Rachael Herron's Blog, page 30

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This is For When You’re a Good Writer

Hi writer friends,

I just heard writer Rebecca Hunter say something that I really related with. I mean I just heard her, about an hour ago. I rushed home to write this email (and to take a nap, but that’s for after I hit send on this).

She was talking about how she’d made a goal for herself to finish a book before she was forty. She hadn’t yet (at that point), because: “I was waiting to write until I became a good writer. That strategy? Yeah, it didn’t work out that well.”

Rebecca finally realized that she would never get better without actually writing. She wrote a book. Then multiple books. She wrote and kept writing.

See, most of us come with some built-in talent. If you’re reading this, I bet you have it, too. People have told us we’re fantastic with words. Why, then is it so hard to actually do the work? We’d better wait till we learn some more — maybe then we’ll be able to figure out how.

I was this way, completely.

I read all the writing books.

I talked to all the writers.

I thought really really really hard about what I was going to write someday.

I wrote sentences (glorious ones! Ones that could light the world on fire!) in my head while I did dishes.

I thought up new plots while I was driving.

But I never did the work, because I was waiting until that magical day when I would wake up a better writer.

The bad news:

That day won’t come unless you’re writing.

How do you write when you don’t feel ready?

My darling, you just do. You write a crappy first paragraph. You follow that with a crappy first page. Then comes the crappy first scene, then the crappy first chapter. Soon enough? You have a terrible book! You let yourself write terrible, awful dreck because it is better than not writing. You’re learning while you’re writing crappily.

The good news:

There are bright, sparkling, magically wonderful words in that draft. You probably won’t see them when you write them. It’s when you’re sifting through the pages later, you’ll stumble on something brilliant, something tinged with filigreed gold at all its edges.

You’ll find words that string together like twinkle-lights, words that sing like garden fairies on a champagne bender.

And from there, that’s where you move forward.

In the memoir class I taught this semester, I asked the students to write the last chapter of their books midway through class. One writer (Hi, S!) had the revelation I knew someone would have.

So, I was writing along, enjoying the exercise, and then my subconscious said that maybe part of what I was writing just then might be a better beginning than the new beginning I wrote 3 months ago. Crud. Was this an evil plot by my writing teacher?

Hmmm. One wonders, doesn’t one?

Being surprised by your own writing is a source of such happiness that it pays for all the dreck we have to push through to get there.

Now, it’s not easy. You will suck.

Personally, I’m exceedingly terrible at writing at least five or six times a week.

(This might be one of them!) I sincerely mean this — I’m not being fake-modest. For every draft of anything I write (a tweet, a Facebook post, a book), I leap into the air, and I’m never sure I won’t land face-first in a mud-puddle. I’m getting better at not ending up wet and muddy, but that’s because I have heaps of practice.

That said, there’s real, true joy to be found in splashing in puddles, isn’t there? If you’re new to the writing gig, or you still feel like you’re waiting to become a better writer before you commit your thoughts to the page, remember: you’re just a kid when it comes to writing. We all are, no matter how good we are, until we’ve written at least two or three books.

What that means is you get to splash in puddles.

You’re not supposed to be able to keep yourself clean and neat and tidy all the time. That’s not how kids learn! Kids learn to walk by falling down. They learn you can’t always tell the depth of the puddle by sight. They fall out of trees. Sometimes it kind of hurts. Sometimes it hurts a whole hell of a lot and you hear yourself doing that hiccuped-forever-inhalation that comes before the scream.

But mud can also be fun, if you embrace it.

I’m in Northern California, and it’s raining here this weekend. Instead of driving (because we don’t know how to drive when the air is even slightly damp), I’m going to take the dogs for a wet hike and splash in puddles. Then I’ll splash around on the page.

Join me?

