Eric Witchey's Blog: Shared ShadowSpinners Blog , page 12

KDP Select: A Brief Overview

by Christina Lay

A few authors have asked me lately about my experiences with Kindle Direct Publishing’s Select option, so I thought I’d condense my notes and present them here. While the topic might be rather dry, it also might be of interest to those searching for new revenue streams for their published or about to be published works. For those who don’t know, Select is a program offered by KDP, Amazon’s ebook publishing service. By enrolling your ebook, you agree to offer it for sale exclusively on Amazon. In return, you get the option to list your book for free, for up to five days of each three-month enrollment period. This can be a big boon to someone who is using the freebie option as a marketing strategy. The second benefit of Select is that your book is available for “check-out” by anyone paying for a Kindle Unlimited subscription. Amazon pays the author for this by a royalty system that I’m sure keeps many up late into the night. It’s calculated by pages read—and each book gets a share of a monthly pot based on its percent of the total.  If you feel like giving yourself a headache, you can read details here.

I should pause a moment to point out that many seasoned, best-selling authors will warn you quite passionately against putting all of your book eggs in Amazon’s basket. I understand and I see the point very clearly. However, there are instances where having your book in Amazon’s free library might be a viable part of your overall strategy. And, when you sign up, the term is for three months. It is not as if you are selling your literary soul to the behemoth that is Amazon. Just remember to unclick the auto-renew option, so you can escape at will.

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Are your books gathering dust? KDP Select might be an option for you.

I discovered the benefits of KDP Select by accident.  I published a very short story a couple years ago, with the intent of offering it for free to generate interest in my novels.  The easiest way to do it seemed to be to sign the book up for KDP Select, so that I could have the option of offering it for free on Amazon with no hassle. I did that, generated about 700 downloads, and I felt fairly satisfied with the whole experiment. There was a bump in novel sales, not big, but enough it seemed to have had a bit of an impact. Also, there were now 700 people in the world who at least were vaguely aware of my existence. Maybe someday they will actually read the story and become a fan, write a review, buy another book. That’s the dream.

Nowadays there are more free giveaway platforms like InstaFreebie and so on, to help with the Free Book gambit, but there are other reasons one might choose KDP Select.

I left my book in Amazon’s clutches without much thought of doing anything else with it. The short story continued to sit up there, neglected by me, and slowly, I noticed a few pennies dribbling into my checking account from Amazon. And yes, I do mean a few pennies.  KU’s author reward system is based on pages read, and my very short story generated very few royalties. I considered it amusing, and somewhat interesting.

Flash forward a few years, and I found myself with the rights to a backlist of novels after my publisher closed its doors. I repackaged them and when ready to re-release, decided to opt for KDP Select on the first book in a series, again mainly to generate interest in the rest.  This time the book was downloaded about 300 times. Not bad but not great either.  But then something else started to happen. Instead of a few dozen pages being logged in my KENP report (what Amazon calls pages read), there were thousands. I became more interested in Amazon’s byzantine reward system.  At the end of the month my pages read for that book resulted in a royalty payment that was about equal to the royalties from books sold, thereby doubling my income. Now, these were not quit-the-day-job-and-move-to-the-south-of-France numbers, but it did spark my interest, shall we say.  I signed up the second book in the series, and experienced the same results.  One might ask whether this diminishes actual sales, but there is no way to tell and by my calculations, the royalty result is nearly the same for a full-length book priced to sell (2.99-4.99). My guess is that readers who are paying for the KU option are probably reluctant to pay for a book, especially when they don’t know the author.

KDP Select is obviously not a good choice for everyone, or even most.  Obviously, if you have a solid fan base, your sales are going well and you feel satisfied with the progress of your publishing career, than signing over your fate to Amazon probably isn’t worth the sacrifice.  It is clearly in your benefit to have your ebooks available through every possible retailer.  And there are other ways to offer books for free.

However, if your sales are lagging, if you have books that have been around the block and are gathering dust on the virtual shelves, or if you have a series that could use a boost, this might be a golden opportunity to reach new readers.  And, if like me, you are an unknown minnow in a vast sea of unknown fish, having your book free on Amazon can give you a marketing lift like no other (assuming you don’t have a huge publicity budget, that is).  Over the span of my publishing experience, I must admit that sales via Amazon equal about ninety percent of my total, so being exclusive is not much of a sacrifice for me, especially not in the short term. Remember this is for ebooks only, not print.  So is it worth sacrificing a handful of sales to B&N and Apple readers? Only you can decide that.

