Rachael Herron's Blog, page 28
March 9, 2017
Ep. 038: Jason Gurley
Jason Gurley is the author of Greatfall, The Man Who Ended the World, and other novels and stories. His bestselling self-published novel Eleanor was acquired by Crown Publishing and reissued in 2016. His work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine and numerous anthologies. He lives and writes in Oregon.
Craft Tip: Learn how to keep an idea folder.
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Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
The post Ep. 038: Jason Gurley appeared first on Rachael Herron.
March 5, 2017
This Is What We Get Wrong About Writing
I just finished writing a Patreon essay. You may have heard me talking about them on my podcast. I love writing them so much though they’re not easy to write (is anything?).
In this latest Patreon essay, I write about how bad we are, as humans, at predicting what will actually make us happy. I won’t go into the science of it here, but this is the main takeaway: We guess wildly at what will make us happy, and then we get it wrong, over and over again. It’s human nature, and it’s part of the way we work.
It might sound familiar to you.
We dream of the totally free Saturday afternoon when the spouse has the kids, and you have the cafe. You know exactly how it will go. You’ll get there, grab your favorite chair by the outlet, and you’ll proceed to write the brilliant prose you know you’re capable of. It will be everything you’ve been waiting for.
Fact is, it doesn’t go like that, does it? Even when the seat is open, and your computer is plugged in, and your latte is perfect, something isn’t quite right. It’s your brain. It won’t settle. It won’t do what you need it to do which is to get some goddamn words on the page that don’t suck all the suckitude of suckery sucktown.
We predict what will make us happy (or sad) and we are wrong, over and over again.
It helps me to know this.
Nothing is going to go the exact way I imagine it, either for the good or the bad, and that kind of lets me off the worry hook.
Brain science shows us that the thing you fear the most won’t be as bad as you think it will be. It also shows us that the fantasy–the lottery win, the subsequent small-island purchase–also won’t be as good as we think it will.
That means all you have is now. This imperfect, perfect moment you’re sitting in right now.
Now is all.
Don’t wait for after retirement. Or next weekend. Or when the kids are in grade school. Whatever you’re waiting for, it’s not enough.
If you’re waiting for a future time, when you’ll be a better writer with more discipline and courage and creativity?
The only way you’re going to be one is to write messily, sloppily, and badly NOW.
Go write something. Anything. A blog post. A letter to your aunt who would die of shock if she got something in the mail from you. A love letter. A letter to the editor. A Facebook post that says something instead just a status update. The first chapter of your book (it will be terrible! It’s supposed to be, I promise!).
You have right now. And it’s better than okay–it’s all you need.
Onward!
xo, Rachael
PS – Curious about the longform essay on this which includes things like the way I use my ADHD for my writing benefit? You can read it (or listen to the MP3) here for as little as a buck.
The post This Is What We Get Wrong About Writing appeared first on Rachael Herron.
March 2, 2017
Ep. 037: Kate Maruyama
Kate Maruyama’s novel Harrowgate was published by 47North. Her short work has appeared in Arcadia, Stoneboat and Controlled Burn and is now featured in two new anthologies, Phantasma: Stories and Winter Horror Tales as well as on The Rumpus, Salon and The Citron Review among other journals. She teaches at Antioch University Los Angeles in the BA and MFA Programs and for inspiration2publication.com as well as for Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She writes, teaches, cooks and eats in Los Angeles where she lives with her family.
Women Who Submit, Saying Yes While Afraid
Craft Tip: Imagine who in your book or story is telling the story, who they are telling the story to, how long ago the story happened, and why they are telling it now.
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Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
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February 23, 2017
Ep. 036: Anna Doogan
Anna Doogan is a writer, dancer, and mother of three. Her writing has also appeared in Hip Mama, The Literary Kitchen, and Arcadia Magazine’s Online Sundries. She was the winner of the 2015 Hip Mama Uncensored/Unchaste Readers Writing Contest for her short story, “Fires.” She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Craft Tip: I often make playlists of songs that feel like the piece I’m working on, and even if I can’t be writing, I can be hearing the music that’s inspiring me.
