Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 22

How We Write: Focus, goal, distraction, KNOCK IT OFF…

We’re creative creatures, writers. We’re artists. We want to imagine our worlds into being what we need them to be, how we need them to feel, and we need others to share in that vision, to see us. Unfortunately, for those of us who want to make a living from our art, we typically need to do all of that on deadline. And there’s the rub. A brief workadayreads interview with me went up yesterday, talking more about the business/insides of writing than my recent guest posts, so take a look. Then shoot back over here, and lets get down to the nitty gritty of how to focus when you have to. Because you have to. No matter how much you love your story or characters or your readers, this writing/creating gig becomes a job at some point, and if you can’t focus your energy on your creating long enough to actually create something on deadline, you’ll be writing for yourself and friends for a long, long time–but the new hearts and souls that you could have reached with your work won’t ever get to share in your creative journey.

Think of focus as a tool. A zoom lens. It’s the determination that you will get whatever you need to get done today, DONE TODAY. In however much time you have, you will make the impossible happen. Because you have to. Even if what needs to be done is an intensely personal, creative thing. Even if it’s like pouring your heart or rage or fear or insecurities onto a page, that’s your job today. And you’re focusing until your job is done.

Your goal must remain your focus until you reach, well, your goal. Sounds easy, right? RIGHT.

Today, my goal is to get to the midpoint turning point of my book, which I’ve been writing toward forever (since I first began this proposal years ago, and pitched it to a publisher who passed because it was too women’s fiction, through when I reworked the story as a Christmas novel and sold the resulting proposal to a publisher who wanted my women’s fiction/contemporary romance hybrid style, through the drafting that’s been happening since because I knew exactly where I wanted the first half of the story to go…). But I can’t seem to get there. I keep writing more stuff in front of this moment that needs to happen so I can write the second half of the book, toward the ending that needs to happen, too, only it will be even more difficult to create the way I want it to be.

I can see it all in my head, but I can’t get this midpoint scene written. Except today, it’s going to get written. I’m not getting up from my desk until that happens. Unless, of course, I keep creating distractions for myself that allow me to keep avoiding one of the most pivotal, emotionally difficult moment’s I need to paint for these characters.

Think of distraction as your subconscious showing you the door, when you have the urge to get out of whatever you need to do. It’s your best friend or your husband or your mother calling when you need to buckle down, and you pick up the phone instead of letting them leave you a message until you can grind out what you need to write and come to a productive stopping point. It’s your chores or your volunteer work, or the latest crisis that you could avoid for just a little longer before letting it sweep you away into the time sink you know it will become. Only you don’t avoid it, because you’re probably feeling rattled and unsure and nervous about the time you have to spend with the story you’re creating, as well as whether or not you really want to (or even can) make what you’re imagining come to life.

Here’s what those moments look like in your subconscious, when you have the chance to dial into your goal and not come out until you’ve reached it, but the journey won’t feel good and you’d really rather feel good than feel whatever you have to, to create what will keep your WIP on track:

How do we lose the determination to focus on the goal we HAVE TO get done, or our creative venture will stagnate, and if the work is avoided for too long, die? Because not doing the work is our comfy place, at least in a weak moment of denial and avoidance. That’s our go-to position: telling ourselves not that we can’t, but that we don’t have to. Because we’re artists, and artists are ALWAYS supposed to feel good when they create, right? RIGHT.

Not feeling comfy is part of creating. It’s part of discovering what you’re creating, and what it’s about.Whether you’re writing much lighter stuff than I do, or getting into the dark and angsty that drives the themes in my work, revealing yourself in what you write isn’t going to always be a lovely moment. And you can’t keep avoiding those unlovely moments, and have any hope of being in control of how much you create and when you’re going to complete a project. In other words, your determination to work can’t be an emotionally-driven part of your process. GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF.

Eh-hem. Sorry. I’m trying to write through a funk myself today. And I will. Really. No, really. I will!

It’s a sign that you’re getting to the good stuff, when you want to pull back from what’s happening.

It’s a symptom that you’re creating a very real moment that others will resonate with, and maybe a part of you isn’t ready to feel those emotions first, or to have others feel them with you. But that emotional honesty is why you’re writing, it’s why you see and interact with the world the way you do. It’s another tool.

