Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 25

I Hear the Craziest Things: Anyone Got a Tissue?

Every time I pull a tissue from a tissue box in my house (once or twice a week), it's always the LAST one in the box–even the box beneath my beside table reserved solely for my personal consumption. What does this say about our family dynamic?

 

Do others' allergies outpace mine so dramatically?
Am I unknowingly using tissue in some fugue state, after which I suffer PTSD symptoms due to the trauma of blowing my nose and promptly forget I've indulged?
Are my men scurrying about, from one box to the next, looking for ways to score their next tissue hit while avoiding the horror of reaching into the linen closet for a new box?
Do they have a covert scanning method I'm not privy to, where infrared sensors alert to the immanent arrival of the final tissue, so they can be certain not to remove it from the box???

My entire morning will be consumed, pondering said mysteries…

How We Write: The Soul of the Matter…

If you want to write, write. If you want to publish, prepare to work your ass off getting very, very good at your writing. This business is all about soul. And I'm not just talking about your unique, creative voice–though that's incredibly important, too. Today, I'm talking about grit. Stick it out, find your own way, stop waiting for everyone else to make this crazy business sensible and welcoming and easy, G-R-I-T.

I write my books; I edit for other authors. I'm close to offering my first two book contracts for Entangled Publishing. After publishing 16 novels of my own and reading countless propsals others have written over the years, all I know for sure is, this is all about soul.

Have you been rejected (like me)? Figure out if you have what it takes to get up the next morning and start over from nothing–because every published author must do that each and every time they meet a deadline.
Do you have a day job (like me)? Buckle down and accept that your personal life off the clock belongs first to the book you need to finish, not your hobbies and social (media) life–because the majority of published authors don't make enough off their writing to support their families, so we're all hoofing it to make ends meet while trying to stay creative in the dark hours of early morning.
Do you have a busy family (like me)? Love them and care for them, the tell them your entire life doesn't revolve around them and they're going to have to take care of themselves the 1,2,3 hours a day that you devote to your writing. Otherwise, they'll consume you (and maybe that's what you want, if family is the excuse you're making daily for not creating new words).
Have you been dealing with an illness (like me)? Deal with it, by all means, your health is everything. But for Dog's sake, knock off saying your illness is responsible for you not moving forward in your writing. I don't mean to be insensitive or unkind, but whatever your condition is, I assure you I can find others who've managed to succeed battling far worse circumstances–because they refused to quit.

Soul is the thing that lives and breathes inside us, regardless of the piles of s**t raining down on our worst days. And on our best days, it's the piece of us that sings the loudest, reminding everyone of who and what we are at our essential core. So, what are you? How strongly do you want that dream you say you want? How hard and for how long and through what difficulties are you willing to grit out this journey?

Grit is what I call that indiscernible thing I'm looking for in my own work and the manuscript submissions I read. It's my name for what drives us as artists to create, then to refine and revise and rework and create some more, until we've done absolutely everything we can do for a project. Grit is the magic we all hope to write and read one day. It's the soul of every thing and every person who's touched us in that indescribable way we'll never forget.

I went for nearly 2 years before my thyroid issues stopped zapping every ounce of creativity away, not to mention the energy it requires to sit before a computer and write thousands of words a day on deadline. So, instead, I read research for 4 different projects (3 of which are being considered by publishers now). I upped my freelance editing business, because it took less concentration and allowed me to work in shorter spurts of time (and now I'm doing that as a second career). I got excited about my life again, despite the rest (and that excitement, I'm told by others, is shining through my new novels and every new endeavor I'm undertaking). It wasn't easy. I nearly quit–every day. It took grit to keep going, but try as I did, I didn't know how to quit. And here I am(hopefully), on the other side of it, wondering how I could have ever thought about stopping.

As I read for authors fighting I have no idea what obstacles themselves, and as I write my new books and look forward to seeing them published and hearing from their readers, it's grit that I long to see. Mine and others. I want to feel that faith and determination and the beautiful inspiration and inventiveness that flourishes when we persevere until our dream becomes reality. I want to see that in every beautiful word. If I don't, I instantly know something's missing. That either you or I have only given a portion of ourselves. And it's not enough. Time is too precious. We can't afford to waste it on sort-of, maybe, kind-of creating or experiencing anything.

