About Writing

It’s easier to achieve a dream if you break the journey down into steps. Like the prospect of writing a book. Say, we’re talking about 75,000 words. It’s not a huge tome like, “War and Peace”, but then it’s bigger than, “The Little Engine that Could”.

First step would be to have something to write about. Once you’re set on that the rest of it is actually gravy. You’d need to examine your intentions too. If you are writing with the sole intent of being a famous author remembered through the ages for your writing, for your clarity of thought, for your succinct handling of language; forget it. If you are writing just to make money; that too is a bad idea. I don’t know why, but it is.

Why you write should be more along the lines of you can’t do anything else. It’s a driven sort of thing. If you are not exactly driven right now you could develop the habit by writing in small chunks. You could write 500 words a day. Every day. Actually, 500 words isn’t really that much. It’s not even a full page of typewritten material. Write about anything you want to write about. Cut pictures out of magazines or print them off of the internet and write a page about the picture. Describe what is going on. If there are people in the picture pretend that you can see into their hearts and talk about what they are feeling.

Once you are easy with the 500 words a day extend that by a few hundred and do a page and a half. Then, after a week or two of the increased output aim for 2 pages a day. Now, at 2 pages a day you are writing about 1,200 words a day. That is a pretty descent output. The rule of thumb is to write 1,000 words a day, but I figure filling 2 pages is easier than counting. Or you could use the word count feature in your word processing program for awhile until you get sick of it and just count pages of new material.

Once you have the driven thing down you are invited to begin work on your book. That in itself can seem daunting, but just plunge in. You could develop an outline or have index cards filled out. One of my favorite techniques is to write the story in the form of a short sentence: “A wants to go to B and finds herself distracted at every turn.” Then, you go back and expand that sentence a little bit: “A wants to go to B because her sister is being held captive by an ornery old woman. A sets out on her journey but finds obstacle after obstacle is thrown up in her face.” You get the idea. Just keep expanding on these sentences until you’ve got a paragraph of, maybe, 10 sentences. Then, take each one of those sentences and expand each one of them into a paragraph. Now, you’ve got your book on one page and each one of those paragraphs can eventually be a chapter.

You will probably see that your story goes every which way anyway, but the original plan might just carry you through from beginning to end.

You’ll know you’ve hit the driven quality of writing when you find yourself thinking about what you are writing about while you are filling your car with gas, while you are waiting in line at the grocery story, while you are driving to work. There’s a story I love of James Thurber and his wife. They were at a cocktail party and James was standing by himself in the middle of the room. He had a drink in one hand and some hors d'oeuvres in the other. He was just standing there not talking to anybody although people swirled all around him. His wife was across the room. She spied him where he stood all alone in the middle of a room full of people and stalked across to him. She hissed at him, “Quit writing.” I just love that story.

It is important that you write every day. You might feel now that you don’t have a minute to call your own, but you can carve out an hour or two for yourself if you try. My favorite time to write is in the very early morning before everybody gets up and before I go to work; and I do have a full time job. I tend to go to sleep a little earlier when I’m writing so I can get up a little earlier and have that time to myself. I put some headphones on and will either play music or not. Many times I “come to” to find that I’ve been sitting here writing for 45 minutes with headphones on and nothing coming out of them. But, there was a time when I wrote a book mostly listening to Celtic music. One of my favorite pieces is, “Wind Horse” from Bill Douglas' album Celtic Twilight. Another favorite I listen to is Dr. Jeffrey Thompson’s Brainwave Suite. Background music that helps to get me in the mood that helps to sustain the moment and that will mask background noises if I am writing once everybody is awake.

Stephen King, one of my all time favorite authors, listens to rock music while he writes. He also writes every day. Every day. I believe he takes one day off a year which, if I remember correctly, is his birthday. Otherwise, it is every day.

Something else that is going to happen which might alarm you in the beginning but will quickly feel okay is that all that you write is not going to end up in the book. You will probably write yourself into a corner at some point. Speaking from personal experience I can tell you that if you’ve killed off a key character and need them later on to extricate your other folks you will have written yourself into a corner. This is where you go someplace quiet and try to figure out what to do next. A good technique is to begin a separate piece where you allow your characters to speak to you. Just pretend. Let them talk to you and tell you where they think the story should go. This is where you deviate from your original plan, but hey, it happens. Also, you could just go lie down on your bed with a tape recorder and let the free thoughts come. One time I’d written myself into a corner and did the tape recorder thing to not only get myself out of the jam I was in but also had six month’s worth of writing material to work on and I only talked for 15 minutes.