Yep, distraction is the tool that, if handled properly, will cycle you right back to focus. When you feel that urge to pick up the phone or log into social media or dive into an unexpected demand for your time, and you should instead stick to your guns and get your uncomfortable writing done, GET ON WITH IT. The writing that is. Let the instinct to look away be your sign to strap in and drive through the difficult work you need to do. Take responsibility for meeting your goal and NOT embracing the distraction you’ve so conveniently stumbled upon.

The impulse to let go and let yourself off the hook is a natural survival instinct. But that urge isn’t in control. You are. And these valuable moments are the times to focus more than any others. Your story and characters and craft will grow exponentially, if you give yourself the chance to power through whatever is tempting you to turn away. Get it done. Focus. Meet that goal. Then and only then, you can distract yourself with something else for a while.

But I’m betting that once the hard stuff is behind you, you won’t feel the need to look away so much. In fact, I suspect you’ll want to keep writing on the other side, because your moment of emotional discovery will give you the same pressure release a distraction would have, except you’ll be further into the story that you love and not wanting to quit now. You’ll be proud of what you’ve done, and it’ll be behind you, and you’ll be dying to see what happens next, instead of afraid of it.

At least, that’s how it works for me. How it WILL work for me this afternoon, or tonight, or in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Because I’m not stopping until I get this crucial, emotional, difficult scene written…

What’s your got-to distraction when you should be working?

Mine (don’t know if you’ve picked up on this yet): writing motivational blog posts dealing with what challenges my own process the most ;o)

The Soul of the Matter: A Mother’s Day…

I’m not your average mother (I know. Hard to believe, right?). What with the staying up all night, or basically for weeks at a time except for catnaps. And then there are the cooking and cleaning binges I go on, once the deadline’s met. And, oh yeah, my Mother’s Day ideal is dragging my family on mile after mile of interior hiking to untouched waterfalls. Dozens of them, that you can only get to by climbing down steep embankments from the safer high ridges where the rough trail runs, then scrambling over fallen trees and up steeper rises to the next ridge that’s been cut off by last year’s storms. Doesn’t that sound divine? Take a look at the presents you get, if you’re along for the ride.

 

Most of these were taken actually in the middle of “creeks” that are running high still from the spring thaw and a few weeks of steady rain. You have to get close, where the rush of the water is making you shiver, even though you’re wearing a sweatshirt and jeans in mid-May. You have to feel the mist after it crashes into the rocks that over time are worn smooth and covered in the greenest moss you’ve ever seen. You have to reach your hand into the ice-cold softness of this eternally-running perfectuib while you’re hunting for the ideal picture to remember your day by.

 

A lot of the time, I haunt these North Georgia woods on my own. This weekend, my guys took me to this place where I’ve never hiked before, so far interior my husband roughed it with me until the woods swallowed up the trail and there was no room left for us. My son’s gift–staying back at the B&B we’ve been to so many times, the owners are the best of friends, studying for his AP Bio exam and the rest of his finals so I could have a day of not worrying if my celebration would cost him points he can’t afford to lose. And it was raining, water finding water and filling us and misting our way through mud and dampness and the feeling that we’d moved back in time to a place where nothing electric or motorized or man-made had ever passed.

 

Of course, it was just a day trip. We’re not embarking on a trek across the AT. But it was glorious, and then I got to go back to the Inn, clean up, and on Sunday we hit the best cafe in a nearby town, all prettied up for brunch.  Don’t give me that look! I am a mother, after all. I like to be pampered as much as the next girl. I just like the water more, and you can’t get to the kind of water I like without a little mud and a challenging mile or two. And on some of these trails, a girl needs a little company to get close enough to what she likes.

My family gave that to me this Mother’s Day.My quail on a bed of fresh spinach seasoned with warm bacon vinaigrette on Sunday was lovely, too. But so was my mud. ‘Cause for me, in case you haven’t read one of my books, the very soul of what you love is a shy critter to hunt. And it’s the chase that entrances me the most. I like to dig around a bit–well, a lot. I like the kind of lovely ending that getting muddy along the way makes a hundred times better.

