Steven Barnes's Blog, page 85

The Writing "Machine" Part 3: Express your deepest values and beliefs

The “Writing Machine”  Part Three:   Write stories that reflect the values, beliefs, and concerns of your own life, in indirect form.

We are investigating the basic structure of “The Machine”, a writing concept I’ve taught, implicitly and explicitly, to thousands of students over the years, without ever formalizing it.  It is designed to produce, not a particular piece of work, but a body of work that gradually cuts closer and closer to your ultimate potential.  To that end, please absorb what is said here, mull over it, adapt what is useful, and discard the rest.

The third principle is to WRITE STORIES REFLECT THE VALUES, BELIEFS, AND CONCERNS of your life, in indirect form.

Most of the time, you’ll start a story with one of just a few motivations:
1) A character you wish to explore.
2) A story situation you wish to explore.
3) A fact or idea you find fascinating, and wish to explore in story form.

A fine suggestion is to “write hot, and edit cool”.   In other words, when you have your idea, you write your first draft at mach speed, enjoying the heck out of it, riding the flow of emotions.   The REWRITE, on the other hand, should be done with deliberation.   

When you’ve finished your first draft, it is time to read what you’ve written. What is the meaning of your story?  That meaning is generally expressed in your final scenes or images.  Once you extract that meaning, you begin your rewrite process, expressing or attempting to “disprove” your basic theorem  in each scene (for instance: love is stronger than hate, versus hate is stronger than love.)

As you move from project to project, you should also be deepening and refining your sense of what is important in your own life.   Refining your sense of self, and the world you see.   This could involve your sense of the divine, of the ethical structure of the universe, or the core rules of nature.  You might dig into your personal concerns about abuse, success, love, or whatever else that has affected you deeply.

This is especially good when it comes to issues that have deviled you in the past, stopped you from progressing or reaching your goals.  What emotional or perceptual issues have hurt you?  Continue to hurt you?

What are the lessons you wish you’d earned earlier in life?  If you could create a “time capsule” and send it back in time to your younger self, 10, 20, or 30 years ago…what would you say?  What might have made your days easier? Helped you survive emotional turmoil?  Steer you clear of a bad relationship?  Give you more understanding and compassion for yourself and others? Lifted you from depression?   Helped you survive the death of a parent or loved one?
What have you learned about life, the world, yourself over the years?   REFINE THAT AND MAKE IT THE BASIS OF A STORY.

Now, note…you should never, ever state your basic premise directly, for a variety of reasons.  But allow the images, actions, and language reflect and expand upon your theme, your basic idea.  
Decide that the dominant emotion you wish to project to your audience will be something uplifting, inspiring…or that you will use horror to cleanse, release emotion, warn or illuminate.   Shine a light on an unexplored corner of human experience.  Or just send a message to those a little younger and less experienced than you.

Now, your primary motivation MUST be entertainment, but the actions and reactions of your characters, as well as the way the universe responds to their efforts, reveals the meaning of your story, as well as your view of humanity.

Learn to control these things.  When your stories begin to reflect the REAL issues of your life, you are resting your craft upon emotional truth, and opening the doorway to art.  Harness those emotions and skills properly, and everything you write makes you a better person (by deepening knowledge and working out issues), and everything you do to improve your life makes you a better writer (by increasing knowledge of character and reality.)

And that…is a very sweet outcome indeed.


Write with passion!
Steve
www.diamondhour.com

The Writing "Machine" Part Two: Read 10X What you write

So our first rule was to create an output target and stick to it.  The second rule is designed to keep you from creative bankrupsy.   YOU MUST READ.   Lots.  Tons.  Everything you can get your hands on.   But too often, I encounter people who want to publish, say, SF, and confine their reading to the very magazines they wish to write for.


I think this is a bad, bad idea.  The first generation of SF writers seemed to know two things: literature and the sciences.  If you have, say 100 units of ability, and have to spend 30 of them on world-building, guess what?  You only have 70 units of ability to use on the quality of your writing. 

