inspiration

Self-soothing

/ Ev Bishop / 3 Comments

When my daughter was just freshly born, the doctor on duty watched her noiselessly root about for her clenched fist. When her mouth found it, she gave a contented sigh, and the doctor commented that I was lucky—my baby was a self-soother. I asked what he meant and how he could tell. The general gist was that apparently right from birth, people show signs of personality type and individuals who spend a lot of time around babies can tell those who will work to comfort themselves almost from the get-go and those who need help from someone outside themselves for consolation.

As a neurotic, I mean a writer, I’ve given the doctor’s comments a lot of thought over the years, because I seem to have to search for comfort quite often. Is getting down just a natural accompaniment to thinking? Does everyone share my angst? Does everyone feel completely useless, ill equipped for, and entirely intimidated by the endeavours they pursue? (Excuse me while I suck my clenched fist for a moment, please….)

This past week (month), I’ve been suffering what seems to be a reoccurring crisis in my writing life. Writing gives so much, but it also demands a lot. And every so often, I just feel tired. My pile of rejection slips grows, and along with it, my worry that maybe I’m only a competent writer, not a good one. I wonder if I should stick with what’s easy (business writing), and keep my fiction for myself, hoard it away in a drawer…. I can’t quit writing. I love it. I need it. It brings me (despite what this post may suggest) a lot of joy. I just don’t always love the selling-your-wares side that goes along with it.

Compounding my problem (funny how you can know the source of a problem and not just go and fix it!), I’ve been away from my novel for too long. Always a recipe for madness. Anyway, I won’t bore you with all the insecurity and meanness my brain can throw at me—I’ll cut to the part where I root about for comfort and let out a satisfied sigh.

By now I know that that the cure for writing-related-neurosis is to write. When I’m writing every day, I’m insane with story, not self-doubt. However, you can know the medicine you need and still have to steel yourself to gag it down. Some people recommend an equal dose of sugar. I prefer Stephen King.

I wrote cryptic “am going through stuff/will write you later” e-mails to my close writing friends (accidentally scaring them), then got off the computer (the horror, the horror!) and dug out my old standby for times like this: On Writing. No one calls it like it is quite like S.K.

I appreciate his matter-of-fact assertion that I probably am only a competent writer at best; I LOVE how he goes on to assure me that I can become a good writer if I stop being such a whiny little sot and get back to work. He’s a dragon slayer, making all the insecurity and neurosis I deal seem like normal parts of the writing life. His no-exceptions command to be honest when writing is always beneficial. But perhaps the most important affirmation he provides is the reminder that I don’t write for glory or money (obviously); private, intangible things make writing so crucial, so wonderful, so worth it.

I did some journaling. I stared into space. Then I did what I couldn’t put off anymore. I opened the binder that holds the second draft of my latest novel and read/worked over the first three chapters. And they weren’t that bad. They might be okay—or even good. Ish. (Why can’t I just say, Hey, I actually think they’re good? They’re good. There. Gah.) Does any of this bring me any closer to knowing whether or not I’ll ever find an agent, “get published,” or be able to write fiction as a day job instead of fitting it around one? No. But it did something much more important; it reminded me that none of that matters.

In short (well, not in short, it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?), I rooted around to find those things near me that I could use to comfort myself, to get myself back at the page again, and in doing so and experiencing that “Ahhhhhh, finally” feeling, I find myself wondering (just like I always do when I’ve let myself get out of hand) what was the big deal anyway? Why didn’t I just sit my butt down and face the page at the first onset of nervousness ages ago. It’s a mystery…. One that I’d promise not to repeat, but by now I know myself too well. It’s not if I need the reminder again… it’s when. Until then though, I’m feeling quite determined to never let a day go by without writing.

(I heard your sceptical snort-laugh! Stop that.)

Wherever you are on the writing sanity spectrum, I hope your project’s going well. And if it’s not? Well, suck it up, Princess, and get back to it. (My extremely modified version of S.K. encouragement. Whaddya think? Did it work?)

Happy writing,
Ev

A rejection a day….

