April 2022 archive

Teacher’s Pet: A Tarot Writing Prompt

April 19, 2022

In this week’s blog post I will provide you with a Tarot writing prompt.

IN TAROT CIRCLES, the Hierophant, also known as the Pope, can get a bad rap—for being an uber-conservative, repressive, by-the-book sort of guy. But, really, he might just represent any clergy person, mentor, or teacher—however rule-bound or not. And I’ve had some great teachers!

My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Nethercote, for instance, gave me props for my mad reading skills. The next year, my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Smith (who looked like Aunt Bea from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW), thought I was a fine communicator and took the time to introduce me as such to my third-grade teacher, who subsequently always listened to what I had to say!

High school was tough, but my tenth-grade English teacher, whose name is lost to memory (and to various adolescent indulgences), was a bright light, encouraging my poetry-writing. In Seattle, at Shoreline Community College, theater instructor Charlie gave me a directorial role, saying she thought I had leadership potential.

As I make this list, other teachers—a horseback-riding instructor, an art teacher, a math professor—arrive at the threshold of my mind, nodding approval across the years. Their long-remembered encouragement has boosted my self-esteem and bolstered my belief in my own abilities when I’ve needed it most.

This, then, is a thank you to them all.

WRITING PROMPT

Revisit your memory of a supportive teacher—or create such a champion in the life of a character who could benefit from one just about now.

Alternatively, if your life has been stingy regarding mentors, consider this writing prompt as your chance to rewrite history and provide yourself one you wish you’d had. Once you’ve got him or her on the page, let your self-created mentor provide a bit of guidance. Chances are it will be some of the best advice you’ve ever received!

When I told my art pal Paula Jeffery about this prompt, she shared this poem with me:

Just Words
by Paula Jeffery*

Before home time, every day,
That sleepy, can’t-write-any-more
Time of day,
Low sun picks out chalk dust
Suspended in air, over kids,
Who only want to meander
Across the park,
For tea and Thunderbirds.

Most kids. Not all kids. Not us kids.
We were Mr. Gardener’s kids,
And the slowest of us perked,
Eyes bright, legs crossed
At the end of the day,
Warm with anticipation.
Home was not pressing
On our nine-year-old minds

Unexpected Mr. Gardener,
Generous, mild, and
Gentle sharer of knowledge,
Balancing on the brink
Of retirement,
Who, at the Christmas concert,
Awed us, floored us
With soaring solo Emmanuels.

Before the bell, we gathered round.
He held the book aloft and cracked open our little worlds
With Beowulf.
No diluted, convoluted picture story form,
This was all bloody battles,
Dragons, a severed arm.
A teacher transformed
Animated, passionate, Mr. Gardener
Held us all in thrall

We went home through the cloakroom,
Summer air heavy with the smell
Of plimsolls and sour milk,
Minds alive and buzzing with heroes and monsters,
Chasing sword play across the park.

I thought, Imagine. You can have all that
With just words.

MORE WRITING INSPIRATION

TEACHER, by Sylvia Ashton-Warner

THE FREEDOM WRITERS, by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell

EDUCATING RITA, 1983 dramatic comedy, starring Michael Caine

Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching ! And check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine.

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*Artist, writer, self-publisher Paula Jeffery lives in the middle of England. Visit her at http://www.paulajeffery.com.

Thank you to U.S. Games Systems, Inc. for kind permission to use the image of The Hierophant from the RIDER-WAITE (SMITH) TAROT.

Writing Prompt: Thankful

April 16, 2022

Today’s writing prompt: Thankful

IT’S BEEN A TOUGH YEAR. You’ve probably heard that at least a thousand times. But it’s true. And that toughness can lend a dark and uneasy tone to our lives. That’s why today, our writing prompt is “thankful.”

Of course, here comes Thanksgiving to remind us of our blessings. And why not? Even if there’s no turkey (bird or vegan) for our tables, even if our families (of origin or choice) are unable to join us to raise a glass, even if we have sustained devastating loss over the last few hundred days, still, we can—if we wish—look around and find something to be thankful for.

