Month: June 2017

 Find me a writer who hasn’t gotten stuck and I’ll tell you, “That’s no writer.” For me the image of being stuck inevitably makes me think of Roald Dahl’s humorous (but dark) children’s book, “The Twits,” in which an awful sticky glue is first the nemesis but later the liberation of Mr. and Mrs. Twits’ victims.I asked my fellow Miss Demeanors, “What do you do to get unstuck? Do you believe in Writer’s Block? But even if you don’t, what tricks, methods, etc. do you use when the writing is just not happening? I’d love to hear if anyone has a lucky charm, pen, ritual?”  Tracee:I have issue with Writer’s Block being an excuse not to work. Like it’s an illness that you have to recover from. Certainly blocks happen. Maybe you don’t have the right ‘next step’ in your plot or you’ve uncovered a big hole or you simply have distractions that make it hard to focus while writing. Maybe taking a day off is the answer (especially if you’ve been on a hard work spree). But mostly it is about working through it. I rely on different tools – if you can call them that. Don’t ignore the impact of blood to the brain (quick jog, bit of yoga, trip to the gym). After a dose of oxygen to the brain…. maybe I need to just keep writing and worry about the details later, maybe I need to go back to the master chart and check the outline. If I’m really desperate I re-do my notecards and put them out and in order to take a look at flow differently (really to put the myriad details back in my mind). The basic thing is to keep working. Do something different to trigger the right next steps, but keep working. After all, you can’t edit a blank page!  Susan:      Usually when I get stuck it’s because of something relating to character. I don’t know why someone’s doing something. Or I don’t know what they should be doing. So when that happens, I begin doing dossiers. My office is filled with notebooks that are filled with questions: What type of coffee does she order at Starbucks? What did she wear to her prom? And so on. When all else fails, I watch House Hunters or walk in the woods.  Alexia:     When I experience writer’s block, I remind myself it’s just my anxiety and perfectionism kicking into overdrive and tormenting me with self-doubt. By focusing on what’s really going on–psychological hangup, not a lack of ideas–I can better deal with it/get past it. I remember a trick Chris Baty mentioned in No Plot, No Problem and envision myself banishing my inner editor. I mentally slam the door and lock inner editor out of the room. Or I imagine the self doubt as little demons and I exorcise them. “Back, back, back to hell,” I say. Sometimes I tell myself, “Just put some damn words on the page” and force myself to write something, anything as long as some words start flowing. Those words might (probably will) get deleted later but at least I’m producing words. I try not to get up from my chair because I’ll find an excuse not to sit back down and resume writing. Instead I close my eyes and so some deep breathing or send up a few prayers to the Holy Spirit. This quiets my mind and eases my anxiety.  Paula (Munier, our fearless agent and contributor): For me, writer’s block is usually a matter of my not knowing the characters well enough. Whenever I feel stuck, I just pull out my trusty Waterman pen and red leather journal and scribble around until something hits me. Or I just do research. The more research I do, the more I write.   Cate:      I write my way through writer’s block, putting sentences together that I’ll discard later until I get to a place where things make sense again. I also agree with Paula’s assessment that the source of writer’s block is a lack of understanding about the people and places that the story is about. When you know your characters and setting well enough, the book kind of writes itself. I recently threw out a 2/3 finished novel and started over because a lot of it was writing through my writer’s block. But doing that work and tossing it enabled me to understand the characters and what I wanted to say so that I could finish the resulting novel in six weeks. Robin:       My answer to the question: I have two strategies for getting unstuck. Which one I employ depends on whether it’s a first draft or whether I’m closer to submission. My first draft rule: keep going, no matter what. To echo Tracee, you can’t edit a blank page. The first draft is meant to be the burst that gets fixed in the next round(s). I do my best to muzzle my inner editor and spew out whatever it takes to move the scene on to the next one, no matter how ridiculous or lame it comes out. I liken it to a painting; no one but me ever sees the crappy pencil drawing beneath the colors and definition of the finished product so just go for it. Rule Two for later drafts: walk away for a while but take a notebook. I think everyone is familiar with the experience of the brilliant idea that comes to them while taking a shower, right? It happens because we’re not consciously trying. It’s the Zen moment that comes from quieting the mind. When I hit a roadblock I go for a walk, go for a bike ride, have dinner with friends, do some yard work, wash my car…any activity that takes me away from the computer screen and presses pause on the conscious effort. My friends and family have gotten used to me saying “OH!” out of nowhere then scribbling madly in a notebook. The only one who still gets surprised by the outburst is my dog if she’s on a walk with me. That “OH!” can sometimes be kind of loud 🙂    Michele:          My brilliant blog mates have offered such wonderful advice, I have little to add. For me, fresh air, is the antidote for a brain stall. A walk in the woods, along the ocean, or just sticking my head out a window and inhaling is a terrific way to jumpstart my brain when I’m stuck. Oddly enough, the other complimentary method is for me to pick up that pen that has stopped moving and just write. Write anything, including how frustrated you are that you can’t write. Before you know it, you’ll turn that writer’s breakdown into a breakthrough. 