One last look at what I mean? You’ve seen my Shoes are My Heroin posts here and likely the running shoe-orgasm on my Pinterest Shoe Page. But I’ve never shared the before and after. The very beginning and end of what fascinates me most. The tomboy mom lusting after the perfect water, and the designer shoe mom who wants a long, beautifully prepared meal with my guys where we talk about all kinds of things we let pass us by on a normal day.

So, yeah. I’m the kind of mom who likes to hike through the mud to the wettest, most beautiful sights I can find. Then the next morning, I like vintage wine with my orange juice ;o)

Here you go–my PERFECT Mother’s Day shoes. My weekend wouldn’t have been complete without either pair. Let me know which ones you like best ;o) It’s a toss up for me. I’m just that kind of mom…

Guest Blog: Her Forgotten Betrayal Grudgematch–Stormy beginning vs. Happy-ever-after ending…

I’m talking up my June release today, by taking a look at what part of a story readers like best: the dark and stormy beginning (at least in my novels ;o), or the big pay off, happy ending. You know me. I make my characters hard for their emotional pay off. But even in lighter novels, the story and the characters have to arc. What’s you favorite read, when it comes to a killer story journey?

Join me today at the Writing Playground, chat it up in the comments, and you just might win a FREE Her Forgotten Betrayal downlaod!

Don’t forget to check out HFB’s Pinterest Board for all the latest updates and special bonus material!

How We Write: Creating through the crazy…

“How do you keep a writing schedule like that, ” one of my weekend students asked, “when you’re editing and teaching and everything else? How do you know you’re going to be able to write, when you sit down at your desk every day?”

My answer–I don’t know if I can do it, until I do it.

Then again, I don’t let myself up from that desk, until I’ve found a way to plug into the muse, the creative inspiration, that will take me a step or two closer to realizing my dream for this new book, the way I have for all the other ones that have driven me equally crazy. Crazy, you understand, having become my natural state, so it’s not so strange a thing to be asking myself to dig deeper into the crazy well, whether I feel like it at that moment or not.

I love talking with small groups of authors, many of whom aren’t yet writing on publishing deadlines. Their energy is kinetic, frenetic, and contagious. They’d do almost anything to make their stories better and sellable and one step closer to being published. No matter how busy their lives are, no matter how much trouble they’re having with everything else, these hungry writers are dying to get back to their books and their critique groups and their creativity and make something happen on the page. 

I need to see that as often as possible, which is what makes weekend events like the one I just taught with my literary agent–and the first pitches I’ve officially taken for Entangled Publishing ;o)–exactly what I need when I’m too mired in my own impossible deadlines and creative low spots. Because fresh, energetic, wanna-be-published-at-all-costs authors like the ones at Carolina Romance Writers have just as much of a message for me as I do for them. Their very existence begs me to answer the question faced by all published authors who can’t find the inspiration to write when they know they need to to meet their current deadline: Why can’t you direct your creativity now, and get the words on the page now that you’re under contract, the way you did when you were hungry and eager and dying to be published, just like these hard-working women? Hmmmm???

There are a lot of answers to this very important question, and none of them easy to discover or accept. And a lot of unpublished authors have creative draughts, too. It’s a very individual journey, learning to direct your creativity and harness it into productivity, even when you sometimes feel there isn’t any point, or when the voices in your head have gone quiet, or when you doubt that anyone will ever give a damn about anything that you’re writing. But that doesn’t make it any less our job, to learn how. Which is what I teach when I do my drafting workshop–a bit of which I touched on while talking communication skills over the weekend.

Because I think the kind of inspiration we all must have, as creative artists who want to be successful commercially and finanicially as we practice our art and reach our readers, is the kind where we’re communicating with ourselves that there IS hope, and there is a kick-ass story to be told, and there are characters we need to bring to life so others can see them. And when you’re not-yet published, I sometimes think it’s easier to see just those things–the heart of what you want to do–rather than the make-it-or-break-it success we all seem to think we need to become once we’re offered that first book contract.

Yes, once again, I’m talking about fear, and the complete mind f**k it can do on us, as artists, if we let our negativity, rather than our love of story, take over.

