Nancy Butts's Blog, page 5

Perfection: the graveyard of ideas

When I opened an app on my iPhone this morning to check my to-do list for the day, this quote by Voltaire popped up.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Yes, it’s a smartphone, but how did it know what I needed to hear today?

Writers should chant this line from Voltaire every time they sit down at their desks. I don’t know about the rest of you, but there is this harpy in my head who is always nagging, “Don’t you dare write that sentence down until you’re 100 percent absolutely positively certain that it’s the most perfect sentence anyone has ever written in the entire history of literature.”

And since perfection does not exist—not for me, not for you, not even for Shakespeare or the entire winners’ list of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Newbery awards combined—when I make the mistake of listening to that harpy, nothing gets written.

Old Calton Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland
(c) Infrared photo by Nancy Butts


The poet Sylvia Plath wrote this in her poem “The Munich Mannequins.”

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb...

The quixotic quest for perfection in our work does indeed “tamp the womb,” keeping us from writing stories that may not be perfect, but are good enough nonetheless to inspire, delight, and transport readers.

The cure? Give yourself permission to write dreck, at least on that crucial first draft. What’s important is that you get the ideas out of you and safely onto the page. Those words and ideas are going to be far from perfect, but you’ll have plenty of time to make them better during revision. And that’s where most of the real work of writing gets done anyway.

So go write something awful today. 

[PS: I got so carried away with this topic that I couldn't keep from writing a longer article on this topic, with some suggestions for how to work around it. Jump over to my website for a peek.]

Poverty of ideas: the fifth kind of creative block

My friend Kristi Holl, whose book Boundaries for Writers I recently reviewed here, shared a fantastic article on her Facebook page about creative block.

Seven Types of Creative Block (and What to Do About Them)
Since I just spent three frustrating hours yesterday staring blankly at my keyboard, this couldn't have come at a better time. 

The author, Mark McGuiness, talks about seven different kinds of block. As a solitary writer, only six of them concern me, but I confess that at one time or another, all six have been a factor. Sigh!

It's Block #5 that intrigues me the most. McGuiness writes:

5. Poverty.I’m not just talking about money, although a lack of cash is a perennial problem for creatives. You could also be time-poor, knowledge-poor [italics my emphasis], have a threadbare network, or be short of equipment or other things you need to get the job done.

I had never thought of poverty in these terms before, but I like that way of looking at creative block. I think it was my problem yesterday. When the roofers working next door started playing insanely loud, insanely obnoxious radio music yesterday, I had to flee. I  packed up my portable office and sought out the cool peace of the stacks in the college library. It was the first day of the summer session, and I swear I was the only patron in the entire library. It should have been writer heaven, right?

Wrong! I sat there for nearly three hours and didn't get a thing done. Well, not true. I revised the last chapter I had written in my middle grade novel, but I couldn't make any headway in the new chapter. I couldn't see what the characters were doing. I had poverty of ideas.

I think perhaps the problem for me is that I was in a space where I felt constrained physically. Is there such a thing as a kinesthetic writer? That seems to be what I am, because my daily walks always seem to kick my mind into gear. This morning on my walk, the first line of the chapter came to me, whole and complete. And I suddenly had a clear visual image of where my characters were. Of course, I've got a stack of manuscripts coming in this morning to be edited, so no writing for me, not today.

But I'll jot down that line, and maybe storyboard the chapter on some index cards. It's like depositing money in the bank, so that when I am able to sit down to write, I won't be idea-poor again.

Flying the flag for my nephew

Memorial Day means a lot more to me this year since my nephew Andy enlisted in the Army. He just turned 21 two days ago, but he already bears the scars, both physical and emotional, of his harrowing service in Afghanistan last year.

So I remember him and all the other men and women who truly do make a sacrifice to serve. Their families sacrifice  as well, and also deserve our thoughts and care and concern.

I also remember my dad, who died in February but who served in Army intelligence during the Korean conflict; my brother-in-law Brian, a retired Navy captain, who spent a year in the Green Zone in Baghdad; and all the men in my husband's family who fought during World War II. Some of them didn't make it home; some suffered in prisoner of war camps and on the Bataan Death March.

The words "thank you" don't seem like nearly enough.

Goodreads giveaway still open!

Just a reminder as we head into this holiday weekend that you can still enter the Goodreads giveaway for my book, Spontaneous Combustion . I'm really excited by the response so far! You can enter until June 11th; five winners will get signed copies from me.




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Goodreads Book Giveaway Spontaneous Combustion by Nancy Butts Giveaway ends June 11, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win

Just a reminder as we head into this holiday weekend that...

Just a reminder as we head into this holiday weekend that you can still enter the Goodreads giveaway for my book, Spontaneous Combustion . I'm really excited by the response so far! You can enter until June 11th; five winners will get signed copies from me.




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Goodreads Book Giveaway Spontaneous Combustion by Nancy Butts Giveaway ends June 11, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win

Lawsuit v. Penguin: self-publishing as a servant's entrance?