Surprise and The Ah-Ha Moment

Surprise and The Ah-Ha Moment

Eric Witchey

An article I once read described one of the major categories of procrastination as “threshold procrastination.” Translating that concept into writer speak, a writer has to have a deadline and get close enough to it that adrenaline (fear) drives them beyond a certain threshold before they can perform. Since I juggle multiple kinds of writing, once or another I’m pretty much always near or on the wrong side of one deadline or another. Worrying is a state of being. Adrenaline is a pain in the ass. Still, it works for me.

However, another experience I suspect is closely related is the clarity that comes from sudden, short-term notice of a new project.

A long time ago, I had a great uncle who was known to be “a little psychic.” The family stories I heard about him had me curious as hell. He was old when I was 16, but he still worked at his tool and die company in Wauconda, Ill. My mother had taken me to dinner at his house. Another relative, a sort of uncle from that same generation, was an administrator at a hospital in Chicago. Keep in mind that his was in the early 70s, and miniaturization in medical equipment was happening in read time. Personal computers were about to be invented for the first time. Phones still lived on little tables in hallways.

Uncle Red, the administrator, had been helping out at Uncle George’s house while his wife and George’s wife, Ruth, fixed a pot roast. Red had been mowing the lawn in a small orchard behind the house. The little riding lawn tractor hit a rabbit rut and jarred him pretty hard. A while later, he realized he had lost a hearing aid out in the lawn somewhere.

It wouldn’t be a big deal now. You’d just order a new one on the internet, take it to a tech for tuning, and Bob’s your uncle. Except Red and George were my uncles, and Red had a miniaturized prototype hearing aid that was worth 10k in 1974 dollars.

We, meaning myself, my Mom, Red, Ruth, and Red’s wife, whose name I can’t remember but who may have been Betty and will be so named hereinafter, spent over an hour on hands and knees searching the orchard for that irreplaceable hearing aid.

We didn’t find it.

Ruth decided we should all clean up for dinner. She said, and I will never forget how strange it sounded to me at the time, “When George gets home, I’ll ask him to find it.”

To my surprise, everyone seemed just fine with that.

Maybe a half hour later, George did come home. Ruth met him at the door. Here’s another bit of nostalgia for folks my age. Back then, there were still “business men” who carried umbrellas, wore long coats, and sported actual fedoras. They were a dying breed, but George was one of them. To make what seems now to be both cliché and a perpetuation of patriarchy worse, Ruth took his hat, his coat, and his bumbershoot. Then, she kissed him on the cheek, got right in his face, locked eyes, and said, “Red lost his hearing aid out back. Can you find it?”

George reared back a bit in surprise, but he recovered quickly, glanced at the back of the house, paused like a man trying to peer through fog, then replied, “Yes.”

Okay, this sounds nuts, but I swear this is exactly what happened.

George then walked through the house, into the back yard, into the orchard. A few minutes later—very few minutes later—he came back in and handed Uncle Red the hearing aid.

All the adults present thanked him. Otherwise, they treated it like the most normal thing in the world. Dinner was served. We are talking left hand in the lap formal family white-folks dinner, too. Afterward, Mom, Ruth, and Betty “cleaned up.” Red left to do some hospital thing he had to do, and I found myself alone with George in, and I kid you not, “the library.” And yes, the library was actually what you are imagining. It was a personal library. The walls were books. The furniture was leather. The liquor cabinet wasn’t inside a globe of the ancient world, but such a thing would have been quite happy in that room.

So, young upstart me is sitting there with the scotch-in-hand spooky uncle trying to figure out how to ask him about what happened, and he up and says, “I have to be surprised.”

I say, “If you can do that, you could be make a lot of money.”

He chuckles and sips scotch.

“Can you do that any time you want?”

Again, he says, “I have to be surprised.”

“Can you bend spoons?” It was a thing then.

He says, “Ruth knows me. She knows I can’t think about it or it doesn’t work. She surprised me with the question. I saw the spot in the yard.”

