Writer's Blog: Tips and Inspiration

Here, Kitty, Kitty: A Tarot Writing Prompt

THE TAROT STRENGTH CARD typically shows a beautiful woman gently closing the jaws of a fearsome lion. When discussing the Strength card, we talk about taming our inner beast, controlling our impulses, or harnessing our own strength to face challenges. But we rarely talk about how the killer instincts of a lion might preserve us in times of danger or how some people won’t listen to us unless we roar!

Tarot writing prompt

For this prompt, let’s try turning tarot convention on its soft-and-fuzzy ear. Make a quick list of times you’ve loosed your own inner wild cat. (Aim for at least five examples.) Now scan that list. Is there one that still makes your hackles rise?

If so, grab that incident by the scruff of the neck and toss it onto a new page. Write about what incited you. Start by describing the scene. Where were you? Who else was present? Who said what to whom? Was there a moment when you felt yourself getting ready to spring? What was the trigger? What happened next?

Finally, after all was said and done, did you feel you used your strength for good? Or ill? Or some nicely complex combination of both?

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This exercise was created for and first published in Christiana Gaudet’s TAROT TOPICS newsletter.

Thanks to U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for kind permission to use the image of Strength from the MORGAN-GREER TAROT.

Writing a Memoir? Read Memoirs!

Are you writing a memoir?

If so, reading others’ memoirs can give you a boost! The work of published memoir writers can help you in a number of ways. For instance, you might find that the structure of an author’s story is applicable to the part of your life that you’re recounting. As a memoir writing coach I can provide the following recommendations to help you with your writing.

Story structure

WILD, by Cheryl Strayed, is a great example. While the main thread of WILD takes place in the story’s present, during which Strayed is hiking 1100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, the reader first meets Strayed at the low point of the story, about halfway through her hike. We’re then taken into a significant stretch of backstory, before being returned to her first steps on the trail. From there, Strayed dovetails backstory with tales of the trail, all the way to book’s end.

Tone and voice

Or, if you’re seeking the right voice for your story, you might consider the difference between the cool, journalistic tone of Jeanette Walls’s THE GLASS CASTLE and the sharp-tongued young persona of Mary Karr’s first memoir, THE LIARS’ CLUB.

Recently published

While all of these are wonderful works to learn from, if you’re aiming for a traditional publishing deal for your memoir, reading work that’s been published more recently (within the last five years) will give you a sense of what’s in fashion, memoir-wise. Taking your cue from what’s currently being sold, you might freshen up your own approach to improve your chances of capturing an agent’s interest.

Apply liberally to all genres: young adult, women’s fiction, self-help, sci-fi, fantasy!

These ideas are applicable to all genres. For instance, a few years ago a rumor was circulating through my writing world: A writer, deciding she wanted to write middle grade (MG) fiction for a living, started her new enterprise by reading two hundred recently published examples of MG.

As I heard it, after finishing that research, she wrote her story, taking intoWriting a memoir consideration all she’d learned from what she’d read—and got a two-book deal with a big-time publisher!

Now, I never confirmed the details of this story, so I can’t send you hieing off to read this woman’s no-doubt fabulous blog about her diligent investigation into what gets agents and editors to pull the trigger. But I can tell you this: From what I know about the wild and woolly world of publishing, this (mythical?) writer’s approach seems likely to get any would-be traditionally published writer out ahead of the pack.

Writing coaching

I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review! Check out “Should I Hire a Writing Coach” in THE WRITER magazine for more insights on hiring a writing coach.

Thanks to U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for kind permission to use the image of The Chariot from the DREAMING WAY TAROT. http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/dreaming-way/

Living Collaborative Exploration: How I Work with Writers

WORKING WITH WRITERS LIGHTS ME UP. It’s exciting to help new writers find their feet, and then watch them take off as they gain confidence and strength. It’s like seeing a newborn foal, who staggered upright in the first minutes after its birth, galloping around the paddock, tail raised high, a flag of independence.

New-to-me writers often ask about the process: What steps will we take to help them get from here to there? It’s a great question. My answer, however, is always this: It’s our process, not just my process. It’s a path we’ll create together, by walking along it.

Sure, I’ve had a lot of experience accompanying writers on their writing journeys—but every writer is unique. This means that what will help one person grow and learn is specific to them. My job is to pay attention to what’s working—and what’s not working—and take my cues from the writer I’m engaged with, not what helped a client last month or something I read in a textbook fifteen years ago!

We’re blazing a trail. Not following a map. Our journey together is a living, collaborative exploration* of what it means for each person I work with to be a writer in this world.

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*Hats off to Ryan Van Cleave, Creative Writing BFA Coordinator, Ringling College, for finding just the right words to describe what I do.