Anyway, getting yourself out of a jam might entail you deleting a portion of what you’ve already written, or changing it somewhat. There are those writers who save that deleted material in other file to be used later on. I just delete it.

Having written a book I can tell now when I read stuff other people have written when they get bored. It’s this draggy quality to the material. These are folks who got bored with what they were doing and pushed on regardless. Been there…done that. Anyway, consider jumping forward to another part of the book and writing that for awhile. You’ve got a plan and can do that. Then, go back to your original spot where you started getting bored and resume writing. It might help. Or, just delete a bit of it and start over.

Doing this writing every day is a lonely thing. There’s nobody but yourself involved though you’ll need some support from your family members. Like, “Don’t talk to me when you see me with my headphones on.” I’m actually thinking about decorating my headphones with flowers or something just to make them special, but that’s sort of silly. Fun, but silly.

I remember reading somewhere that a book might be compared to an iceberg. What you are reading is the part of the iceberg above water. The part you don’t see, the enormous mass of the iceberg that is underwater is the mass of written material that never saw the light of day. It was a necessary part of the book, but you just don’t get to read it. That material might be saved for future projects or it could just be character sketches that you do to get an idea of what your characters are like before you have them hit the pages of your book.

So, my husband is up. I’ve written 1,439 words (which is almost two and a half pages) and that’s enough for today. I’m also running out of steam. These are my thoughts about writing and I hope they help you to achieve a dream that not that many people dare to do. Write a book. And, when people ask you what you do you can honestly say to them that you are a writer.

Write A Book

Here’s what I do. I determine that I’m going to tackle a big project. I mean this one is simply huge for me. It’s something that’s been in the works, I think, for a long time, just sort of percolating away, but the idea of doing this is daunting.

Write another book.

This one will be on how to channel. It’s obviously for a very small audience, but I think it has a place in the arena of books out there already. Plus, I’m funny. Well, sort of. One of the guides just said, “Huh?”

Oh, I have to tell you at the grocery store this evening the line was just inching along and I had time to look at the magazines on display. I zeroed in on this one with lots of stuff to look at. I can’t tell you the name of it; it was just there and caught my eye. So, I took it off the rack and flipped it open and happened upon an article of how to look pretty. I spent about a nano second on this article. My first impression was that these were all very young ladies and all of them were already very pretty. My next impression was of one of the tips that had to do with applying makeup. I don’t wear it. Anyway, with a sigh I knew that particular article was certainly not for me. No hope here. Old, fat, ugly and do not wear makeup. No hope. Not that it bums me out or anything. It used to when I was younger, (and a site prettier than now), but I’m pretty much okay with being ugly. Anyway, as I reached to return the magazine to the rack one of the guides said, “The quickest way to be pretty is with a smile.”

Sometimes my heart stops with the stuff they say.

Anyway, back to writing the book. What I tend to do with the larger projects is to whittle away at them from afar. Like I'm doing everything but work on the book right now. I've farted around on the Internet for awhile. I did spend my lunch time yesterday writing some notes out about it. I know there's already a lot of material on the subject at several of my sites, but I want to pull it all together and I want to start fresh with the writing.

I guess I could think about it here for a few minutes. Sort of muttering aloud on the blog.

Okay....so, I suppose I should think about size of book. I'd like to be able to hold it in one hand. I'd also like there to be enough room for somebody to write comments in the margins. I guess a 6 x 9 inch or so book would be okay. That's not too big. Not too small either.