Now, I did ask him a lot of other stupid 16 year-old questions. He was kind. He was patient. He answered them all. None of the answers fit my worldview, so I left that experience pretty sure it had been an elaborate conspiracy among relatives I barely knew to convince the kid of secret powers.

Except it never came up again. I wasn’t the butt of any jokes. There was no follow-through—no payoff. Nothing.

Years went by. I went to college. I went to grad school. I went to life. Other strange things happened here and there, but I let it all slide over me. It’s all good. Right?

Except that sometimes I’m reminded of that dinner party and the hearing aide in the strangest ways.

As always, I seek patterns in the creation of story. I seek patterns in the stories and in the process of creating them. I look for ways to describe the patterns of process and form so that other people can shorten their learning curves, reduce the amount of personal trial and error. I’ve had some success serving the writing the community in this way. Most of the time, that involves rigorous application of experimentation and application of linguistic knowledge and personal experience.

Then, I’m surprised.

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out how to further shorten the development curve for writers who are struggling to put scenes together. The dramatic scene is, after all, the building block of all stories. I won’t explain that here. I’ll just say that building a solid, functional scene requires the writer to keep a lot of balls in the air. Normally, I teach people how many balls, the patterns in the air, the colors of the balls, and how to add a running chainsaw.

Okay, metaphorically speaking.

This week, Willamette Writers emailed me and asked me if I could take on a presentation slot in their calendar next week. The original speaker couldn’t make it. I said yes. I hung up the phone, the phone. With perfect clarity, I suddenly saw the path to the result I wanted.

An Uncle George psychic surprise? Mere Jungian synchronicity? Perhaps a deadline whose threshold for adrenaline had already passed?

I don’t know.

I do know that several teaching and writing techniques suddenly resolved into a seminar I’ll be teaching at Old Church in Portland, Oregon the evening of October 2nd. If the path is true and the hearing aide is where I have seen it, we’ll delve into character psychology and connect to setting and scene structure in a counter-intuitive way that will make writing and learning to write scenes faster and easier for most people. It will also allow revision that increases the emotional punch of the scenes. The talk will be called, “Because, Because and the Six-Layered Scene.”

Thank you, Uncle George. I may not be psychic, but, because of my experiences with you, I am open to those magical moments when a catalyst triggers the subconscious to deliver a result.

For more information on the event at Old Church, here’s the link:

https://willamettewriters.org/event/portland-monthly-meeting/2018-10-02/ 

Here’s the description:

Because, Because and The Power of Six-Layered Scenes

Join us on October 2nd, doors open at 6:30PM, at the Old Church in downtown Portland. to hear speaker and award-winning author Eric Witchey. Witchey will present this short adaptation of material from his Fiction Fluency Seminars. The evening will include an interactive demonstration of use of the “because, because” technique to uncover character psychology and emotional states before writing a scene. Discovered character attributes will then support creation of a six-layered scene that includes three simultaneous levels of conflict and three emotion-supporting layers of setting. Participants will walk away with a step-by-step understanding of the techniques demonstrated. Once understood, these techniques can be used for analysis and revision of existing scenes or for creation of new scenes.

About Eric Witchey

Eric Witchey is a writer, seminar teacher, course developer, process analyst, communication consultant, and conference speaker. He has made a living as a freelance writer and communication consultant for over a quarter century. In addition to many contracted and ghost non-fiction titles, he has sold a number of novels and more than 140 stories. His stories have appeared in 12 genres and on five continents. He has received awards or recognition from New Century Writers, Writers of the Future, Writer’s Digest, Independent Publisher Book Awards, International Book Awards, The Eric Hoffer Prose Award Program, Short Story America, the Irish Aeon Awards, and other organizations. His How-to articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer’s Digest Magazine, and other print and online magazines.

See you at this month’s Willamette Writer’s Portland meeting!

The Book that Wouldn’t Die

By Elizabeth Engstrom

Years ago I wrote a book called Guys Named Bob. I loved this book. My agent hated the ending, but at my insistence, he sent it out anyway. It got attention from two major publishers, but they all wanted me to change the ending. I, in my ridiculous “artiste” attitude, politely declined. So the book sat on the shelf for a decade.