Onward!

xo, Rachael

***

YOU GUYS, Dani Shapiro was on the podcast this week. THE Dani Shapiro. Go buy her book, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life , immediately if you don’t have it. She’s an inspiration, and I seriously fangirl all over her in the podcast. It was a little embarrassing, but I regret nothing.
If you’re so inclined, come over and say hi at the new Facebook group, Onward, Writers! if you haven’t already! It’s fun!
If you haven’t already noticed, the subject line of this post is tongue-in-cheek. You are already a good writer. You’re just going to get better from here.

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Ep. 026: Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of the memoirs Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in many places including The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on “This American Life”. Dani was recently Oprah Winfrey’s guest on”Super Soul Sunday.” She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, The New School and Wesleyan University; A contributing editor at Condé Nast Traveler, Dani lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Her next book, Hourglass, will be published by Knopf in the spring of 2017.

Craft Tip: More than anything: have patience.

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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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Ep. 025: Janine Bajus

Janine Bajus is an internationally known Fair Isle knitter, designer, and teacher. Her goal is to provide the information that people need to knit their own stranded garments, whether traditional or wild, subdued or saturated, from a pattern or self-designed. Her hands-on workshops in custom color knitting are known for Janine’s unstoppable can-do attitude and step-by-step methods. Her book, The Joy of Color, is available now!

Craft Tip: Having a foam board with Post-it notes helped me move forward and see where the gaps were.

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).

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How Does a Workaholic Make Herself Relax?

This is a serious question, even though I’m pretty sure it’s kind of an annoying one. How to relax? Seriously? Those of you who are good at relaxing, please know that the tight-ass Type A workaholics among us don’t actually always enjoy being this way (though truth be told, we often do).

I finished a book on Friday. It was the fastest I’ve ever written a book, and lord, you know I’m usually fast. And the book is good — I can feel it. (Don’t worry — it’s at the beginning of its life, off to my editor now, and she’ll help me shape it into something I don’t have to hope is good, but can actually know is good. God bless an excellent editor.)

I want to relax and take some days off. 

But I literally don’t know how. 

I’m a workaholic. I used to think that was just a funny word, but now it doesn’t feel very funny at all.

It’s Monday. I managed to work over the weekend (some marketing, and a writer’s email). And I’m suddenly drowning in worry that I’m Not Doing Enough. I should be knee deep in the next book idea! I should be writing a Patreon essay! I should be making a new online class! I should be GENERATING REVENUE.

Lala bought a used car this weekend.

She needed one. Her 20-year-old station wagon rained on the inside every time it rained on the outside. The radio didn’t work and recently the tape deck stopped, too. It doesn’t idle well in traffic and the other day with all three dogs in the car, I pulled over on the freeway because I thought it was on fire. It wasn’t, but it was close. We had most of the money saved in the New(ish) Car Fund because YNAB is amazing and taught me about how to save money. We’re taking out a loan for the final $3,000 (car was $11,400) to increase Lala’s credit rating (which is already stunning) at credit union rate of 2.4%, but we’ll try to pay that off quickly.

Doesn’t all of this make sense? It does.

And I still panic about money on the regular. 

Seven months into being a full-time writer, I still feel like I’m living the dream and I shouldn’t be allowed to. I should have to get a part-time job waitressing or telemarketing or something awful.

I worked hard at a hard job for a long time (17 years, average 60 hours/week). Now that I do what I love, it just feels… It feels too great. I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to hit the floor.

Today this is what I’d like to do:

Sit on the couch and watch the new Gilmore Girls while knitting. All day.

Here’s the problem, and I’m truly asking for advice here: The house isn’t tidy. The dishes aren’t done. There’s poop in the backyard, and the weeds are taking over. My office isn’t minimalist anymore — it’s a maximalist place with no surface clear, full of yarn and books and clothes that need mending. The front porch, which I’d like to clear off, is full of Stuff, as is the closet in the bedroom.

If I “do a little bit” I’ll end up working on these kinds of things until I finally grab half an hour of exhausted TV watching, if even that much. That’s not relaxation.

I don’t know how to give myself permission to truly let everything go and just enjoy not doing anything important. 

