The Ninth Circle of Writer's Hell

Do you ever have one of those days when you sit at your computer, staring at the blank 'Compose' page on Blogger (or WordPress or whatever your bloggy poison of choice may be), and think, "I am boring. I am a boring, boring person. My life is boring; my thoughts are boring; my clothes are boring; I am bored just writing this?" Or, if you prefer slightly more straightforward language, do you sit and think, "WHAT ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH AM I GOING TO WRITE ABOUT TODAY?"

I know you'll be shocked to learn that I feel that way right now.

I think there's nothing like the panic that overcomes a writer when we cannot think of anything to write. It is all-encompassing, it is pervasive, it creeps into every vein and every nerve until our palms are sweating and our hair is falling out and our bodies are vibrating with anxiety, and we would give our left arms (or legs or souls or lives or firstborn sons) for just ONE good, or even mildly mediocre, idea. It is, I believe, the ninth circle of a writer's hell, and it is the place we will all go to when we die without EVER WRITING ANYTHING.

Does this sound melodramatic?

GOOD. Because it is. It feels that melodramatic. Which is why I'm using so many italics and CAPITALS.

How can I be a writer, we think, if I can't come up with anything to WRITE? My very identity is being called question! My very soul! The very fiber of my being!! WHO AM I IF I DO NOT WRITE???

(As a side-note, this should be fairly obvious, but let me add that this extreme, panic-stricken melodrama does not help the situation. In no way is it useful, or even inspiring. It's rather more like asking for directions and then putting on a giant pair of noise cancelling headphones while someone is trying to give them to you, and getting anxious and angry because you can't hear what the person is saying, and telling them sternly to just SPEAK UP, for God's sake.)

And then of course, we realize that the answer to that question - WHO AM I IF I DO NOT WRITE, that is, in case you lost track of the thread of this post like I did - is that we are no one. Which then sends us into an unending spiral of depression and more anxiety.

Surprisingly, this also does not lead to any actual writing.

You know what does? Writing. Yes yes, I know, it's a catch 22. We have nothing to write about so we don't write, but the only way to start writing is to write, but we don't have anything to write about so we don't write, but the only way to start writing is to write...

Fun as that endless circling logic is, I hope you'll pardon me if I step away from it for a bit, and point out that I just spent an entire blog post writing about not writing. So, there it is: I can write, after all. 

Yup, there is a point to this post. Who would've thought?

I know it might sound ridiculous, or useless, but this truly is the only way I've ever found to break that panic, unblock the blockage, and escape from the ninth circle of writer's hell: write. It doesn't matter what I write about. More often than not, I write about how I can't write. It feels impossible, so I write about that, too. I give myself free license, and I do NOT edit, ever. I bitch and moan and whine to myself, I indulge every ounce of my own melodrama, and then, somewhere around page ten of my insane ramblings, it stops. The complaining turns into brainstorming; the panic turns into curiosity. 'What if I write about the ninth circle of hell', I think? What if I write about that time I did a swan dive on the streets of Manhattan, or the time I sat in the passenger's seat in a car in Ireland and became convinced I was going to die because I didn't have a brake on my side - or a steering wheel?

So I write about those things. Or I write some more about not writing. Either way, I am writing, and that is the entire point.

Plus, it's really sort of fun when you get to post about not having anything to post about...

Soulless Cover Reveal!

I'm still avoiding research freewriting up a storm these days, so in the meantime, I am delighted and excited to turn my little blog over to a VIE (Very Important Event) today: it's cover reveal week for Crystal Collier's book Soulless, which is the second book in her trilogy! YAY CRYSTAL! Without further ado...

Have you met the Soulless and Passionate? In the world of 1770 where supernatural beings mix with humanity, Alexia is playing a deadly game.

SOULLESS, Book 2 in the Maiden of Time trilogy

Alexia manipulated time to save the man of her dreams, and lost her best friend to red-eyed wraiths. Still grieving, she struggles to reconcile her loss with what was gained: her impending marriage. But when her wedding is destroyed by the Soulless—who then steal the only protection her people have—she's forced to unleash her true power.

And risk losing everything.