An SF writer would actually have to have about 130 “units” of ability to write fiction that is as good, measured purely as fiction, as a writer who has 100 units but doesn’t have to world-build and extrapolate.   This is why I   like to have students   write non-genre stories BEFORE experimenting with genre.   Do you understand character, poetics, plotting?   The elements of genre can disguise the quality of poor writing.  Easily.  A great idea is forgiven much bad presentation.

There is another factor.  If you eat steak, you know what comes out the other end.    So if you eat crap, what do you think you get?  Sorry for the image, but it is critical to disabuse yourself of the notion that you can be lazy about your input: garbage in, garbage out.    If you take the position that you must read ten words for every word you write, and not only that but must strive to read “up” from your target market, it is hard to go wrong.

What this means, of course, is that if you have the ambition of writing popular fiction, read bestsellers.  Want to write bestsellers? Read classics.  Want to write classics? Well…choose your grandparents very carefully.

That’s kind of a joke, but contains some truth, of course.  Ultimately, there is a limit to what focus, modeling, hard work and so forth will do for you.   There are undoubtedly inborn limits.   Personally, I’ve never met a human being who struck me as being at the absolute outer edge of his potential, although I know a few who come extraordinarily close.  If you concentrate on getting the very, very best from whatever potential you have, you’ll accomplish hella more than if you lament that you don’t have as much “talent” as someone else.  In fact, one of the first clues that a person is focused on the wrong things is if they spend time complaining about the success of others.

Do what you can, to the best of your ability.  And one core element of the “Machine” is to write a story a week (or some other serious output goal), and then read 10X what you write, one level “up.”   The truth is that if your ambitions are the very highest, then you should be spending the majority of your reading time with the classics of the ages.   Also immersing yourself in the mastery of some area of human knowledge.  And stripping away your perceptual and emotional illusions and masks, so that you are free to  cut closer and closer to the truth of your existence every day.

We’ll touch on that again, soon.  But today, look at the application of these two rules in your life. 

Write With Passion!
Steve

The Writing "Machine" Step #1: A Story A Week, or every other week

All right.  Let’s take another look at the Ten Steps of “The Machine”.   Please understand and bear with me.   I never formalized anything beyond about the first four steps, but definitely “clustered” my advice around the areas I’m going to be discussing.  The point is to create not a given story, but a pattern of action which will, over time, lead you to your own methodology, your own way of controlling conscious and unconscious, of expressing yourself cleanly and honestly.  Of building the healthiest career your heart and mind can construct, and taking your art as far as you possibly can.

    A lot to ask.  But I think that much of this is doable, if you focus properly.   I’m going to be tinkering with the “10 Steps” as I go, so bear with me.  

    The first step:

    1)) Create an output goal (a story a week, or a story every other week.  Or a
thousand words.  Or five pages).
  
    You have to look back from five years from now.  What output will take you to your chosen goal?    I wanted a hundred stories, all circulating in the mail at the same time, before I began to evaluate the wisdom of a writing career.  That meant that at a story a week, I’d have it in two years.   A story every other week?  Four years.   Cool.

Or…look at it as “a million words of crap.”   At a thousand words a day, that’s about three years.   Five hundred words?   About six years.   Cool.

Or…Scripts.    At one script page a day, that’s about two scripts a year.   Five pages a day?   LOTS of room to throw crap away, and still have three scripts a year.   Cool.

And remember…the gut-grinding work is the writing.  Craft is in what you throw away.  Art is found in telling the truth, and if you write enough, you simply run out of lies.

Are you willing to do your five-six years of work?  Your million words? Your hundred stories?  Think about it: in the process, you will learn all your basic skills of research, flow management, typing, grammar and spelling, plotting and characterization.  You will learn about the market, and how to submit, and how to handle rejection.  You will in the flow of that time begin to shift your definition of yourself to “writer” in some core, unconscious ways.   The books, stories, scripts are by-products of living your life in a particular way.  If you act in accordance with your own deepest wisdom AND learn everything you can along the way, you will “cut away” everything that is not you, and reveal whatever “talent” you have to offer.