How do you make yourself relax?

Please leave a comment, below. 

All workaholics encouraged to answer, especially those who own their own businesses. Let’s crowdsource the answer to this together!

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Ep. 024: Tien Chiu

Tien Chiu is a weaver, a dyer and a couture seamstress. She’s also a writer. In addition to writing articles for Handwoven and Complex Weavers Journal, she’s written a gorgeous book, titled Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Making, and Selling Artisan Work, which has just come out from Schiffer Publishing. 

Craft Tip: The best way to brainstorm is to sit down, write all your ideas on Post-its, and stick them on the wall. Then you rearrange them on the wall until they make sense.

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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).

We Rise

I try to keep an open mind about a great many things. I never got involved with the great green-peas-in-guacamole debate of 2014, for example. I am agnostic about jeggings. I know that people are different, with different tastes and beliefs, and the warp against the weft is what makes us interesting.

In the past, I’ve been able to stay that way about politics. I had a side, and I believed my side was right, naturally, but I could also understand the other side. On Twitter I enjoyed sharing political cartoons lampooning the politicians I despised as much as any twitterholic. But I understood it when I saw a cartoon of Obama or Biden, an image that made them look strident or ugly or stupid. I shared the same caricatured images of Boehner and Bush. As humans, we categorize things, we make fun of things we disagree with. I believe in democracy. When Gee Dub won (even though he lost the popular vote), I was devastated, but not this way.

Then, we still had a balance of power in POTUS, Senate and House, or least a semblance of it. There were checks and balances.

Tuesday, we lost all that.

I thought of those cartoons that always look the same no matter who’s being lampooned: floppy mouth, raisin eyes, angry arms. I thought to myself, maybe I’m overreacting. In politics, we always think the ones we oppose are monstrous, when in reality, they’re just politicians, as prone to fits of joy or slips of corruption as the rest of us. We think we’re better—but we’re not. We just have different beliefs, based on different teachings or books.

But this time it is different.

***

We had a few people over to watch the returns on Tuesday night. We didn’t invite many. We only bought two bottles of champagne.

Yesterday I took those bottles out of the fridge, unopened, and put them in the wine rack.

I swear to god, those unopened bottles hold my heart.

Champagne triggers my migraines sometimes, and yet I couldn’t wait to taste the bubbles on my lips, to know that a woman I believe in, a woman I respect so mightily, was going to be the leader of our nation.

The wrong team won.

Hillary has faults, yes. She’s a politician; of course she has faults. (Could I run for that office? Could you? Hell, no. And I don’t give a fuck about her emails.)

This isn’t just about the wrong team winning. If a normal career politician, a regular right-wing rednecked good-old boy had won, I would be heartily disappointed. I would have cried.

But I would have been able to hold this in my mind: We all think we’re right. We’re all a little wrong about that. We’ll limp through. We’ll be okay.

Trump and Pence are different.

Everything has changed, and we are entering revolution.

They want to strip the rights of minorities, immigrants, the disabled, the poor, and the LGBTQ. In a country based on systemic racism, a country just beginning a third, vastly-needed civil rights movement, they want to silence the few voices brave enough to shout the oppression. Not only that, but with the House and Senate behind them, they will start wars against other countries and against our environment—wars we can’t win. Period.

How did this happen?

Here’s how: The undecideds weren’t undecided. Those one in four who said they weren’t sure? They were closeted. They knew enough to understand they shouldn’t tell anyone they were voting for Trump. They knew enough to be ashamed. But in the ballot booth, alone, quietly, they voted for the white supremacist candidate.

David Duke and the KKK were elated by the win (this alone is eternally damning). Every totalitarian regime rejoiced on Wednesday. Russian leaders literally cheered when Trump won (PRI).

Hatred has been given validity.

Violence is now acceptable.

With more than half the population voting against hate, we still lost.

