Kathleen Heady's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

As I prepare for another trip to the UK for a writing retreat in Wales, I would like to share some of my traveling adventures with my readers through my blog, and through a new contest.
I will not be returning to Lincolnshire, where The Gate House is set, on this trip. Instead I will be in London and Scotland before going to Wales.And we may squeeze a day trip to Dover.
So this is the contest: Anyone who posts a comment on my blog between August 7 and 22 will be entered into a drawing for prizes which will include a copy of The Gate House as well as some little mementos of England, Scotland and Wales that I pick up along my way. There will be ten prizes awarded, including a copy of the book.
I will send out reminders and other tidbits before I leave, and you can always catch me on Facebook and Twitter.
And I would love to hear where other people are traveling this summer.
The photo shows the view from our retreat location in Wales last year.

Although these tips are mainly for writers, I find that when I read a novel, I often become so involved in the story that "I am" a main character.
These techniques can help both writers and serious readers identify with a character.

1. Make a list of adjectives that describe your character. Use a thesaurus for words you may not think of off the top of your head.

2. Spend two hours "being" your character. Do whatever you are doing normally, but try to think like your character. Get inside his or her skin.

3. Write up questions and interview your character. Be "in character" when you answer.

4. Ask a friend or family member of the character to describe him or her, and write down the answers that come to you.

5. Describe your character on a typical day -- down to the underwear. Include hair, grooming, how many pairs of shoes he or she tries on before going out the door. Everything!

Spend enough time with you character and he or she will be as real as your best friend. In fact, the character may be your best friend, at least for a while.

I have had a sinus headache since about 3 a.m. It's one of those headaches that hangs around in my forehead and nose and never quite goes away until it is good and ready. I am guessing it will be sometime this afternoon. But I don't want to waste a morning when I want to be writing. I have enough writing projects that I should be able to find one that I can work on through a headache. I don't think I have the energy to tackle the major revisions I want to do on my sequel/prequel to The Gate House. My other Nara story, Nara of the Islands, is almost finished, but an ending is hard to write with a headache. I love writing book reviews, and I have one I need to work on for Suspense Magazine. That's a "maybe" project. But for writing fun and relaxing, I think I will go back to what I call "My Real Story." This is a story I started writing just for fun a few years ago. I have abandoned it and returned to it several times. I don't know if it will ever be something I will want published. It is essentially a fantasy story, and I enjoy wandering around in this other world when I need a break from writing "work." For me, this story is play. I am not following an outline. I don't have any particular market in mind. I have no audience except myself. The story is set in the land of Three Rivers, so named because I worked in Tres Rios when I lived in Costa Rica. The land of Three Rivers is a place of pure imagination, and it's all mine. How do you handle those days when your energy for writing is just not there, but you don't want to miss your writing time?

I have read a number of articles that say the multi-tasking that most of us do nowadays, whether we are writers or not, is really counterproductive. We may think we are balancing a number of task at once, but we really aren't. What we are really doing is hopping quickly from one task to another, which can be tiring and often useless, resulting in tasks having to be redone, or at least revisited.

But many people, even the teenagers that I work with everyday, claim that they are able to multi-task successfully. I have to agree. I am happiest when I have several projects going at once, so I can work on the one I am in the mood for at any given time. This applies to my writing projects as well as other things. When I cook, I like to have more than one project going so I can make good use of my time in the kitchen. I unload the dishwasher and get my lunch ready in the morning while I wait for coffee.

As a writer, I always have several projects in different stages of completion. Right now, I am working on promotion for my novel The Gate House, which is due to be re-released in a few months. I am also working on revisions of the sequel/prequel, tentatively titled Lydia's Story. And in addition, I am trying to finish another story in the series which I began several years ago, and would now like to complete. Obviously, one of the three takes a back seat at any given time, depending on what I see as most urgent, or what type of work I am in the mood for -- promotion, revisions or first draft writing. Of course we need to be able to see a task through to completion, otherwise there is no point in doing it. But for those of us who work that way, having several balls in the air can be fun. I feel less likely to get bogged down when I can take a break and work on something different.

Take a look at your own work habits. Do you like to see one project through before starting another one? Or do you prefer juggling several tasks at once? Does your style work for you?

I was a guest author on a mystery panel at a local library last week, and we were asked the question: How much do you read while you are writing a book,and do you worry that what you are reading will influence your writing?

I read constantly. I read before I go to sleep, while I eat lunch, in doctors' waiting rooms, while I brush my teeth (yes, I really do), and other odd moments throughout the day. And with the things that happen in my life, I have quite a few really odd moments.

But I don't worry that what I read will influence what I write in more than the most subtle ways. I learn from my reading, and am constantly motivated to write better because of what I read.

I don't understand people who say they don't have time to read. For me, reading is like breathing. Would I not have time to breathe? If I didn't read, how would I know how to write?