And doing so seems to be good for us! According to an article in FORBES, focusing on gratitude improves not only our psychological well-being, but our physical health. Feeling thankful may also help us sleep better and think better. And, certainly, it inclines us more positively toward ourselves and our fellow humans.

Writing prompts for gratitude

We writers often make sense of things by writing. So here are a handful of writing prompts to support you if you feel the need to shift your gaze from what’s not working to what is.

1) Start a gratitude journal. Making a daily list of three to five things we’re grateful for is a simple but effective way to keep gratitude alive in our hearts.

2) Write about a time when something wonderful happened (expected or not). Remembering any boon—from the timely discovery of a much-needed twenty-dollar bill to learning that a loved one’s health concern ended up being nothing for concern at all—reminds us that, like rays of sunshine, moments of well-being can break through the cloudiest of times.

3) Create a dour character who, like Eeyore, sees life as an endless series of difficulties. Put that character in unavoidable proximity to a person you might call a “Pollyanna,” someone who is unremittingly cheerful. Perhaps they become roommates or cubicle mates. Or maybe Pollyanna marries into Eeyore’s close-knit family. Could it be that they’re stuck in an elevator together? Or on a “three-hour tour“!

However you glue them together, let Pollyanna’s sunny outlook eventually push your Eeyore to a change of attitude. (This may take considerable doing. All the better for dramatic tension!)

4) Write about a random act of kindness and its unexpected, far-reaching effect. This can be something you did for someone else, or a kindness you received. You might also use this idea to launch a short story!

5) List your own good qualities, attributes of yours for which you’re grateful. Dig deep! Don’t be modest. In addition, you could list the ten best qualities of some of those closest to you. Bonus: Make any of these lists into a poem!

These prompts are just jump-starts, a handful of ways you might incorporate gratitude and thankfulness into your writing. They aren’t (necessarily) meant to elicit high literary art. They are meant to remind you of what’s going right in your world and send you into your day (or into your dreams) with a lighter heart.

And that’s something to be thankful for.

Writing resources

Here are some books I turn to when I need to boost my gratitude practice. In them, you’ll find folks whose compassion and generosity and appreciation of the everyday world make their own and others’ lives better.

HUMANS, Brandon Stanton

PUT YOUR HEART ON PAPER, Henriette Anne Klauser

29 GIFTS, Cami Walker

POEMCRAZY, Susan G. Wooldridge

GOOD DAYS START WITH GRATITUDE (a journal), Pretty Simple Press

Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching ! And check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine.

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Thank you to Llewellyn Worldwide for kind permission to use the image of the Three of Cups card from the ANNA.K TAROT.

Writing Sprints and SFDs

April 15, 2022

WRITING SPRINTS AND SFDS

by Tia Levings

I’LL NEVER FORGET WHERE I was the day I learned about SFDs (shitty first drafts). The phrase alone got my attention, so bold and borderline-crass in a sea of serious approaches to “craft.” I bought BIRD BY BIRD because I was familiar with Anne Lamott’s blue-jeans-and-bare-feet spirituality. She’s forgiving, likes dogs, and knows how to tame wild anxiety. To me, she is St. Anne, patron saint of nervous writers trying to find their way.

Writing sprints and SFDs changed my writing life completely.

I’d recently decided to write my first novel, based on an idea I got from a travel ad. My two main characters came in loud and clear––travel writers who wanted to kill each other. The problem was, they were married (to each other) and had just accepted a job contract contingent on their union.

I had a premise, characters, a fun working title…and minimal plot. Looking back, I’m not sure I even knew what the word “plot” meant yet. I wanted to write a novel and had no idea how to do it.

So I took BIRD BY BIRD on audio out for a walk. I left my front porch and our cul-de-sac and crossed the street to get on the sidewalk. One square, two square.. “step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back,” came to mind. I was on the seventh square of the sidewalk when I heard Anne’s voice describe what she called “shitty first drafts.” Zing! Electricity.

