Writer's Funk is over! I have been writing a lot lately and am gettin' my grove on, fo' sho'. It still amazes me how much writing makes me feel alive. I know this has to do with something in the brain surrounding the creative process. We all should do something creative daily.

Yes, daily.

Our brains need to express itself creatively as much as our lungs need air. The problem is that most people think doing something creative is hard.

Being creative can be knitting, painting, writing, or simply cooking. It can also be solving puzzles or
whittling (don't knock it till ya' try it!). It could be making beer or maple syrup. Just something that allows the brain to fire off those endorphins!


Sometimes when I write I get a tingling sensation throughout my entire body -that's when I know I'm in the zone. Some might even say it's when I am most connected with my souls purpose. Most of the time though, when I write, I know I've hit a great place, creatively, when my fingers are typing away on the keyboard faster than my brain can actually think of the words.

So, if you don't think you are the creative type - think again. We are all born to create! Go and have fun will ya? Sign up for a class or write that poem that's itching to get out, but just do something!

I am telling you....the world would be a better place if we all tapped in to this thing called creativity daily!

 

 I am stuck in a funk and I can’t get out. Ever since I went on vacation back in April I haven’t had passion for writing that I have in the past. 


Lately when I write, which is mostly because I am afraid that if I don’t I will lose it, or something like that I guess, my writing lacks pizzazz, umph, passion. I’ve written some articles, edited a short story, and maybe have written a blog or two but nothing is really grabbing me and taking me on that “ohmygod writing is amazing” path.


I miss that tingly feeling when I’m writing that radiates throughout my body. I took this feeling as an indication that whatever I was writing about was “meant to be.” Now, I’m not so sure. I know that being a writer is not an easy path -heck it's down right HARD - but should it be an impossible one? Every story I’ve tried to get published has been rejected and I suppose that rejection has entered my soul. Damn rejections. 


Now, I have had some- let’s call them- signs recently that have indicated to me that perhaps I should keep writing. For example, my Yahoo Contributor site suddenly was off the charts with hits on an article that I published last summer. And by off the charts, I mean 72,000 in a three week time period. I have no idea how or why that happened, but when a deposit was made into my checking account because of those hits, I stopped questioning it. That money represented something more than earnings; it was the validation that I've been seeking. Then, like all good things, that ended and my hits on my Yahoo site are back to dismal. Another
sign was a publication telling me that they are considering using an article I’ve written. Hey, I’ll take a consideration over a rejection any day even if my article never makes it to print. Then just the other day, as I was meditating and asking for a sign about what to do, I received an email that had a subject "Pursue your Masters in Creative Writing" Now, that was not something I have ever even thought about doing but I asked for a sign and there it was. I'm just not convinced it's the right sign for me. I need some time to mull that one over.


 Maybe I should forget about fiction for a while and focusing on article writing. I have to wonder if fiction just isn't my path- how could I not think that with the amount of rejections I keep getting for my short stories and novel queries?  And, while I do experience a surge of energy when I get that idea just right and the words flow, I’m just not feeling the sparks. This worries me. Maybe writing is not my calling after all. Maybe I’ve been jaded by too many rejections. Maybe I am burnt out. Maybe I am depressed. Maybe I need "real" job. Maybe I’m supposed to be focusing on something else other than writing. I really don’t know, but I want my sparks back! 

 
Has this ever happened to you before? Let me know, maybe we can eat cheesecake, drink wine, and bathe in chocolate as we discuss how we got here. 


I guess I will continue to write every day in the hopes that something will ignite the tingle, the sparks, the pizzazz.




 

 
I will be attending Grub Street’s Muse and Marketplace Conference this weekend. I have wanted to attend this conference for a long time and finally decided to bite the bullet and sign up a couple of months ago.
 
I also signed up for the Manuscript Mart where I will meet with an agent and discuss my novel. I turned in my query, one page synopsis, and first 20 pages a few weeks ago. I’ve been asked if I’m nervous about the meeting and honestly, no. I mean, sure, I fantasize about her telling me that I am the most beautiful writer she has ever seen and that she wants to sign me right then and there! BUT, we all know that the chances of that
happening are slim to none. 

I’m trying to be realistic about the meeting. The agent I’m meeting with has been in the business for a long time and I know that whatever she says will be the truth.  At the minimum, I would love some honest
feedback about my work that will help guide me in the direction towards publication. 

The sessions I signed up for are: 

1. The Psychology of Strong Characters

2. How to be your own best editor

3. Essentials of Structure
 
I am still undecided about which Hour of Power session I will attend. There are too many great choices! This is when I wish I were Hermoine Granger and could be in two places at once!
 
All I know is that I am very excited to get jazzed up about writing again because I’ve been in a bit of a rut. I can’t wait to be surrounded by other writers and to hear what other successful authors have to say. 

If you are going to the conference let me know!

 


I was thinking about my novel Laguna the other day wondering if it was the “best” it could be. Will the answer ever be yes? I’m really not convinced it ever will so I continue asking myself that question every now and then. 

As I was thinking about my main character, Sarah, I wondered if she had enough depth. In other words, had she changed enough throughout the novel? I’ve heard/read other authors say that a good trick for
getting to know your characters on a deeper level is to interview them. YAWN. The thought of having to come up with questions seems so boooring. Not only that,  if I could think of the questions wouldn’t I already know the answers? 
 