Listen above or subscribe on:
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Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
The post Ep. 036: Anna Doogan appeared first on Rachael Herron.
February 16, 2017
Ep. 035: Adrienne Bell
Adrienne Bell is a wife and a mother of two. She’s lived her whole life in Northern California. She has a deep, abiding love of all things Disneyland and Supernatural, and is the author of One Lucky Night, as well as the Second Service and The Sinner Saints series. Hook, her new book from the Exiles of the Realm just came out on Feb 14th, 2017.
Craft Tip: Luck can come into the story into the first act, but after that, luck has to go away. Every action has to be because of a decision.
Listen above or subscribe on:
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Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
The post Ep. 035: Adrienne Bell appeared first on Rachael Herron.
February 9, 2017
Ep. 034: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo was named a 2012 Los Angeles Central Library ALOUD Newer Poet and the 2013 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner. Her poetry manuscript, Built with Safe Spaces, is inspired by her grandmother, Los Angeles, and the Arizona borderlands. In August 2011 she volunteered as a desert aid worker with the Tucson-based humanitarian organization, No More Deaths, which informed many of her borderland poems. Her book Posada is available now. In Los Angeles, she is the creator and curator of the quarterly reading series HITCHED and a co-founding member of the literary organization, Women Who Submit. She is a first generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, California and currently lives in the shadows of Dodger Stadium in historic Solano Canyon. She spends her nights listening for the ghosts and coyotes of Chavez Ravine and her days maneuvering the 110 freeway to teach drama and English to high school students in Arcadia, CA.
Craft Tip:
Listen above or subscribe on:
iTunes | Stitcher | Youtube | Facebook
Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
The post Ep. 034: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo appeared first on Rachael Herron.
February 2, 2017
Ep. 033: Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins is poet, playwright, theater director and dramaturg. She was a CALLALOO Journal London Writing Workshop Fellow, is an alumni in Poetry of VONA Writing Workshop and was a Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley. Her writing is published in Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, River, Blood, Corn Literary Journal, Line/Break, As/Us Literary Journal,The Pacific Review and others. Currently, she is finishing her new manuscript of poems, Compass for which she received the 2016 Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award from San Francisco Foundation. She is in development with her new play, Token and was a 2015-16 playwright member of Just Theater Play Lab in Berkeley. She holds graduate degrees from The Claremont Graduate University and UC Berkeley. She is currently a Guest Artist Director at St Mary’s College in Performance Studies, a Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theater and a Artist-in-Residence at BRAVA Theater for Women in San Francisco.
Referenced: The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach
Craft Tip: Write lists. It releases you from having to invent something, but also allows you to generate multiple ideas.
Listen above or subscribe on:
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Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
The post Ep. 033: Lisa Marie Rollins appeared first on Rachael Herron.
January 30, 2017
On Social Activism and Resisting
Hi there, my darlings.
How are you? No, I mean it. How are you?
It’s so rough out there right now.
I woke up on Saturday morning with nothing to do until the evening, when we had tickets to see Ira Glass at City Arts and Lectures. I planned to lounge in bed. I’d cleared work from my plate until Monday, and I was going to have a Day Off. I was counting on pajamas and muffins and knitting and maybe some cleaning out of books.
Instead, I read about the Muslim Ban. I got more and more upset, as you probably did, too.
What has happened in a week and a half? The brand new White House policy advisor, Steve Miller, actually organized white supremacist events at Duke University with Richard Spencer (the Nazi who got punched last week).
Steve Bannon, the ex-Breitbart alt-right (read: Nazi), has the same status of the secretary of state as of this weekend. He has not been vetted. At all. (There’s a theory that says he’s setting us up for an attack by ISIS. No sitting president has ever lost reelection in wartime.) And he’s in the driver’s seat now, not Trump.
There are strong signs that this is a coup.
Read that again.
There are signs that this is a literal coup, well-planned and orchestrated by Bannon. THIS ARTICLE says more and is scary as hell.
Saturday morning, watching all of it unfold, I felt hopeless.
Furious.