But the real talent, the CORE talent, is doing the work.  And learning one new thing every day about your chosen field.  Just one new thing.  Every day.

And write.  And write. And write.

Have you got what it takes to do this?  Can you make your peace with doing this day after day, year after year, for the sheer love of craft and self-expression?  Even if you never publish?    If you can, joyously…you have a damned good chance of being an author.   You're already a writer, dammit.

These ten rules are designed to help you craft a process that will bring you joy and satisfaction regardless of what the external world says about your work.  You CANNOT control the world’s reactions to your dreams.  You CAN choose to live a life of self-expression and growth.   And it is when you do that…without worrying about the external results but applying yourself to excellence in every conscious way…

That beautiful things happen.  The work always belongs to you.   But sometimes, blessedly, the world responds with a “yes.”

And that, my friends, is magical.



Namaste,
Steve
www.diamondhour.com

The Diamond Hour--Simpliified

Ten Principles For Your Perfect “Diamond Hour”

I’ve been promoting the idea of one “Diamond Hour” that belongs to you, every day.   And want to zero in on the ten most important principles connected with that idea.   So, just as with the “Writing Machine” I use in coaching, I wanted to see if I could extract the ten most important principles behind this.    It will take me a little time, but hopefully you won’t mind if I work this out in public over the next couple of weeks.  I’ll enumerate them, then go back over them day by day, o.k.?

1) Five Minute Miracle.  Take five sixty-second “breathing breaks”, one every 2-3 hours.

2) Re-write your top 3-5 goals once every day.  Be certain to have a tangible, photographable goal in each of your top three arenas (body, finances, relationships).  And Journal your emotions and observations.

3) Begin to expand out the “5MM” breaks.  For instance, spend extra time during session #1 by doing it first thing in the morning on awakening, listen to your heartbeat.

4) Begin to implement the “Ancient Child” technique to contact your intuition and passion, clarify your goals for the year and your actions for the day that relate to them.

5) Create a 15-minute (minimum) “morning ritual” of motion and emotion to center and begin to move your goals and intentions from concept to motion.   This means Joint Recovery, Five Tibetans, Sun Salutations…something basic and powerful that requires no equipment.  Something you do every day to anchor yourself into your physical body, your vehicle for this world.  As you do, you will go through a three-step process (Steps 6-9):

6) Raising your emotions.  (About three minutes)    While moving, use an affirmation like “every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”  The trick is to do it WITH FEELING and WITH MOTION.  Walking, exercising, breathing deeply IN MOTION.   You bring up the emotions you want to feel.   Charles Darwin believed that emotions were heuristics, simplified instructions for life that help us sort between numerous choices swiftly.  Without emotion, it is difficult to clarify values, and without values, how do you know which of life’s countless options to take?

7) Gratitude—past and present.  (About three minutes)  Imagine all of the things in your life for which you ALREADY feel gratitude: life, love, health, family, a roof over your head, etc.  As you do, chant out loud something like “I’m SO grateful for my loving children!   I’m SO grateful for a strong, healthy body!  I’m SO grateful for a healthy mind and happy heart!” and so on.  The core message of “As A Man Thinketh” and countless other self-help books is that our minds and emotions create our worlds.

8) Gratitude—future (goals).  (About three minutes)   Now, and this is important—take that SAME emotional energy you have raised about the things you have now…and begin to give thanks for the goals you have in the future, as if you have already accomplished them.   Say it out loud.   If you can’t say it, you can’t have it!   “I’m SO grateful for the new love in my life!  I’m SO grateful I take the time to meditate every day!   I’m SO grateful for my five new customers!   I’m SO grateful I look great in my size X pants!  I’m SO grateful my children graduated college!”   Use total physiology, emphasis, enthusiasm, body language.  The message of “The Science of Getting Rich” is that gratitude for what we have now is the foundation for our future accomplishment

9) Incantation (About three minutes)  chanting, aloud, with enthusiasm, the belief that you already possess the resources and power necessary to create your dreams.   Guru Tony Robbins suggests a statement like “All I need is within me now.  All the STRENGTH I need is within me now.  All the CONFIDENCE I need is within me now.  All the LOVE I need is within me now…”   Again, WHILE MOVING, WALKING EXERCISING. 