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Holidays + Family + Tarot = Good Times? (Prompt)!

THE FOUR OF WANDS SHOWS a group celebrating in the countryside. There’s a positive sense of community associated with this card. But while we might like experiencing such a harmonious event, it’s not that much fun to describe!

Tarot writing prompt

Your literary task, if you accept it, is to write about a family event—a reunion or other group outing—from memory or entirely from imagination. Include details of the bucolic setting and introduce a few of the characters enjoying the excursion. Then create a disruption: Hailstorm? Someone choking? A drunken fistfight? A gang out joyriding who happens onto the peaceful event?

Whatever disturbance you devise, make sure it not only up-ends the celebration of the moment, but irrevocably changes the lives of one of the characters we’ve met.

(Of course, the holidays are almost upon us. Perhaps there’s fodder for fiction—or fact—right there. In this case, the “festivities” are likely to occur within the four walls of someone’s home. But that won’t necessarily keep marauders at bay.)

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This exercise was created for and first published in Christiana Gaudet’s TAROT TOPICS newsletter.

Thanks to U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for kind permission to use the image of the Four of Wands from the RADIANT RIDER-WAITE TAROT.

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A Long Way Down (Tarot Writing Prompt)

THE CHARIOTEER, WITH HIS FOOTBALL-PLAYER SHOULDERS, is determined. He has all his ducks (and sphinxes) in a row. He’s laurel-wreathed and star-crowned. He’s got promise, dude! Get such a character in your sights—maybe modeling them on someone you know (or someone you used to be?)—and write about an early success they’ve had.

For instance,

  • She led her high school debate team to their winning-est season ever, then earned a full scholarship to UCLA, graduating summa cum laude in political science.
  • Or, he was an Olympic equestrian hopeful, riding six-figure horses at the age of fifteen.

Next, fast forward ten years and look them up—only to find they’ve fallen deep into a well of circumstances that really surprise you, given their early promise.

For instance,

  • She stays home with five young kids, now, and is supporting her husband’s bid for county commissioner.
  • Or he, horses a thing of the past, has become a beast of burden himself, humping forty-pound bags of feed and bales of hay at the local feed store.

What happened? Did she trip over her own hubris, too confidently taking on a project she couldn’t complete? Or did his attempt to besmirch a competitor’s reputation and steal their ride backfire? Are they in a slump from which they can’t seem to emerge? (Cue movie montage of a collapsed main character, unable to get out of bed, litter box stinking, produce that used to be whirled into fabulous energy smoothies moldering in their refrigerator’s produce drawer.)

Tarot writing prompt

However they got here, your character is drowning at the bottom of life’s pickle barrel. How can you help them? What kind of stakes can you create that will light a fire under your once-optimistic little charioteer and get them to rejoin the race?

  • Do you bring her face to face with an instance of social injustice that directly threatens her family—hoping she’ll get busy writing letters to the editor, canvassing her neighborhood, and speaking passionately at meetings of her local government?
  • Or, do you place a once magnificent, now-neglected horse in a field he passes on his way to work—hoping he’ll rescue it and bring both it and himself back to the glory of their earlier days?

Whatever their predicament, look into your character’s past and find the makings of a virtual cattle-prod of a motivation to jolt them back into the saddle again!

Writing inspiration

WORKING GIRL,1988 comedy, starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford
GREAT EXPECTATIONS, by Charles Dickens
“New York, New York,” composed by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb

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Thanks to U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for kind permission to use the image of The Chariot from the RIDER-WAITE TAROT.

 

Meet-Cute: A Rom-Com Writing Prompt

TAROT’S TWO OF CUPS can speak of early attraction—eyes meeting across a crowded dance floor, the meet-cute of romantic comedy fame, or the moment when the warm comfort of a friendship flares up into sudden passion.

Tarot writing prompt

Have you experienced such attraction? If so, you might want to recapture it by writing out the details of those early, excruciatingly heightened moments.

If not, throw two of the most unlikely people you can into a situation that forces them to interact. Were they both sentenced to community service? Best man and maid of honor at a wedding? Has the Ferris wheel stalled, leaving these two strangers stranded together in a car swaying at the very top? Wherever you stick them, make it uncomfortable for them both. Until, you know, those flames of passion erupt!

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This exercise was created for and first published in Christiana Gaudet’s TAROT TOPICS newsletter.

Thanks to U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for kind permission to use the image of the Two of Cups from the MORGAN-GREER TAROT.

Hearts on Fire! A Tarot Writing Prompt

AMONG OTHER THINGS, the ouch-y Three of Swords can speak of betrayal and the heartbreak it engenders. It can also speak of emotional overreaction! Put those together, and you get the stuff of melodrama!