What people are saying about this series: 

"With a completely unique plot that keeps you guessing and interested, it brings you close to the characters, sympathizing with them and understanding their trials and tribulations." --SC, Amazon reviewer

"It's clean, classy and supernaturally packed with suspense, longing, intrigue and magic." --Jill Jennings, TX

"SWOON." --Sherlyn, Mermaid with a Book Reviewer

Crystal Collier is a young adult author who pens dark fantasy, historical, and romance hybrids. She can be found practicing her brother-induced ninja skills while teaching children or madly typing about fantastic and impossible creatures. She has lived from coast to coast and now calls Florida home with her creative husband, three littles, and "friend" (a.k.a. the zombie locked in her closet). Secretly, she dreams of world domination and a bottomless supply of cheese. You can find her on her blog and Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

COMING October 13, 2014

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Freewriting as Fuel

I'm back! Back home, that is, and very much plugged back in. Thank you all for the well-wishes - I did have a great anniversary, a lovely vacation, and a wonderful birthday. To my great happiness, my birthday was exactly what I wanted: a delicious breakfast, then a fantastic, grueling four-hour hike, a hot shower, and an amazing and enormous dinner (with wine, of course). Call me crazy, but I love the feeling of happy, exhausted accomplishment when I finish a long hike, with a delicious feast as a well-deserved reward. And besides, with a view like this at the top of the mountain, I'd hike it any day, feast or not:

That picture doesn't even do it justice, because I got way too much of the top of the mountain in the foreground, and not enough of the view beyond it! It's a 360 degree view, which I also couldn't capture, of the Green Mountains and the Mad River Valley, and on a clear day, you can even see across Lake Champlain to the Adirondacks. It's gorgeous.

At any rate, I'm back at my job and at my desk, and still using the impetus from the movie to propel me into some work. The more I freewrite, the more I'm inspired to keep going, so I'm going to use that fuel to help me churn out as much as I can while I have time today. It does feel great to be writing, even if I have to give myself little do-nothing breaks for additional motivation - that vacation mentality is a little hard to shake.

So, while I kick my butt back into gear, I thought I'd post a little bit of what I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I did say I might do that, after all, and I like to keep my promises...even if I'm the only one who remembers them. And yes, it's maybe possible that I didn't have time to come up with a longer blog post. Maybe.

This little snippet is from the Tibetan lifetime (since that's what the movie was about, and what I was in the middle of researching when I stopped to watch it), and as always, it's barely been reread, much less edited. When I wrote it, I was thinking of this being the very beginning of the Tibetan section... but we'll see.

It was winter, thick and heavy, like the snows that blanketed the peaks and hid all of the passes. It was no time for a journey.

Tashi slid his fingers – brown and leathered and rough, like the rest of him – over the parchment. He couldn’t read the blocks of black ink, spidery and strange, but he knew what they said; he had gotten a lama to tell him the story the parchment held, and he’d memorized it, fast, a flash of lightning seared into his mind. There was nothing to be gained from it anymore; he should throw it into the fire and let it bake his tsampa for him, let it cook the dough along with the tea for his breakfast, but for some reason he held onto it anyway, and kept touching it, as if it had more to tell him.

Dawn crept through the cracks in the tent, blue and sheer with frost. It was cold, bone cold, with storms chasing the clear sky into darkness: no time for a journey, and yet here he was, embarking on one anyway.

He wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. Tashi stirred the hearth, blowing on it gently, until it caught and the embers blossomed into flame. No other soul could have called him back; not Diki, long-dead anyway, taken from his side by a wasting sickness ten years after they married; not his brothers (he refused to dignify them with their names, even in the silence of his mind) or their pale, weak daughters, or – he added quickly, before memory could settle too deeply into him – anyone else. Only Dorje, his son, could force him to go home.

A Breakthrough

A quick bit of business before I start: I'm going to be away next week, from my job, my normal life, and from blogging. I'm very excited to go on vacation (without going into detail, I'll just say that it's been a rough couple of weeks), but I can't believe it means I'm going to miss my first IWSG - EVER. Well, as long as 'ever' means 'since I signed up almost a year ago.' It'll make me feel insecure to miss it, of course, but I have a really good excuse: it's my birthday next Wednesday, and my wedding anniversary a few days after that, and I'm going to be as far away from a computer (and any other electronic device) as I can possibly manage.

I'll be back the week after, and back to the IWSG in August, so please don't take me off of the list yet, Mr. Cavanaugh! ;)

Now then. A couple of weeks ago, I complained at length about being bored to tears with research, and many of you gently told me to get off of my lazy, research-addled butt and write a little instead.

Ok, no one said that. You were all much nicer than that, but the message was received in any case. Gratefully.