 For the past month, I’ve been transitioning from living in Paradise to Eden. I know that’s doesn’t evoke a lot of sympathy, but it’s not all palm trees and ocean breezes. Living in a tiny cottage in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands half of the year and in a small tindominium on Outer Cape Cod the other six months does have its challenges, especially for this writer who needs a modicum of space and calm. People have remarked to me, “Oh, I watch Tiny House on HGTV. I’d love to do that.”But is tiny house living all it’s cracked up to be? Here’s the reveal: the good, the bad and the ugly about transitioning from the Caribbean cottage to the Outer Cape Cod tindo.            A confession. After six months of tropical temperatures, azure blue waters, and Tradewinds caressing my body, I actually looked forward to a few chilly New England days when I would slip into jeans and a sweater and warm my feet in my Ugg slippers. I imagined being perched on the comfy couch on gray rainy days with a real hardcover book on my lap.  St. John had begun to change from pleasantly warm to bloody hot and, not to sound ungrateful, I was done with it, at least until November.             Shortly after our return in May, we had three consecutive days of ninety-degree temperatures, followed by a never ending forecast of days filled with endless rain with temperatures in the fifties. My dream come true, to an extreme.            Sure, I got to curl up with books and to write prolifically in the dank darkness of the tindo, but when would I be able to plant my garden? Within days, the intimate coziness of our small living quarters began to feel confining. The clutter that comes with being stuck indoors for days on end mounted and spread like an amoeba throughout our tiny tindo. I realized tiny house living presupposes (at least for me) that a lot of time is spent living outdoors.             But there was the soothing rain on the roof, the birds from the Audubon sanctuary next door visiting our feeders not realizing there’s a boundary between the properties, and the pine trees whispering that we should just enjoy the respite from the heat and “be in the moment.”            We planted our garden during misty breaks from the downpours. The plants seemed happy and so were we. The cool quiet of our tiny gardens was a perfect place to germinate ideas for the stories I would later put to words.              A drive to the beach late each afternoon to watch the seals surfing in the Atlantic Ocean from inside our car while the rain pelted down reminded me that this was the same Atlantic Ocean I had soaked in daily while in St. John. The same ocean, but not the same. One smoky gray, swirling in random angry configurations, smashing against the white sand leaving a foamy froth along the edge. The other an illusive shade between green and blue, warm and smooth as silk, often as still as a mirror, but occasionally moody and agitated.            Internalizing the vastness of the ocean and the openness of the garden helped me understand that it’s not the size of the space I live in that matters, but rather the space inside of me. I can live anywhere as long as I remember to bring the outdoors in.   