Books/stories are our dreams playing out for the world to see. The courage it takes to touch another's heart with our own, with nothing more than words strung together on a page, stuns me. Every time I see it in others or realize that core of pure steel that's driving my own writing journey, I'm humbled that this is what we get to do with our lives on this earth. You inspire me, and I long to inspire you. Don't short change that. Not a single word of it. Give your writing your all, your grit, every single day.

Put your soul in every word, my writer friends. Grit out whatever obstacle stands in your way. Slay every excuse that tempts you not to revise or resubmit or start over or learn whatever lesson is holding you back. Make yourself proud, be proud of your work, be prepared to do whatever it takes.

And in the middle of that insane journey, know I'll be writing, too, trying to make this craziness work. It's all about soul. Leave yours on the page. I'll meet you there!

Shoes Are My Heroin: Seasonal Insanity…

Lots of Facebook chatter lately about shoes you need and those you lust for. I've scored both in the last few weeks. Neither are completely practical. But what's the fun in practical? They fit like a dream and will feel great on my feet for hours. And there were bought at killer sale prices. PERFECT! Whatcha think?

These are my early-spring, neutral, sensible business pumps.

Okay, they're wedges, too, and will look great with summer pants and cotton skirts and even shorts. But also the trousers and spring dresses/suits I'll wear when I teach. No, really, that's why I bought them. That, and they have rounded toes (thank Dog, the pointy ones are out again)…

And since this time of year's all about transition, I also needed something not-so-black to mix with the lighter things we wear under our coats in the south the next few months, when its cool but not frigid, and warmer but still chilly.

Now, before you start pointing at the heels and snickering, these have Nike Air Soles that cushion the pressure points on your feet like track shoes. Add in my high arches, and there's nothing better. Plus, they're prettyyyyyy ;o)

Insanity, you say? I'll be wearing both during upcoming travel and meetings. Catch me with them on, win a prize!

I've missed hearing your shoe dreams. Check back each week, and we'll find something even more outlandish to talk about in each Shoes are my Heroin post, than my neuroses that my  heels must be high enough to keep me taller still than my now 6 foot+ 15-year-old.

There's a world of dream shoes out there. Tell us about your faves!

Shoes Are My Heroin: Seasonal Insanty…

Lots of Facebook chatter lately about shoes you need and those you lust for. I've scored both in the last few weeks. Neither are completely practical. But what's the fun in practical? They fit like a dream and will feel great on my feet for hours. And there were bought at killer sale prices. PERFECT! Whatcha think?

These are my early-spring, neutral, sensible business pumps.

Okay, they're wedges, too, and will look great with summer pants and cotton skirts and even shorts. But also the trousers and spring dresses/suits I'll wear when I teach. No, really, that's why I bought them. That, and they have rounded toes (thank Dog, the pointy ones are out again)…

And since this time of year's all about transition, I also needed something not-so-black to mix with the lighter things we wear under our coats in the south the next few months, when its cool but not frigid, and warmer but still chilly.

Now, before you start pointing at the heels and snickering, these have Nike Air Soles that cushion the pressure points on your feet like track shoes. Add in my high arches, and there's nothing better. Plus, they're prettyyyyyy ;o)

Insanity, you say? I'll be wearing both during upcoming travel and meetings. Catch me with them on, win a prize!

I've missed hearing your shoe dreams. Check back each week, and we'll find something even more outlandish to talk about in each Shoes are my Heroin post, than my neuroses that my  heels must be high enough to keep me taller still than my now 6 foot+ 15-year-old.

There's a world of dream shoes out there. Tell us about your faves!

How We Write: Living the Book…

What challenges us emotionally in life, challenges our novel writing. What we're best at in life, becomes what we look forward to most in our writing process. I teach this dynamic all the time–and I live it. If you're a seat-of-the-pants writer, it wouldn't be a coincidence if you're not a list maker or a planner in the "real" world." If you LOVE to revise (like me), it's likely that analyzing things and breaking them into their orderly parts is you everyday zen (at least it's something that doesnt' drive you nuts the way it seems to for everybody else).

Flip that around. If the unknown scares you, and you tend to plan for likely outcomes before you embark on a journey, drafting a new novel won't make you warm and fuzzy (I tend to call the feeling a blank Page 1  invokes in me abject terror, but that might be a bit extreme for the rest of you.)

