April Davila's Blog, page 16

Getting Comfortable With Discomfort

I was never been much of an athlete in my youth. That is to say, I was never very good. I was a swimmer, and loved being in the water (still do), but when I was younger I never could persist through the physical discomfort it took to get faster.

That’s all changed for me as an adult. While I still don’t LIKE being uncomfortable, I’ve built up a tolerance for it that has served me in so many ways. I first noticed it when I took up running to get in shape after my son was born and somewhere along the way I came across one of those annoying motivational quotes about how your mind will quit 100 times before your body actually gives out. I don’t know if it’s actually true, but I believe it because I have had the experience, over and over, of thinking I can’t go another step and then doing it anyway.

I had a similar revelation when I started meditating regularly. One of the ways I practice is by attempting to sit perfectly still. If this sounds easy, you’ve never tried it. Because the minute you sit down with the intention to not move, you notice an itch. Or maybe you realize you could be more comfortable if you moved *just* a little. I’m telling you, it’s always something.

When I was new to meditation I would go ahead and scratch or adjust and tell myself it didn’t really count if I moved, but with some practice I’ve gotten better at sitting with the desire to physically adjust. I can recognize it, feel it, and stay still. Sometimes my whole meditation will be about not scratching a particularly persistent itch as it moves, infuriatingly, across my scalp.

Why would I do this to myself? Because it makes me a better writer.

Writing can be wildly uncomfortable, and I’m not taking about bad ergonomics. No, I’m talking about writing things like loss, anger, grief, physical pain, heart break. To write any kind of pain (physical or emotional) we have to tap into the experience of it. If we want to write agony convincingly, we have to be willing to feel it. Not only that, we have to be able to stay with it long enough to find words to describe it. That shit is hard. No joke.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to a scene that requires some sort of deep emotional investment and suddenly realized I need to do laundry. My subconscious is sneaky like that. And before I started meditating and training my mind to stay with the hard stuff, I would get up and grab the hamper without thinking.

It’s not that I don’t still have the impulse to do laundry. Sometimes I even push back from my desk before I realize what I’m doing. Then I scoot myself back in, take a deep breath and try to get comfortable with the discomfort I’m about to bring down on myself.

And my writing is better for it. When I reread things I’ve written when I was uncomfortable I FEEL the emotion all over again, which is a good sign. I want my readers to feel things with my character and if I can make myself feel it first, I know I’m on the right track.

If you’re curious to give this practice a try, you can check out this meditation I posted recently on Insight Timer. It’s free, but it’s not easy. When you’re done, pop back here and tell me how it went.

Claire the Hummingbird: Update

I wrote last week about the hummingbird that has built a nest right outside my office window. I’m calling her Claire and she’s been there for a couple weeks now. I can’t say exactly how long, as I didn’t notice her building the nest, I only saw her after she had settled in, but even if the nest was brand new when I spotted it, it should be just about time for the eggs to hatch. Then, just yesterday, she started shifting around a lot, fluffing her feathers and adjusting.

The thing is, I’m not sure I will even be able to tell if they’ve hatched. The nest is high up in a light fixture, so I can’t see into it without disturbing her. Will the babies be big enough that I’ll see them over the edge of the nest?

Looking for answers, I found this YouTube video:

Two things caught my attention:

Momma bird tossed the empty shells out of the nest after the babies hatched, so I checked the ground outside my window for egg pieces and didn’t find any. She perches on the edge of the nest while she’s feeding the little ones. I haven’t seen Claire take that position yet.

It seems safe to assume that the eggs have not hatched. But it’ll happen any day now and I have to say, having Claire and her nest outside my window has been one of the best writing distractions I’ve ever enjoyed. Stay tuned.

Button Poetry

Hey y’all. In case you didn’t know… it’s National Poetry Month. Now, I am not a poet, not by a long shot, but I appreciate poetry. I particularly love to hear poets read their own work. I find that, when I listen to poetry, images jump into my mind and swim around, transforming like some Fantasia-style jumble and more often than not I walk away with some sort of insight or inspiration pertaining to my own work.

Used to be that you had to actually go to poetry readings if you wanted to hear a poet share their work. It took the whole night and there was no guarantee the poetry would be any good. Sometimes you got stuck in a place for hours, too embarrassed to leave because you were one of only three people in the audience. Of course, that was always a good excuse to drink more, but as a grown-up, I just don’t have that kind of time anymore.

As a result, my intake of poetry tapered off until I discovered Button Poetry. Almost every day they post a video of a poet reading their work. I don’t even know how they maintain this stream of content and frankly I don’t want to know. It’s magical. It allows me to enjoy a few minutes of poetic beauty every day. May all the rainbows end at their front door.