Anyways, I came up with a different, and novel changing, idea to help me understand Sarah better. I had Sarah write a letter to her sons explaining why she ran away. I was shocked at what I learned about her as a
 woman, about her pain, and I was very shocked a what I learned about how much she had changed. 

It seems so funny to be shocked by what is actually coming from my own brain but I couldn’t have found all this out had I interviewed her. I would have been thinking too much about getting the “right answers”. By handwriting a free flowing letter from my main character to the people she loves (and hurt) the most I was really able hear her voice and to sympathize with her not to mention to ultimately see her in a different light. 

I was able to go back in to the story and tweak a few lines of dialogue here and some exposition there and all of a sudden, Sarah came to life on the page. Instead of her having my voice of reason, she suddenly had her own. It was like meeting your baby for the first time right after the nurse puts him on your belly and they open that one eye and look at you as if to say, “There you are!”


 All I can say is give it a try. Instead of interviewing your MC, have them write a letter to someone else in the story about how or why they did or didn’t do something in your story. It just might help you get your
story to where it needs to be.



Good luck!

I bought a beautiful necklace recently. The necklace was
a little on the pricey side but when I saw it in the store I couldn’t stop staring at it. It is long and has many shimmery silver strands (say that ten times fast!) that are connected together and when they fall into place around my neck and drape down my chest, it looks like a waterfall of silver. I simply had to have it. 

I wore it one day to an event and haphazardly took it off
  that night leaving it in a heap on my bedside table. A few days later, I picked it up and it was a tangled mess with all of those strands knotted together. I thought if I shook it a little bit that the knots would right themselves and it would be fine, but I only made it worse. I tried to untangle the strands by pulling one strand out at a time but as I did that, a new knot would form somewhere else. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to fix the necklace, and feeling mix of intense frustration and anger, I gave up. I was mad at myself for not only for buying a necklace that I couldn’t afford in the first place, but that I had ruined it after only one day. I left the necklace on my dresser and have been staring at it for a week. Or rather, it has been staring at me reminding me that I am a failure.


Each day, I’d pick it up and try to fix it but the frustration would get the best of me and I would put it down once again. Why was this so hard to figure out? And, how could some strands of silver make me so damn angry?


This morning as I was cleaning my room and putting away laundry I saw the necklace laying there and thought that this thing wasn’t going to get the best of me. I began to work each knot one by one and started
to feel good about the progress I was making. Slowly, the strands were untangling and I felt like I could actually fix it this time. Then, I realized that I had gone from having just four strands tangled back up to ten! Feeling the frustration build, I breathed, studied it, and continued to work strand by strand. I had all but four strands free again. If I kept going, I knew, from experience that I would only make it worse so I  figured
that was good enough. I could live with the necklace having those four tangled strands because the alternative, of trying to fix it, was too daunting a task.


I set it down and walked away. I quit. I went about finishing my cleaning but the necklace called me back. I picked it up again, amused with myself for my doggedness and feeling cheeky, I looked at myself in
the mirror and said, “You are going to fix this.” I knew that if I left those four strands tangled that the necklace would never be as beautiful as it should be.

I stared at it instead of pulling at it and suddenly, I saw the problem as clear as glass! The strands were not tangled at the bottom, which is where I was focusing all of my energy. The strands were tangled at the top! The clasps at the top, which connect the strands, were twisted. Once I turned the clasps around and moved some strands from one side to the other everything else fell into place at the bottom. No more knots!

 “I did it!” I said as I stared at myself in the mirror grinning. I even did a little dance. 

Then, it hit me. 

This necklace represents a metaphor for my writing. 
 
Lately, I have started so many stories but have abandoned them midstream. Alternatively, I have been editing a story that I just can’t seem to get right. No matter how hard I try to shake the strands of my writing in order to make it beautiful, I am coming up short and feeling frustrated. 

As writers we spend so many painstaking hours, days, weeks, months, years  pouring our hearts
into our pieces that sometimes we can’t even see how crappy they are. But, as we read them (or start to get rejections) we begin to see the tangled messes we’ve made. However, as we try to shake it to untangle the mess (by tweaking characters, scenes, plot or whatever) we just seem to be making it worse. So we leave it. We tell ourselves that we are a failure and that we should never write another piece ever again.

 But something draws us back in.

We know that it can be fixed. 

Sometimes what we are trying to say doesn’t always come across in our pieces.  Who knows why that happens but it does. However, in order to make it beautiful we have to stop trying so hard to fix it and begin to see the bigger picture. See, if I had only realized from the beginning that my necklace was tangled from the top I would have saved myself a lot of frustration. But, I was trying to use logic by untangling one strand at a time. I thought that if I could just fix this one strand, the whole thing will fall into place but I was wrong. 
 

I can apply that same principal to my writing. I may think it is a character that needs to be fixed but really it’s the plot, or maybe it’s not the plot but the depth of character. Until I step back and see the piece from the top down, I can’t really fix it at all.  I need to look at my pieces from a different angle and try not to focus on the strands but the clasp that holds the strands together. In other words, determine what I’m really trying to say because if I don't my piece will never be as beautiful as it should be.


I am going to spend the day reading some of my unfinished stories to see if I can find the clasp. I know that if I just keep at it I will end up with something beautiful. Wish me luck!

I was so excited to be asked to write a piece for the
 website Literary Rejections: a website dedicated to helping and encouraging the  unpublished to persevere. Please follow this link to readmy story. 

 http://www.literaryrejections.com/kathy-sloan/

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