Funny enough, it was the research itself that did it. I was so fed up with textbooks that I found a movie to watch instead - Himalaya. To quote its Rotten Tomatoes page, it is "a fiction film about the forgotten people of Tibet, focusing on their daily lives and traditional customs."

Daily lives??? Traditional customs??? JACKPOT! Here, finally would be real, normal people going about their lives! This is what I've been dying to find!! Fiction, schmiction, I say.

No, don't worry, I know it's a movie; I took everything I saw with a large grain of salt (which is ironic, but you won't get the joke if you don't watch the film). However, one of the best things about this film was that it was shot over nine months in the Himalayas, among the Dolpo people of Nepal, who, Wikipedia tells me, have "preserved...Tibetan culture in relatively pure form." In fact, with the exception of a couple of roles, almost every part in the film is played by an actual Dolpo tribe member.

The movie is only a little over an hour and a half, but it took me the better part of a day to watch it, because I kept having to pause it to take notes. Everything was helpful, from the way the women tied blankets around their waists, to how the men wore their hair, to where they slept inside their low stone houses. This is the sort of practical, everyday information that is so hard to find, and yet is so essential to me as a writer.

I really don't know if I could tell you if the movie is any good. I didn't really notice, which means, as far as I can guess, that it was pretty good, because I'm generally super picky about movies. But I was so focused on gathering every tiny bit of information that I truly didn't care one way or the other.

What I can say is that I'm very, very grateful to the movie - and to all of you. As soon as it ended, instead of doing more research, I went off and wrote two big chunks for the Tibetan lifetime. It took almost no time, and I have no idea if what I wrote will end up in the book, but I don't care. It was incredibly useful: it helped me solidify some plot points, get to know my characters better, and gave me a chance to write about the glorious, unbelievable setting I'd gotten to see in the movie.

Not bad, eh?? Image courtesy of http://bossnepal.com/oscar-nominated-nepali-movie-caravanhimalaya/

At some point, after I've worked on those freewrites a bit, I'll post a snippet here. Perhaps even when I'm back the week after next?

Thanks again to all of you, and I'll see you on the other side of VACATION!

What Does It Mean To Be Versatile?

It's been an exciting week in my blogland! Loni Townsend nominated me for a Versatile Blogger Award, which is, as you may have guessed, what this post is about. Thank you, Loni! Loni is a super talented blogger and writer with a clever, quirky sense of humor. Her epic fantasy novel, Thanmir War, is available on Amazon, and her blog is always available, so if you're not following her, go check her out!

Before I get to that award, though, I also need to thank Kristin Smith, Felicity Burnett, and Ava Quinn, who all nominated me for Liebster Awards in the past few weeks. Thank you all so much, ladies! As I was nominated for one, and accepted it a few months ago, I don't want to be an awards hog and accept again. BUT I am really grateful to all three of these bloggers, and highly recommend that you check them all out!

Now...the Versatile Blogging Award!

The rules of the VBA, should you choose to accept them, are:

• You do NOT talk about VBA. Oh, wait, sorry, wrong club. Moving on.
• Thank the person who gave you this award. Thank you, Loni!!
• Include a link to their blog. Done and done - but in case you missed it, you can find her here.
• Select 15 blogs/bloggers that you've recently discovered or follow regularly. ( I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!), and nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
• Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

Because I'm a BIG RULE BREAKER (not at all, but we can pretend, right?), I'm not going to nominate 15 people. Instead, I'm going to nominate a completely arbitrary number of bloggers, because, well, because I can:

1. Milo James Fowler, who writes a dizzying array of short stories in an equally dizzying array of genres;
2. Ava Quinn, who never fails to make me laugh out loud, is wildly creative, and comes up with the world's most bizarre and wonderful blogging topics;
3. And L.G. Smith, who always has a fascinating idea, unique insight, or thought-provoking question to offer.

Finally, seven things about me!

