Writing Archives -

Motivate—Life’s Curse

Life goes, clicking along, time slipping, easy until
falling
scrambling,
clattering,
broken

LOST
lost, Lord, I’m lost

fears,
tears,
searches,
questions

Solutions, ideas, suggestions, all well-meaning
clutter,
frustrate,
choke

Makes me scream silent
cling,
slip,
cling,
slip,

again

This was written in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt: Motivate. It’s rather ironic that I struggled deeply with this week’s prompt. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing.

I pretty much destroyed all the rules this week.

This is the result of my fourth go at this prompt. I still hate it…and, in addition, I’m still in the quagmire of plot problems and writer’s block for a novel starring Sam and his wife Charlotte (you met them in short stories here and here).

I know all the suggestions, all the tricks, but every time I throw myself at this, it shatters at my feet.

But I sit behind the computer and cling to what I know and have a go again…

I’m learning that questioning yourself, your faith, your work, isn’t always a bad thing.

As scary as doubt is, it is often the doorway to new, unseen discoveries. Tweet This

How about you? Where are you struggling to motivate yourself?

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Why You Should Save, Celebrate, & Share Your Art

Janyre11 Comments

I met Pearl Allard through another writer friend. Pearl had driven a fair distance to be at my friend’s release party. And I knew right away I had met someone special—loyal, creative, and a kindred spirit in finding the beautiful in the not always pretty.

It’s a privilege for me to introduce you to her, and I hope you’ll love Pearl as much as I do. And, for the record, I didn’t know how much my little comments meant to her and I certainly didn’t she was going to write about it here. I’m still blushing 🙂

They were a lifeline from heaven; number twos drew me to Number One. How I don’t know, but those pencils were the only light during the darkest time of my life. I was desperate to see something, anything good, groping through blackness. Sketching brought meager solace.

I drew to learn to see. To cling to beauty. To escape. Though my soul anguished under the weight of oppressive darkness, I held a flicker of light. Something living, and good, still lurked when I looked at my imperfect rendering. It sparked hope—and guilt came galloping on its heels. Continue reading “Why You Should Save, Celebrate, & Share Your Art” →

A Short Story About Story

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This short story is in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt: Story. There’s some irony in this, but I won’t go there…at least not today. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing (although I can’t stop myself a little. I am an editor after all…and this one actually took me longer than 5 minutes. There are bossy characters involved. You’ll see.). I’ll see you on the other side. Hope you enjoy it.

Last night Mama cried out again in her sleep. The moans grinding deep into the floorboards until rising into a holler so sharp, it nearly raised the dead.

In the past, I might’ve gone to comfort her. Asking about her dream, smoothing back her damp hair. But she never did answer, the glass-eyed look never wavering until the rhythm of my hand on her head soothed her back to sleep.

I was eight the one and only time I asked her about the dream in the morning. The slap following convinced me to never ask again. Continue reading “A Short Story About Story” →

Writing a Picture

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Part of an artist’s job is to see the things other people miss and introduce the two. As a novelist, I walk through life almost constantly distracted, curious about the frost creeping up the garage window, the lichen on a tree, the distinctive way someone walks or speaks.

I have files of disjointed impressions, thoughts, people, and scenes that just might eventually find their way into my writing. It’s me introducing something I saw or heard to my reader. You’d be amazed how much emotion can be infused into your writing by using vivid scene description from my files of memories.

Example

For example, I wrote this quick scene after walking my son to the bus stop. It was cold and my breath puffed in front of me as we walked by the forest path. And I suddenly pictured a frightened girl walking the path. She was a runner for an underground group of some kind and she just catches something out of the corner of her eye…

I blinked and he was gone. The vapor from his breath still rising in the air. Unconnected. Alone. I turned slow circles. Searching again.

The shadows shifted amongst the trees and I knew they’d sent him.

The colors bled around me watercolors dripping through space. Collecting at my feet.

Most of the time I don’t have full flashes of a scene like this one. But who knows where that scene might crop up.

Usually I note everyday sights and how they strike me or, even more, how they might strike a particular character.

Maybe it’s the sluggish movement of the creek all gummed up with seaweed. If I’m writing a book with a teen who loves to be outside, that little sight becomes a metaphor for how my character views the last 15 minutes of school.

Or maybe it’s the birds on a telephone wire—beaks pulled in and all puffed up against the cold. I don’t know about you, but I can identify, and I bet you might have a character who can too.

Or maybe it’s the moon caught behind a haze of clouds—the light ineffectual against the darkness. I have a character who sees God that way—a weak light hovering above us, but he doesn’t seem strong enough to make any difference at all.

Or maybe you have a timid character and icicles on the roof of her antagonist’s house look like jagged teeth. Can you just see a character walking up to that? You wouldn’t have to say she’s intimidated if the house has a gaping maw. But you could just as easily have the character see the sunshine bend through the icicles, sending dancing sparks of light across the ground. It’s the same sight but seen from two different points of view.

Writing Prompt

So, this week, I challenge you to take an everyday sight from your life and turn it into a useable snippet for your book or blog. Maybe take one image (like the icicles) and give it both a happy and chilling twist.

Then hop back here and share on of your mini scenes. We’d love to hear it and learn from how you see the world.

Want More Help?

To get more help on the art of description without going overboard, check out this workshop: https://www.editinginsiders.com/downloads/the-art-of-description-without-going-overboard/

When Small Things Become Big—A Book Is Born

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A little over a year ago, I was walking through one of my favorite places—a local craft store—and picked up a book on Zentangles for my daughter. My girl has a distinct artistic bent, and I thought she’d have fun with these doodles.

Well, it wasn’t long until she was begging me to sit with her and try them.