When we’re scared, our direction goes out the office window and our emotions lock the keys on our keyboards and we see failure instead of opportunity with each new idea we attempt to embrace. When we think we’re going to fail before we start, as is so easy to do once someone is actually expecting you to succeed, our minds often protect us by simply refusing to start doing whatever we’re feeling threatened by.

Sound familiar?

So, my advice today is simple: don’t write that way. Don’t live that way. Don’t see your writing that way, whether you’re on book contract or still dreaming of having one.

Harness the positive crazy inside you instead. The hopes and dreams and impossible expectations for yourself that have inspired and driven you to get this far. You want to see the world in your own unique way, and you want others to see your world, too. You fee more alive when you write, than you do almost anywhere else in your life. You create because you can’t stop, not because you don’t want to fail. You will keep creating, even if every opportunity that could slip through your fingers actually did go away. So, create today, and don’t care so much how strange that makes you or what’s going to happen tomorrow.

Direct your creativity, yes, to produce something tangible in your story that will inspire you to even greater creativity tomorrow. Challenge yourself to write, even when you don’t feel like, just as you did when you were first starting out. But not because you’re afraid of never making it any farther than you have already. Challenge yourself to create, because your life is better and your heart feels lighter and your mind opens just an inch more, every time you do.

On my hardest, craziest days, that’s what keeps me writing, I told my weekend students. My love for the story and the words and the characters that I feel inside me and want to see you feeling, too. That’s why I’ll write today, and tomorrow, and every day between now and my next scary deadline.

Love what makes you crazy, my friends. Because the crazy’s not going away, and neither is the drive to write. Might as well buckle down and get to work!

EXCERPT–Her Forgotten Betrayal’s a “Bandit” for a day!

Romance Bandits gets the exclusive this release. The first excerpt from Her Forgotten Betrayal goes live over there this morning as part of Nancy Northcott’s fun interview ;o)

Scoot on over, read some creepy, psychological-thrillerish prose, comment to win a FREE download, and have yourself a fine “bandit” day!

And just to set the tone a bit better, here’s some creepy, Gothic imagery to get your morning going on the right note. Bwahahahahaha…

Don’t forget to check out Her Forgotten Betrayal ’s Pinterest page for the book’s growing playlist and video collection!

Dream Theories: Premonitions, Schemonitions?

Do you dream events before they occur? Do you believe the things you dream to the point where you look  for links to your waking life? While dream symbols and imagery shouldn’t be taken literally, there are many who believe, as I do, that our subconscious, sleepings minds work hard to learn from our experiences and teach us when they can, how to better deal with our “real” lives.

Unforeseen events, warnings, daja vu, illogical or irrational outcomes that somehow manage to come true…do you have to be psychic to believe that dreams can share things like this? I don’t think so. I’ve had my own premonitions for years, sometimes not realizing that’s what they were until the unforeseen event begins to play out, reminding me that I’ve “seen” something like this before. Scary, right?

Wrong!

That kind of heightened awareness can be spooky at first, but it can also be reassuring as you find your way through whatever event or potential conflict you face. It’s not so much about accuracy as it is about learning that your instincts talk to you in a lot of different ways, and they tend to keep talking until you pay attention ;o) Even if your subconscious has to weave stories within your dreams, in order for you to “see” what you need to see.

No, I’m not saying this sort of thing happens all the time, though I keep working premonition dreams into the fiction I write on a frequent enough basis that interviewers and book bloggers always ask when I’m going to do it again, LOL! I’m not saying everything you experience in a dream will come true. In fact, most dreams are about things that have already happened and what you should learn from the experience that your sleeping mind is storing away in your memory.

And, no,  you don’t have to be psychic to get something tangible out of your dream life.. The trends and patterns of the forward-thinking parts of your dreams are something to follow closely, if you’re one of those lucky people who actually do remember what you’ve experienced once you wake. There’s good stuff in there. There’s your very intuitive brain, process and analyzing and hinting at things to be on the look out for, opportunities you’re overlooking, or hidden difficulties you could avoid if you plan well enough in advance.