 While downsizing our home, my husband and I had to sort through some of the debris left by my parents, my grandmother, and Steve’s father. Much of it we had already disposed of, but we had left remnants we felt needed a little more consideration than “toss,” “save” or “donate.” My father’s Navy hat, my mother’s wedding dress, and other sentimental items had fallen under a fourth category: “defer.” So had boxes of photos and papers.            The time to face the “defer” pile came as the date when we were moving from the ten room home we had inhabited for 33 years loomed on the calendar just weeks away. I took a box at a time and sat at my dining room table sorting through like an archeologist sifting through the sands of time. My emotions ranged from amusement to melancholy to wonderment. I found myself uttering the words, “What were they thinking?” more than once. Why did they save some of this stuff? What had it meant to them?            I lifted a heavy opened envelope that was addressed in typewriting to my mother. I took the pages out and began to read a short story several pages long. It was the romantic tale about a young man and the woman he loved who returned home to her after World War II. It was well written, somewhat saccharine, and totally irrelevant to current times. It became clear to me that I was reading a story that had been written and proposed by my mother and rejected by a women’s magazine.            Wow. I never knew my mother had even an iota of interest in writing. Double wow. I wasn’t the only member in our family who had faced rejection. Damn, wouldn’t I have loved to chat with her over coffee or something stronger about our shared affliction, but she had been gone for decades.            I tried to understand why she had never told me that she had written a story, or maybe stories. My mother was a very private person, but she knew I was writing and I had shared some of my work with her and my father during visits with them. They lived next door, so sharing what I had cooked, read, or written was a common occurrence.            Something kept gnawing at me. I would pick up the hefty envelope that weighed heavy in my hand. Had I known so little about my own mother? Did she keep her creative dreams buried from a daughter who shared the same passion? I felt a tinge of anger and regret that we had lost the opportunity to connect on a level I wondered might have been an important opening.            Then the mystery reader and writer in me kicked in. My father had shared various stories he had written over the years. When “Agnes of God,” a movie about a novice who gave birth in a convent was released in 1985, he produce multiple chapters of a novel he had started years before, lamenting that “Someone got it done before I was finished.” Sure enough, he had written the beginning of the story about a troubled young novice who was forced to leave the convent.            He’d written all of his life professionally. His first job was as an English teacher. After the war, he worked in the television industry in marketing and promotion. I knew he had dabbled with writing fiction, but now I realized he had done more than that.            He had written a romantic story for a women’s magazine and submitted it under my mother’s name. My guess is he thought it had a better chance for publication if it came from a woman. I scratched my head at the notion that in the 1950’s some version of gender bias would work in the reverse in the publishing industry.            I thought about the few other things he had written and shared and realized the story was in his style. What dreams had my father buried in the name of being a responsible post-war provider for his family? Had writing been an illusive, impractical pursuit he dared not seriously indulge in?            When I had finished my first full-length novel in which I had murdered the board of selectmen in our hometown one by one after a torturous term on a local board, I shared it with my father. He trilled with delight after reading it, proud father kindly not noticing it may not have been very good. “I knew you had it in you,” he declared. “It’s in the genes.” I agreed with him, suggesting there was no irony his name was “Gene.”            Until I found that envelope, I never knew how seriously Gene wanted to be a writer. It was my father’s secret.

Let me take you on an Artist’s Date. What? You don’t know what an Artist’s Date is? It’s what I call a field trip for creative souls. Everyone is a creative soul. Some people just haven’t discovered it yet.              Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way and forty other books, is the Great Creativity Nurturer in my view. The Artist’s Date is designed as an excursion to fill the creative well. It can be an outing to an art gallery, a library, a yarn shop – any place that speaks to your creative spirit. Often color, scent, texture, and other sensual appeals are part of the destination. One of my favorite Artists Dates is to Jules Besch Stationers in Truro, Massachusetts, which is on Outer Cape Cod.            Meet Proprietor, Michael Tuck, a man with a passion for all things paper. He lovingly tends to the desires and needs of his devoted clientele and has created an environment perfect for an artist’s date            For a writer, there is eye candy everywhere. In addition to exquisite stationery, notecards, greeting cards for all occasions, there are displays throughout the shop nestled within nooks and crannies. Antique letter openers, ink wells, pens, and bookends so gorgeous, you might actually miss the array of gorgeous antique desks where Michael has tenderly arranged artifacts.              