The SFD reminded me of Natalie Goldberg’s WRITING DOWN THE BONES––the skeletal frame. Anne called it “writing without reining yourself in.” She said it’s almost like “just typing.” You can’t overthink, which is hard for anxious writers who want to get it right. But there’s no pausing for corrections in the SFD. The sentences run on. The ideas flow and wander. You’re writing down the bones of your story, and the pretty fleshy bits come later.

An SFD is more than writing badly on purpose. It’s a flow.

If you’ve used free-writing and morning pages as techniques to become unblocked, you’re working the right muscles for a shitty first draft. These uncensored lines flow through you, mind to hand. The difference between an SFD and my morning pages is intention; I have an idea with story elements I’m working with on a draft. Otherwise, the sensation while writing is very much the same.

If your shitty first draft is rambling, incoherent, and too-ugly-to-show-anyone, you’re doing it right. You never show anyone your SFD. Showing it off is not the point. You’re just getting the words down on paper—messy, uncramped words out of your head and onto the page. You can edit and revise later, but only if you put the words down first.

“You can’t edit a blank page.” ––Jodie Picoult

I’m no longer a new writer. And in my experience, a gate with two locks guards the pathway to a solid working draft and the Kingdom of Completed Projects. The SFD is one key to the kingdom; the other is writing sprints.

Writing sprints are timed shitty first drafts. You assign yourself a duration, set the timer, and go, much like a free-writing session. When I sprint, I go for fifty minutes, break for ten, and usually do another, sometimes changing projects. The rinse in between is long enough to grab a snack, get some fresh air, and then dive back in with my concentration renewed.

The urgency of the clock is just enough pressure to keep my fingers flying. I’m not stopping to edit and rearrange sentences because I want that word count target. My eye is on the prize.

I write in Scrivener, which allows me to set word count targets against a calendar date. Scrivener tells me how many words I have to write per day to hit both the word count goal and deadline. The alchemy of target, timer, and deadline is the method I use for all of my work now.

Writing sprints are also excellent keys to unlock creative blocks. Choose a writing prompt––Jamie’s tarot prompts work great for this––and set a timer for 15-30 minutes. Just write whatever comes to mind, even if that’s “I don’t know what to write about this.” Sometimes I even type with my eyes closed. It always leads to a discovery. Most importantly, it creates movement, and when I’m done, I’m no longer blocked.

Vocal writing sprints: try talking it out

A few of my author-friends are experimenting with speech-to-text software for their SFDs. Using microphones and dictating their first drafts, they get the words down quickly, well enough to revise and edit in a second sprint. In his book 5,000 WORDS PER HOUR, Chris Fox breaks down his method to increase word count efficiently. It’s working for genre writers I follow online, and if speed an issue for you, dictation might help you battle it out.

SFDs and writing sprints help me overcome creative paralysis and perfectionism. The point, which is a draft that can be cleaned, edited, and improved, makes sound metaphorical and practical sense to me. I still turn to BIRD BY BIRD when I get stuck. St. Anne suggests short assignments, one-inch squares, and making messes. We’ve got to break these enormous tasks into bites we can handle, as the title suggests. “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

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Writing coach

Tia Levings hired me as her writing coach in 2017. Since then, she completed her memoir, co-authored a book on the craft of writing, and started a podcast for writers. I’m delighted to have Tia as a colleague, co-writer, and client. And I’m so glad that she’s sharing some of her writing experience with us, here. Thanks, Tia!

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching ! And check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine.

RIP Beverly Cleary: I Think Ramona Grew Up To Be a Writer

April 12, 2022

Yes I think Ramona Grew Up to Be a Writer

By Tia Levings

When Beverly Cleary died in March, at 104, the little girl who still lives inside me cried her heart out.

Cleary’s books, along with Judy Blume’s TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE NOTHING and SUPER FUDGE, were the first chapter books I read as a kid. I remember relating to the Quimby family’s always-tight finances, and the frequency with which Ramona heard her parents struggling with depression, big bills, and unavailable jobs. I’ve never forgotten the agony of squeaky shoes on the first day of school or the horror of throwing up in class. And remember when Ramona broke a raw egg on her head? Ugh. Ramona and her foibles taught a generation of kids that one could endure all that, feel all the feels, and carry on.