Here’s the poem they posted yesterday. It’s by an artist named Chibbi. It nearly brought me to tears.

Let’s hear it for the poets.

The Best Part of Traveling

We went up to Northern California to visit the family for Easter this past weekend. It’s the first time we’ve flown anywhere as a family since Covid and it felt great to travel again, even if just a little jaunt up to San Jose. It reminded me that my kids are not little anymore, which, on the downside means we don’t get priority family boarding, but also means I can get them situated at the gate and then wander back to the bookstore to pass the time until boarding begins. I LOVE airport bookstores. I mean, I love all bookstores, but airport bookstores are particularly great because

1. They exist in a place where you have time to kill. True, you could sit and play candy crush or wordle or whatever while you wait for your plane, or you could go gaze at the books.

2. It’s always interesting to see what books they have on the shelf. Some are brand new. Some were best sellers YEARS ago and a little voice in my head always marvels: their still stocking THAT book?

3. It feels like visiting friends. Maybe it’s me, but when I see a book I’ve read and loved, it’s almost as fun as running into an old friend. I want to stop the people shopping for Dramamine and People Magazines and tell them: “this, this book, you should buy this.”

Funny enough, I myself almost never buy books at the airport. Frankly, if I paid full price for even a fraction of my reads it would be a significant yearly expense. I’m more of a library kind of girl. Paperback at least. How about you?

My Church

Easter is a funny holiday in our family. We’re all of us atheists or Buddhists, but on my husband’s side there are lingering vestiges of Catholicism so we often go up to Northern California to visit and dye eggs and pretend that a bunny brings chocolate in the night.

For me, it’s always an opportunity to visit the redwood grove at Henry Cowell State Park where a collection of old growth tress climb so high that you give yourself a neck ache craning to look up at the tops of them.

These trees have been here since before Jesus walked the earth, and with any luck they’ll be here long after humans have forgotten his name. We are so tiny, so ephemeral. A walk in the redwoods is my version of church, my way of reconnecting with life, remembering to be kind, cherishing the world around me as it is.

Happy Easter everyone.

Co-Working In Culver City

I’m in Culver City today, working at a co-working facility called Blank Spaces. I love their slogan: Work for yourself, not by yourself. Anyway, popped out for lunch at Chipotle (I love me some lunch burrito) and I was surprised, once again, and just how NICE Culver City is these days.

I mean, it’s not that I ever thought of it as not nice, but when I was in college and had some friends living out this way it was just another part of the city. A little grimy, a lot trafficy. But they’ve declared this part of town the Arts District, installed fountains and lots of parking, sectioned off a lane of road on each side for bikes. It’s lovely.

Great work, Culver City.

Think About Things

My new favorite song:

I’ll just admit it right here – this is not how I pictured him.

It’s even more charming when you know that he apparently wrote the song for his baby girl. Here are the lyrics:

Baby, I can’t wait to know
Believe me, I’ll always be there, soThough I know I love you
I find it hard to see how you feel about me
‘Cause I don’t understand you
Oh, you are yet to learn how to speakWhen we first met
I will never forget
‘Cause even though I didn’t know you yet
We were bound together, then and forever
And I could never let you goBaby, I can’t wait to know
What do you think about things?
Believe me, I will always be there, so
You can tell me anything and I’ll listenWhen we are together
There isn’t anywhere that I would rather be
Three birds of a feather
I just hope you enjoy our companyIt’s been some time
And though hard to define
As if the stars have started to align
We are bound together, now and forever
And I will never let you goBaby, I can’t wait to know
What do you think about things?
Believe me, I will always be there, so
You can tell me anything and I’ll listenI might even know what to say
But either way, at least I’ll be thereBaby, I can’t wait to know
What do you think about things?
Believe me, I will always be there, so
You can tell me anything and I’ll listen

Claire, My New Office Buddy

Okay, this is not a great photo, but I’ve been dying to share the news that a hummingbird has built a teeny tiny nest in the light fixture outside my office window. I’m calling her Claire. She flits in an out of her little home all day, zipping through my peripheral vision. She’s a wonderful distraction. I wanted to get a better photo, but even more than that I didn’t want to scare her, so this is what I got.

My son (whose authority on these things I don’t question) tells me it take about 2 weeks for baby hummingbirds to hatch. She’s been out there for over week now, so I’m guessing the babies are due any day. I keep thinking I’ll hear some peeps or something, but then, hummingbirds don’t sound like other birds, do they? So I keep craning to try and see up over the lip of the nest. No sign of babies yet.