1. Running is my best stress relief. I'm not very fast or very good, but when I can be running outside (treadmills, aka hamster wheels, do not count), I always feel better.
2. I'm a serious foodie. I love shopping at farmer's markets, going out to eat at new restaurants in the city, and reading/learning/thinking about food. I would love to cook if I had more time - when I do have time, I really enjoy it, but most of the time it's just another thing I have to fit in, sadly.
3. I once went paragliding in the Swiss Alps.
4. I lived in a haunted castle in Holland for a semester when I was in college.
5. I'm a huge nature nerd. I love to hike and I'll watch animal documentaries any day, anytime; I of course own both the Blue Planet and the Planet Earth series on DVD. I'll let you guess how many times I've watched them!
6. I think teachers are our modern unsung heroes. Undervalued, underpaid, misunderstood, and under a ton of pressure, they still devote themselves to the future with passion and dedication. Yes, there are bad teachers out there (there are bad everything out there), but for the most part, these people are amazing.
7. As a massage therapist, I believe deeply in the value of self-care - all kinds of self-care. I believe in non-Western approaches to healing, like acupuncture and massage (of course), and I work hard to take good care of myself, and to encourage other to do the same.

Accepting the nominations is totally optional for my picks, but visiting them is not - honestly, you'll love their blogs!

Patience IS a Virtue

It's been a long time since I posted anything about the 'progress' part of my WIP. While I'd like to blame this entirely on the A to Z Challenge, that would skip a whole month of posts, and would be rather like blaming climate change on America's love of gigantic, lane-hogging SUVs (which are, living in a neighborhood of teeny, narrow, winding city streets as I do, a major pet peeve of mine. I don't blame you for wanting a nice, big car, but what kind of urban dweller needs a Chevy Suburban?? Wouldn't a CR-V do the trick?). Part of the problem, but really not even close to the whole problem.

The main problem is that I haven't made much progress. I'm still doing research. I'm still wading through large volumes of dusty sociological treatises whose main goal seems to be to make fascinating information as dull as possible. I'm still digging around for elusive information on normal people in history: not the kings and emperors; not the war heroes; just the average, rather poor people who grew and harvested all the food that the rich and fabulous people ate. (Although I did find and start watching a lovely movie called Himalaya today, which, in addition to being about normal people, has the benefit of being fictional, and therefore, designed with the express purpose of capturing and maintaining my interest. So at least there's that.)

If I sound bitter, it's because I am - not about rich people in history but about how much they HOG the historical annals. I mean, wasn't it enough to be getting all the attention while they lived? Can't they share the damn limelight now?

Apparently not.

What this means is that my pace of discovery can be measured in weeks, not days. It also means that I'm searching further and further afield for information, and reading more and more obscure works. Yes, I am that second person in the world who read your dissertation on Marriage Customs in Tibet (besides your mother and your professor, who don't count). And I'm very grateful you wrote it.

I'm also realizing more fully just how long it's going to take me to write this book. I think I can best sum it up by saying: a really freaking long time.

Do I sound negative? Sigh. I don't mean to be. I'm just not the most patient person in the world.

Which means, of course, that I have to refer myself back to my own advice: be patient (I'm referring to #7 on that list, for those who are following along). When I wrote that, I was referring to the industry, but that advice extends just as well to my own work. BE PATIENT. Remember that I've chosen to write a book that requires a stupid amount of research.

Patience really is a virtue, isn't it? The more I need it, the more I realize how true that is.

Insecure Writers: Don't Be Afraid of Public Speaking!

NOTE: It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for The Insecure Writers! For those who don't remember, it's an online group created by Alex J. Cavanaugh for writers. You, too, can join us anytime!

A few little birdies have recently expressed a wish for a post on public speaking for writers, and after delaying said post for too long (I blame the A to Z Challenge), I figured the IWSG would be a perfect opportunity to put together a list of tips and tricks. I originally wrote this up for the talented writer Julie Flanders, who was about to go to various events to promote her new book, and was - understandably - a bit apprehensive. I think most writers can understand this fear - viscerally, with some stomach-clenching dread and sweating palms - because for most of our working lives we have to be able to sit, alone, in silence, and write...and then every once in a while we're suddenly expected to leave the solitude of our desks and be outgoing, charming, consummate public speakers and marketers.

It's a weird shift.

BUT, there are a few very concrete things you can do to make this whole speaking-in-front-of-many-staring-expectant-people-without-turning-into-a-blithering-idiot thing much easier, and much more do-able. I learned these valuable skills because I got my degree at Emerson College, and because said degree was a BFA in acting, believe it or not. For those of you who aren't familiar with the school, it's a specialized college for communication and the arts, and it was founded by an orator - all of which meant that, at least while I was there, classes in Public Speaking and Voice & Articulation were mandatory. I was highly irritated about this at the time I was in school, because I was 18 and knew absolutely everything about everything and knew that actors didn't need this silly stuff, but now, quite a few years later, I have to admit that I'm pretty damn grateful that they made me go.