 But if you're the wanderer, dreaming of a backpacking trip through Europe where you merely have a start point and a destination and you'll figure out pesky details like lodging and food and transpo along the way, well…you're nuts! Eh-hem. What I meant to say is that I suspect writing blind into a new story is a mighty lovely place for you. Until you hit The End, and have to go back and break things down into their parts, rework your rough draft pieces into a better whole, then knit everything back together (which anal retentive, geeky analytical girls like me tend to think of as Nirvana ;o).

My point to my students is never that either one or the other of these approahces is bad, in either life or writing. But that it's best to know your strengths and weaknesses and to play one up, while compensating for the other. If it takes you forever to write a draft (to the point that you revise and revise and revise your first 100 pages while never writing the rest of the novel), take a look at why. If you can't "make" yourself go back and revise a first draft because all the fun's gone out of the story for you now that you know how it ends, and the idea of working with it anymore makes you nauseous, take a look at why.

We make excuses for the broken parts of our writing processes. Excuses that in everyday life would impact our ability to do our jobs or run or families or keep our friends. In the "real" world, we learn to correct the personality traits (and control the emotions) that get in our way, so we can live better. Why, then, aren't most of us doing the same thing in our writing lives?

How to draft can be taught to any writer with a true gift for telling story through the written world. How to revise and deconstruct story and analyze its parts can be taught to any writer with the desire to actually publish the beautiful creation that is their rough draft.

The only real unknown is, how hard do you want to work on the internal life of your writing process? How honestly can you look at your strengths and weaknesses as a person, and the emotions that always come with challenging those weaknesses, no matter what you're doing? How determined are you to make your writing work and sellable, not just fun.

The fun will always be there–the part of this writing journey that you love best. So will the challenges. But once you decide to combine the two into whole–a well-rounded writer who's the entire package that a publisher, agent and reader are looking for–nothing can hold you back.

We live our books. We live our writing process. Our minds are creative, yes, and the artist's heart within us must be protected. But the writer's mind is also a tool that can be trained to overcome any challenge it faces–including the parts of us we don't like to look at any more closely in our writing than we do in our other lives.

"Look," I tell my students. "See what you are and what you're doing. Keep what works, fix the rest."

Life's just that simple.

Dream Theories: Parasomnia, Brains Gone Wild!

Welcome back guest blogger "Dr.  C" to Drem Theories. She's sharing her in-house know how about the sleeping mind. Today, let's spook our way through the confused and abnormal disruption (and potential trauma) parasomniacs endure.This is the kind of science I LOVE to play with in my contemporary psychic fantasies. Understanding more about how our brains work in sleep and out, makes me a happy geeky girl ;o) And it opens worlds of plotting happiness for even bigger and more exciting stories about worlds that play out in our minds alone. Bwahahahaha!!!

So read on, then come back to Dream Theories often to hear more of my meanderings about my personal dream research–and more from Dr. C., as she feeds my (and your) imagination about the physiology behind oursleeping brains' most intriguing, if disturbing, patterns. If you look closely enough, even in today's post, you'll see the bones of the "fringe" science on which I crafted the parapsychology of my first two Legacy books. No, NOT Exploding Head Syndrome (though I don't know HOW I missed that one!).

Don't forget to ask Dr. C. your strange dream/sleep questions in the comments… She's SO much fun to talk to ;o)

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Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.  ~William Dement

Lady Macbeth: Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then 'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? ~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

What do these two quotes have in common other than being by men named William who like to ponder the weird things people do in their sleep?  It is often assumed that parasomnias, or "…unpleasant or undesirable behavioral or experiential phenomena that occur predominantly or exclusively during the sleep period," (Mahowald & Bornemann, Principles & Practices of Sleep Medicine, 4th ed.) have their roots in some sort of psychological distress, including guilty consciences.  However, the cause is more physiological than psychological.

If you've learned to drive a stick-shift car or been in a car with a failing transmission, you know how it stalls out or moves jerkily from one gear to another if something is off, either with the driver's clutch timing or in the transmission itself.  Remember that hypnogram from last week showing the different sleep stages?  Sometimes the brain doesn't shift smoothly from one stage to another, or it gets interrupted, and that's when parasomnias can occur.