I’ll keep you posted.

Brunch with Paulette Perhach

Sometimes I hate living in Los Angeles. It’s crowded. It’s miserably hot a lot of the time. There are too many cars. But sometimes I can’t help but get caught up in loving this place.

Like this morning. My friend and business partner Paulette Perhach was in town working on a book project with a client, so we snuck out for an early breakfast at a cute little cafe on Sunset Blvd called The Butcher, The Baker, The Cappuccino Maker. It was a perfect 75 degrees out. I found parking easily. I got ordered myself the BEST egg sandwich and really enjoyed being part of the scene for a little while.

If you don’t know Paulette, and you’re a writer, you need to head on over to her Instagram account and follow her because this woman keeps it real. Back in 2020 we met at AWP and decided to co-create A Very Important Meeting. For a while now she’s been doing the digital nomad thing, traveling all over the country, house sitting, writing, touring AWP ’22.

One of the things I LOVE about Paulette is that she shares all of her rejections on Instagram. I mean, a lot of writers TALK about how rejections are a part of the writing life, but when you see how many rejections a professional working writer gets you really start to understand. Rejections are a part of writing.

I always tell my students: If you’re not getting rejected, you’re not putting yourself out there enough.

So submit your work, get rejected, and whenever you can, take a writer friend to brunch at an adorable little cafe.

Write Distinct Characters

I don’t know about you, but if I’m reading a book and can’t tell the characters apart, I am highly likely to put that book down. And if, somehow, the story is good enough to keep me reading, I’m going to be confused half the time and cranky about it. It’s critical to me as a reader that a story have distinct characters. As a writer, I try to keep that in mind, because nobody wants cranky readers.

Consider the Names

One of the easiest ways to create distinct characters on the page is to give them differentiated names. Well, duh, you might say, I’m not going to name them all John. But consider that a lot of names are kind of the same. Single syllable names of similar ethnicity are easy to mix up. Consider the following list:

JohnBobJasonGeorge

If I see names like this on the page I know I’m in trouble, especially since two of the names start with J and (as if that isn’t enough) the name George kind of sounds like a J, so in my head, this is a big ‘ol mess. If you possibly can, start your character names with different letters/sounds.

Now consider a handful of names with different lengths, ethnicities and sounds:

John SebastianDiego Pavel

This is a much more interesting list.

My favorite way to come up with names is to use the , but you can always just start by googling “Irish names for boys,” or “Kenyan names for girls.” Just BE CAREFUL. For the love of all that is literary, once you’ve decided on a name, google it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up with a great name, only to google it and realize it’s the name of a famous football player, or jazz musician, or psycho killer. The last thing any of us wants is to accidentally name the hero of our story after a psycho killer (unless, you know, you write horror, but then, that feels a little on the nose). So google it. It takes two seconds.

Change Their Appearance

Something I often hear defensive writers say in workshops is that they told us so-in-so was black/asian/latinx/white in the first section. Do they really have to keep telling us? In a word: yes. Of course, you have to be artful about it. You have to find creative ways to remind the reader of what your characters look like.

If they’re tall, maybe a lover has to stand on tip-toe to kiss them goodbye. Maybe they just got a new haircut and they’re checking their look in the mirror so you can remind us they have black hair. If they’re a sloppy dresser, have someone comment. You can also compare them to other characters (“…her skin was darker than mine,” – or – “…her eyes were a lighter blue”).

Keep it up through the whole book, but definitely front load your descriptions. It’s hard to imagine a character if you don’t know what they look like.

Give Them Tics or Habits

Consider the idiosyncratic habits your characters have. Do they get in the car and start driving immediately or do they need five minutes to put the music on, adjust their seat belt, run the heater, etc…? Are they a morning person or a night owl? Do they always tap their foot? Do they click their pen?

This can easily be overused, so be careful with it. Ideally, choose something that another character in the story will notice (to either annoy or endear) so that the tic or habit matters to the story.

Notice Patterns of Speech

Does your character shorten people’s names or use nicknames? Are they loud or soft spoken? Do they tend to trail off mid-sentence? Or do they maybe fill the room with their talking so that no one else can get a word in edgewise.

Pay attention to the people in your life or maybe go sit at a coffee shop for an hour and spy on people. Real people have all kinds of weird ways that they affect their speech and details like this can go a long way when you’re endeavoring to write distinct characters.

Do you have specific ways that you make your characters unique? Help me expand the list here by adding to the comments below.