a month.

And that's what I think writing does. It opens your heart. It shows you things that you didn't know or you didn't want to think about. It eases pain. It shines sunlight on to wounds. It is powerful medicine.

The Mystery of Writing

Lately, I've been thinking about how I write. The way I work doesn't really line up with the way I thought it would be. When I was growing up, I imagined that being a writer meant that you sat at your desk for a certain amount of time each day, and you wrote chapters until you finished your book. Then you sat at your desk and revised, and one day, you wrote "The End," and it was cause for great celebration.

It turns out that I don't sit at a desk. I write in bed. And I have concentrated periods of time where I am writing chapters.  But more and more, I'm finding that an important part of writing is listening and doing things that doesn't look like much. Doodles. Reading a book. Watching a movie. Taking a walk. Stopping in the middle of an errand to write something down in that red notebook that lives in my purse. Making timelines, clustering. Engaging in basic brainstorming that doesn't translate to word counts. And I could work on the celebration. Right now that just consists of a basic Snoopy dance and a hoot and a holler or two.

Sometimes it all feels fraudulent. Why am I not writing paragraphs? Is this really going to end up being a chapter? Then I remember back in the day when I read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. She recommended morning pages, writing two pages in a notebook when you first woke up. I probably did that for a year. It did make me feel like I was doing something.  But I have no idea what happened to those notebooks. I never referred to those pages again. If I looked back at them now, I'm sure I would read something along the lines of "I'm very tired. The sky looks grey today. A bird is singing. I wonder what kind of bird sings that song." So I achieved my goals at the time. I wrote those two pages, but it didn't take me anywhere.

I'm currently reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. It's all about creativity, and I'm sure many would think it was too woo woo. But California is my home. I can speak woo woo. Anyway, in the book, Gilbert talks about  how she thinks ideas come to writers. She feels that an idea will choose a writer, and the writer can then decide if this is an idea  that she wants to explore. If she doesn't, that's fine. The idea will find someone else. If she does, the idea and the writer are now in relationship. And if things come up and the writer ends up not pursuing the idea, then the idea goes and finds a writer who will.

When I was writing Joy Returns!, I was afraid my idea would leave me. If that had happened, I would have understood. I listened to someone else's idea of my idea. I tried to bend myself in a pretzel to figure out how to make my idea their idea, and then I cried and couldn't write anything. I felt my idea going away. But before she did, she woke me up in the middle of the night for several days in a row. She made me write when I was tired and had no analytical resources. I just threw words on a page and thought they were nothing. Then she let me sleep through the night again. When I read the words in the light of day, I realized that my idea was still here, and I settled down and got to work and vowed to listen and not to stray.

Writing is a mysterious business. I'm often humbled. I always learn from the process. I frequently feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I try to keep track. I try to keep a connection. I try to honor the ideas that come to me and write them down as fully and as clearly as I can.

Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield

I read this book last week while watching the Academy Awards. Since I was very young, I have watched the Oscars. It's something that I remember really enjoying with my mother and my sister. It felt very special then, and it still feels very important to me even though a) I rarely see all of the movies any more, b) the stars don't seem nearly as glamorous to me now, and c) I often find the show boring and tedious. (I miss the big production numbers they used to do. I used to really like Billy Crystal's medleys. I wish Hugh Jackman had hosted the show more than once.)

My solution this year was to read during moments that did not hold my interest. For this year's Academy Awards, I chose Steven Pressfield's Turning Pro, which felt like the perfect antidote to an awards ceremony. To me, Turning Pro is about making an internal commitment to your art and not caring so much about external validation. Perhaps you end up with a glittering trophy at the end, but what's most important is putting in your time and taking your creative life seriously. It's not about one moment of glory; it's about living a life where you produce whatever you call art.

I ended up quite happy with this way of watching the Oscars. Turning Pro is made up of short pieces, ideal for a commercial break. (That was another issue this year. It was my first Academy Awards since we cut the cord on cable. This show has been so much a tradition in my life, that it took me until the day before the show to realize that I would not automatically be able to watch it. Luckily, we figured out a streaming option but it came with ads. I didn't mind. I had a book. When I was young and the Oscars meant so much to me, the ceremony came with commercials.) Anyway, the book seemed to me to be the perfect answer to evening gowns, thank you speeches to agents, and Jet ski jokes. It lingered on in my head long after the orchestra played its final song.

On Perfectionism

This week I've been thinking about efficiency, productivity, and straight lines.

When I was a teen, I was a perfectionist. I was a Straight A, National Honor Society, anorexic girl who had all sorts of rules in her head about how to succeed, and on one level it worked, although it could have killed me.

Thinking back on it now, it's no surprise that it took me so long to write novels, although it is a dream that I've had since childhood. I believe writing novels requires bags of grit. You have to listen to all parts of yourself. You have to often not know. You have to be willing to be humbled, again and again.

Right now, I'm in the beta reader process of my book, and I have heard some suggestions. I have to say, first off, that I am really fortunate to have my beta readers in my life. They are thoughtful and smart. They get me. So I've begun this process, not fully completed, where I'm hearing feedback on my latest draft. And here is my process: “I can't believe I didn't see that! But I read those craft books! How could I have made that mistake?” The perfectionist wails.

But I've come to this answer: I'm not a machine. I will do my analytical best to figure out what to write, but at some points, I may trick myself for the greater good. I may get a little lost to go deeper, to say a truth that may take me several rounds to realize and fully tell.

Maybe some people would have this experience, and the takeaway would be, “Get thee to a feedback group and have continual thoughts on your work as you move through your draft,” and, for some people, that is the answer. That would stop me in my tracks.

So, here I am, a work in progress in more ways than one, taking one step at a time each day, listening, adjusting, and trusting my work. I hope this is helpful in some way. I wish you the best in your creative endeavors.

Practice

I was a shy kid. I mumbled. It was hard to speak. I would often have to repeat my words because nobody could understand what I said. If I had to speak in public, my hands shook. To make matters worse, my hands tended to dance around when I spoke. Shaking dancing hands will tend to distract people from your message

Fast forward to years later in adulthood. Mike and I took a trip back East to attend my ceremony in honor of my father. At the start of the event, my dad walked up to the podium and delivered a speech that was funny and wise. It looked as if he was speaking off the cuff. We even asked him later if that was the case.

He told us he practiced. He  wrote out his speeches, and then he would recite them in the car when he was alone, off on errands. He told us he would go over a speech until it felt natural, until he knew it backwards, forwards, and inside out.

When we returned home, I went to my local women entrepreneur group and signed up to speak. Every meeting, one of the attendees would make a presentation about their business. I had put it off, but now I thought I could do it. I followed my dad's advice and discovered that I loved speaking in front of people. I just had to practice until I would write it in my heart, and then it was really fun. After that, I spoke at this women's group whenever I could. I presented at the Rotary Club. I've given talks to students. I turns out I love to speak about writing. I want to share what I know with people who want to write books. As with speaking, I believe the key is practice.