10) TAKE AN ACTION.   You’ve clarified goals, raised energy, visualized your internal world and the external steps you will take today and this week to create your future.  NOW…take an action!   Exercise, write  1000 words of your novel, write an email you’ve put off.  DO SOMETHING.  ACT ON A DECISION.

These are the ten steps I’ve been teaching, and using myself for years...and in some cases, since childhood.  Start with five minutes, while keeping a commitment to stealing a hour back from the world.   Then begin, one step at a time, to walk The Thousand Mile Road.  You may notice that I don’t specifically speak of Spirit.  That is deliberate.  But if you raise your energy, fill your life with love, learn to serve your community in a way that they exchange value with you, and remove the fear from your life…you will automatically begin to seek a higher connection, never fear.  Take care of the roots, and the rest of the plant will grow.

I’ll look at these again, very soon.
Namaste
Steve
(Www.diamondhour.com)

The (Writing) Machine

Over the last decade, I’ve used and taught a writing model I call “The Machine”  I’ve decided to try to boil down the basic advice to about ten steps, and you will probably excuse me if I do this in public.  Here are the ten steps that come to mind.  In the coming days I’ll work to refine and explain them:

“The Machine”
1) Create an output goal (a story a week, or a story every other week.  Or a thousand words)
2) Read 10 X what you write.
3) Read one level “up” from your writing goal.
4) Keep your stories circulating in the mail
5) Don’t try a novel until you’ve sold ten short stories.
6) Once you’ve finished your first draft, ask “what is the meaning of my story” and re-write from the beginning to sharpen this.
7) Model the healthy attitudes, actions and beliefs of the writers you admire.
8) Follow structure until you have mastered it (selling at least 10 short stories), then try freestyle.  If you have problems, revert to structure until it is internalized.
9)  Separate the “Flow” state from the “editing” state.  
10)   Develop a circle of writers and readers to evaluate your work.   Choose the smartest, toughest critics you can find, and learn to take the discomfort.


These ideas have served me and my students well.    Study them, absorb what is useful, and reject the rest.  More later…


Namaste,
Steve

"G.I. Joe: Retribution" (2013)

Watched "G.I. Joe: Retribution" with Jason yesterday. Having his eyes was a useful experience. I may have used up my Bad Movie tolerance for the year already...but I have to admit to enjoying it, in a 9-year-old boy kinda way. There was a bogglingly grin-worthy Ninja sequence on a snowy mountain that was a kind of perfection of the absurd. If you go to see a movie called "G.I. Joe" starring The Rock...this is what you came to see.For those who can access their inner 9 year old...a "B".  All others...beware.  

Morning Ritual--for adults

(An expression of the "Ancient Child" meditation available FREE at: www.diamondhour.com)

Tons to do in the next week. Under stress we tend not to remember the most important stress-smashing steps:
1) Stop every three hours and breathe for sixty seconds.
2) As you do, "listen" quietly and softly for your heartbeat.

And healing:

3) Visualize the light flowing within your body, as if watching yourself in a mirror.
4) Form the light into a living being within you. The amount of light will determine the size/age of the being.
5) "Sink" this image down to your root. Listen carefully to what this "child" has to say to you.