With the early arrival of spring on the east coast of North America, I am thrilled to be out once again for my daily walks. But I have to confess that I don’t do earphones. All right, I carried my smart phone with me to use the camera, but I resisted pulling it out to check Twitter or Facebook while I walked. Yes, I have done that.
As a writer, it is important for me to allow my mind to relax to make room for creative ideas. I have never felt comfortable with earphones in my ears, not even on long plane trips. I may have deformed ears, but they just aren’t comfortable. I’ve tried listening to audio books and podcasts while I walk, but I end up fiddling around with my phone and do not come back with my mind refreshed. So I walk the old-fashioned way, with my eyes and ears open to the world around me, and allow the ideas and thoughts to bounce around in my head unimpeded by music or talk. Some of the ideas are even worthwhile.
How do you clear your mind to write? Or if you are not a writer, how do you unplug and relax?

I became a writer because I love to pretend.

I was an only child until I was almost five, and we lived on a farm seven miles from a town nobody (almost) has heard of. We had no TV, but we had books and I had an imagination.

I often entertained myself my making up stories, with me as the star, of course. At some point I decided to start writing the stories down.

I am still pretending. That’s where stories come from — the wonderful world of “what if.”

Now I sometimes use my imagination as a tool to learn more about a character in a story I am writing. I spend a couple of hours “being” my character. I try to walk like her, eat what she would eat, even choose my clothes with her tastes in mind. (Of course, it could be a male character as well, but some of the choices would be a bit of a stretch.)

It’s fun! I still enjoy playing that I am someone else. And it is good preparation for going back to write about the character. I know her better, because I have been inside her skin.

Does anyone have any other tricks for getting inside the mind of a character?

My neighborhood is boring. I live in a suburb of a major east coast city. We have an excellent school system, low crime, residential streets with nicely manicured lawns, and it's boring. Our homeowner's association requires certain standards to keep the appearances uniform -- and it's boring.

I didn't know the area when we moved here, didn't realize I would feel frustrated and out of place, but we are stuck here until my husband finds a job in a state about seven hours south of here, where we want to live.

But I am a writer, and I live for creativity and imagination. I have always been very good at pretending. I make it a priority to look for the unusual when I am out. Today when I was out walking I found tiger lilies in bloom, which reminded me of rural southern Illinois where I grew up. We often found tiger lilies in bloom along the roadside where an old farmhouse had once stood. The house was long gone, but the tiger lilies came up year after year in a riot of orange color. I may write a story about tiger lilies.

Anyone can bring creativity and color into their life with a little effort and awareness. I have a friend who is an artist at baking cookies, and makes them for any occasion with her own special touch. Another friend is a librarian and brings her sense of humor and imagination to her job. A third friend was forced to quit her government job for health reasons, and has just created a web site for the new business she is launching.

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams. He tells he students, "Make your lives extraordinary." I challenge other writers, readers and myself to do just that. Don't settle for a boring neighborhood.

Someone said that "life is in the details." I take that to mean that we really only see the big picture of life when we look at the past or the future. In the present moment, we only see the details. I see the computer screen, I feel my fingers typing, I see my orange cat sleeping on the desk. I know I am hungry for lunch and need to take a shower and go out and run some errands this afternoon. I live in the details.

It is the same with writing. A novelist wants her readers to appreciate and enjoy the totality of her novel, but she writes it chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, word by word. And an error can trip up the reader and cause her to lose the flow of the story. A reader can be caught by a detail that makes her stop and think --" I've noticed a mistake in this writer's work. What other mistakes has she made that I have not noticed?"

In a novel I read recently, the author described the French press in the kitchen whistling away to tell them the coffee was ready. Anyone familiar with a French press knows that it doesn't whistle at all -- it simply sits there until someone pushes the plunger and pours the coffee. This small error caught me up short. Another error of language that I noticed recently in a novel was simply a mistake in terminology in different parts of the country. I know that in southern California, people use "the" before the number of a highway, as in "the 5." I drive up and down I-95 between Pennsylvania and North Carolina quite often, and I can assure you it is never referred to as "the 95," as this author did.

While these are small errors, they always make me pause and wonder if the author just didn't do his or her research, or was in a hurry, or thought it just didn't matter. Of course, it also speaks to the importance of an editor.

I also do some freelance editing, and I am always on the lookout for small mistakes that can hurt the credibility of an author.

How important do you think these small errors are, either as a writer or as a reader? As a reader, do they catch you up short and interrupt the flow of the story?

This year, for the first time, I participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. This is a pretty short novel, but a darned good start.

I have been so caught up in the release and promotion of Lydia’s Story that I haven’t been doing much “real” writing lately. I have not been working on anything new. True — I have some unfinished pieces hiding away on my computer that I could resurrect and turn into something readable, but I had the urge to work on something new, something challenging.

So I am devoting the month of November to writing 50,000 words of my new project, which has the working title Magic Words. The title may have more to do with me typing the words than the actual words themselves!

I did a little basic arithmetic and figured out that to write 50,000 words in a month, I need to write 1,666 words per day. This is not out of reach. When I write a first draft, I write fast. I get the words down. And I do have a plan for this story. I know where I’m going. But since like most people, I have a lot going on in my life, I think this is what will happen: I will try to write 1,666 words each day, but most of the time, I won’t make it. Then every three or four days, I will have a marathon writing day when I will catch up with my goal. As of November 3, I have over 5,000 words.

Anyone else out there doing NaNoWriMo? What are your tricks for reaching your goal? And does the goal matter if it gets you writing?