Stage N-3 (formerly stages three and four) is when the body gets its deep, physically restorative sleep, and the brain puts out big slow waves.  Disorders of arousal, which include sleepwalking, night terrors, confusional arousals, and even sleep-eating and sleep-sex, occur during slow-wave sleep or during transitions into or out of it.  As you can see from the hypnogram, we get more slow-wave sleep during the first part of the night, so that's when these disorders occur.  Since people tend to get confused between them, let's talk about what they are.

During a sleepwalking episode, the person may get out of bed, walk around, and perform complex motor behaviors.  There is little to no awareness of what's actually going on, and they won't remember it the next morning.  Often, the only clues to sleepwalking if a person lives alone is that objects may be moved around or go missing.  I know of one case where a pet fish went missing for three weeks, and then reappeared, still alive but not in great shape, in its tank. 

A person with night terrors will seem to wake terrified, scream, cry, or make other noises associated with extreme fear, and perhaps jump out of bed and try to escape from something.  Although their eyes are open, witnesses say they seem to "see right through" them.  They often resist comforting, and will eventually settle down and remember nothing the next morning.

Confusional arousals fall somewhere between night terrors and sleepwalking.  It used to be thought that in all three of these disorders of arousal, the person wasn't dreaming, but one study found that people who experienced them did have some sort of dream imagery occurring that corresponded with their behavior.  These disorders occur most often in children, which makes sense because kids' brains are going through frequent reorganizations, but they are present in four to five percent of adults as well.

When someone literally acts out their dreams, REM behavior disorder, or RBD, is the culprit.  Typically, when we're in REM, our brains shut off our voluntary muscles so we don't act out our dreams.  Sometimes the signals get mixed up, and the muscles don't get shut off, so people will do everything from talk to thrash around to get up and run or fight.  Since this occurs during REM sleep, it's more likely to occur later in the night.  One of the first cases I heard about was an older woman who loved to sing in her church choir.  She'd wake her family early in the morning with shouts of "Praise Jesus!" 

True nightmares, which differ from stress or anxiety dreams, also tend to occur later in the night during REM sleep.  These are dreams that contain disturbing imagery and have negative emotional and fatigue effects that last into the next day.  They often co-occur with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

My favorite parasomnia is an extremely rare one called Exploding Head Syndrome, where the patient wakes hearing a loud noise and afraid their head has just exploded.  No, it doesn't make sense – how would you have awareness your head was missing? – but very little does immediately upon awakening.  I've never seen a case of this, but one neurologist in a course I taught had.  Sadly, I didn't get the chance to catch up with him after to ask him how he treated it.

Parasomnias, especially in adults, can have a wide range of causes.  Remember, the group of disorders that includes sleepwalking are called disorders of arousal, so we often look for reasons why someone's sleep may be getting disturbed, but only partially.  Sometimes another sleep disorder like obstructive sleep apnea, when the airspace closes during sleep, or periodic limb movement disorder, when the movement system kicks into gear and makes someone kick their feet, is to blame.  These disorders also tend to run in families, so there is a genetic component.

A wide range of substances including alcohol and its withdrawal, caffeine, and some prescription medications have been associated with parasomnias.  I hear interesting Ambien stories from patients who have discontinued it due to eating, talking on the telephone, and other activities that they don't remember later, including driving.  One tip:  don't ever combine Ambien with alcohol.  Not only is it physically dangerous, but it could also have embarrassing results (and that's all I'm going to say about that to protect confidentiality).

There are a range of pharmacological and behavioral treatments for parasomnias for those who experience true distress or impairment as a result.  The behavioral ones focus on re-training the brain so it will be more likely to sleep through the night, or so the imagery it produces will be less disturbing.  I sometimes end up doing psychotherapy focusing on underlying anxiety or depression, although this isn't always the case.  Unlike Lady Macbeth, most sleepwalkers aren't doing so because they have some sort of psychological distress.

I can't diagnose or make treatment recommendations, but I look forward to hearing about the strange things you've done or heard of someone doing at night!

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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." 

I Hear the Craziest Things: Horizon View…

My husband and I recently snuck a weekend away from every day life. The hotel on the beach we stayed in, when asked about an upgrade to a ocean view room, said none were available, but we could pay for a "Horizon View."

Huh?

I have to upgrade to look at the sky from this place?

Where is this amazing room? Are we talking the penthouse? 'Cause that would be worth throwing some extra dollars at.