And performance

6) Remember your top 3-4 goals for the next year. Be sure you have one for each major arena. See how these goals will benefit you, your family, and your community.
7) Remember your top 3-4 goals for the next month. Be sure you have one for each major arena.
8) Remember your top 3-4 goals for today. Be sure you have one for each major arena.
9) Move your body: joint rotations, power-walking, dancing.
10) As you do, see your daily actions leading to success on the daily, monthly, and yearly level.
11) If possible, launch into your morning exercise session. If not, give thanks for another wonderful day of life, love, and possibility.


With practice, you can do all of this in 3-15 minutes. And the benefits, once you learn to ride a wave of gratitude and purpose...are amazing.


Namaste,
Steve
www.diamondhour.com

Owning Your Emotions

You have to admit that you want change in your life. Admit that you want that passionate relationship. Admit that you want a dynamic, lithe body. Admit that you want success in a career that empowers and expresses you, and contributes to the world. Admit that you want financial stability. What stops people is fear of disappointment. Success will always belong to those who step up and take the risk. The others will have some story about how they can't, or shouldn't, or mustn't. They'll blame their genetics, their environment, society, their parents, their spouse. Anything, everything, but taking responsibility for their own lives. Adulthood is the point of conation--the point at which you stop blaming and start taking responsibility for your emotions, your actions, your beliefs. Children can fault others for their emotions, say "they made me feel X." But if you would own your life, you must draw the line, and take responsibility.

Response-Ability. The ability to respond. Not guilt, blame, or shame, but response-ability. I know I'm dealing with a child when I hear "they made me feel..."

And an adult when I hear "They did X, and I felt Y about it." That subtle shift denotes awareness. And awareness is where it begins.


Namaste,
Steve

What It Takes To Get Everything

Almost fifty years ago, a bully (backed up by his brother and two friends) were beating the hell out of me on Washington Boulevard near Crenshaw in Los Angeles, and I hit threshold, realized that I simply couldn't allow myself to be shamed and humiliated in such a way. I was being destroyed psychologically, one piece at a time. And knew I would rather die than continue being crushed in this way. And I walked out into the middle of the street, standing on the double yellow lines with trucks whizzing past me on both sides, looked at my tormentor and said "come out here and do that."

He looked at me, and I looked at him, and I thought to myself that if he came out, I was going to push him in front of a car. I was going to try my level best to kill him. He saw his death in my eyes.

And in case you didn't know, one of the real, basic secrets of the martial arts is the attitude: "I'm ready to die, and I'm ready to take you with me." You simply can't get stronger, more feral, more dangerous than such an attitude. This is one of the reasons that most martial arts systems have rule and laws about when the art is to be used: under what circumstances, what provocations, what people. This isn't just about being "a good person." It is about unleashing the most basic core of your survival energy. The person willing to die is a martyr. The person ready to die killing his enemy is a warrior.

This emotional "burning of the bridges" removes all the b.s. All the illusions. All the excuses. It is the most powerful position you can come from, and should only be accessed when defending your sacred honor, or the lives of loved ones.

Or...your dreams. The "Ancient Child" asks you to get in touch with your heart, and the love within you. Then to create an internal representation of the different levels in your life ("chakras") in which our unconscious mind can provide visual representations of your clarity and health (represented by light) on each of these levels. Then to create a representation of your "inner child"--the child you were before striving in the external world wore down your uniqueness. You take the love you've found in your Heartbeat Meditation, and pour it into this child symbol. You vow to protect that precious essence at ALL costs. There is NOTHING worth betraying this essential self. Nothing. Everything you do has to be in alignment with your dreams and core values, in one way or another. It is up to you as an adult to figure out how to do this--either adjust your attitude toward what you are doing, or you change what you do. But one way or another, if you want to live with the greatest passion, the greatest pleasure, the greatest success, every step you take in life needs to acknowledge who and what you are at the deepest level. Everything you do has to be a way of answering the two most important questions in life: "who am I?" and "what is true?"

