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Aug 22

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How I started writing in my dream state — And what I learned

As I write this, I’m thinking about following the advice of my blogging partner and taking a nap. That’s because I woke up extra early this morning to write in my dream state.

If you read my last blog post, you know that I decided to turn myself into a morning person after reading the book, “From Where You Dream.”

Here’s more about how I did it and what I learned, starting with a note I had sent to my writer’s group back when I started waking up early: Read more

Aug 19

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Nap your way to health & creativity

Let’s face it, we are insanely busy these days. It seems as if the more technology we have to make our lives easier, the less time we actually have for rest and relaxation or even vacations. (And when we do go on vacation, we often take our work with us).

We live in a culture where the myth of a superman and a superwoman is perpetuated daily and we begin to believe we can and should become these super beings.

I know. I’ve been there and still am to some extent. And I’ve paid for it with my health, my happiness, and my quality of life. It’s called burnout. And the really insane part is I’ve done it more than once. Think I’d learn, right? Read more

Aug 18

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Write from your white-hot center – your dream state

Most people know whether they’re morning people or night people. I’m pretty sure I’m a hybrid. I love early mornings, but I also like to stay up late. Of course, it’s pretty hard to be both ways for long before you crash and burn and have to catch up on sleeping, which I also enjoy.

And despite the fact that I enjoy mornings, I’m not usually one of those ultra early risers. That changed when I read Robert Olen Butler’s book From Where You Dream. This book had a huge influence on my approach to writing.

Art does not come from what you know – the mind, Butler says. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you. Do not “will” the work, Butler says. Write when you feel it’s coming from your unconscious. Butler’s instructions reminds me of how writer John Gardner described novels as “vivid, continuous dreams.”

I was intrigued by what Butler had to say about writing in your “dream state.” I wanted to see how my writing could be different with this approach. I wanted to be more committed to a daily writing practice. Like most writers who juggle writing along with full-time jobs and all the other stuff in life, I had been thinking about my schedule and how I could increase my writing time. I knew writing first thing in the morning was my best chance to write every day before other events or interruptions could interfere — best laid plans and all that. I was ready to put myself in a trance. Read more

Aug 17

Three steps to change & how you can realize your writing goals

New York Times best-selling author Bob Mayer’s nonfiction book Write It Forward is the best book I’ve read for helping writers become successful authors. It’s not a book about plotting or character development (though he does have an excellent book for that—The Novel Writer’s Toolkit). Write It Forward addresses things like fear, self-sabotage, how to design a writer’s business plan with long term and daily goals, how to take yourself seriously as a writer, how to get others to take you seriously, and that big, scary monster called change.

Mayer’s three steps of change are:   Read more

Aug 16

Weather as a character in “Breaking Clean”

Weather may seem mundane, but crafted with finesse, weather becomes an antagonistic force and a “character” to be reckoned with in the memoir, Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt.

Blunt wrote about living in a remote area of Montana and of being separated from her true self. Vivid sensory descriptions and scenes of weather illustrate the natural elements that contributed to Blunt’s isolation and search for her identity.

Blunt and her family lived at the mercy of blowing snow, frigid temperatures, and driving rain that turned roads into impassable muddy troughs. Her description of constant wind is eerie and violent:

“It whipped down out of Canada in gusts and gales unhampered by mountains or trees. Wind blew for days on end, a relentless pushing at your back, a constant moan we listened around and shouted over without really hearing.” Read more

Aug 15

Buck, the movie: how your characters reflect you

Last night I saw the documentary Buck about horse whisperer Buck Brannaman. This movie is not just for horse lovers. It’s a touching story of hope and humanity—how one man overcame the pain and horrors of his early childhood and turned that experience, with the help of loving foster parents, into helping horses and their owners. Instead of repeating the cycle of abuse his father perpetrated on him, Buck found a way to transmute that pain into love, understanding, patience, and compassion.

Buck is a modern-day cowboy version of Gandhi.

The film shows Buck at work—his 40 weeks on the road each year traveling from town to town putting on horse clinics for the locals, showing them how to communicate with and handle their horses. The film shows us where Buck comes from—his harsh early years where he developed the survival skills and insights that eventually set his personal philosophy. We also get to see him working on the set of the movie the Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford.

What does this story have to do with writing? As writers, we’re constantly on the lookout for good characterization, setting, dialogue, etc. This movie has it all—but there was something else I learned about being a writer. Read more

Aug 12

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What is your writing’s ripple effect?

As a writer, think about the impact you have. Your words have the power to do more than entertain. Literature is how people make sense of the world. Writers have a tremendous power to change and even save people through stories.

Author Donna Jo Napoli, who spoke at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators summer conference August 5-8, said she was once asked, “Why do you take a perfectly good book and put something awful in it?”

The question spurred Napoli to think more about why she writes what she does and its ripple effect.

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