Nope. This would be an ocean-facing room that you can't quite see the water from. But the beautiful clouds and such that hang over the ocean could be ours to stare at for just a little more per night. Then, I suppose, we could use our imagination to conjure all that watery stuff that would be swirling about just beneath our visage.

So, we'd be paying for a top-floor room, only the angle wouldn't be quite right to see the water?

Nope. This would be a ground floor room. And we'd have to settle for two double beds (did I mention this was a getaway for my HUSBAND and me, you know, sans intrusive teenager forever breaking up our cuddle time with one demanding need after another, like food and transpo and clean clothes and all that nonsense!).

So, there we were, expected to be excited about about paying more for a ground floor, tree-obstructed, water-facing (sort of) room, from which if you looked out at just the right angel from the corner of the window, you might be able to catch a glimpse of the blue, blue ocean sky above the sea we'd never see. Oh, and if my husband and I wanted to do what we'd come there to do (after we'd slept late for the first time in–how old is my teenager? Oh, yeah, SIXTEEN years…), we'd have to get busy on a double bed, which while cozy isn't nearly as much fun as the palace of a king size number we'd originally booked–which, the desk clerk had already told us, would be on the 5TH floor.

Yep, that's the point where I completely lost it all over the poor guy. I know he was merely doing his job. We were there on a discount package I'd booked over the Internet, and his job was to make more money for the hotel once we'd arrived. But come on! Who in their right mind would think you could see the the sky better (from the ground floor) if you'd only paid a little more money for the privilege?

"Don't we all have sky outside our window?" I asked the kid. "Can't we all find a way to stare off into the distant sky from our own view, without you putting a monetary value on it and telling us that a lesser, more restrictive perspective is actually better because it cost more? Do we really seem that ignorant TO YOU!!!"

Like I said, poor guy. My husband was holding my hand by this point, squeezing reassuringly. I'd come to detox, and this was why. This, right here, this push to pay more and want more and do more, because what you have isn't enough and it's always better out some other window, so you have to work harder to have that window instead of being grateful and satisfied with your own off-kilter view of the world, whatever that looks like.

The desk clerk merely blinked, numbed by now by other guests (hopefully) seeing through his shameless sales tactic, only they no doubt had found kinder, gentler ways than I of saying no thanks. He scanned our door keys and sent us on our way to the 5th floor, hoping he'd be off the clock by the time I called down for extra towels or a hair dryer or whatever else I found I needed in my lovely room where the sky was still there outside my window, just as I suspected it might be.

The Horizon View… I stared off into it as often as possible that weekend, whether we were inside out out combing the sand. Looking outward for the calm and peace I wanted to mirror inside me upon my return to the teen and the hectic every day.

And, nope, I didn't have to pay a cent for it. It was there every day and night. And there when I returned home. Free of charge. A perspective to meditate on, always mine, always waiting for me to sneak away, always simple and easy. All I had to do was look out my window, away from the demands of my day, and relax for a few moments into its possibility…

How We Write: Time to Revise…

"Being practical, yet innovative…" A friend and freelance client emailed that sentiment to me during an exchange about the beautiful novel I'm helping her take apart and revise. I'm pushing her to dig deep. She's wanting to keep as much as possible of the beautiful inspiration that drove her to write in the first place. And she should–as long as the reader feels equally inspired to devour her beautiful words. Which is what revision is all about, and what makes it so hard and time consuming, and why the majority of those who attempt to publish never make it to a book contract–it's VERY hard to craft a story that readers will love half as much as you did when you first envisioned it.

Let me repeat. Rewriting a manuscript until it's reader-ready is hard. Brutal. Seldom pretty, at least at first. And it takes time.To analyze. Re-evaluate. Re-focus. And only then, to revise what you've already painstakingly completed. The process takes a creative artist out of her comfort zone and dumps her into the hell of picking apart word and character and theme and plot choices, drilling deeper until the true meaning and purpose of each piece is (effortlessly) crystal clear to a reader.

This isn't a post on the method and technique of revision. I've done that already, so scroll back through How We Write, or attend one of the half-dozen workshops I'm already scheduled to give this year, the majority of which will include a discussion of rewriting. This is a blog about attitude. Fortitude. Determination to maintain your unique writer's voice, while doing the writer's day-to-day job of reaching others through story.