Did Ramona grow up to be a writer?

The Ramona books came out in the 70s when the economy was hurting, and gas lines were long. Our parents sighed after reading the news a lot, and they tried hard to find their way. Those days smell like peanut butter sandwiches in metal lunch boxes, leather shoes wet with rain, and school glue. Ramona and I both wore hand-me-downs, chose favorite teachers, and felt big feelings. We were little girls without front teeth, and we, too, were trying hard to find our way.

Ramona’s parents weren’t perfect like the parents in other books. They were often irritable or struggling with their burdens, and getting hamburgers in a sit-down restaurant as a family was a BIG TREAT. There were even lovely strangers in the world who paid for their meal. The way Cleary wrote the Quimbys helped me (and a generation of kids) feel seen and life would be okay.

“I think children like to find themselves in books.” ––Beverly Cleary

A librarian told third-grader-Beverly to write stories. She wrote about her third-grade experiences, writing childhood from the inside out. Eight years old is such a pivotal time for a kid. Eventually, Beverly wrote about Ramona, who was eight, who was read by readers like me, also eight. The result is a bit like Russian nesting dolls, except with a writer, inside a writer, inside a writer. So, maybe generations of kids who nested inside Ramona like me became writers because of that librarian.

I have a hunch Ramona Quimby grew into a woman who still found wonder around every corner, felt all of her feelings, and laughed at her foibles––eventually. Looking at photos of the elderly Beverly, with the glint of Ramona forever in her eye, I’m sure that’s exactly how life turned out. And now, at 104, Beverly has died. But Ramona lives on, in books and in writers like me.

Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching ! And check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine.

Writer’s Block: How One Writer Beats It!

April 9, 2022

How one writer beats writer’s block

I ASKED MY GOOD WRITER PAL MK SWANSON to share her magic. You see, MK writes consistently, creatively, and to completion without writer’s block. Currently, she’s preparing two novels for publication (watch this space!). But whether she’s got a book launch in mind or not, she successfully makes her way through big drafts of complex, full-length manuscripts—and tells excellent tales, at that!

I’ve watched MK work this literary magic for years. As someone who helps writers deal with serious stress about getting words on the page, I was curious about MK’s process. How, I wondered, does she get it done so well and so effortlessly. So I asked. And this is what she had to say:

I rarely have writer’s block. It’s my superpower.

Sometimes, I’m inspired. I dream a crazy story-line, read an enlightening science article, remember a strange episode, or just think of an idea. But for now, I’m between muses.

So how do I start a story—or keep one going—with no gentle voice in my ear? How does my superpower work?

It starts with attention. Or perhaps inattention? (Looking directly at the problem is ineffective.)

I turn my head away from my computer screen and stare out the window. I’m drawn to a colorful flying creature, a moth or a wasp, maybe; I can’t tell from this distance. It could even be a beetle or a damselfly.

Bees are hovering, too, even though it’s late in the year, getting their nectar before the flowers thin out during a Florida winter.

I’m reminded of the big freeze of 1983. When the freeze destroyed our orange grove, my mother told me how, when she was a child, she helped her father light the grove heaters and keep them stoked all night.

I could write an imagined story of my mother and grandfather, allied in purpose just this once.

I think of crickets at night, a low hum and rise to crescendo, before falling again, a sound I’ve heard less as the city encroaches. What would the world be like without bees and butterflies? Dragonflies and moths?

The absence of buzzing and the brush of wings made a summer’s day hurt the ears.

Frogs, too, are scarce—Cuban treefrogs have displaced the delicate green ones that liked to rest in the furl of a palm frond, and I rarely hear carpenter frogs, spring peepers, or leopard frogs.

I think of a poem about disappearing species, but instead I return to my fluttering insect, available only in memory now.

The bee, or beetle, or maybe moth, lit on a Turk’s cap’s never-opening red petal, slipped over the edge and into the throat of the flower in an indistinguishable blur of legs.

Who is watching the insect? Is this a protagonist in a story I’m already writing, or a new someone?