You have to know this: my wife and I are now scared to leave the house. We live in the Bay Area in a liberal state, and we’re still terrified to hold hands in public. And we’re privileged. We’re white. We’re still scared out of our skulls, and we ain’t got nothin’ on how POC are feeling (and have been feeling).

This week we mourn. We find community. We eat with friends. We spend our money close to home, in small businesses we care about. We pray. We meditate. We cry.

Next week?

We rise.

How? I have no freaking idea. Not yet. We’re still mourning. I’m numb, the way I always get during storms of grief.

But in our house, we know this:

Even with half the income we had last year, we’re tightening belts and just set up monthly donations to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
We will attend every demonstration we can.
We don’t have kids—we can be arrested (oh, the dogs would be so pissed off at that).
We will listen more than we talk.
We will talk with those who need to be heard most.

On Wednesday, I was so upset I walked the dogs with the express intention to meet a neighbor (any neighbor, I didn’t care) and talk about it. In my Oakland neighborhood, we are good at waving. We’re not always so good at talking.

An older black woman I’d never spoken to was sitting on her porch, watching her husband wash the car. I halted the dogs and stopped on the sidewalk.

“How are you?” I asked.

She waved her hand politely. “Oh, fine, fine.”

“No. How are you? Because I’m completely devastated and I was wondering how you felt.”

She looked at me in astonishment. “I’m not surprised. But it’s so terrible I can’t bear it.”

We talked for twenty minutes. I tried to listen more than I spoke. Miss Mary E. and I are friends now. She asked what my car and house looked like because now “I can come knock if I need you.”

My parents raised me on picket lines. I knew every verse to We Shall Overcome before I knew the names of the Disney princesses. I truly believe that my New Zealander mother, who never had the slightest interest in becoming a US citizen, would have finally become a citizen after 35 years of residence in order to vote against Trump.

I won’t let her down.

I will do my part.

I will write.

I will march.

I will listen.

I will lift up.

What will you do?

all my love,

Rachael

I know I’ll get plenty of hate mail and unsubscribes from this letter. That’s okay. If we disagree on this, you won’t enjoy my books.
Speaking of that, if you do agree with me, please consider sharing this letter to make up for those hate arrows that were just lobbed, on fire, in my direction.
Lena Dunham’s letter on this is much better than my own. Go have a read, and subscribe.
Solidarity? Wear a safety pin. It seems silly until you wear it in small-town Mississippi.

Ep. 023: J. Thorn

J. Thorn has published over one million words and has sold more than 170,000 books worldwide. He is an official, active member of the Horror Writers Association and a member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers. J. is a contributor to disinformation.com and a staff writer for HeavyPlanet.net as well as a founding board member of the Author Marketing Institute. He earned a B.A. in American History from the University of Pittsburgh and a M.A. from Duquesne University. He has spent the last twenty years researching mysticism and the occult in colonial American history.

 

Craft Tip: The last thing I do before I go to bed is put a few bullet points into the document for the scene I’m going to write the next morning. I let my brain sort of  chew on that overnight. It never fails. In the morning, there’s something there.

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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).

Ep. 022: Greta Beekhuis

Greta Beekhuis is an author, knitter of complex mathematical equations, word nerd, physics junkie, voracious reader, and open wheel racer. Her first novel was recently released, Remembering the Way: A novel about a life in science.

Craft Tip: Research, research, research. The science in my books has to be real.

 

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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).

Ep. 021: Grant Faulkner

Grant Faulkner was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He earned a B.A. in English from Grinnell College and an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. In 2011, Faulkner  co-founded 100 Word Story, an online literary journal that publishes stories that are exactly 100 words long. In 2012, he became Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), taking over from founder Chris Baty (who can be heard on Episode 15). He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the writer Heather Mackey, and their two children.

Shownotes: 

Lee Child on creating suspense in the NYT. 

Dog Lap Desks: 

Grant and Buster, writing

Rachael and Dozy, writing

 

 

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Sign up for my FREE weekly email in which I encourage you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).