If you can't commit to doing that, once it's made very clear to you how hard and uncomfortable and unpleasant that part of your job can be, then that successfully published novel of your dreams won't become a reality, no matter how wonderful your original idea might have been. I fact, it's that very commitment to making your story everything it should be that protects that innovation bursting to live through your imagination.

 

By successful, I mean a story that reaches into readers hearts and souls and pulls out the best and worst of who they are, all while you're transporting them to a fictional place that existed only in your mind before they began reading your words.You can epublshing anything you want these days, but if you're wondering why your self-published fair isn't hitting the top of the charts, take a look at the work you have or haven't done rewriting/recrafting your novel and accept what might be missing in your process. Honesty. Practicality. Innovation. And, yes, time.

Good writing is good writing. But good storyrequires time to create and craft and recraft, until you've hit the mark. Readers engage with emotion and characters, and the growth of character over time, through a series of dilemmas and conflict that pushes the character and reader toward a satisfying (though not always happy) ending. Most of us can't pluck something like that out of our imaginations, throw it on the page, and have a successful novel in first draft form. MOST of us require pass after pass through the raw beauty of what we've done, until we even understand what we've done, let alone can plan and execute a revision that gets us closer to a good story. Most of us need time.

 

Give yourself that time. Give yourself a good critique group or, if you're lucky, the benefit of a good editor's (often brutal) insight into your creation. Be practical, but innovative. Be vigilant in maintaining your unique writer's voice, but be open to change. See your vision, while accepting what the reader sees beyond your own experience. These are the things that will make or break your success at this job.

I've been through that gauntlet 16 times with published works, and countless others with the proposals and manuscripts that haven't made it to contract. Then there are the projects I've helped other writers create, each of which have come to be very special to me as I see them grow (or sometimes stagnate). And what I can say for certain, as a publishing insider, is that the time you spend revising/rewriting is the MOST critical part of your writing process. Don't skimp on it. Don't deny your novel (and your readers) your absolute best, no matter how hard the work ahead of you might be.

The Psychic Realm: The Subconscious Mind's Power

Dr. C. will be back in our Dream Theories series next week, giving us more inside skinny on cool sleep know-how. But first–let's dip into The Psychic Realm and talk about the power of the subconscious in day dreams!Wonder what the Doc will think about my wacky take?…

This grey area of dreaming became the premise for the fringe science in Dark Legacy for a reason–many believe the "alpha" brain activity we enter during states like meditation, biofeedback and daydreaming is where our subconscious mind is at its most accessible and potentially powerful. Hence, in my first psychic thriller this was the "active" state dream scientists were attempting to trigger behavior in, using a persons "programmed" subconscious connection to what had already happened while they dreamed. In my books, the unconscious/unaware mind was programmed by psychics, so that the sub-conscious mind could be triggered when the brain is at it's peak "concentration efficiency"–that is, during walking, waking daydreams.

But what does this mean for you and me? A lot of really cool stuff, if you're looking for ways to plug into your creativity and awareness and the power of the mind-body connection. Our minds move through natural cycles, or at least they try to. Alpha, Beta (full consciousness), Theta/Delta (sleep) rhythms. We need all of them to function well, and factors like stress, nutrition, chemicals, and fitness/exercise can contribute or disrupt the way our minds function in each state. How balanced our brain function is as our thoughts move through these states determines how in touch we are with the worlds both outside and within our own thoughts. And some would say, the reality within our minds is the key to being fully aware and fully engaged in our existence.

75% of our waking minds (in Beta state) are wrapped up in keeping our bodies functioning and moving. That leaves only 25% to deal with conscious thoughts. But in Alpha, when we let our minds wander (even in focused ways such as meditation), the efficiency of our subconscious thoughts peaks at 95 to 100%.Mystics and psychics would say this is the brain rhythm to tap into, to be at your most aware to messages and signs. Parents would say this is when they see the true potential of their children shine through. Writers and other artists would say that this is the world they must "dissociate" into, in order to create. What do they see, these "seers," when they let their undirected minds wander? What would you see, if you set aside time daily to do the same?

You've had deja vu moments. You've had memories that may not have been fully yours find you at odd times. You've felt and sensed good and bad things about places and people and things, with no explanation for the shiver or thrill that takes you over. This is your subconscious breaking through, whispering its magic into your fully aware mind. You're only hearing an echo. The true message is still waiting just beneath the surface. Making time to plug into the potential of these instincts and senses and the "touch" of your powerfully receptive interior world can transform your life.