Of course, most of my heroines, including my latest, Shaw Cassidy, in Her Forgotten Betrayal, must remember what they’re dreaming and heed the warnings their nightmares are shouting at them, or there will be much danger ahead. But that’s because I often write creepy suspenses. Our normal dream patters are far more calm and healing. They’often hinting and possibility, not danger, and potential for self-improvement, not who the killer stalking us might be ;o)

So listen next time, when you get the chance to go back over a dream. Feel the emotions that stay with you, take a closer at the imagery that remains in your mind once you wake. What kinds of real-life hopes and dreams might they be standing in for as you sleep, and how are they suggesting that you go after what you really want most, in order to achieve the best possible result?

Let you dreams inspire you. Let them paint a brighter future.

Anyone want to share a few personal experiences???

I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours ;o)

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Related posts you might find fun to read:

realmeaningofdreams.com’s take
how stuff works is always a cook place to research the scientific side of things
dream symbolisim–it’s all subjective, but this is a pretty cool starter article

Her Forgotten Betrayal Pre-Release Tour Continues with FAQ!

The fabulous Romance Author Hotspot had invited me to Guest Blog about my creepy, psychological thriller, Her Forgotten Betrayal (availabe in June!).

I’m bringing Gothic overtones to the Dead Sexy suspense line launch for Entangled Publishing. And I’m getting lots of questions about my writing background, how it plays into what I’m doing with Dead Sexy, and about Shaw Cassidy’s story. Click over to learn more. Leave a comment for your chance to WIN a free download of Her Forgotten Betrayal, once it goes up for sale. And, basically, enjoy a few minutes of “Dark and stormy night…” in the midst of your beautiful, sunny Wednesday ;o)

Don’t forget to follow/favorite HFB’s Pinterest Page , to catch all the cool, pre-release surprises I’ll share. And sign up to your right, for email alerts for new blog posts–so you don’t  miss a chance to win a free download of my June release!

Her Forgotten Betrayal Pinterest Book Page!

To capture all the goodness of my Her Forgotten Betrayal’s pre-release blog tour, my Gothic thriller’s Pinterest Page  is growing with each tour stop, blog post, character portrait, plot summary, video, soundtrack update, and startling image I share.

Save HFB’s board to your favorites and check back often for updates about my June release! Visit my blog and sign up for email alerts about contests, when the novel goes live, and for you chance to win a FREE download at each guest blog tour stop. Join in the dark and creepy, thrilling fun! I’d love to hear from you ;o)

Dream Theories: Midnight Mental Meanderings with Dr. C.

Welcome Dr. C. back to the Dream Theories! I like to think she lends a bit of respectibility to our endeavors, as I obsess about one of my favorite metaphysical subjects: dreams and how our sleeping mind’s work can impact (and improve) the conscious things we do all day. My latest heroine, Shaw Cassidy, is fighting her dreams to the point of putting her life in danger. She either remembers and deciphers her dream imagery, or she’s in a whole passle of trouble. I wonder if Dr. C. knew that, when she sent me her latest guest post?

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Midnight Mental Meanderings

Several of my patients have been mentioning a recent BBC article, The Myth of Eight-Hour Sleep, about the reality of split sleep: which references historical and scientific research to propose that waking in the middle of the night for a couple of hours is a natural pattern.  The way it works is that a couple of hours after dusk, the “first sleep” period starts, and then the sleeper wakes for two hours and then falls off again to “second sleep.”  During those waking hours in the middle of the night, people in pre-industrial (and therefore pre-artificial light) times talked to their bed mates, made babies, visited neighbors, and pondered their dreams.

It was the pondering of dreams that caught my attention. That they were part of the culture at the time, and the potential advantages of earlier vs. later night dreams.  If we recall the hypnogram (yes, I know I keep referring to it, but it’s important), we could suppose that the middle of the night awakening happened after the first or second sleep cycle, so Rapid Eye Movement, or REM, sleep hadn’t become as prominent.  To that point, the main deep sleep has been stage N-3, or slow wave sleep, with shorter periods of REM.