This is the book that made me research how to write erotica. This is the book that spawned my (infamous) weekend workshops and conference talks on how to write sizzling sex scenes. I had two unconventional people falling for each other in an unconventional setting amidst much turmoil and emotional upheaval. I discovered that I like my sex scenes with a light, significant touch. And so they are, in this book.

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Recently, I took a fresh look at Guys Named Bob again. I saw what the agent/editors objections were to the ending, and decided that I could “alter” the ending, and in fact, I needed to.  I saw what the they saw, given the time that had passed and the accompanying difference in perspective. Not to mention the difference in my attitudes about my career.

The ending didn’t exactly change, but in its alteration, I see better results for every character. I am very happy with the new ending. I brought it up to date, edited it, and my publisher just released the paperback and Kindle versions of Guys Named Bob.

You can read the first chapter here. You can buy a copy here.

I hope you do, and if you like it, please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads.

Write Better Faster

[image error]By Lisa Alber

I’m a somewhat — OK, highly — skeptical person, so when a writing buddy, A, told me about an online course she was taking called “Write Better Faster,” I snorted. Seriously?

(Sidenote: The link above will disappear after awhile — Google “Write Better Faster Becca Syme”)

But … Somewhere inside me, after Mom’s death in May, while still dealing with the estate stuff all. summer. long. I felt a nibble of interest when A said, “Oh, this isn’t one size fits all. She uses personality (psychometric) tests like Myers-Briggs to work through what strategies might work best for you for your writing based on how you’re wired. I got a lot out of it. I bet you would too.”

Hmm …

I’ve been stalled since May … I’d thought I was on my feet again, but it derailed earlier this month in the face of stress. Plus, A isn’t a dope; she doesn’t buy into BS or fads. She’s singularly level-headed and sensible.

What the hell, I thought, and signed up for the August course. (They’re held every other month as far as I can tell.) If you’re the kind of person who likes psychology and are curious about how your brain works as related to your writing life, you might like this course. For example, why are some people pantsters and others outliners? One way isn’t better than the other. It has to do with your wiring. Me–I’m a pantster. Now I know why, and it makes total sense.

The instructor, Becca, is amazing and sooo knowledgeable.

A fascinating aside: Becca mentions a study that was done that illustrates that when we improve on our natural strengths we achieve monumentally greater improvement than if we improve on areas that aren’t our strengths. Like, I could take a class to improve my car maintenance skills, but since I’m not talented in anything to do with machinery, I’ll only improve so much. But, if I take a class to improve on my gardening skills, I will see a big difference because I have a natural aptitude with plants.

Ultimately, the course is about capitalizing on our strengths to improve our productivity and writing. Becca breaks down what in her vast experience as a coach generally works best for I vs. Es and Ns vs. Ps, and so on (from the Myers-Briggs world).

She spends time on our systems, which includes our energy, our environment, our health, and so on. So it’s a systems class. She advocates changing one small habit at a time, and a lot of the class is about figuring out the small habits that will make the biggest difference. For example, as a high-P (perceiver), I’m easily distractible because I take in all the data all the time. (Yes, this is true.)

A small change for me might be to *not* open up Internet or email first thing in the morning. Instead, have the manuscript open and waiting for me instead. That’s a small but difficult change. Becca talks about how painful change can be, which is refreshing, because how many times have you been in a course and the instructor says, Do this, like it’s no big deal?

Just do it. F–k that. I hate that Nike slogan. Actually, if you’re a J, judging, not to be confused with being judgmental, these kinds of thoughts might work for you. See what I mean?

A Whole New World

by Amy Braun

I think it’s pretty safe to say that these days, most of us wish we were somewhere else. It’s hard to get up in the morning and realize you live in a world where absolutely absurd, cruel, and wretched things happen, and that when you do donate or speak out, it can be hard to feel like you’re contributing. I’m not saying to give up (never, ever, do that because your contributions and donations truly do matter and truly do help), but every once in a while we just want to escape this world and dive into another one.

The solution is actually quite easy and pretty cheap: Books.

As a reader, I’m a sucker for a book with an amazing setting. Red Rising, Nevernight, and LifeL1K3 are just some of the books that have drawn me in with their exquisite and visceral worlds. As a writer, creating them is something I’m addicted to.