The playful, dreaming, insightful spirit within all of us moves whether we're aware of it or not. The more balanced we become in clearing and rejuvenating our minds so that we're ready to hear these messages and accept that there's more to our worlds than the 25% we can glimpse as we scurry through our ever day.

Don't call it psychic ability, if that's too "woo-woo" for you. Don't say "spirit" if that bothers you. Say acceptance. Accept that there's more than what you pick up and put down and do and don't do. There's a thread between what you are and what you were and what everyone and everything else around you is and has experienced, too. You're a creature of instincts and perception, designed to pick up on the signals that your fully awake mind can't successfully process–unless you slow down and decompress and give your subconscious (and, yes, your creativity) a chance to take over and "see" what lies beneath.

Successful awareness of all we were meant to understand and appreciate and do comes from, yes, playing and daydreaming and NOT working 24/7. It comes from being and accepting and relaxing into the messages that our subconscious (Alpha) minds are waiting to share with us.

So the next time you reach for the remote or the video game, consider turning off the stimulation and the chatter and just listening, instead. Daydream a little. Then a little more. Or, as I do, make daily yoga and extended sessions of cardio or whatever unplugs your mind best a quiet/peaceful ritual you look forward to escaping into.

You'll be amazed what you can see and hear, once you get yourself there…

How We Write: Central Conflict

Without conflict, your story has no forward momentum. Your characters have no motivation to act. There's no goal they can't achieve. So, in commercial fiction at least, there's no reader engagement, no matter how well what you've written is, well, written. For lack of a better analogy, you need combustion that will lead the reader to expect some future explosion that'll keep them on the hook through the rest of the wonderful things you plan to do.

And I'm not just talking about suspense plots.In addition to writing (and now editing) romantic suspense as well as crafting sci-fi/fantasies that are full-on thrillers, I also write home and family dramas (straight contemporary romance) where the same level of escalating conflict and tension must still exist, in order for the reader to care enough to turn the page.

Conflict is how readers identify with your characters. It's how the story transports the reader through a purely fictional journey. How deeply do the dilemmas you put the protagonist through resonate? How carefully do you craft the internal motivation and goals and tension the character must resolve, and are there external factors (anchors and stumbling blocks) that drive that person to do and behave and learn and grow and fail and, ultimately, succeed?

Conflict IS NOT petty arguments and bickering between the leads.

Misunderstanding and arguing and coincidence and a character emoting her feelings to someone else until the other person, finally, understand and "gets" her at the end of the book isn't conflict.

Conflict is active things happening on the page to thwart a protagonist from achieving an external goal (which, in turns, mirrors, and mucks up, the internal journey the character must complete, in order to get what she needs).

Here's Bob Mayer's excellent technique for isolating the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist of a story, so that you have escalating tension to drive your plot from beginning to end. He calls it Conflict Lock.

 

In this blog post , he further explains how this central conflict must exist in every scene and act of your story, from beginning to end.

This isn't a new concept, but crafting strong, believable central, character-driven external conflict is difficult, and a lot of us delay learning the technique.

Crafting compelling, believable, active conflict is an intermediate creative novel writing skill. Whatever you're designing in the book's external reality must drive your protagonist (and antagonist) to behave the way he/she does. It must also drive internal struggles and growth,  so the characters arc in believable, plot-driven ways from the beginning to the end of the story. For most of us, this type of detailed attention to the mechanics of storytelling takes time and effort and analysis to achieve. Too many writers don't make that time in their process.

Something active and external, and active and internal, needs to be at stake in every scene. These two components have to be linked and pushing the plot (and the reader's expectation that something even more interesting is about to happen) forward. Even in the family dramas that I write, there have to be very real goals and motivation and reasons why what the lead character is doing isn't going to achieve what he/she wants, until the very end of the story–because of the conflict/dilemma I continually, carefully, put in the way as the story and the character arcs. That journey through all those landmines is the plot that, ultimately, should appear effortlessly drawn to the reader–after a hell of a lot of work.

This week's writing challenge is to spend some time analyzing the plot/characters' central conflict, in your current project.

Use Bob's techniques or anyone else's you prefer. But nail that lock between your protagonist's internal/external needs and goals and the conflict being created by competing internal/external needs and goals of the antagonist you've created.

Then report back. Let me know how it's going ;o)