/ Ev Bishop / 2 Comments

I woke up bright and early, went to the gym, came home and got a start on my workday (checking e-mail is something I can do while my kids get ready for school). The first thing I opened was a rejection to one of the queries I sent last week. At least it was a quick response, and really, a rejection is a great way to start the day. It’s a) affirming—you can only be rejected when you’re actually submitting, and b) inspiring—every rejection fuels the motivation to receive an acceptance.

If there was a downside to this one, it was that it was the worst kind of chastisement. You know how I mentioned in my last post that I sent queries I’d been sitting on too long? The rejection read, in part, that it was “a good idea, but that they were already working on something similar.” The same thing happened last year re: a gym article I wanted to write.

The moral of the story? Writers should abide by the rule I’ve heard applies to patenting ideas—from the time you get your idea, you have three months maximum to flesh it out and patent it, because if you take any longer than that, whatever combination of things—overheard conversation at Safeway, article browsed through at the Dr’s office, television ad campaign—that caused you to get the idea, will have done the same (or too similar) in someone else’s head. Don’t sit on your ideas and stories! Write them—or write of them—and send them out. It’s one thing to be told your idea stinks, it’s another to be told, “Oh, if only you’d sent it a bit sooner….”

I think I will scrawl that last bit on a sticky note and add it to my “Note to self” wall.

Have a great day!

~Ev

Do What You Want Day

/ Ev Bishop / 2 Comments

One of the disadvantages (or advantages, depending on your type-A, work obsessive personality ☺) of working at home is that you can always work. I try to have set work hours, and adhered to play, family and “normal” person hours, but I confess that whenever I have a few spare moments, especially if the house is empty, I find myself working overtime. And why not? My office is right here…. I’ll just catch up on that one more thing, write that one line, get that one idea jotted down so it doesn’t slip my mind.  And I’m happy with that. As I wrote in a recent e-mail to a good friend, “I don’t feel horribly busy. I’m still playing games at night with the kids, reading, etc…  I guess I don’t really socialize a lot—but I do a bit, so yeah…. my schedule is do-able and good. :)”

Yesterday though, I kind of played hooky (another advantage/disadvantage, depending on your viewpoint—I’m my own boss. I may be unhappy with my work habits, but am I gonna get canned?  No way.). I’d come home from the gym and every muscle felt delicious—that good tired where everything’s been stretched and pulled and worked, but it’s the day before it hurts. Crispy-pretty blue-with-cold late autumn had turned into white, wonderful winter and everything was muted and made dreamy by a quickly thickening blanket. I had my double-cream coffee in hand, the woodstove was crackling away, and the animals were in various positions of complete sloth—cat sprawled belly up on back of chair, old dog curled up in a ball behind big plant, small dog sleeping on my feet.

Sitting in my office chair, I lifted my arms as high as I could stretch them and just felt good. I considered my long to-do list and hesitated. I have a big project with an open- ended deadline (ugh, the worst kind!), an editing job, and a column due soon. Plus, my latest WIP sits fresh and deserted from its first edit, ready for me to really put some teeth into it. I like each job, and I had an industrious day planned, but still I stalled…. And then I said, “It’s too good a day for a to-do list; it’s do what you want day!”

I spent some time on the Internet, browsing writing sites and boards that I don’t frequent as much as some others. I researched a few markets for articles I’ve let rest for too long—and then, feeling very motivated, I pitched two of them.  I finished two novels. Good stuff!  I split up my full day with an hour-long tub…. All in all, it was wonderful.  And productive.

It makes me laugh that even when I do exactly what I want, I end up doing exactly the same type of stuff I do on days that I’m sticking to a schedule. How lucky am I?  My real job is also my dream job.

If you work from home and the odd day calls, “Do you what you want, do what you want!”  I recommend listening to it.  Worse case scenario, you have to pull a few longer days later in the week or work Saturday morning (but come on, you do that anyway!).  Best case, you remember exactly why you work at home, alone, in the first place.

