down the writer's path

Tempting the muse

Are you addicted to office supplies? Do you tremble at the mere thought of entering the hallowed doors at the temples of Staples, Office Depot, and Office Max? If you are, you are among the many who daily make words their business and their play. Why do these places hold such a fascination? Why are we so drawn to their contents? I think it’s because they are today’s Taj Mahal. They are temples where a writer goes to openly court the muse.

What is not to love about these stores? Every aisle is full of plunder. I stand in awe of Post-it bins and racks. My muse is tickled to touch the stickys whose numbers and shapes continually increase. We lament the demise of the useful small squared ones. When we sticky shop we’re like the three bears: this one is too large, this one too narrow, but this one—this one—is just right.

The small minutias that attract the muse and wake up my dream world include the clear boxes of colored and shaped paper clips. The reaction of some writers when they receive a few pages of manuscript papers held together by a dark red outline of a star is amazing. They covet them. My pages are returned with the old hum-drum silver clips. Tack pins, post-it flags, highlighters, and oh yes, those wonderful retractable Sharpie pens daily engage me. They are the toys I use to draw my muse out to play. They offer a tactile lure that never ceases to engage her.

My muse loves to mind map. Together we cover the walls and any empty space we can find with the poster-sized sticky notes and erasable pages. We have been known to completely rearrange hotel rooms. Notebooks are dedicated to mind maps of scenes, potential chapters, early character maps and even shapes of complete novels. Naturally we succumb to the lure of colored pencils, gel pens, highlighters, small packages of pencils, and those pens of a particular nature and feel that attract our use. A corridor of potential maps springs to mind every time my fingers feel the shape and texture of the tools.

But a muse of today is not locked in the past. Oh no. She is a contemporary muse who laughs with glee when she turns into the electronic aisle. Digital recorders, handheld mini-cams, colored printers, mini-digital photo albums, iPods, and now the new small computer netbooks like the Acer Aspire One. Electronic toys are capable of holding her attention for hours upon hours and she fills my mind with an unending stream of thoughts and ideas. It is a joy to spend an afternoon with my muse engaged in office supply delights.

Now I ask you, what engages your muse?

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Note: Special thanks to Editor Unleashed for inspiring this post.

Exercising the Writer's Muse: Finding fodder in unlikely places

Many preach specialization today but writers would do well to take the generalist's approach when it comes to writing. I know time is an issue as you get more and more involved in your writing and focused on deadlines. For many writers time becomes a precious commodity, something to be coveted, protected. Their world of writing shrinks. Soon writers focus only on the latest books published in their chosen genre. This narrowed view may build up their knowledge in a specific field but it can also limit their creative expansion in the world of story.

Exercising your creativity is a productive and beneficial tool that enhances the imagination. If you're new to writing and story development, learning to find ideas and build them into viable plots is a healthy lesson. One way to keep the imagination flexible is to read outside your genre. See what other people are doing. Don't just read the story, look for the ideas that have been extrapolated and woven into the storyline. Bestselling authors frequent the world of science as a source of inspiration. Look at the works of Michael Creighton, Robin Cook, Jodi Picoult, Dean Koontz and others. They do more than dip their toes, they bathe in the ideas of cutting-edge news.

If you're muse is being a bit balky, why not take it to a new park to play? I looked at the Science Daily website this morning and quickly found three or four headlines that sparked story ideas. I'm sure you could find even more. To exercise your muse, pull three headlines that spark your imagination. Brainstorm the ideas. Do a quick mind map of the central idea. Pick a protagonist and give him a related goal that either supports or goes against the idea underlying the headline. Now write a quick paragraph that provides a brief story idea and contains a beginning, a middle, and an end. Repeat this for each of the three ideas.

Don't spend a lot of time on this. The idea is to write down your immediate responses, put a character into the mix, give him or her a goal and an endgame and write. Allow 15-20 minutes max to complete each one. Your muse will be entertained, you'll have some fun, and your creativity muscle will be flexed. As you work your imagination in new ways, you'll find new and exciting ideas bubbling up in your daily work. Give it a try and let me know what you think and remember: think big.

Note: If you already troll the science news, move to a different pool. Try history, language, mathematics or any other that is new to you and search the news of the day.