Helpless.
Yes, we should call our representatives and congresspeople, we know that. Calls are worth way more than paper letters, and emails/Tweets/FB messages are all but ineffective. (I didn’t know until this week that if you do write paper letters, send them to their regional, state-level office rather than DC. Good info.)
But my congressperson who’s waffling on voting No on Sessions and Tillerman is Diane Feinstein. None of her offices are answering their phones. At all. You get messages that say the voice mail is full.
The voice mail is full! There’s nothing you can do with that! You can keep calling, hoping a live body will answer (in DC, in SF, in LA, in SD, even in Fresno) but no one does.
I felt so hopeless I felt sick.
Then I saw the march planned at SFO. When I saw the FB page, only 9 said they were going. That was okay. I talked to Lala (who couldn’t go–she went on Sunday) about contingencies in case of my arrest. I made a hasty sign.
I went to BART and made my way there to find I wasn’t the only one.
For a while, we stayed on our sides of the street, letting traffic flow.
Then, led by a tiny elderly Asian woman who waited for the cops to get distracted and then stepped into the street. She gave a little “come on” sign with her hands and we all did.
http://rachaelherron.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2017-01-28-23.58.31.mp4
It was a loud crowd, the chants never stopping, the mic-checks almost drowned out by the sheer righteous anger that surrounded us.
The ban is not our America.
It’s not what this country was founded on.
It felt good to fight. To resist. To yell as loudly as we could, “No ban! No wall! Sanctuary for all!”
And it’s just the start, my friends. We have at least four years of this to come.
What do we do now to resist?
Protests are important (and let’s face it, they can be soul-mending and even fun).
Calling your elected officials is essential. (We’re finally learning how to use our smart phones to make calls!)
But what else?
This is what I’m doing to make a difference:
Call: On the off-chance you haven’t seen this already, start with 5calls.org. You just put in your zip, and you get info on who to call with what message.
Swing Districts: Control of the House in 2018 depends on a few swing districts, and it’s time to start thinking about that NOW. Go HERE to find out the one closest to you, and then get to work there. (I’m CA Dist 7, see you in Modesto!)
Put “social activism” on your To Do list every day. Cross it off after you’ve made contact with someone. Today I crossed it off after sending a fax to Diane Feinstein (apparently faxes are good for something!) through this site from which you can fax both house and senate.
Arrest: Are you in a place of privilege that you could be arrested if need be? Lala and I are (no kids, no jobs that would punish us for doing so), but we are putting into place to set up care for the animals. (We’ll use IFTTT to send a text blast to the relevant people who have our house keys. A beloved friend who can’t be arrested but wants to help is our bail money. She’s set it aside on purpose, keeping it liquid for this reason, for those she loves.) Related: I’ve been a good girl my whole life. Kept my nose clean. It’s fucking NUTS that this is the conversation we’re having.
Start learning about that same privilege. I can only speak to white women, but start here. Already feel you’re a good intersectional feminist and ally? Level up here.
Get organized, on a grass-roots level. I’m part of a local crafting group, and this was done in the first meeting:
Write down the social topics that matter to you (it might be a long list)
Have people sign up for those they’re most interested in.
Get a leader for each topic.
Each leader disseminates that info to the people interested, with news and plans of action.
By dividing, we can conquer. My particular group meets once a week for an hour and a half, in person. Knitting is in our hands and we’re taking action.
Every HOUR it seems like the news gets worse, and we can’t all fight all the things all the time. But we can help each other hit the high points, break through the noise, and take action.
Together.
Don’t despair.
I know that’s hard, but there are more of us, who value the rights all of human beings, than there are of them.
Keep fighting. (And keep talking. Comments open. Polite comments of all types will be kept and cherished. But come into my house with fists swinging, and I’ll delete you right out of my house, and you won’t even get a gluten-free muffin to go.)
And remember to put on your own oxygen mask first. Too much? Step away. Rest. Read something light. Take a bath. Then come back swinging. We’re in this together, petals. We’ve got this.
The post On Social Activism and Resisting appeared first on Rachael Herron.