A writer writes…

/ Ev Bishop / 2 Comments

* If you would be a reader, read; a writer, write. ~ Epictetus AD 55-c.135

I am well into my Nano novel—although realistically, not quite as well into it as I should be considering the date on the calendar. However, “winning” (making it to the 50K marker by midnight on November 30) is still well within my grasp (and grasp it I will, if I have to pull two all nighters in a row). Month up or not, word count beaten or not, I can already elaborate on the primary value of Nanowrimo for me. Wonderfully, it’s not some obscure, limited-to-one-month-per-year benefit, available only to the select few who can fit Nano’s intensity into their calendar. No. It’s immediately transferable and tangible help to anyone who will just adopt Nanowrimo’s primary focus, goal, raison d’etre: Write daily, accumulate words, beat the monster who whispers ugly nothings in your ear.


Whenever I’m working on fiction regularly (so not just in November), I find that my self-confidence as a writer soars. It’s not that I think I’m writing such great stuff (quite the opposite usually). It’s that showing up to write every day tosses my worst fear to the ground and stomps on it. I’m always afraid that maybe I’m not a “real” writer (whatever that is), and that I’ll never make it (whatever that means!). Somehow all past finished works fade from my memory when I stay too long away from my computer; I think they’re flukes, flash-in-the-pans, all she wrote. When I’m writing close to daily though, it’s another thing entirely. I’m a writer because I write. Everything my nasty inner beast can throw at me is quieted.


“Shhhhh, I’m writing here, show some respect,” I say.


“Oh no,” screams the beast. “She is.”


“A writer writes, so by definition….”


The beast can take no more. It slinks away, and for today—because I write—it’s vanquished. It will be back. I will write it away again and again, as often as it takes. And if it beats me for a few days? No matter. I write frequently. I accumulate words. I will run it through with the sword of my pen when I take up the battle again, which for today, is now.


*I always find this quote motivating. Some interpret it as, “Don’t read if you’re a writer, just write,” but I think of the words as expanding, not limiting. If you would be anything, an artist, a musician, a writer, a runner, a chef…. Paint! Play! Write! Run! Cook! Do the things you feel you must, live those lives, not at the expense of all the other things you are and do, but in addition to them, adding depth and layers of enjoyment and passion to your every day.

Why do you write?

/ Ev Bishop / 2 Comments

Why do you write?

The question was put forth on a writing board I frequent. In turn, I passed it on to the Terrace Writers’ Guild and to Procrastination, an online writing forum that I help moderate. It wasn’t a new question for me to ponder—not by any means. For as long as I’ve been compulsively scribbling stories and jotting down interesting phrases and descriptions that catch my imagination (so since I was eight), I have tried to understand my burning desire/need to.

But no matter how often words fail me—or rather, I fail them—I keep digging. And over the years I’ve arrived at some of the reasons for my obsession. I’ve hinted at these reasons in columns and shared a bit about them on my website, but I’m never fully satisfied. There’s something else out there, some core motivation that is so deeply blazed on my soul that I can’t begin to explain it—it just is.

However, as often happens when I have something in my head, every idea or concept I come across seems somehow related to it. The latest stirrings of synchronicity involve the chance discovery of William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Prize Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1950, and a chunk of text excerpted from Stephen King’s novel, Bag of Bones, in which the main character, a writer named Mike Noonan, makes commentary on how he keeps going as a writer. While the latter doesn’t go exactly to the “why do you write?” question, in my mind, it still fits—speaking of the perseverance, the doggedness, the You Do It Because You Must sentiment that sits in your belly if you’re a writer.

As I read their words, I felt, Yes, of course. That’s it exactly. And of course, it really isn’t…. Perhaps there is not be all, end all “IT” when it comes to why one writes. But still, I offer the quotes in the chance you’ll read them and have your own lovely, possibly teary and sobering, reaffirming moment.

(And as in so many things surrounding writerly inspiration, I have to thank Jen Brubacher for pointing to both of these, although I’ve known and loved the S.K. one for a long time—what would I do without your amazing blog?!)

William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950, as quoted from Nobelprize.org.

“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

“He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

“Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

~

“This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things — fish and unicorns and men on horseback — but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.” ~ Bag of Bones, by Stephen King