Okay, so how thick? Okay...forget that. I just turned around and looked for a book the size I can envision for what I want to do. I hauled, "A Traveller's History of Scotland" off of the bookshelf behind me. It's 5 inches wide, 7 and 3/4 inch high and a little more than half an inch thick. The print in it is too small though. Okay, on average about 12 words to the line. I remember that number from another time I was figuring how long to make a book. And, 36 lines to the page for an average of 432 words per page. For rough count lets call it 425 words a page. Okay, so there are 239 pages in this particular book. Just because I feel like it I'm going to move with 222 pages because that's my special number. Okay...that is 94,350 words. My first novel was 75,000 words and that took me 3 years to write. But, I can't really base any of this on the labor involved with that because it was the first time I'd ever done anything like this and I also didn't know what I was doing. Not that I know now, but I know a little bit more. Also, this isn't a work of fiction but will be a how to book. That should be easier. Especially since I already know how to do it.

Okay, so a book of 94,000 words. Figure I write 1,000 words a day and it will take me 94 days or 3 months to complete. Right. Like I'm going to write 1,000 words every day. I could try though. I could try.

The guides were the ones who suggested I do it. They said I could aim for my birthday to have it done. That's September 1st. That's 4 months from now. I suppose I could do it.

Okay, so 94,000 words. How to break it up?

If I had 15 chapters about how many words per chapter...about 6,200. I'm talking rough here. Don't have to count words...count pages. Okay, so I know when I'm writing in Word I get about 600 words to the page that would be 10 pages per chapter. I'd have to do a few to see if it works.

I suppose I ought to be thinking about content about now. I'm really not sure that I can talk enough to fill this book up.

For this I need my special crayons. New ones. Fresh out of the box and a big old piece of paper. I'll take a picture of it when I'm done.

What I do is draw a big circle. In the middle of the circle I put the main thrust of the book. Then, the ideas begin to radiate out from the center. I'll do it tomorrow and post it to the blog.

And, I will sweep my desk off so I can be really clear about this. I think this might be fun. God knows I need some fun right now.

Sleeping In

We’re sleeping in later these days. Even our 6:00 am alarm clock kitty is sleeping in. It’s because it’s not getting light as early in the morning anymore. So, on the one hand, it’s nice to have a bit more time to sleep. On the other hand, not having as much time to spend doing morning things before work is not as nice.

I’ve been thinking about the National Novel Writing Month contest coming up in November and wondering if I shouldn’t start now with gearing my hours up so that I’ve got an extra hour or more in the mornings to use for my writing. That’s what I mostly ended up doing the last time I participated.

It all sort of caught me by surprise the first time I did it. I knew the goal was to write 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30. What I didn’t anticipate was the toll it took on me. While I still have a job to go to and I still need to be able to perform at a good level I also wanted to be able to write. Like they say, don’t quit your day job. So, squeezing in time to write was important if I was going to even make a dent in 50,000 words that month.

National Novel Writing Month is Approaching

I’m thinking again of the writing. I’m thinking of November. I’m thinking of pushing me to my limits once again. I didn’t make the 50,000 words last year. It was more along the lines of 20,000 words written, but for an old lady, I thought I did pretty well. I’m gearing up for the National Novel Writing Month again or NaNoWriMo.org

I checked out the site and they’re set to start accepting signups on October 1st. If you have a hankering to write that book you’ve promised yourself for years that you were going to write one of these days, this is what you’re going to need. I even bought the book, “No Plot? No Problem!!” by Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo. It’s a terrific read and will inspire you to pound away at your keyboard with the best of them. This is the book that will shred each and every inhibition that you have about writing. This is the one that will have you actually writing instead of staring at a blank screen (or paper).

Doodling

One of the things I just cannot seem to do in recent days is to figure out what I’d like to recommend for my newsletter’s August good thing to do. These are my recommend activities for movies, books and stuff to do for the last 7 months.

July – Five People You Meet in Heaven
June – Finding the Deep River Within
May - Pretending
April – Let Spirit Flow
March – Calm Down a Bit
February – Cleaning Up
January – Writing

I thought I’d put smiling in there somewhere. When did I say smiling? Oh, wonderful. Doodling! Yes, that is perfect. Thank you. Okay, now what should I say? Dear, we helped you to an idea. You can run with it.

Okay. Doodling. Doodling is good for passing the time while you’re on the phone on hold for somebody. That’s about the extent of my doodling. Oh, right, sometimes I doodle while I’m talking to somebody, but mostly, I think I pay attention to the conversation, so doodling on hold.
Except, that’s just doodling. What good is it? I guess that could be the snag. Other people might think like I do and figure what good is doodling? Well, I guess I could ask what it is. The mind is engaged while seemingly at rest. It’s sort of like twiddling your thumbs then. And, everybody maybe has the same sort of doodle that they do mostly. Like when I was a teenager I’d do whirls and hooks and such.