In the rear of the first floor, you will find notebooks and journals. There is at least one for every writer, whether you prefer lined or blank paper, leather bound, or the plebeian spiral like I do. I’m partial to a spiral bound notebook that has paper made of stone. It is so smooth, I’ve been heard asking other writers to “Feel my journal, please.” There are few circles where I can implore others to indulge in the love of paper and all things writing but here I browse with other members of my tribe.             Another room is filled with notecards for those of us who understand email has not replaced a handwritten expression of congratulations or sympathy. The selection ranges from tasteful and convention to humorous and a little outrageous. I recently sent a thank you note on a notecard with a tiny hydrangea on the front by Crane and got a thank you for my thank you.            Upstairs, you can roam through and touch sheets of elegant and joyful paper just waiting for you to find a purpose for. You may decide to wrap a gift, cover a book, or just display it above your desk to occasionally marvel at. There are party invitations and cocktail napkins with vintage photos. “My idea of a balanced diet is a drink in each hand,” boasts one woman from the fifties.            By the time you head to the cash register with your loot, your creative well will be overflowing. But the best is yet to come. The inevitable conversation with Michael tops it all, filled with folklore about Cape Cod and his adventures with paper and antiques. On a lucky day, you may find his beloved black lab there. You’ll probably not have noticed the quiet music playing in the background, but it’s there. Michael wraps your goods in lovely tissue, places them in a decorative bag, and then attaches a sprig of whatever is in season. I got a fragrant lily of the valley last week.              As you exit through a sun porch filled with African violets, antique photos, cloches, and sunshine, you feel your shoulders lighter and find a smile of your face. You’re ready to go back to work, even looking forward to it. Your Artist Date is a success.                 Where do you fill your creative well?(Jules Besch is located at 3 Great Hollow Road, Turo, Massachusetts.) 

 I invited the indefatigable Bruce Robert Coffin, author of Among the Shadows and Beneath the Depths coming out on August 8, 2017 to share his experience as a young writer with a creative demon. Creative demons are people who step on your creative dreams like bugs squashed under the heavy sole of a work boot. I love how Bruce is willing to share with writers and other artists how he reframed his experience and went on to write the successful Detective John Byron series (Harper Collins).  Bruce Robert Coffin here, delighted to be guest blogging on the Miss Demeanors website! Many thanks to Michele Dorsey and the rest of the gang for the invite.       I thought I’d ruminate a bit on overcoming ones creative demons. And when I say demons I mean of course those pesky things that stand in our way, blocking the path to creative nirvana like a Jersey barrier. The irony is, as write this I’m sitting at the airport waiting to learn my fate with at least a four hour flight delay due to: weather, construction at JFK, or the unspoken excuse of ‘we didn’t fill the plane so we’re combining flights so we don’t lose money’. Excuse the pun, but my money is on the latter reason. The whole point of my trip is to meet with my publishing team at HarperCollins.      But I digress. Back to my original point. Perhaps my most formidable creative demon, and one that comes up frequently during my author talks, appeared during my college days in the form of a creative writing professor. I had been awarded several scholarships for my writing ability and had dreams of becoming a published novelist. My writing professor was far less than nurturing and in no time I found myself floundering. The short story writing that had earned me As in high school now received only Ds. Discouragement was on the horizon. The message became clear. I couldn’t write. Ultimately, I made the tough decision to pursue an altogether different career path. I chose the field of law enforcement because my uncle was a police officer. I’d seen him in full regalia enough times to make a positive impression. In 1985 I was hired by the Portland police department. It was a career that I loved and stayed with for more than twenty-seven years. Oddly enough, in the spring of 2012 I found myself infected by the creative writing bug once more. It was as if the desire to write had never really left me. And this time I actually had something to write about. My nearly three decades as a cop left me with something to say. I often wonder, what if my college experience had been different? What I would have written about? I suppose I would have written about other people’s lives, as I hadn’t really done anything worth mentioning at the point in my young life. But now I have more than a lifetime’s worth of material from which to draw. My years as a police investigator have provided me with a veritable cornucopia of experiences that most writers would kill for, metaphorically speaking of course. Or maybe not… I like to joke that writing novels is cheaper than spending time on a therapist’s couch. Okay, so maybe I’m only half joking.        If there is a lesson to be learned here, I think it is don’t ever let anyone squash your dreams, whatever those dreams may be. In the five years since retiring from police work, my life has gone in a completely different direction than I could have ever imagined. My dream of becoming a published author has been realized. I have bested my creative demons, and if I can do it, so can you! Wait a minute. What’s that? They’ve started the boarding process for my plane! Ha! Another demon bested.Write on, McDuff! Is anyone else willing to share how you reframed an experience with a creative demon?