The publishing industry is undergoing a metamorphosis that is painful and confusing for all parties involved—especially writers. E-books, the dominance of Amazon as an online bookseller, the concentration of so-called "traditional" publishing power in the hands of the Big Six houses, and the rise of independent or self-publishing are all mutating the business of books—and no one, not even the alleged experts, can predict with any degree of certainty what the final outcome will be. What publishing will look like in ten years—or even in two—is a mystery that keeps many of us running to the medicine cabinet for daily doses of Prilosec.

Since my own foray into indie publishing last month, I promised a blog post on the ups and downs of my experience. But that will have to wait. Today I think it's more important to publish four links about the new class action lawsuit filed April 26, 2013, against Penguin and Author Services Inc., which it owns. Under that Penguin umbrella are a host of other self-publishing services, such as AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, Xlibris, Palibrio, and Booktango. ASI is also the force behind self-publishing imprints with traditional book publishers like Simon & Schuster (Archway Publishing), Thomas Nelson (WestBow Press), Hay House (Balboa Press), Guideposts (Inspiring Voices) and Writer's Digest (Abbott Press).

I've had students and manuscript clients who have published books with some of the services listed above, and who said they were satisfied with what they got for their money. I've also had clients who were so traumatized by their experiences with these same services that they couldn't even bring themselves to share the details with me. They seemed to take the blame onto their own shoulders, and were too ashamed to talk about it. 

Well, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit isn't ashamed. In Emily Seuss' blog, Jodi Foster (no, not the Oscar-winning actress) is more than willing to talk about her experience with iUniverse.

I have not researched this particular lawsuit thoroughly, though this Mick Rooney blog post at TIPM takes a balanced look at it. Also, Victoria Strauss at the excellent Writer Beware blog reports on it as well. 

Until I can write more intelligently about the lawsuit, I'll withhold comment on that. What I will say now is this: it has always made me deeply uneasy that major publishers such as Simon & Schuster—even Christian publishers such as Thomas Nelson—should offer two separate paths to publication. If you aren't lucky enough to get an actual contract where they pay you to publish your book—and give you all the editorial and promotional services that go along with that, for free—there is a back door, a kind of servant's entrance. You can still have that affiliation with S&S or Nelson, sort of—as long as you are willing to pay them for the privilege. But does that buy you the same careful editing, the book design, the cover art, or the promotion that a contracted author receives? Somehow I doubt it.

Now that may not be a fair representation of how these self-publishing imprints of traditional publishers work, but that's how it comes across to me. If any reader has published a book with one of these imprints, I'd love to hear about your experience.

Boundaries for Writers: review of a new e-book by Kristi Holl

My husband and adult son are on vacation; I am not. Now it’s true that they are spending the precious days of their vacation painting the front porch, and I thank them for that. It’s a wonderful albeit belated Mother’s Day gift. But the other day, as we all took advantage of the glorious spring weather to be outside—them scraping and painting, me sitting outside with my iPad Mini and notebook—they couldn’t resist teasing me. “Pick up a paintbrush,” they said. “Why aren’t you working?”

And even though I knew they were just teasing, I admit that my blood started to boil, just a teensy bit. Because I was working. Perhaps they are to be forgiven. As the late E.L. Konigsburg said at an SCBWI conference many years ago, “Sometimes writing looks a lot like doing nothing.” But after more than two decades of seeing me pound away at the keyboard in the corner of my living room, you’d think my family would recognize me working when they see it. Yes, I was outside, and yes, I had what may have looked like a toy to them. But the fact is that I was studying a book and making notes to write this review; and I was also researching and brainstorming and drafting not just one but two freelance articles.

Fortunately, the title I was studying at the time was Kristi Holl’s new e-book, Boundaries for Writers . So even though there was a little voice inside me whispering, “Well, maybe you are slacking off. Maybe you should pick up a brush and start helping them with some real work,” I resisted. I remembered what she said about boundaries, about guarding my writer’s heart, and I just smiled and said, “I am working.” And I went back to my notebook with a smile.

Kristi knows her stuff. She is the author of 42 books, both for kids and for adult writers. Though we’ve never met, I came to know her about a dozen years ago when, as a rookie instructor at the Institute of Children’s Literature, she asked me to do a web chat with students about the craft of writing. Since then, I frequently refer my ICL students to Kristi’s books and articles about what she calls “writer’s first aid.” She has some great tips for time management that can really help those of us fighting to squeeze writing time into lives already crowded with a host of obligations, commitments, and responsibilities.

Her latest book is in one sense a sequel to her first aid books, but in a way that plunges deeper into the problem of finding time to write. Sure, you can look at this as an issue of time management. But in this book, Kristi goes far beyond that. Her brilliant insight into the problem of why writers can't write is that it is an issue of faulty boundaries: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. This was a revelation to me, a moment of clarity.

In her opening chapter, Kristi talks about how walls—far being divisive or isolating—are the key to “guarding your writer’s heart.” I found myself hearing this line from Robert Frost’s poem as I read: “Good fences make good neighbors.” For writers, they certainly can.