And, last night I did do some doodling while we were watching one of those forensic evidence cop shows on television.

So, that’s another place to do some doodling.

Could you do doodling deliberately maybe with some sort of purpose in mind?

Purposeful Doodling. I have to go to work right now, but I’ll think about it tonight. Now, that I’ve got something to think about.

When Spirit Whispers

Well, I finally took that very large step and am in the finalizing process of publishing my book. I renamed it to, "When Spirit Whispers" and have a really good feeling about it. I'll be offering the book for sale at LuLu.com for $10 or as a download for $3. I certainly don't expect to get rich with this, but it is something that I can offer to folks who are interested in my work.

I've actually got another book in the wings that I can begin work on now. It's the one on creativity that I began last November during the nanowrimo.org writing frenzy (National Novel Writing Month). It isn't a novel, but the combined efforts and enthusiasm of all the people participating in the endeavor helped to get me moving and off my butt. I need to finish it up.

Vrooom

Do you have times during the course of the day when you seem to have more energy to get the “important” things in your life accomplished? I know for me that time is morning. I absolutely revel in the weekends because I’ll sometimes get up at 4:00 am, work on my “stuff” whether that is a writing assignment I’ve set for myself or updating my various blogs and then, when the creative juices begin to dwindle about 9:00 am I’ll go back to bed for a bit of a cat nap. About 11:00 am or so I’m up again to do another 5 hours. Come late afternoon I’m done for the day. But, for me to cram all that wonderful time into my writing and channeling on Saturday and Sunday is just perfect.

What happens on a weekday? I write fast. Right now I’ve got about 20 minutes before I need to brush my teeth, put my shoes on and head out the door for work.

Somehow or another I’ve become able, due to these time restraints, to turn “ON” with the writing juices, with the creativity, with whatever it is that allows my fingers to fly on the keyboard and be productive. Now, I’m not talking about whether this stuff is good or not. But, it is stuff. I’m not just sitting here staring at a blank screen or, as in the old days, where I would stare at a blank piece of paper totally frozen with self-doubt and no creativity coming through at all.

I don’t know when this shift occurred. If I knew I’d bottle it.

Part of it is forcing myself to be here. When I sit down at my computer and hit that little “W” for my word processing program I feel good. It’s like I’m revving up my engine. I’m ready to go. I’m ready for whatever comes through. I suppose that’s part of it too. Instead of knowing that I’m going to the racetrack or to the store I just set out in the car to drive. Anywhere. That’s the permission I give to myself to write.

Now, what I’d like is to be writing on a particular project. Like a book. That would just tickle me no end. I suppose I’d just need to set that up for myself. But, I’ve got this project of my other book to finish first. I’ve been carrying it around with me in my bag to work and home from work. Just in case I want to look at it during lunch. For 15 minutes. Like that’s really going to put a dent in it? But, actually 15 minutes work on it will be better than nothing which is what’s been going on for the last year.

Maybe that’s what I’ll do today. At lunch. While I scarf down my bologna sandwich.

Update on the crystal ball watching. Still nothing going on. At least, nothing that I can point to and say, “Hey, what was that?” Little flickers. Could have just been my eyes. Shifting. I’m not focusing. Whatever. I’ll keep it here and gaze more. Having it in front of me is helping.

Okay, time to go to work.

How to Make an Index

My husband and I are writers. But, neither of us have had very much experience with making an index. Right now I’ve been stuck fixing up my own index which was formed automatically in Word. I picked the words I wanted indexed and Word did the rest of it. Now, I’m culling through the mess/results adding and subtracting to get it to where I’m okay with it. Then, I will publish…self publish that is. Me? Find a publisher to do it for me? The old fashioned way? What do you think…that I’m psychic? Right. Anyway, enough rejection letters behind you tacked on the wall and even you might consider self publishing. I’m going through LuLu.com But, not until I’ve got the ding-donged index done.