January 28, 2017
Writing Rituals: Allowing them to change
I got an email earlier this week from someone trying to sell me something that asked me what my writing routine was. The goal of that email (not this blog post!) was to get me to buy a piece of software that would improve my writing rituals. (Before you ask, you don’t need the software, I promise, or I would totally tell you about it.)
But it got me thinking about rituals.
A ritual is a ceremony that is made of actions performed in a prescribed manner.
And oh, lordy, do I love a ritual.
I have so many rituals in my life. A sampling:
The way I push the dogs out of my office every morning to lay out my yoga mat and move my body around for thirty minutes.
The way I heat my oatmeal for four minutes exactly, and then add the frozen blueberries so I get an infusion of insta-cool which means I can get to the eating part of my day faster.
The way I polish my glasses when thinking about emotion, as if that would make it easier for me to see.
I like rituals with everything, everywhere.
When I’m in a strange city, I set up a routine on the very first day. I unpack my clothes, putting them into drawers and setting my paperwork in order on whatever desk I have nearby. I find a new “favorite” cafe and go back often. I used to bring a scented candle when I traveled until I almost started my agent’s apartment on fire (true story) and now I don’t bring extra flames with me. I even unpack in a tent.
And I really love my writing routine, which is always changing.
I know that’s contrary to the usual advice of “always play the same music” or “always have the same scent in the air.” Shouldn’t writing rituals be rules that you’ve set yourself and that you follow, hard and fast?
Look. Life isn’t static. It’s always, always changing. If I’d made myself stick to the same cafe where I used to get excellent work done, I’d be there right now, hating the smell of onions (they added cooked food to the menu) and distracted by the woman talking to herself while wearing intricately crafted items made from foil (bless her, but I can’t tune her out even with white noise turned up to 11).
If I’d made myself stick to writing at 4am, I’d BE VERY SAD AND TIRED.
If I’d made myself stick to writing when the mood struck, I’d have no books written at all.
Old writing rituals die. New ones rise to take their place. That’s natural.
I’ve recently learned that the best routine for me in writing is putting my feet up. Who knew? It seems, for me, that sitting with feet down means email and tasks. Feet up (or standing) means making new words. (You can’t really do the feet-up thing if you’re in a cafe or you turn into one of THOSE people, like the people who Skype without headphones in public.)
My routine, though solid and predictable on a daily basis, changes over the long term. It’s always moving, always a work in progress.
That’s okay. That’s good. That’s life.
I will admit that a few things always remain, though, and I’ll list them here in case they’re of use to you:
I use Write or Die to catch my first drafts. No jump-scares, no kamikaze mode, I just have the screen go to red when I’m not writing, and I get a puppy image when I’m done.
I use Post-its like some people put parmesan on pasta — everywhere, with gusto.
I write in silence at home, and with white noise when I’m out. (Years ago, I used to write with music, but I can hear the rhythm of my words better with no melody.)
I use Sharpwriter pencils. Always Sharpwriter. Plain, cheap, basic, reliable. (Like me!)
Scent is helpful for me, so I burn incense or put a pan of cinnamon/clove water on a low burner (CAUTION: FLAMES!). It’s not so much what it smells like as the fact that the air just smells nice.
Don’t worry if you’re still finding your way into your perfect writing routine. If it’s changing, that’s good.
Play.
Explore.
Experiment.
I’d love to know your writing rituals. Leave a comment!
The post Writing Rituals: Allowing them to change appeared first on Rachael Herron.
January 26, 2017
Ep. 032: Honorée Corder
Honorée Corder is the author of 20 books, including You Must Write a Book, and Prosperity for Writers. She is also Hal Elrod’s business partner in The Miracle Morning book series. Honorée coaches business professionals, writers, and aspiring non-fiction authors who want to publish their books to bestseller status, create a platform, and develop multiple streams of income.
Craft Tip: Always be bettering your craft. Always be learning.
Listen above or subscribe on:
iTunes | Stitcher | Youtube | Facebook
Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).
The post Ep. 032: Honorée Corder appeared first on Rachael Herron.