Tarot writing prompt

Now’s your chance to write a script for a soap opera. If you’re a fan of daytime TV, you might want to create a story line for characters from your favorite show. If not, create a cast of characters of your own and set up a betrayal. Either a financial or sexual betrayal would be a great basis for histrionics by the injured party.

Have a fabulous time describing their clothes-rending reaction. But what if they go beyond their first dramatic response? What if they retreat to plan their revenge? What then? And if they carry out that dastardly plan??!!

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This exercise was created for and first published in Christiana Gaudet’s TAROT TOPICS newsletter.

The Three of Hearts illustrating this post is from the THE PRAIRIE TAROT, by Robin Ator.

3 Emergency Writing Prompts

SOME DAYS, IT FEELS LIKE AN EMERGENCY. We want to write, but don’t have anything to write about. Be prepared for such a dire situation. Paint these three mini-prompts fire-alarm red and stick them to your wall so you’ll have them on hand … in case of emergency.

1) I SPY: Did you ever read HARRIET THE SPY, by Louise Fitzhugh? In this Middle Grade novel, the awesomely unsentimental, eleven-year-old urban-dweller Harriet M. Welsch spies on friends and neighbors—and jots her sharp observations in a notebook. (Sounds like an aspiring writer, to me!)

Of course, things go badly for Harriet. Let’s hope they go better for you! Today, spy on yourself. Make notes about your life, your environment, your associates, your habits—in third person, as if you had yourself under surveillance. As if you were a spy.

2) MEMORIES: What was your life like … before you were born? Go as far back as you like. As far back as you can! Take a wild ten minutes—and keep your hand moving!

3) TOP SECRET: What’s something you’re not EVER allowed to talk about? Write about your own secret or someone else’s … then burn, shred, delete, or flush the page you’ve written it on.

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The photo illustrating this post is “Pulitzer prize winning photo” by betke2 and is licensed under CC0 1.0.

Walk Like a Writer

ARGH!! I’M STUCK! I’ve written myself into a corner and can’t find my way out. While I stare at the screen, hoping the right words will magically appear, I feel an inner nudge. It’s my smarter self trying to get my attention. She’s thinks I should power down my computer, put on my sneakers, and take a walk. And she’s right. Whenever I’ve taken a writing issue out for a thirty-minute hike around my neighborhood, that issue has magically been resolved. Every time.

And it’s not just me. In Brenda Ueland‘s classic book, IF YOU WANT TO WRITE, she says, I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five- or six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day. I have done this for many years. It is at these times I seem to get re-charged.

A few years ago, THE NEW YORKER published an article called “Why Walking Helps Us Think.“ In it, writer Ferris Jabr asks, What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing? The answer he discovered has to do with how walking affects our bodies—including our brains, which balance atop the narrow column of our necks and benefit from the increase in oxygen a good walk delivers.

So, yes, like all exercise, walking gets our energy moving. But different than a yoga class or gym visit, a good walk also provides a stream of images to fill our creative well. When we walk, we see things: people, trees, big yellow steam shovels shifting mounds of earth. All these visual elements “fill the well,” providing us with increased creative fuel, which is why Julia Cameron recommends a weekly walk in her Artist’s Way books.

Walking and writing are both independent acts. Both are self-fueled. They stroll happily hand in hand. Today, walk like a writer. Head out onto the nearest path with a literary dilemma in mind. Walk until it’s resolved—then marvel at the elegant solution you and your feet have found.

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The illustration for this post, “Walk,” is by chilangoco, and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Waiting Game: A Tarot Writing Prompt

IN THIS IMAGE, a young man rests on his hoe and gazes at the not-quite-ripe coin fruit he’s been tending. Clearly, he can’t make it grow any quicker—but he doesn’t seem perturbed. In fact, his patience is a trait many urban-dwelling, multi-tasking, traffic-jamming folks might benefit from emulating!

But that would be boring. Wouldn’t it?

Tarot writing prompt

Make a list of ten or more situations in which common sense would tell us there’s nothing for it but to wait. Got it? Now, pick one, put a character in that situation, and assign the character a superpower that would allow him or her to speed things up … a little or a lot.

What would the consequences be of, say, speeding up the rate the earth circles the sun? Or having the state award your two-year old a driver’s license?

Think the Tom Hanks character in BIG or the Adam Sandler character in CLICK and let your imagination take you as far (and as fast!) as you can.

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This exercise was created for and first published in Christiana Gaudet‘s TAROT TOPICS newsletter.

Thanks to U.S. Games Systems, Inc., for kind permission to use the image of the Seven of Pentacles from the RIDER-WAITE TAROT.

 

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