In order to be more creative and productive, Kristi advises that writers repair their broken walls—or boundaries—whether those have to do with protecting your writing space or shielding yourself from the sting of rejection. She gives specific advice about how to deal with people and situations that are sabotaging your writing time. I still can't get over the story of one writer whose wife deliberately gained fifty pounds to punish him for "neglecting" her so he could write.

Resistance from family and friends is usually more subtle than that, to the point where sometimes we don’t recognize it for what it is. Kristi prepares writers for that, and also for the sneakiest of adversaries: ourselves. On page 24 she writes, “Sometimes we are our own worst enemies when it comes to damaged boundaries.” We allow ourselves to get distracted when we’re supposed to be working, or fritter away our writing time with a nonstop barrage of worries. I especially liked Kristi’s solution for dealing with what I call the Panic Bird. Make a fifteen-minute date with yourself during which you are allowed to worry. Then whenever your thoughts drift from your characters to whether any editor on the planet will ever buy the manuscript on which you are working, remind yourself sternly, “Nope, Mr. Panic Bird, you aren’t on my calendar until 5. I’m writing until then.”

She is also sensitive to the fear of many of us have that we are being selfish or neglectful of our families when we set boundaries so that we can write, and she deals with that, too. For Christian writers, she even has an entire chapter devoted to biblical references that support setting such boundaries.

Like so many others, I always seem to be struggling to carve out and safeguard my writing time, but I never before thought of this as being the result of boundary issues. Kristi’s book provided me with fresh insight and resolve that I think will help me, along with many others writers, to spend more fruitful time at our desks.

Note: this book is only available in PDF format as a direct purchase from the author's website. Click through on the book title above to get there.

Goodreads giveaway for my new book

I'm kind of late to the party; can you believe I only recently discovered Goodreads? But now that I have, I'm sponsoring a giveaway for autographed copies of Spontaneous Combustion . You can enter until June 11th; there will be five winners.



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Giveaway ends June 11, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Mother's Day gift—from a stranger in Istanbul

Istanbul...Constantinople...Byzantium: this ancient city has gone by many names, and its turbulent history has fired the imaginations of many writers [including the Irish poet William Butler Yeats]. Today, on Mother's Day, I received a wonderful gift from that city, in the form of an email from a Turkish writer about my my book, Spontaneous Combustion.
Here is an excerpt:
"Your book arrived yesterday and today I sit in a coffeeshop in Istanbul, my yellow marker in hand reading, nodding, and laughing, taking notes while furiously marking passages in your book. I am lost for a while in the book, look up and discover I am still in Istanbul."
I love that that my words were able to inspire and transport her. This particular person is herself a writing teacher, and runs something she calls a "writer's house." I'm not sure what that is, but it intrigues me; I think I want one!
But what is really making me smile is the image of someone in Istanbul, a world away, sipping Turkish coffee and and laughing and scribbling notes while reading something I wrote. Truly, books can erase all kinds of distances, both physical and cultural. 

Good news!

It was a struggle yesterday to get to my desk. I was able to postpone that visit to the vet because Yukon's growth seems to be spontaneously shrinking. But I still had to take care of him, shoo my family down the driveway, finish all my chores and errands, and complete what I've started to call my morning rounds (this means checking and updating all my social media sites).

After all that, it was difficult to switch gears and go from mommy mode to writer mode. And at first I wasn't sure I was going to succeed. But I forced myself not to flee from my desk, not even when the 20,000 words of the book that I've already written seemed as foreign and incomprehensible to me as if someone else had penned them—in Klingon!

This is where the freewriting advice I've heard from so many others saved me. When you get stuck, don't stop—even if it means writing "I'm a worthless hack without a single original idea" over and over. OK, so you shouldn't write that! What I do is insert what I call placeholders into the manuscript. If I'm not sure what a character should say or do at any moment in a scene, I'll write something like, "Arlo has some reaction here." And then I'll move forward to write a real passage about the next thing that I do see clearly. This sounds stupid, but it always works for me. When I come back to that scene the next day, during revision, I will discover that now I do know what the character is doing. Then I'm able to take out that placeholder and weave in a snippet of dialogue, internal monologue, or action.

In the end, I was able to write a solid opening scene for my chapter after all. So now I can lead my characters down the cracked, weed-choked sidewalk and into the haunted house at last. What fun!

I had more good news this morning: I sold an article to the SCBWI Bulletin! Thank you, my dear friend Vijaya, for suggesting that I submit there in the first place.

The bad news though is that it's one of the pieces on my Free wisdom page, which means I have to temporarily take down. So I apologize, but the article about using a Kindle or iPad as a way to get fresh eyes when proofreading a manuscript will have to disappear from the site—just for a while.

However, the good thing about the SCBWI Bulletin is that unlike some other publications, you retain all rights to anything you publish there. So after a decent interval, I will be able to publish the proofreading article again.