Links: http://www.sciencedaily.com/news, http://www.sciam.com/

Internet Tools for Writers: Catch it with Stickies

I am old enough to remember life without the Internet, typewriters prior to word processors, and index cards before the dawn of Post-its. I love stickies. Canary yellow, pale pink, turquoise blue, and spring green, the list goes on and on. Now there are Super Sticky notes, ruled notes, sticky index cards, and even color-coded half-index-card stickies. It's a beautiful world for writers today.

My library is littered with flags and notes on stickies. I use stickies as I read through books that I use for research or that I'll review. I arc out a character's life on stickies. I manage a novel visually scene-by-scene using stickies in a blank book I keep close at hand. Notes, ideas, questions all mark up my stimulating rainbow of stickies.

But wait! Let me tell you about my desktop. It, too, is littered with Stickies. I've tried several note-taking software and my favorite is--what else?--a software called Stickies. Offered by Zhorn Software, this is a simple, clean program that will soothe the soul of any stickie manic. You can color-code, alarm, and play hide and seek with them. They can live on your desktop or hibernate in a particular file. They can be huge, tiny, or Post-it sized. Bless them, they can even be printed.

I use my cyber-stickies to capture random thoughts that accumulate during the day, to run ongoing shopping lists, and to capture quick notes for phone calls or emails. They function as terrific reminders. If you prefer to have a clean desktop, hide your stickies until you need them. What's the best thing about Stickies? It's free! Download it now.
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More info: USING FURL; USING OUTLOOK; USING GOOGLE ALERTS; USING GOOGLE DESKTOP SEARCH; USING THE BLOG READING LEVEL TOOL; USING VISUAL THESAURUS; USING JACKETFLAP.COM SOCIAL NETWORK

Pack power into your writing life. PowerPOPP!

Okay, I've been working on a new site called PowerPOPP. If you want to pack power into your writing life, practice these four principles: Plan, Organize, Pursue, and Persist. Take a look around. Don't forget to sign up for the mailing list. If you have any ideas, want to contribute a mini-article, or have other suggestions, let me know. Your input is definitely appreciated.

I've added subscription boxes here and on PowerPOPP where you can join my mailing list. (There's some kind of glitch in the text for DWP's mailing list subscription but I'm trying to work that out. I truly wish I had a better handle on all this html and widgets and web whatnot stuff.) 2007 should be a busy year. The hoppers around here are bursting with new ideas, plans, and projects. Of course, that means I'm on an intensive learning curve. Hey, I've even managed to come up with a banner for PowerPOPP's feedburner.

Michael Crichton and NYT Book Review Editor on Sunday CSPAN2 Book TV

Quick. Grab your remote, click to the CSPAN2 channel and set your timer for these upcoming BOOK TV events. (The schedule will fill up over the next few days.) This Sunday, December 8th at 7:30PM, Michael Crichton's speech to the National Press Club will be aired on C-SPAN. Crichton always delivers a provocative and interesting talk. Given the subject matter of his new book, you can imagine the depth and breadth of his talk. Then, if you've wondered what really goes on at the New York Times Book Review, make sure you watch CSPAN the following Sunday, December 17th. The program will air at 11 AM and 7PM (Eastern times).

Weekend Highlights ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michael Crichton, Next Saturday 8 PM, Sunday 7:30 PM ET In his novel, Mr. Crichton describes the genetic world as "fast, furious, and out of control." During this event hosted by the National Press Club in Washington, DC, the author discusses recent scientific leaps in the study of genetics and talks about how gene manipulation can help cure drug addiction.

**Coming up on Book TV next weekend - December 16-18**
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sam Tanenhaus, Editor, New York Tiimes Book Review
Sunday, December 17 11 AM and 7 PM ETA rare look inside the influential New York Times Book Review, featuring Editor Sam Tanenhaus. Mr. Tanenhaus guides viewers through the editorial and production process including how books are chosen, how reviewers are selected and how the review is fact-checked and copy edited.

If you aren't in the habit of watching CSPAN on the weekends and you love books, particularly nonfiction, you'll love watching CSPAN on the weekends. Often a weekend is devoted to one of the national, regional, or state book festivals. While 90% of the time the subject matter is nonfiction books and their authors, occasionally, like this weekend, a writer known more for his fiction than nonfiction turns up. Of course, nothing compares to the 3-hour in-depth interviews that happen on the first Sunday of every month where an author sits for an interview that covers their life and complete literary works. Great stuff. Another favorite of mine is the National Press Club meetings. Most of the time the subject matter is timely and the author interesting.