This is where things get interesting.  Traditionally, we think of REM as being dreaming sleep, but we can actually dream in any stage.  There are differences in the types of dreams we have in REM and non-REM (nREM) stages: the main one being that memories tend to be sources of dream content in nREM sleep, and semantic knowledge, or what’s already in the brain from learning, is the source of dreams in REM sleep.  That’s how you end up with poltergeists in your office, as in some recurrent dreams I had last year.  My brain took work stress and translated it into a haunting.

A 1992 study from Italy* examined dream content during the first half of the night, and had participants describe their dreams after ten minutes of either slow-wave sleep or REM sleep.  Some of the participants’ dreams were very similar.  Although the amount of sleep was the same, the REM dreams were usually described as longer.  They also found more “nonself characters” (i.e., characters who are not the dreamer), “undefined characters” (what I call “random dream people”), and emotion in REM dreams.

So what were those people in the Middle Ages pondering in the middle of the night?  This returns us to the question of, “Where the hell did that come from?” that we tend to ask ourselves upon awakening in the mornings and remembering our dreams.  During the night, the brain takes the things that happened to us the previous day and integrates those bits and pieces with the stuff it already has in it, as we saw above.  This integrative process has been demonstrated in several dream studies.  As the dreamer gets further and further into sleep, the dreams become more and more abstract and random-seeming as the brain makes more connections between what’s occurred and what’s already there. 

This is where we get to my speculation, i.e., the fun part.  Perhaps after the “first sleep,” the ammount of slow-wave sleep and limited REM sleep dreaming allowed those sleepers who woke after four hours and “pondered their dreams,” to make more connections between their dreams and their lives before the brain processed everything into incomprehensible abstractions.  Also, alpha waves have been associated with meditative and creative states, and they tend to be more prominent during drowsy periods. This midnight pondering would serve as a continuation of the brain’s associative work under more conscious circumstances, which likely allowed them to remember the insights they gained through examining their dreams. 

Indeed, one researcher quoted in both the original academic article and the BBC story deprived his participants of artificial light, and they slipped into the split sleep pattern described above. Instead of being fully awake in the intervening period, they experienced an “altered state of consciousness not unlike meditation.”

This isn’t to say, of course, that it’s not useful to record and examine our dreams from later in the night when REM sleep is more prominent.  But you might just have to dig a little harder to relate that purple dinosaur in your backyard to your work stress.  To go back to my earlier example, I didn’t fully understand the poltergeist that was rearranging my office furniture and seemed to live in the printer until I talked to Anna about the dreams.

It makes me wonder just what our artificially lighted society is missing out on.  There obviously used to be a lot more respect for dreams and what they could tell us.  With our addiction to artificial light in the evenings, I doubt it’s possible to duplicate the split sleep phenomenon under normal, non-experimental conditions.  One thing you can do to circumvent some of this modern interference is to cut off your screened gadgets (e.g., i-Things, smartphones, and computers) two hours before bedtime and not look at them until after you record your dreams in the morning.  Who knows?  You might find yourself sleeping better overall and remembering more dreams than you did previously.

Footnotes

*Because in Italy they get funding to study cool stuff like this.  Remember, it was also Italian researchers who found that people with televisions in their bedrooms have less sex.  No, I don’t know whether that particular study was personally funded by Mr. Berlusconi.

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By day, “Doctor C.” is a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist.  That’s a long title, so she answers to any variations, including “Sleep Psychologist.” 

By night, she writes fantasy and science fiction, blogs about wine and life, and interacts with other wine lovers and writers on twitter as @RandomOenophile.  She’s a featured first-place winner in this year’s Mystery Times Ten, a Young Adult mystery anthology, for her fantasy story “The Coral Temple.” 

Her Forgotten Betrayal: What’s at the Heart of Your Fear?

Today’s Soul of the Matter installmentis a very, very early guest blog for Her Forgotten Betrayal: What’s at the Heart of Your Fear?

My psychological thriller is an Entangled Publishing  launch book, for their Deady Sexy suspense line–due to be released in June. Stop over and chat about my amnesiac herione, and how fear can either destroy your dreams or challenge you to fight even harder for your heart’s desire. A free digital download of Her Forgotten Betrayal goes to one lucky commenter ;o)

Follow the link. Don’t miss out…

http://bit.ly/IkyRQy