What DeeDude told me yesterday was that he knows this lady who would charge $1,200 to do an index. She said she knew somebody else who charges $1,800 to proof the book and do an index. The going rate for creating an index is evidently anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000. Sheeesh. But, she said he should just do it himself. The old fashioned way. The way she does it. With index cards. A through Z. She said that's why they call them index cards.

That’s right. That’s the secret. Sounds like hard work, but it sounds a whole lot more inviting when you figure you’d be shelling out $1,200 to have somebody else do it for you.

Just suck it up and do it yourself.

The Easy Way Out Today

Oh, shoot. I am worn away this week. Friday just did not come fast enough. So, I happened to think of all the channeling I did last November for the NaNoWriMo stuff. I haven’t looked at it since then. Actually, after I channel anything when I read it afterwards it is like reading it for the first time. It’s just something that happens to me when I zone out while I’m channeling. So, seeing as how I am mentally worn to a frazzle I thought I’d resurrect portions of that for inclusion in my blog.

Words of Wisdom

I was poking around in the kitchen section at The White Elephant Sale over the weekend and spied the coffee cups. I’m always on the lookout for that “special” cup that I can use as a writer’s cup. It’s not going to imbue me with the ability to write wonderfully. It’s just a special cup I can use when I’m writing. I have several of them already, but you can never have too many.

So, there I am trying to look at all the cups and there are people crawling all over the place. I leave, take a few turns around the other displays and come back to have another look. Still too many people. I waltz around the area again looking at other things and find myself in front of the coffee cups for the third time. This time there isn’t anybody else around. I’ve got the place to myself and can look at my leisure. I don’t see anything that fills the bill. I’m a little disappointed, but not terribly so. It was just a thought that maybe I’d find a special writer’s cup.

Right then a voice in my head goes, “Over there.” And, when I look in the direction specified and still don’t see it they said, “In the corner.” I reach three cups deep on the shelf and smack in the corner is the cup I bought. It said, “Words of Wisdom” on it. Couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

Sometimes Spirit Whispers

The biggest news of all is that, “A Year of Psychic Readings” arrived from LuLu.com. I was thrilled to hold in my hands a book with my name on it. It didn’t matter that it was the only copy and that there might not be that many ever purchased. I was thrilled anyway.

However, as I figured, there are things that need to be changed and fixed. Right off the bat I saw that there were no numbers on the even pages…just the odd ones with the exception of page 26 which was blank. Go figure. I went back to the document I’d uploaded and, sure enough, I’d done something to the footer so that none of those pages displayed. So, there’s that to fix.

A couple of the graphics got disconnected from their text so I’ll need to hook those back together.

The other thing I will need to do is to fix the index, which is something I have not been looking forward to. But, it’s next.

Also, the cover itself, though attractive, might need to be changed. Within 3 minutes all I could see were all the fingerprints I’d left on it. Not a good one. So, maybe I’ll change that.

And, the last thing is the title. DeeDude said not to have the word Psychic in the title. He said it was a turn off. So, I’m thinking what else could I call it? Musings from the Mist…Advice from my Invisible Friends…Okay…enough silly. It’s advice. It’s channeled. DeeDude already told me I shouldn’t use the word, “Channeled”. It’s pretty mysterious at times. It’s secrets I never knew about before Seth told me. The Other Side Unveiled. Only, it’s our side mostly. How to Live an Upstanding Life. Assistance About Arcane Matters…Think…think….Help me guys…Watch Out! Your Path is on Fire. What? More, please. There’s Always Hope. Hey, I like that one. Okay, that’s a keeper, but let’s keep going, please. Another Way to Look at Life. That’s nice too. Snippets from Spirit. Cute. I like the idea of using Spirit and having an “S” word with that is sort of balanced. I Thought I was Crazy, But I was Merely Hearing Voices In my Head. Yeah, right. About Living From Dead Guys. Well, yes, but that’s sort of weird.

What’s a good “S” word? Streams…Sifting…Shifting…Shitting…stop it…Smells…Spirit Speaks…Yes, I’d love to use that one, but somebody else already did, didn’t they? What about “Spirit Speaks – Practical Advice”

How about Spirits Speak? Spirits Whisper. Sometimes Spirit Whispers. I like that one.