Urban fantasy is one of my favorite genres to both write and read, and the moment I decided to write Storm of the Gods, I knew it could only be urban fantasy. But I didn’t want my setting to be like most urban fantasy worlds, where the buildings haven’t changed, the people haven’t changed, and my imagination can’t really stretch. No, I wanted to twist in new elements. I had to—You can’t exactly write a book about reawakened Greek gods and expect them to share your idea of architecture and décor.

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Greek mythology is one of my oldest love affairs. I won’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve read enough to understand what would appeal to each deity. Since the gods in the Storm universe have only returned to our world thirty years ago after a two thousand year slumber that saw them reduced to fairytales, their powers are not as strong as they had been. While creating the history of this world, I knew that the gods would be divisive but need to work together to build their New Kingdom.

So I took the setting—a reimagined version of California—and broke it up into pieces for each of them and their scions, the humans who are descended from the Olympian’s lusty escapades.

From there, I changed each region to match its Olympian. Dionysus got all the vineyards. Artemis has all the forests and hunting grounds. Poseidon owns Santa Monica and most of the beaches and ocean. Aphrodite’s region is one big romantic getaway on one half, and the other is a literal red light district.

Doing this was a long, tiring process, because each region needed its own security, temples, distinct personalities and types of residents, but it was ultimately worth it. I love the world I created, and it ends up feeling like an entirely different place rather a slight deviation from normality that happens in most urban fantasy novels.

World building is one of the longest and most taxing processes in writing, but it’s one of my favorites. Whenever I do it, I feel not only a connection to the characters I’m creating, but I understand the mechanics of my story and the rules of society. I also understand how my characters can––and often will––break them.

At the time of posting, there are only certain sections that will be explored in the first Areios Brothers novel. But I have at least four more books planned as well as three novellas, so it’s safe to say that there will be more worlds and adventures for anyone who enjoys this New Kingdom as much as I do.

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Amy is a Canadian fantasy, steampunk, YA, and horror author. Her work revolves around monsters, magic, mythology, and mayhem. She started writing in her early teens, and never stopped. She loves building unique worlds filled with fun characters and intense action. She is an active member of the Weekend Writing Warrior community, and has even had a spotlight on the website of international best-selling author Michael J. Sullivan (The Riyra Chronicles, Legends of the First Empire).

When she isn’t writing, she’s reading, watching movies, taking photos, gaming, struggling with chocoholism and ice cream addiction, and diving headfirst into danger in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Amy can be found online on Facebook (www.facebook.com/amybraunauthor/) Twitter (@amybraunauthor) and Instagram (@amybraunauthor)

amybraunauthor.com

 

State of the Art

State of the Art

by Eric Witchey

Packing up to head off to the Willamette Writers Conference to teach a Masters Class and generally engage in the literary debauchery that goes along with a conference, I am struck by the fact that I’ve been doing conferences for a very long time. Some of the beginning writers I met at conferences a quarter of a century ago have become New York Times best selling authors. Some of the writers I met so long ago are dead. Teenage students I first met at speaking gigs twenty years ago now have families and solid careers. Others have left the world in search of brighter days in Elysian Fields.

In short, things change. They also stay the same.

Since I first realized I was a writer, I have known that the only sustainable motivation for writing is love. Writers have to love sitting in the chair and arranging the little black squiggles in rows until they feel right. If they don’t love that process and all the little puzzle-solving moments that go with it, eventually they will become frustrated, angry, and resentful of lost time and life.

Fiction writers have to love stories. I mean that on a profound level. Arranging the squiggles is enough for most non-fiction work; however, it is not enough for fiction writers. A fiction writer has to be deeply, obsessively in love with the idea of creating the illusion of life in the mind and heart of another person. They have to love to experience the illusion created by other writers, and they have to love creating that illusion.

Now, at this point it would be very easy to drop into a diatribe about how many aspiring writers I meet who don’t actually read. I won’t bother. They are self-limiting creatures, and my righteous indignation will neither help them nor stop them from making their mistakes. Some might even learn that they need to read, and that might lead to love of reading and better creations. It does happen.

I could also drop into a riff on the limitations of the desire for fame or money, but I’d only be presenting a straw man. If you want a riff on artistic purity of heart and mind as necessary to creative health of artist and culture, I recommend looking up and reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s take on the damage of commodity thinking in the arts. Once again, the people who focus on money and fame will either limit themselves or succeed and discover a level of unhappiness the universal heart of all things has created just for them.