And if you're keeping up with the latest book talk gossip, then the in-depth interview with former President Jimmy Carter Sunday morning might be of interest. If you do watch one or both of these shows, stop back by and tell me what you thought.

Writing prompts and exercising your writing muscles

Spent the weekend exercising my writing muscles. I worked up a piece for blogHouston on the Houston museum that is featuring the dog in art exhibition. Museum exhibitions offer some good opportunities for Artist Dates (in the vein of Julia Cameron), spontaneous writing exercises, and old-fashioned inspiration. Why not check your local calendar and see what opportunities are available right now at your local venues? Plan an Artist Date with your creativity and go alone. Another option is to call up a few fellow writers/artists and wander through the exhibit; then, separate for about 15-20 minutes of free writing before you share your experience and your impressions.

I also wrote up and posted another book review at Blogcritics.

Have to say it feels good that I'm starting the week with two short pieces under my belt and at least 1500+ words published.

What is your relationship with your Muse?

Where do you fall within the full spectrum of inspiration? Do you actively seek inspiration or are you content to wait for the first flap or ruffle of an inspired word?

"The way in which you think of the energy that motivates you to pick up your pen and add to your writing will shape your relationship with your writing and your ability to pursue it." -- Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

This quote comes toward the end of a long passage about writers and their continual dance with inspiration. As Smiley says, "every author attests to the two states of writing--inspiration and waiting for inspiration." For Smiley, the state of being inspired enough to write is "a condition of being stimulated by contemplation of the material to a degree sufficient to overcome your natural disinclination to create."

Far too many writers are content to play the romantic courtier languishing on the sidelines while waiting for even the briefest glimpse of their Muse, the supposed supplier of their creativity. They love being caught up in the moment, dancing among the glorious stream of words only to fall exhausted at their Muse's feet. When they wake, their Muse has vanished. Distraught, they sit and pine.

What about you? Are you aggressive enough in your courting of the Muse? Or are you content to allow her to play hide and seek with your inspiration? Do you wake up every day ready to ride through the dense forest, wade through rapid river currents, intent upon pursuing your inspiration? Or do you sit, hoping against hope that this is the day you will entertain an audience with the fairytale Muse?

Perhaps it's time to reshape your relationship. Direct confrontation too much? Try stalking her. Shuffle your papers, sharpen your pencils, open your files, render your thoughts, fears, and hopes into an online journal, open a project notebook. Don't wait for inspiration to show its face. Take control. You set the parameters. The muse can't help but return, if only to see what you're up to.

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Finding the passion to write

During the last holiday season I somehow forgot to pick up copies of the latest The BEST AMERICAN Series (2004), and had, in the process, deprived myself of what has become an annual pilgrimage through the pages of the year's best American essays, spiritual writing, science and nature writing, travel writing, and stories, both short and mystery. I enjoy the brief encounters with writers of high caliber and wide-ranging thought. Often I find new (to me) writers or writers I had by-passed for a variety of reasons. Many times I gain new respect for a known writer.   

Sometimes the pieces are autobiographical and an open window into the writer's life or writing process is offered. That's how it was the other morning--although I didn't know it--when I read Laura Hillenbrand's A Sudden Illness in the The Best American Essay Series for 2004. The piece originally appeared in The New Yorker. Mind you, I didn't make the connection between the writer and her best-selling book until the revelation at the end.

"What began as an article for American Heritage became an obsession, and in the next two years the obsession became a book. Borden and I moved to a cheap rental house farther downtown, and I arranged my life around the project. At the local library, I pored over documents and microfilm I requisitioned from the Library of  Congress. If I looked down at my work, the room spun, and Border jerry-rigged a device that held the documents vertically. When I was too dizzy to read, I lay down and wrote with my eyes closed. When I was too dizzy to read, I lay down and write with my eyes closed. Living in my subjects' bodies, I forgot about my own."