“Babe,” I said. “I canNOT do those.” Big emphasis on the not.

But she persisted, batting her little girl eyelashes. So I sat my “haven’t had an art class since I was 12” self down to spend time with my girl. It was a decision based on the knowledge that it wouldn’t be long before I was too uncool to hang with the girls.

And boy was I surprised. Continue reading “When Small Things Become Big—A Book Is Born” →

Conquering Fear and Following Your Calling

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Some of you probably know that I spent the 30 days of November writing 50,000 words on my next novel—that’s about 200 pages…basically an entire book. It was a challenge for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Writing with that kind of speed is NOT how I normally write. I’ve always been a little like Ernest Hemingway—reading over what I’d written and editing that before moving forward bit by bit every day.

I thought going for speed might be a good exercise. Help me learn new skills. Stretch me. You know, make me better.

And it might do that yet. But at the moment, with everything that was going on in my family, I wonder if the story I started was worth it.

Every novelist knows that there are points along the way where you hate what you’ve written. But I fear this is different.

Did I push myself into a place I wasn’t called to go? And now I’m overwhelmed in the quicksand that is my book. I’ve too many elements, perhaps not enough research.

I feel as if I didn’t give myself the space to do it right. Sure, I can go back and fix it… maybe.

If this character hadn’t been haunting me for 5 years, I might give up. But the more I think on it, the more I think my fear of the character has everything to do with why I veered off in a direction I hadn’t intended on.

Isn’t that like life?

The things we fear most are often the things we’re called to do. Tweet This

So today, I will again tackle the book. Reworking, rewriting, replotting.

I will look straight into fear and walk into it, if for no other reason than most fear runs when it encounters confidence.

I will hunt fear today and invite you to do the same. Tweet This

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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” ~FDR

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Success: What Is It Made Of?

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Almost exactly a year ago, I attended a writer’s conference that was the catalyst for starting this blog and opening a Twitter account. I had already started writing my novel, tentatively titled The Way of the Sharaw. But I had no idea where to go or what to do to market the thing.

The other writers in attendance, encouraged to just start somewhere. So I did. I started last year with no social media presence. Now I have over 900 Twitter followers, and all of you supporting me (Thank you, by the way!).

It’s more, but is it enough?

Continue reading “Success: What Is It Made Of?” →

Finding a Foothold When Life Is Slipping

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There’s an enormous rock that thrusts into the creek behind my childhood home. I remember lying on my back, stretching fingers and toes long and not even touching the edges. Above it, the sky hung endless blue with the tips of the trees a dark parenthesis on either side.

The rock was my younger brother and my pretend house when we played castaways, our kitchen table when we played house, and my refuge when I was escaping the terrors held inside my real home.

I’ve always been a collector of stories so I know that my “real” story is better and worse than everyone else’s. It isn’t in me to compare anymore. My past made me who I am.

It isn’t my past that scares me. I’ve moved beyond it…mostly.

I have this random file of character sketches, snippets of scenes. In my file there’s pages and pages of a character I’ve resisted for years now. She scares me because I recognize her. She’s trying to pull back from the edge of insanity and her feet are slipping. The hot breath of evil tickles her neck. She needs a rock, a refuge and I don’t know if she’ll find one in time. And I’m afraid of what that means for me, for my kids, and my marriage. Continue reading “Finding a Foothold When Life Is Slipping” →

When There Are No Words

Janyre4 Comments

As I writer and editor, my life lives and breathes letters, words, sentences. Pictures, scenes, emotions, flow from my brain, to my fingers, to the page. It’s what I do.

But sometimes…sometimes the river of words runs dry. I’m left without a way to respond to circumstances.

I’ll admit I’m tapped out right now. I have no words. And it’s okay for me. I know I my writing hasn’t been my best, but it’s okay for now. I’m not actively writing a novel…just editing.

My stopped up word-river is even fine for my family for the moment. We’re okay. Really we are (and I’m not just trying to convince myself of that).

My world is surviving without my words, my connection to something bigger…until I got a phone call from a friend who’s always been there for me. Until I didn’t have words for her.

I’m not sure I even followed everything she said through her tears, but I do know this: Her daddy died, and it was hard. She was trudging in the valley of the shadow of death, and I had such paltry words to give. I couldn’t even point her to comfort.

I know that sometimes it’s okay to not say anything. Sometimes it’s better even.

But oh how I long to speak into the dark spot left in her dad’s place.

And so I bring a meal, I pray for her peace, I scour the Internet for funny stories to send, and I might even buy a card with someone else’s words or I might haul out my paints and paint her a picture.

See I may have no words, but she can still hear me…and that’s okay with me. Tweet This

Perhaps it’s here, where our words flee, that we find action. In this wordless place, we set aside our daily tasks, roll up our sleeves, and communicate in a bigger way.

Quoting Themes

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Quoting Themes I’m nearing the point where I’m willing to let other people read my current work in progress and I’m stalling a little. I need to cut a serious number of words and I seem only capable of adding. So I’m taking a break and attending to details like making sure there’s only one chapter marked “10” and that it follows chapter 9. Seriously. It needed to be done.

But one of my favorite details was searching for the epigraphs—the little quotes at the beginning of the chapters that give you a little taste of what might happen in the chapter and points to the themes.

I thought it might be fun to give you all a selection of some of the quotes that might just make an appearance in The Way of the Tiger…

“Where then is evil? What is its origin? How did it steal into the world?…Where then does evil come from, if God made all things and, because he is good, made them good too?”
~St. Augustine

The classic question of an all-powerful, loving God. It becomes a critical question to most of my characters as they’re faced with the worst of human circumstances. Okay, it’s one I wrestle with too. But it seems silly sometimes Continue reading “Quoting Themes” →