Helera directed her attention to the insect, commanding her cybernetic implant to focus telescopically on the details—multifaceted eyes, six legs with barbs designed to keep nectar attached, incidentally lifting pollen to father other plants in Utheria’s garden.

A bee, she thought triumphantly, and searched her database for its exact species and role, until she felt an elbow jostle her mechanical left arm.

“Stop it, Hel. This is a garden, not a machine,” said Utheria.

And just like that—a turn of my head, a window, an insect I can’t identify—and I have the beginning of a semi-biographical essay, a line of post-apocalyptic poetry, and a science fiction scene.

My process for writer’s block isn’t unlike meditation, improvisation, or a shamanic journey; I have to look and listen. And then write it down.

Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching ! And check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine.

Literary Quotes for Writers: A Writing Coach Takes a Journey Through 10 Literary Quotes

April 2, 2022

Do you have a favorite literary quote? Here are 10 literary quotes to inspire writers

1. EVERY STORY IS A STORY OF SUSPENSE. I wish I could recall where I heard this. It’s been invaluable as I help writers get the most power from their stories. Whether you’re writing a memoir or a novel, remember that readers are held fast by suspense. Give your story stakes by making your readers care about a character or an anticipated event—and then create suspense by threatening that in which you’ve gotten them to invest.

2. But how do you get started? Crime novelist Lawrence Block says in this literary quote, “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or ten pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

3. And if you get stuck? Speaking to the power of the unconscious to provide elegant creative solutions, Nobel Prize in Literature winner Saul Bellow says, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

4. In her guide to finding your most authentic voice, WRITING ALONE AND WITH OTHERS, poet Pat Schneider explains this further: “Never underestimate the power of sleep. Leading a disciplined writing life is not all about work. It is also about sleep. Entering and staying in the mysterious place where daydream meets night dream is important to the writing life. Our deepest writing, our genius, requires an engagement of the unconscious mind.”

5. Another favorite literary quote is from writer Brenda Ueland, author of the classic IF YOU WANT TO WRITE, finds another way to unravel a tangled tale. A fiend for walking to find creative gold, she says, “I will tell you what I have learned for myself. For me, a long five- or six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.” (Personally, I manage two miles a day—and consistently find at least one crystalline, often startling, solution along the way.)

6. And then there’s the question of what you feed your writer self while it’s walking and sleeping and spinning out the threads of suspense. Best-selling author Stephen King, never one to beat around the bush when offering writing advice, says this: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

7. Poet and novelist Natalie Goldberg, who has encouraged at least one generation of writers to settle into a meaningful writing practice agrees. In WRITING DOWN THE BONES, she says, “If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. Maybe it’s not quite that easy, but if you want to learn something, go to the source.”

8. Sometimes, though, we need to remind ourselves why we write. Diarist and novelist Anais Nin says, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

9. However, (brilliant) novelist Amy Tan, who contributed her essay “Pixel by Pixel” to the anthology LIGHT THE DARK: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process, found her way to a different meaning. At the start of “Pixel,” she shares this literary quote,

“In my novel THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT, a character named Edward Ivory recites the following lines from Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’:

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

…. And I realized [Tan says]: This is what the character is about. No, more than that: This is what my writing is about. This is what my whole life is about.“

10. Tan’s conclusion, that her whole life reflects Whitman’s idea that we must travel our road ourselves reminds me of another quote by Natalie Goldberg. Speaking of her desire to write a novel after her well-received books on writing process, WRITING DOWN THE BONES and WILD MIND, were published, Natalie says,

“I [had] a story I wanted to tell, something I’d half lived and half felt, and I needed the big space a novel afforded to tell it. I was a writer and liked to keep my hand moving. The road was out there and I wanted to ride it.”

This takes us far from the idea we started with—that suspense is what keeps a reader turning the pages and that, implicitly, we bother to write at all so as to be read. In searching out quotes that were meaningful to me, however, I seem to have taken myself on a winding journey. And here is where I end up: Maybe we don’t always write to be read. Maybe, at least sometimes, we write because we are creatures who have something to say, who have a head full of words to say it with, and who have a road before them just waiting to be illuminated by those words.

Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching ! And check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine.