Advice

How do I Become a Better Writer?

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That wasn’t exactly the question she asked me.

More it was, “He was awesome. How did that happen?!”

I didn’t really have time to research an answer, and part of me felt, Hey, I‘m not a teacher, how do I know?

But thankfully I was stopped by a phrase that popped instantly into my head.

Tonguepolishing.

Or should that be two words?

Tongue Polished.

The designation refers to old, old stories that are elegant in their simplicity, and may even contain absurdities that are so entrenched that that they are simply accepted without any attempt at explanation.

Folktales. My little corner of enjoyment in the esoteric.

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In our own, more prosaic, lives, we still experience the tongue-polished story.  These are the stories that make up the Family Lexicon.

A Lexicon is like a dictionary (a collection of words), but more specialized. Linguistically it’s a catalog of a given language’s words. The way I use it here is just to give a name to that collection every family grows as it creates its own culture with specialized language, stories and lessons learned.

The longer a story’s been around, the longer it’s been told and re-told, the more streamlined it gets. Often it loses some of the random, irrelevant facts. Frequently the teller is no longer recalling the event itself, but rather the best words with which to describe it.

But that’s not the case, at first.

Something happens (Baby born before we get to the hospital!) and you talk about it because it’s extraordinary, an adventure. But what do you tell? what part did you play in the story? What words you use are not usually the main thing you’re focused on. In those first days, you’re only remembering.

It’s at this point you may begin to see there’s more to storytelling– and, therefore, writing– than most of us think about at first.

There are four levels of work involved in writing, and this, I believe, is part of what complicates the process of learning how to write. It’s this 4-step process, unidentified, that I think gets people in trouble.

  1. Image courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt via stock.xchng

    Idea generation. You have to come up with something to write ABOUT.

  2. Translation from idea into language.
  3. Translation from head-language to language-on-the-page (this essentially means holding onto the words you’ve come up with long enough to get them onto the page).
  4. The physical act of recording the words.

Some people get stuck at step-1, and that has almost the easiest solution. Even if you never know what to write about, you might be awesome once you get started.

If this is you, there are all sorts of books for sale and even free options on the internet to get you started: just Google writing prompts.

For step-2 (image into language), assume that time will be involved. Give yourself permission to make a few running jumps.  Throw some words at the idea (like spaghetti at a wall) and see what sticks. If you’re a natural talker, use that facility with language that you already have. Talk to a friend, talk to yourself or your pet. Talk into a recorder of some kind, and see if you like what it sounds like later.

This is what you do in that early stage of storytelling. You say what you remember. Other people remember it differently, or your listener has a question. The next time you tell the story you shape the transmission differently, based on what you learned from your earlier audiences.

You’re half-way through the process, and it’s something you’ve done all your life!

Continue Reading →

Making Characters interesting — Before they do anything.

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Lindorm, Part One, is essentially a Beauty-and-the-Beast story, where the beauty is teenage single mom, and the beast is a dragon.

Short story writer Kurt Vonnegut says that every character needs to want something, “Even if it is only a glass of water.”

In a novel, that wanting, the characters’ goals, usually corresponds to the plot of the book, and those goals are what make the action happen, but in this series of lectures (sorry, I don’t remember which one) the teacher urged pre-existing goals for your characters.

This concept brought a much-needed life into my main characters.

For one thing, pre-existing goals let them be proactive, interesting, believably awesome people before they get yanked into Story-Action. They act instead of (just) reacting.

If the original goals conflict with the (newer, more-compelling/unavoidable) Story-Goals, there’s bonus points in terms of conflict.

My main characters are Linnea (the beauty) and the Lindorm (the beast).

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I found this one step– giving them preexisting goals– was huge for giving them depth and dimension.

All of my novels (so far) have been seeded by folk tales, which means I’m starting from archetypes, stereotypes and puppets.  People do things because they DO things. It’s not like they have a motivation all the time.

Now, I am particularly gifted in mind-reading, and I’ve said more than once that my super-power is Instant Extrapolation.

So this starting place really works for me.

I’m not so great at the what-if game out of reality (what if you were investigating a crime and found evidence your daughter might be guilty?), or out of the news (one of James Scott Bell’s suggestions for story mining is taking a headline/newspaper article and milking it 10 different ways). My main problem with this is that they’re all too close to home.

I could really imagine this stuff happening, completely wig myself out, and be useless the next few days till I got over it.

I’m still very tender in the depression department.

I have to be nice to myself, and recognize when to stop pushing or just take another road.

This is where having the solidity of old stories really anchors me.

This is a pattern. This isn’t anything that I could’ve foreseen and prevented, or anything that I made happen with my freakish brain-power.

It’s got magic and crazies and just enough underhanded predictability (GA! I should have known!) that I can just play and enjoy some blatant non-reality.

Continue Reading →

Brokenness, Healing and Art

I just got through The War of Art by Steven Pressfield last week.

My library had it on CD, which meant that my laundry finally got folded.

Pressfield starts out by defining resistance by its action and power, tying it to our main difficulty in writing (okay, he actually is very careful to keep the talk about ART and whatever one’s contribution to the world is. But for me, that’s writing).

Problem #1: Getting Started

He has a whole series of specific examples of delays to beginning the work, but especially because of my experience with depression, and the upcoming launch of Wyn Magazine, I was intrigued by Pressfield’s comments about (and waiting for) healing as a tool of Resistance, to prevent the beginning of a Great Work.

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According to Pressfield there are whole communities of people investing such effort and resources into getting well that they aren’t doing much else.

In his book he says some people feel they need to be healthy before they can do, or make their art.

I have felt this way in a vague sense, thinking that what I wanted to say would have more legitimacy or authority if I’d passed some point of competency, but the idea of doing nothing until that point is a straightjacket of terror.

Why ‘terror’? (That is a rather melodramatic word, but it’s the best I have just now.)

Because without my art I am locked in the long white corridors or darkened rooms of myself. There is no escape. And that is terrifying.

Writing is the walking.

One foot in front of the other to travel these endless hallways, and slow familiarity teaches what direction could be more useful, and I eventually see a door, and my momentum feeds itself until I slam into that crashbar and break into the open air.

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I’ve had encounters with others, or their words, who feel that they cannot produce art without the brokenness inside them.  Elyn Saks, in her Ted Talk quoted poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said, “Don’t chase my devils away, because my angels may flee too.”

I have wobbled on both sides of that line, and the perspective I find most-comforting is what Pressfield expresses in his book. He insists that healing is not a prerequisite, because the part that needs healing is completely separate from the part that is creating.

The experience of brokenness can make the creating part of you more useful, but somehow, in this one-way economy, that brokenness can only add depth to what already is.

I like this model, this container of words, because it suggests that the reasoning of second quote—about needing to keep the demons around—is misplaced.

Continue Reading →

Response to “A Letter to Teenagers”

I understand why this letter has gone viral and been so popular, but when I saw it on Facebook this morning (before I read the above article) These were my thoughts.

~ ~ ~

This letter is a good start (in the sense that we all need to be reminded to do what we can, and quit expecting others to do it for us) but these words don’t provide what I needed as a teen, and that was personalized direction.

I was a KID. I was even one who didn’t claim to know everything. And I didn’t know on my own which way to go other than to “be good.” And that is WAY to vague for most kids.

I was a good kid by most standards, and this letter being given to me would have made me feel simultaneously furious and helpless.

He’s just told me to get out of his way and quit being vocal about the fact that I have needs I don’t know how to meet.

All my life I had a drive to “make a difference” and “be involved,” but I did not have the skill/know-how/authority to make much of anything happen on my own.

Weekly visits to the nursing home (at 13) were with an adult, who eased me into being unafraid. Joining worship team (at 17 or 18) and before that forming a youth version (when I was 15) required an adult sponsor to give us access to the stage and sound equipment.

Even now, in my 30s, I know the fastest, most efficient way to know how best to apply my talents comes from outside help.

Why do you think “life coaching” even exists as a profession? We want solid, reliable input. Wise people don’t want to be limited to their own experience.

It always feels good to tell off people who are making your life more complicated, and the writer was described as “a judge who regularly deals with youth.”

I guess most of the readers/repeaters are parents, and AMEN! because they feel similarly pressed.

These parents have been dealing with and giving, like the judge says, and yes it’s perfect for the youth to “accept some of the responsibility your parents have carried for years.”

But I for one was never the kid who could look at a mess, see what needs to be done, and “just do it.”

I am BARELY that kind of adult.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from becoming a grown-up, it’s that the growing. never. ends.

And parenting (best as I can tell) is a lot of inconvenience.

We’re allowed to gripe, and call it hard, like it is, but eventually we have to swallow the frog; reenter the inconvenience of life-as-parent ’cause, really, nothing gets done until we do.

We have to change that diaper, find a bandaid, teach a concept and (Lord-Willing) cultivate a sense of self that will allow that child to develop a personal vision and motivation that will equip him or her to finally accept everything in his letter as a reasonable expectation.

The Platinum Rule

Everybody’s heard of “The Golden Rule:”

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Treat others the way you want to be treated.

It is a concept that has existed forever, but I read somewhere that it was Jesus who turned it on this positive angle. Everybody else– Confucius, the Greek philosophers– couched it in opposite terms:

Don’t treat anyone the way you don’t want to be treated.

It was “the law of reciprocity” and contained a rude (underdeveloped) sort of empathy. Sort of like another admonition I read on a twitter profile:

Be gentle with others. Everyone is fighting a secret battle.

All of these build on the idea that we know our own needs and that there is a commonality to our race (we’re all human) that allows us to recognize (from our own experience) what others would value and/or fear.

The frustrating thing about conclusions is that they are fully dependent on the assumptions that lead to them.

Even the Golden Rule.

I have been told more than once that I’m not like most people, and Jay had that great line last week, “You are a square in a world of circles. You come at things from such a *completely* different angle nobody else sees.”

The man wasn’t being critical or complementary. I think bewildered is the best word. It’s nice not to be the only confused one. And nice to be accepted, even “off center.”

So when I assume that others are like me, that they value and desire the same things– I can get in trouble.

For one thing, other people “golden-ruling” me really are trying hard, and I shouldn’t get offended when it doesn’t fit, and what I give other people (because it’s what I would have wanted) can land completely wrong.

So I think the level-to-aspire-to is The Platinum Rule:

Treat others the way they want to be treated.

Image courtesy of Sara Haj-Hassan via stock.xchng

By necessity this requires knowing the other person well enough to make a reasonable guess, but it also requires the presence of mind to apply what you know.

Many people I know (and I include myself in this category) are just plain-nice people. They’re not in the habit of doing unkind things, and I can’t think of situations where they would be deliberately hurtful to anyone.

But some of these people have hurt me.

And I have hurt some of them.

Here’s one specific example, going both ways– it relates (as I see it) to the way we process information differently. Continue Reading →

Weight Therapy #8: Motivation

There is a joke (that I don’t agree with) that goes like this:

Heart Attack on a Plate!
(Image courtesy of arrowp via stock.xchng)

Did you laugh? Yeah. I don’t think it’s funny either.

Here’s another not-funny one:

Depression in a Box!
(Image courtesy of allergyfre via stock.xchg)

Thing is, even if you’re not ready to accept the growing link between sugar/grains and mental disturbance, I have noticed readable changes in moods after eating stuff like that.  So I don’t play with fire.

I was depressed for two years. I’ve only been back to “normal” for a few months, and I’m still learning what normal means after two years of ‘not being myself’. If I can keep that scarey stuff at arm’s length by paying attention to my food?

I’m motivated.

Continue Reading →

Weight Therapy #7: Engage Your Imagination

I think imagination is perhaps the most under-used tool in the modern world.

I have a few ways I try to engage the power of imagination in training my habits.

Remember

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This may be less effective for those of you who love all foods and they all love you back, but most people I know have foods they return to even though they aren’t satisfying or actually are negative.

I’ll actually play a whole memory in my head: yes I love the texture, the warmth, the flavor; I may even get a bit of enjoyment out of the memory, but then I’ve got the conclusion of that lump of cornbread hanging out in my belly way. too. long.

Sorry if that’s too weird for you, but the point is your body has a very good memory, and you can use that to your benefit.

Play Pretend

Try these on for size: Picky Toddler and Bank Teller 

Picky Toddler

Most of you reading this have children, and those who don’t have doubtless seen that “comedy” staple where a hapless parent (or other caregiver) is pitted against a resolute toddler whose compressed lips clearly communicate You shall not pass.

When I think of how I went a long. time. as a child without eating lunch (because I wouldn’t eat peanut butter or tuna fish), when I see those little lips pressed together, I’m reminded that I am the only person who decides what goes between my lips.

And that hunger hasn’t killed anybody I know.

If this is all you have the strength for: just avoid the first bite.

I don’t know about you, but I do much better with absolutes. If I’m having no. grains. at. all., saying no to the GF brownies is a lot easier.  If I can justify one bite, I can justify a whole brownie, and I’m so logical I can move from a single brownie to more than that.

Bank Teller

No matter how poor an honest bank teller is, she doesn’t pocket the money she’s handling.

Why? It belongs to someone else. It’s not hers.

This is how we can prepare and share food that isn’t on our HEP (healthy eating plan) with minimal temptation to ourselves.

It requires a mental shift. A level of seriousness that means we’ve committed. We can know what’s not ours.

After my major, unignorable reaction to food at a birthday party last October, I decided I was done with gluten. The reaction was clearly not in my head. Living with gluten-intolerance wasn’t about other people’s comfort level anymore. It was about my safety, and now that was going to trump others’ discomfort.

I continued to buy store-bread and “convenience” food for my family, but no matter how many times I made them something, I never took a nibble.

Made experimenting with Atkins surprisingly easy, btw. Most of what we find “tempting” is highly processed things quickly available when we have a surge of hunger. Since there are fewer GF things that meet that description, I had an easier time managing my environment.

 

Ultimately this comes down to honesty.

Be honest with yourself. (And if something always makes you sick, your body could be trying to tell you something.)

Picture your goals.

This is kinda hard for a lot of us, because we’re afraid to aim to high, but try it any way. The original Protein Power book includes a mathematical formula for determining your (as in you, the person doing the math) lean body mass.

From there is is easy to extrapolate your own personal weight range, based on healthy body-fat levels for your age and gender.

This is freeing because it removes the super-unrealistic from play.

For example, I’m 5’4″. According to the BMI chart I could weigh 110-140 lbs and still be in the “normal” range. But my best (and temporarily successful) bid for a size-six body did not get me close to 110. And I haven’t been that small since I was 14.

Doing the math, I narrowed that range to 130-139 lbs.  Talk about freeing!

But it also allows me to be ambitious if I want to.  I have a range to work within for my goal, and it is a healthy choice, no self-abuse involved.

Having lived there three years ago, I know what I like about it. I have a favorite dress I’m looking forward to wearing again. And I use my imagination, my memory of the first time I tried it on and was thrilled about how it fit and how it looked.

How I looked.

I liked it. I’m looking forward to that.

Imagination is a tool. Learn how to use it.

Weight Therapy #3: Manage Your Environment: pick your battles

There are two main sides of this:

  • create distance between you and poor choices
  • make the right choices easier/more accessible

Thinking about those two options may give you your own ideas of what you need. (And here are my examples.)

I create my distance by closing doors.

Image courtesy of Nicolas Raymond via freestock.ca

It wasn’t till my first serious  effort to lose weight (summer of ’09) that I realized I have a very poor record when it comes to shutting things. Cupboard doors, chip bags, cracker boxes. And I made the corresponding observation that the easier it was to graze (take a bite here or there), the more I did it.

There were two ways I dealt with this back when I was a 30 and a normal American with Doritos on my shelves.

  • Closing things as soon as I was done with them (made it harder to lie to myself about it being “nothing.” You don’t open a bag for “nothing.”)
  • Pre-portioning a single serving for the week of anything I liked to graze, and taking it out of my HEP allotment before I even started the week
    • This way my “just one chip” a couple times a day was always legit.
      • And this may genuinely matter less to a taller person, but at a bit under 5’4″ I find precision is better than the opposite

Now that my HEP doesn’t allow for gluten-containing things like Doritos, I’ve learned that grazing is not a compulsion. I genuinely have no problem walking by the open bag of pretzels (Just don’t wave it. Please.). And the cool thing about learning this is how it can make saying no to other things seem more in reach.

That said, when simply feeling good about making good decisions ceases to be motivating I’ve still found the best thing I can do to reenforce my good intentions is to close doors.

Get things out of sight.

I made tater-tots for my kids. Trying to get a few of those “fun mom” points. Then the taters sat out to cool. And there were left-overs. And I ate a few, even though I don’t actually like potatoes that much.

They were out, crunchy, grabbable and I was reminded: Get it put away.

I refuse to label mis-eating as Sin. Some Christians do label. I think it’s one of the gray areas covered by grace and up to the individual’s conscience.

That said, I still think the Biblical admonition applies.  We are told to flee temptation.

I don’t think this means running out of the kitchen (necessarily), but I think it firmly presses home the fact that we aren’t required to keep things hard for ourselves, just to prove how tough we are.

Managing your environment means make it easy for yourself.

Especially if you’re the mom, you’re probably choosing what foods come into the house in the first place.

This is no kind of contest where the person who holds out the longest gets a free desert.

Allow your self-discipline training wheels at home.

This is a long ride. Try not to wear yourself out just as you’re getting started.

More Doesn’t Keep Being More

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In contrast to the popular saying,

Money can’t buy happiness

there is this study that shows a fairly tight correlation between money and a lot of good things. (Here’s another eye-opening view, if you go in prepared for anger and crass language.)

I liked reading about this study when it came out, because I’d always thought along the lines that money has got to simplify a LOT of things and how most of the “simple freebies” that are cozy and fuzzy-edged in any story aren’t so accessible.

I mean, I do those things, and they’re not necessarily cheap and accessible.

  • Musical instruments you actually *want* to play are a pretty penny.
  • Pets/animals take work and money.
  • Craft supplies that are enjoyable to use usually can’t be found at the thrift store
  • Even simple “hanging out” with friends involves cost to someone– either in transportation, food, or entertainment.

Free is really less common than storytelling will admit.

It is this common sense awareness of increased money = improved life that gets us into trouble.

When we see, Oh, more money is better life, we don’t see that topping out– until it does.

This is why you don’t see movies about poor people realizing their two jobs plus night school are eating away at their family life and just. not. worth it.

It’s the rich executive or the workaholic mom who have to choose family over acquiring even-greater wealth.

~ ~ ~

All that to say that we educated types have the same relationship with information.

Continue Reading →

Weight Therapy #1: Saying No to Self

G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, pointed out that sometimes the reason we don’t know where to start talking about a big subject is because it possible to start anywhere.

Sticking to a healthy lifestyle appears to be one of those topics.

Leaving aside what a Healthy Eating Plan looks like (for now), I want to talk about my first tools for maintaining that HEP.

*First of all, it’s best if you remove the word “cheat” from your vocabulary.* Even if your HEP of choice uses it.

I’m pretty open about how I see words affecting our thoughts and behavior, and if you are the sort to “cheat” a lot, you’ll eventually see yourself as  “cheater” and that just doesn’t help your persistence factor.

Instead, think of it as your level of “strictness” as you retrain your approach to food.

You’re not “cheating” when you sleep in on the weekend, you’re just being less-strict with yourself.

Image courtesy of Sanja Gjenero via stock.xchng

Here’s something I just learned recently: our self-esteem, the way we see ourselves, is strengthened in proportion to the number of times we say no to ourselves.

Think about how you feel when you pass up the cake or ice cream at the birthday party. You feel good about yourself, don’t you? You feel relieved, maybe, and in-control.

Your self-esteem actually went up a notch.

Believe it or not, for the first two weeks back on my HEP that little up-tick was all I needed to stay focused. I still looked longingly at “the good stuff” and felt the urge to consume, but every time I said no to myself I was rewarded with this little surge of Yes! I am the boss of me!

The other thing that helped me say no to the birthday cake (because after all, yummy stuff feels pretty good, too) was asking, Is this [indulgence] worth waiting to reach my goal?

And very few birthday cakes are worth that, really.

I’m calling this series Weight Therapy , because it seems like everything I read about good choices or about motivation loops back around and applies again here.

Because this is where I’m living, and that’s the way my brain makes everything useful.