Hillenbrand details the terrible and sudden onslaught of a disease that captured her in its net in 1987 and still exerts tremendous power over her more than fifteen years later. With more downs than ups, it's absolutely amazing to me that she continued to write despite the devastation that sought to consume her every moment. That she could produce a work that so captured the imagination of millions and led to a major movie nearly defies belief.

But that's how it is for many writers who struggle to produce book after book despite hands that are locked into tight balls constrained by rheumatoid arthritis or bodies that suffer attack after attack of MS or some other debilitating disease. You have to wonder: What is it that makes them persevere? Why do they continue to struggle day after day, often with meager results that would deflate the best of us and cause most of us to walk away?

Passion. Some call it a compulsion, others say it's an obsession, but whatever it is, there is something deep inside that tries mightily to get out, to be released into the world at large. Despite the clamor of the real world, the obligations and duties, the frustrations, the struggles, the strikes that imperil the soul and the body, these writers continue on. While I confess that my trials and travails barely rise to the bar set by so many other prodigious and productive, yet afflicted, writers, I do know that I am driven to write in order to communicate: I have something to say. It's beyond reflection. It's infused with discovery. The urge to tell is powerful.

But there is another, perhaps more powerful urge, that infuses my writing. I love to create. The first burst of an idea that lights up my interior landscape sparks such a strong desire to communicate and urges me to find the right form to translate the idea from my mind onto paper. The ability to write and sort it all out, to make sense of the explosion, is what draws me back to the process time and time again.

If you haven't figured out who Laura Hillenbrand is, let me jog your memory. Her book won the Book Sense Book of the Year Award and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Okay, think: racehorse. Yes, she is the author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend, and her essay, Sudden Illness, won the National Magazine Award. (Click here to read the full article.)

Do you have a passion to write? Maybe it's not the writing but the subject that brings a twinkle to your eye and an obligation to your spirit. Ask yourself whether you're writing something that interests you, something that has enough power to bring you back, time and again, to the keyboard. If you do, then the next time you don't feel like writing, remember Laura Hillenbrand. Then turn on the computer and click your way back into that stream of passion that thrums at the center of your writing life.

Learning from Ray Bradbury, discovering the passion to write

For Ray Bradbury the admonition to write what you know does not apply. He practices the art of writing what you love. He wears his passions openly and they are abundant. He writes about what he loves; he writes about his inspirations; he writes about his passions. This type of writing is easy enough for him for they saturate his being and illuminate every part of him. He doesn’t have to tap his passions--he lives them. They encompass his existence. Bradbury loves life and his ardor knows no bounds. Writing about his passions is second nature; I would argue that he cannot help but do so.

What excites you? What illuminates your soul? Are your passions visible? Is tapping into them easy, even second nature to you? If not, perhaps you should take a few days to discover and rediscover them, exhume them, play and experience and write about them.

Even more than his writing, it is Bradbury’s exuberance for life and his unexcused love for writing that sings so powerfully to my writing soul. He says "find your twins," no matter where in life they reside. Find where your passions intersect, for there inhabits the spark that will fire and illuminate your soul.

Bradbury unabashedly scrolls across the genres from playwright to screenwriter, storyteller to short story writer, essayist to novelist. Writing is his playground. Like a joyful Johnny Appleseed, the age-old Bradbury skips across the cultural landscape planting seeds within the fertile grounds of essays and shorts stories and moves on, secure in the knowledge that good fruit will follow.

What about you? Can you say you love to write? Do you unabashedly grab your pen or pull the keyboard forward excited, even trembling, to create the next story, essay, or novel? Does your work move you? Do you find it invigorating?

If not, why not?

To Kill Who? Not the muse.

In a moment of severe procrastination, I clicked over to Georganna Hancock's Writer's Edge blog, and fell prey to her teasing post about The Book Quiz. This literary fun-filled tidbit is designed by Storey Clayton, author of Loosley Based. Apparently this quiz is where we part company, Georganna. No Cinderella am I, but you, Gentle Reader, you are who?

You're To Kill a Mockingbird!
by Harper Lee
Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you've also taken a significant amount of flack. But you've had the admirable guts to persevere. There's a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you, but you're pretty sure it's worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.
Take  the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Please continue to read the next post and take part in my poll.

Editor's note: Will the weird guy please step out of the shadows and come forward?