Instead, I want to focus on a moment in time.

Way back when, I had a degree in English and an MA that included Theoretical Linguistics, Computer Science, Literature, and training as a writing teacher. I’d been working in high-tech for a while, and I had sold my first short story to a national market. The world was a bright and shiny place filled with potential, but the mail brought rejection after rejection. It was depressing. Hadn’t I studied for years? Hadn’t I gone into debt learning everything I could about stories and writing and language?

Shouldn’t there be money? Shouldn’t there be fame?

Instead, there was only time in the seat arranging the squiggles and drinking lots of coffee.

Eventually, I had to admit that I knew Jack Shit. In fact, Jack and I were way too close. I took him to parties with me and presented him to others with pride as if just knowing him should launch me into social circles where international celebrities of letters chatted casually about the death of existential literature and the advent of post-modern, hysterical Jungian fantasy literature.

Me and Jack! Oh, the places we went.

As with all co-dependent relationships, the day came when I looked at Jack and my dreams of fame and fortune and realized they were tools I used to avoid facing my own fear—my own deep heart. As long as I had Jack and my fame and fortune fantasies, I could go anywhere and pretend I was full of knowledge and potential.

Well, let me tell you something. Combine Jack with potential, and you’ve got a recipe for spiritual, emotional, and literary bankruptcy.

So, I sought out a teacher I had heard good things about. I went to a week-long seminar. For two days, I hated him. He was a no bullshit, blue-collar work ethic, nuts-and-bolts writer who had no tolerance for the mysticism of talent.

Oh, I hated him.

I hated him because he didn’t see how much Jack had taught me and how much potential I had. What an asshole!

Patiently, I explained that I had degrees and had sold a story.

He laughed.

I fumed, but I did the exercises to prove Jack and potential were alive and well and living in me.

By the third day, I knew Jack was dead.

By the fourth day, I understood that potential was pointless.

That was the day I stopped being an aspiring writer and became an actual writer.

Writer is the agentive form of the infinitive to write. It is a verb manifest as person. Writer is a doing and being, and it only happens in the moment between heartbeats and breaths. Right now, I am a writer. Right now, I am solving the puzzle of this essay. Right now, I am arranging the little black squiggles. Right now, I am learning and moving toward new tools of craft that allow me to create compelling illusions in the hearts and minds of readers.

What is the point of being in the writing? Of being a writer?

Yesterday, I got an Amazon review that embodies the point. It isn’t fame. It isn’t fortune. It is a parent who left five stars and said that their 12 year-old boy loved my book and said he wanted to read more stories set in that world.

No award I have won for my fiction has ever validated the million moments of creation as much as that one review.

I still know Jack. I might still have potential. Sometimes, I even think about fame and fortune.

The interesting thing a quarter century after meeting that teacher and as I approach the conference Masters Class I’ll be teaching is that I know beyond doubt that in the moments between heartbeats and breaths when I am a truly a writer, Jack is dead, there is no such thing as potential, and the only validation of my skill that matters is one 12 year-old boy.

That is the state of art.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2DT873QY1F7OU/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0763B3JVQ

Just a Few Words

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By Cheryl Owen Wilson

Knowing the rules of a particular trade, and having applied them long enough to be confident in breaking them, seems to be of benefit mainly in the artistic realms of life. In the writing realm, I’m certain we can all come up with a best selling author who broke basic rules taught to us by our many English teachers. Cormac McCarthy and E.E. Cummings are the first two to come to my mind. One day I may be in a position to break rules, but first I must learn them.

I’m in the process, of what I hope are the final edits on my first novella. So rules, or tips on how to strengthen a story, are forefront in my mind these days. I’ve discovered books filled with rules so numerous a writer might never write a word if they took the time to read and apply them all. Thus, for the purpose of this blog I will touch on just a few I found helpful.

1st Rule— Did I need to use the word just in my last sentence? No. I discovered I use the word just along with its friend only way too often. My writing mentor Liz Engstrom, would say never to use the word just. She would also add the following to the banned list of words: very, causing, here, this, now, and today.