So, I've compiled this list (as an outline - what else???) from the training I received both in public speaking and in acting, which, as you might guess, aren't all that dissimilar when it comes down to the basics.


Public Speaking for Writers (and Other People Who Don't Want To Be the Center of Attention)

1. Body Language is Key: This is the first and most important tip - learn to use your body to help you instead of hinder you. If you're nervous, your body will show it: you'll have trouble making eye contact; you'll speak too softly and too quickly; you'll be sweaty and shaky; you won't stand up straight, and so on. All of this just increases the nerves in a nasty endless cycle. So instead, you pretend to be confident by making your body confident. The amazing thing about this is that when you force yourself to physically embody confidence, it actually works. You can calm yourself this way. And even if you still feel nervous, you won't come across as nervous to anyone watching you. If you have the patience for it, I'd recommend practicing this, so that your muscles and your body get used to how it feels, and then when you're in front of people, you can easily and quickly slip into this physical stance:

• Stand up tall, with your shoulders back. 
• Make sure your feet are under your hips, about hip-distance apart, with your knees very slightly bent (locked knees = danger of fainting = very bad), and your weight evenly distributed between both feet. 
• Take deep, even breaths - you have to really concentrate on this one, and keep up that concentration until breathing like this becomes a habit. 
• Speak slowly and clearly. 
• Put your voice a lower register. If you have any familiarity with voice training, try using your chest register. If you don't, that's OK: just try to put your voice in a strong, deep tone. If you're a visual person, try imagining your words in a color you find confident and strong. For me, this would be a deep burgundy. 

2. Set An Intention, and Embody It: I remember this clearly from my public speaking class. It was specifically about giving speeches, but it applies to any public speaking situation. What this means is that you stop worrying about how the audience might feel, and think instead about how you want them to feel. So, you ask yourself, how do I want my audience to feel? As an author speaking, you might want them to feel interested, comfortable, curious, and/or also humorous or sympathetic, but really, this is up to you. I would just recommend staying simple, and picking only two or three emotions. Then hold onto that intention, consciously, as you speak, and let those emotions color your own words. Even just having this intention will help, but if you want to get more advanced about it, there are specific strategies for different emotions - it has to do with rhythm, tone, etc. For that, I would recommend getting a good book on oration.

3. Speak, Don't Read: Practice your speech or presentation or reading enough that you essentially know it by heart, and don't have to read it off of note cards or Power Point or from your book. You can use your notes, and refer to them in case you forget, but when you have what you want to say memorized, you're free to do something lovely - look up!You can look at your audience and interact with them, you can be more human and less robotic, and that will increase your confidence. You'll come across as human, confident, and approachable, instead of anxious or flat. If you're worried about looking at your audience, well, see below.

4. Concentrate on Heads, Not Eyes: I've never been a fan of the 'imagine everyone in their underwear' advice, because then I'm thinking way too much about putting people in underwear and not nearly enough on what I'm saying. I know that it can be weird and scary to make eye contact with people in your audience (although, if you can do it, it can also be really powerful), so if eye contact freaks you out, don't make the cardinal mistake of never looking up; instead, look just over the tops of your audience's heads, either at the scalp level or about an inch or so above them. The smaller the audience and the room, the less you can get away with this, but generally as long as you have a few rows of people, and you're at least a few feet away from them, it'll look like you're looking at the row right behind each of them. Now, if you're talking to ten or twenty people or less, this won't work, but if the group is that small, hopefully it won't seem as scary! This also won't work if you're doing a question and answer, of course; then you do have to look at the person talking. In that case, try to concentrate on the person who asked the question, and imagine you're having a conversation with just that person, instead of a whole group of people.

5. Be An Actor: If all else fails, you can look at this as an acting exercise, and no, you don't need to be a professional for this! You're just playing the role of the smart, confident, charismatic, talented author, who feels no fear in front of large groups, and is a super star when it comes to public speaking. It might sound silly, but so much of the fear of public speaking comes from worrying about what everyone is going to think of you. If you're not you, but are just an actor in a role, you can detach yourself a little bit from that fear. It's like the role is a shield, protecting you. We're all capable of this; we all played games where we took on many roles when we were kids. You just have to dig deep and bring that powerful imagination back to the surface.


And that's it for the basics! I hope one or all of these help you, and ease at least a little bit of that fear. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer. And of course, if you have any tips of your own, please share them!