A Year of Psychic Readings

Well, that’s it then. I just spent the entire day getting, “A Year of Psychic Readings” published at http://www.lulu.com/ I’ve ordered a copy for myself and if I’m pleased with it I will make the book available to the public. Yikes, but this project has been a long time in the works. I never could figure out how to get the fonts embedded in the Adobe pdf file. After creating 3 pdf files I uploaded the word document instead and lulu created the pdf file for me. That worked fine.

The plan, right now, is to offer free copies for downloading and folks can purchase a paperback copy for $10 plus whatever shipping they want. They had a bunch of different options and I went for $1.91 for media rate through the US mail. I’m not sure how long it will take, but hopefully it won’t be too long in coming.

What I’m thinking about doing is to pay lulu $99 to get an ISBN and re-publish allowing the book to be available in other places besides lulu.com. Something for me to think about.

Clickety...Clickety...Clack...Ding!

I’ve always maintained that writers have diarrhea of the mouth. However, after participating in the NaNoWriMo program in November I seem to have gotten constipated. I’m not sure why. It might have been the tremendous effort I made to write and it just plumb wore my sorry little butt out. It might be the next step in my evolution as a writer and what is now emerging from my pen is more refined than it has been in the past. And, it might be I got constipated. I don’t know.

I’m just now sort of emerging from it. For awhile afterward I was concerned that what I was writing to blog about was drivel and that nobody would ever be remotely interested. Also, once I looked at the finished pieces they just seemed so silly and whiney that even I didn’t want to read them.

What happened yesterday was that I was reading blogs at Blog Explosion and I began reading a blog I’ve never read before. Actually, I can’t even tell you the name of it now. But, they were talking about mundane and very ordinary events in their life. I mean this was totally pedestrian. Not super hero stuff. Not shining star stuff. Just ordinary stuff. And, I was totally enthralled. I hung on every word this lady had typed. I was really, really interested. And, that’s when my own log jam finally broke up. So, here I am…back in my hair curlers and fluffy slippers with nothing of truly extraordinary importance to talk about. But, at least I think I’m getting back on track again.

Peeking Out From Under My Rock

Last month I really pushed myself to write. Every day I wrote. I also encountered any number of stress filled situations. If I started counting them I’d run out of fingers and start up my arm. But, I didn’t lose my cool…not much, anyway. I realized that I was pushing my buttons with the writing. I realized that as I pushed forward on something that I really wanted to do all the psychological issues that had been lying dormant waiting for the ideal opportunity to rise up and clamor for notice and recognition would realize that the time was right. Typically, it takes a lot for me to attend to my own psychological issues. Looking at it another way my higher self, in directing traffic, decided it was time for rush hour.

When the month was over I ran out of gas. I haven’t been blogging very much. It isn’t that I haven’t been writing. There are any number of entries that I made that as I looked at the finished product I decided to put them into my journal instead. It’s not really that they were any different from any other blog I’d done before the month of NaNoWriMo. Same mundane stuff. Nothing really significant. Just regular stuff. But, I didn’t feel that it belonged here. I didn’t get rid of the entries entirely, I just put it into my journal instead. Private. Buried. Not to see the light of day again. That’s how I am with my journals.

Maybe I just need to go with the flow here. I’m still probably reeling from November. Generally a stress filled time is what the holidays are for me. You’re supposed to be happy. You’re supposed to be full of excitement and being depressed is not allowed. I guess.

One of the guides just said to me, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

The other day I was sitting quietly at work after lunch. I wasn’t reading anything. I’d taken off my glasses and closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. I was sitting at my desk, where I always sit for lunch. Suddenly, from out of the psychic mists came to me a person. A woman. But, she wasn’t real in the sense that she had been a person once upon a time, now passed on and with the Folk in Spirit I talk to. No, she was one of my characters. She was a person who would be in a book I would someday write.

I shuddered with awe. Tears came to my eyes. It was magic. It was a writer’s high and I wasn’t even writing. This was somebody I could get to know and eventually she would tell me her story and I would write it down. It was a pretty incredible experience. I said to her, “You’ll come back to me? We can talk? I can see what you look like?” She said, “Yes. I will come again.” And, that was it. I had to get back to work.

This is what it’s like being psychic.