I write short stories. The idea of writing anything lengthier seemed absurd to me. I almost, nearly, didn’t write the book.

2nd Rule—Did my last sentence make you cringe just (I told you I really like this word) reading it? Yes. Investigate, or take out: almost, kind of, nearly, and sort of.

I recently had the pleasure of spending three days with my tribe, my writing pals. What did I do at this valuable retreat? I found the 641 times I used the word was, and reduced it to 226! A simple word, yet when removed, it transforms the sentence.

“She was crying uncontrollably.” vs “She cried uncontrollably.”

3rd Rule—Investigate every use of: is, was, are, be, being, am, and were.

I am currently searching out the simple, humble word—it.

4th Rule—There is generally a better word for it. Investigate your use of, it.

I celebrated finding my last was, and then explained to my pals it was now my quest. This elicited a most interesting discussion on the infamous often mocked and parodied phrase written in the novel Paul Clifford, by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I’ve never read the book, but know the phrase from my favorite cartoon beagle: “It was a dark and stormy night.” It—the phrase—is a classic. It breaks all the rules, but sometimes rules are there to be broken. Just make certain you have a very good reason for doing it.

What rules do you break and why?

 

FROZEN

By Cynthia Ray

Cory Doctorow, author and journalist, said that “Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way”.  But what if the headlights go out?

For me, writing is visceral, organic, profound, easy, difficult and sometimes impossible. I started a novella, as part of the Labyrinth of Souls novel series.  For those that are unfamiliar with the series, Dungeon Solitaire: Labyrinth of Souls is a fantasy game for tarot cards, written by Matthew Lowes and Illustrated by Josephe Vandel. In the game you defeat monsters, disarm traps, open doors, and explore mazes as you delve the depths of a dangerous dungeon. Along the way you collect treasure and magic items, gain skills, and gather companions. ShadowSpinners Press is publishing novels inspired by the game. Each Labyrinth of Souls novel features a journey into a unique vision of the underworld. You can find more here.

My story turned too dark, too sad, and too difficult, so I abandoned it and started a new one. Because I want my stories to have feeling, and meaning, I tap deep into my inner depths. But once again, I wrote myself into a dark corner with no way out.  After spending a great deal of time in the labyrinth I created, in the dark, I simply quit writing.  My protagonist is still trapped, always there in the back of my mind.  I don’t want to leave my poor heroine in an impossible situation, and yet I have no desire to return to free her.  I considered starting a new story, but in my bones, I knew that it too, would end up in the same place-that place.

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You have heard the phrase, frozen in terror, but have you ever actually experienced terror so profound that your body was paralyzed, unable to move, teeth chattering, in a cold sweat?  Perhaps in a dream, or you woke from a nightmare and could not move?  I have, and it leaves a place in you that needs a light.

Last week, I spoke to a friend about the dilemma, and about the feeling of terror that seemed to emanate from wherever I was going in the story.  She said that there is no escape, only acceptance.  That night I dreamed.

Cynthia’s dream

My companion and I are being pursued by evil beings.  We run but my companion is captured.  Later, I am captured too, and taken to my friend. They have operated on her and altered her appearance with a beastly mask.  They have also pierced her chest with holes to drag her around with chains.

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Toko-Pa Turner, author of Belonging, Remembering Ourselves Home, says, “What I’ve learned again and again, is that we must love the dream we’re given.  We must cradle it and trust that it contains the first step. The step from here to where we want to be is always to welcome it, to be curious about it, even (and especially) when it contains painful or threatening imagery.

When you drop your judgement against the not-beauty of your dream, it is allowed under the roof of your belonging. And so often it becomes beautiful there, unexpectedly, in the nurturing glow of your attention.”

Of course, everyone in a dream is just a part of ourselves, and I asked the evil pursuers what message they had for me.  They just looked at me, and I became aware that the terror I had experienced was over, and the causes of it were gone, but I had taken on the role of terrorizer and continued to terrorize myself,

The chains of the past could drag me around, or I could choose to remove the mask that had been artificially placed on me, and the false view of myself, and make friends with the “evil” ones.  They were not bad at all, but trying to assist me in confronting the false nature of the outer-imposed mask.  I removed the chains, the ugly mask and exposed the gentle, lovely being that had been hidden under those suffocating layers of imposed concepts.  The dream was a gift.