Fifty years ago, the answer was: "someone willing to die before I will be broken." At that moment I found the bed-rock of my life. When I wanted to become a writer, I knew I had to want it so badly I was willing to die trying. When I wanted to create a healthy, thriving, passionate relationship I knew I had to be willing to sacrifice all my illusions about myself in favor of a glorious but sometimes frightening reality. Parenthood? If you aren't willing to do everything, EVERYTHING essential for your child, don't have them.

 I get two hundred and fifty bucks an hour for coaching, but I really don't want your money--I'd rather give you the technology for free or as close to free as I can afford without stealing from my family. I searched the world for answers, was willing to travel a thousand miles to spend ten minutes with someone who could give me a straight answer about how to deal with fear, doubt, lack of clarity or motivation, dishonesty, or any aspect of performance. And...found answers.

And my best, simplest way of conveying what I found is the Ancient Child technique. Master that, and you can bring your dreams into reality.

All it takes to get everything you need...is everything you've got.

Namaste,
Steve
www.diamondhour.com
 

Three Weeks Work...in two days?

I have a client who feels that she has totally destroyed her life in some critical ways. Much of this relates to childhood trauma--being forced to take on too much responsibility, too soon...leading to resentments when she married and had her own family, leading to the breakup of hat marriage and estrangement from her children. She lives as a consultant, intelligent woman, making just enough money to support her lifestyle, almost a hundred pounds overweight and suffering from a sense of no goals, no direction, nothing but floating in an ocean of pain.

Well...I've begun teaching her the ANCIENT CHILD meditation technique, and of course the tools in the 101 PROGRAM. I am SOOOO happy I created these programs, because they forced me to get very very concise about processes I've gathered over forty-odd years of searching for the best techniques from around the world. I was able to tell her the following:

1) Start with the Five Minute Miracle: breathing breaks, every 2-3 hours.
2) Begin to listen to your HEARTBEAT during one of those breaks, expanding out to 15 minutes.
3) You don't have goals? Now you do. Your goal is...to have clear goals.
4) Begin to move her body. Every day, starting with gentle yoga.
5) Forgive herself for not being perfect. Remember that she has done the best she can with the resources she has.
6) Visualize light inside her body. Form that light into a child, of whatever size and age is appropriate for the amount of light she finds. Begin the work of healing this internal relationship. (A critical step in the Ancient Child process)
7) Keep a journal. Write the "Childs" thoughts with your non-dominant hand.
##
We talked about where the energy and creativity of her childhood vanished in a mire of adult responsibilities, and the way out of the nightmare is becoming an Awakened Adult. Years of work for her...but with VERY rapid results if you actually do the work (isn't that always the catch?)
Within a single week after I gave her this homework, she was excited and burbling with joy. The "Ancient Child" had made her first connection: normally, she said, the "editor" in her head makes her hunt and peck on projects, and she is paid by the report. But rather than agonizing for weeks as she usually did, she generated a report in TWO DAYS. Two days. About ten times faster than her usual speed. All because the little girl inside her was enthusiastic because "mommy" was talking to her. Loved her. Was proud of her, and promised to take care of her.

You have to understand the power of internal symbols. And the degree to which our core personalities are formed in childhood. And...the degree to which all of our creativity, joy and flow relates to finding a way to connect our childhood dreams and our adult needs. This is the foundation of a "Zero Strain Life"--there will always be stress. The trick is not "driving with your brakes on" which is what happens when we ignore our needs, values, and emotions.

She was so grateful to me, but I don't want that. I want her to be grateful to HERSELF for having the courage, clarity and self-respect to begin the healing process. Grateful to the Divine, however she represents that, for giving her everything she needs to thrive and grow, right now, the instant she begins to walk the Thousand Mile Road.

We all have all we need, if we only begin to access it. I am proud to be a coach, but that's all I can do. I can point to the mountain, but SHE has to climb it. I can lead you to the track, but YOU have to run the laps. Tell you of a book, or technique, but YOU have to read it and practice it.

Everything you need, in the last place most of us want to look. Within our own hearts.

Submitted for your approval...
Steve
www.diamondhour.com