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Art by Took-Pa Turner

Transformation works both ways as we creatively change ourselves based on our experiences, our thoughts and our dreams.    The transformation of the beautiful into the ugly and false is accomplished by terror and fear.  The transformation of the ugly to the beautiful is accomplished through love and acceptance.  My friend’s wisdom made sense.

Perhaps one cannot write what they have not yet processed internally, or perhaps writing is one way of processing.  Whether or not the story is ever finished, it is a part of a personal journey through the labyrinth.  I will let you know how it goes.

Creativity in General (and in Particular)

by Elizabeth Engstrom

Many of my writer friends engage in a variety of creative endeavors. Some are painters of exquisite artworks. Some sing. Some dance. Some quilt, or do stained glass. I knit and dabble in this and that. But mostly, we write.

Anyone who writes knows the exasperation of the inadequacies of language. With every sentence we write, with every idea we speak, we invite misunderstanding.

It occurs to me that if we had perfect mind-to-mind communications, if we could communicate our thoughts thoroughly—including all history, nuance, and emotion—in a sublime little info packet upload, there would be no need for language.

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If we had no need for language, would our need for a creative outlet vanish?  We would no longer strive to explain, to clarify, to enlighten. We would no longer need to defend, to support, to go to the enormously great lengths we go to in order to express ourselves.

We as a species, would be much the poorer.

Who would we be without the inspirational art, the moving music, the inestimable beauty, the revealing literature that has come from the anguished soul?

We would be bereft.

We might actually discover that we really have nothing to say to one another.

I often say that writers are the keepers of the literature, the chroniclers of our times. But we are much more than that. We are the ones who wrestle with language, endeavoring to explain that which has no explanation, to describe the indescribable, to put motive to that which is inexplicable.

Writers reach deep within themselves to comprehend their inner truth, and then grapple with the insufficient words of language, so that we might express it well enough to touch another’s inner truth. I have been touched many times by the brilliant writings of fearless authors, and have been changed by that interaction. That is my goal as a writer: to touch another. To make a difference.

Clearly, artists of every type spend time in anguish. A friend once told me that it is just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book, and I believe that to be true. In either case, the author suffered to express.

As we go through our days, we might take a moment to appreciate the things that adorn our homes, offices, lives. Every single thing that we see was crafted by someone who put some part of their heart and soul into their work. We take it all for granted, but we should not, lest our work be dismissed as easily.

Showing Up On The Page

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By Lisa Alber

Exactly two months ago I wrote a ShadowSpinners post while sitting vigil for my dying mother. In that post, I wondered about my writing—whether I’d ever feel like writing fiction again, whether it mattered.

And now, here I sit again, clacking away. The past few months have been a blur of grief, dealing with trustee drudgery related to Mom’s living trust, and skimming the surface of the “have tos” of life. Last weekend I spent three hours scouring the bathrooms. At long last I cared enough to spend energy on that task. I thought, Well, maybe I’m doing better because I cleaned the bathrooms.

A Sikh friend recently commented that Americans don’t do grief. We allow ourselves a few days and then get on with it, as if that’s all that’s required. As if compartmentalization as a life strategy works when it comes to sorrow. I’m trying to do grief better this time than I did when my dad died in 2001. Feel the feelings, acknowledge them, and try not to squash what burbles to the surface.

One way I pay attention is by journaling—A LOT. It had been years since I’d journaled regularly because fiction took priority. Not these days. You’d be correct if you guessed that I haven’t written much fiction in the past few months.

This is going to sound contradictory, but I forbade pressuring myself to write fiction at the same time that I promised myself I’d show up on the fiction page each day. Showing up means opening up the manuscript—that’s it. Read a few pages—that’s it. Sometimes I’ll noodle with a chapter and take some notes. If this occurs, great. My only goal is to show up each day.

Somewhere within me, I must have faith that showing up will get me back into my writing routines. Hopefully this is true, but the other day it occurred to me that since I’m naturally lazy, I might be using the grieving process as an excuse not to write. We can use any excuse to procrastinate, right? Grief seems like as good an excuse as any …

All that is to say that there’s a slippery slope between taking it easy on myself and milking grief for procrastinatory reasons. The fact that I’m aware of this is probably a good sign, eh?