Thursday’s Thing to Love about Being a Writer…

…Traveling amazing places! Learning new stuff! Interviewing cool people!

Early early early tomorrow morning, I leave for Texas to spend a long weekend with a writer friend, exploring the Columbia Bottomlands, meeting with some wildlife biologists, sea kayaking, bird watching…

I wish I could say I was cool enough to have set all this up, but I’m just riding along on her coat tails as she collects material for a freelance writing assignment. But don’t worry, I will be collecting material right alongside her.

Yeah. I love being a writer. Happy writing today!

:-) Cheryl

What do you love about your writing life this week?

Thursday’s Thing to Love About Being a Writer

Writers can work inside. In front of the fire. When the temp OUTSIDE drops to a ridiculous –13 degrees Fahrenheit. Just sayin’.

That is all.

:-) Cheryl

*Photo courtesy of knottyboy at Flickr Creative Commons

When the Book Is Finished…Tips for Surviving the Post-Novel Mourning Period

After months of living, breathing, and dreaming about my YA paranormal, VOICE, I'm finally finished with the rewrite. I’m sending  it off to my agent, and if he doesn't have any suggestions, it will soon be on its way to editors again. I feel...odd. At loose ends.

I think I go into a period of mourning after completion of a novel. It's strange, because I'm happy—ecstatic—to be finished; but after spending so much time with a book, it can be difficult to move on. Anyone else experience this? It reminds me of how I felt as an actor, the day after a play closed. I was apt to wander back to the theater, expecting another hectic afternoon and evening of rehearsal, only to discover an empty stage where there used to be sets, costumes, and a frenzy of activity.

Luckily, I’ve been through this a few times. I know it’s normal to feel a little down; I know it will pass. Meanwhile, here are some strategies that help:

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More gifts you can write

This is a continuation of Monday’s post on gifts writers can create. Lest you think huge projects are the only possibilities, here are some less time-consuming endeavors to round out your gift-giving plans.

• Coupon book: Yep, you’ve probably heard this idea before, but oldies can still be goodies…and who better to come up with a collection of interesting coupons than a creative writer? Print or handwrite coupons for hugs, brownies, moonlit meanders, proofreading services, dog sitting, kisses—you’re limited only by your imagination!

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Thursday’s thing to love about being a writer

Have you noticed that as people get older, it becomes more difficult to buy  presents for them? Maybe it’s because, as grown-ups, we have more freedom to go out and obtain the things we really want; or maybe it’s because, as we get older, the things we want become more expensive. Whatever the reason, I find that it’s much more difficult to find the perfect gift for my parents, sister, brother, in-laws, and spouse than it is to find gifts for their kids.

What’s this have to do with being a writer? It’s this: as writers, we have the ability to craft gifts of words, gifts that no one can buy for themselves.

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Editing, editing, editing!

Is it a sign of too much rewriting and editing when you start to look at the whole world that way? Take the hat pictured to the left: normally, I would consider this a fine hat. Beautiful yarn, soft texture, bright colors…. but after weeks of nonstop thinking about character, voice, writing style, and audience, I found myself viewing this finished project with editing-type questions. Does this pattern display the yarn’s colorway to its best effect? Have I created the best texture for the piece? Will the audience love this hat, or would a different color emphasis be better?

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A Writer’s Thanksgiving…

I used to write weekly posts on things I’m thankful for as a writer, and I think I need to get back into the habit. It was fun—and helped me keep perspective because even on weeks when the writing (ahem) sucked, I could always come up with things I love about being a writer.

So, being as it’s Thanksgiving and all, here are (a few of) my week’s things to love about being a writer:

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Writing Inspiration for Moms

What a great way to start the day! Hope you enjoy :).

Work Space and Productivity

As I continue to work my way (slowly) through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way, I continue to experience moments of synchronicity in my life. Cameron’s definition of synchronicity is when you put a request out to the universe—for instance, your desire to take up acting—and the universe replies—for instance, you meet a woman who teaches a beginning acting class at a dinner party.

I think there’s another type of synchronicity: as I learn a lesson from one source, I’m likely to notice complementary lessons elsewhere. For instance, one of the exercises in this week’s chapter was to design a creative space for myself; the idea, although not explicitly stated, is that by surrounding oneself with things that are inspiring, comforting, and beautiful, you free your creative side to come out and play.

It turns out that Cameron’s wisdom, penned nearly 20 years ago, is now backed by scientific research. While a graduate student at University of Exeter in the UK, Dr. Craig Knight performed research on employees’ attitudes, work satisfaction, and productivity as they relate to employee control over workplace environment.

His work challenges the mentality of many corporations, where “managers often create a 'lean' working environment that reflects a standardized corporate identity.” In a study of over 2000 office workers, he consistently found that the more control people have over their work environment, the happier and more motivated they are. In two additional studies, researchers compared the productivity of workers in “lean” environments, “enriched” environments (decorated with plants and artwork), and “empowered” environments (employee-decorated spaces). They found that employees who designed their own work spaces were 32% more productive than those in lean environments without increases in errors.

The lesson for writers: where you work IS important. Giving yourself a place that nurtures your spirit will improve your creativity—and productivity. After all, it’s not just an artsy thing any more: science backs it up!

:) Cheryl 

How a Writer Goes Camping…

She stops at her local thrift store to pick up some inexpensive camping togs...



...then hits REI to stock up on her camping supplies...

...and finally visits Staples to purchase pens and notebooks. Because how can you camp without writing materials?


 
I'll be out of town for a few days to camp with my dad, who has been trying for years to get me to join him on his annual hunting trip in the Colorado mountains. He knows his daughter: it'll make a great story, Cheryl, says he. Blatant bribery.

But I guess it worked, because I'm going! :) It's good to have a dad.

:D Cheryl

Rocky Mountain Chapter SCBWI Fall Conference: Bruce Coville Wows and Inspires

I have a special place in my heart for Bruce Coville’s books. It’s not just that they’re lots of fun—which they are—or that they’re great examples of craft, plotting, and storytelling—which they are. His book Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher saved my life.

This happened a few years ago, when I made one of my overly optimistic cross-country drives from Colorado to Pennsylvania with two kids in tow. Just before Christmas. In horrendous weather.*

After three days of driving and too many hairy moments to recount, we made it to PA late at night, in the middle of a snow storm. We were supposed to spend the night at my sister’s house with her husband and kids because my parents were at the hospital, where my dad had just had surgery. I’ve been to my sister’s house. It’s a large white farmhouse with a red barn only just off the road and, theoretically, it’s not that hard to find. At least, it’s not that hard to find in the daylight. At night, in a snowstorm, in one of the darkest counties in PA, when one’s brain is theoretically addled from WAAAY too many hours on the road, it’s another story. I drove up and down that road without seeing it.

Meanwhile, the snow is getting heavier, my eyelids are dragging, and both kids are awake and pathetic in the back seat.

What does this have to do with Bruce Coville, you ask? Well, it was his story, performed by his audio book company Full Cast Audio, that kept me awake and kept the kids and I sane for much of the cross-country drive and for ALL of that stressful night. We listened to it as we searched for my sister’s house. We listened when I finally gave up and headed to my parent’s house, even though I knew it was empty. We listened to it as we slipped and slid our way down their very long, very snowy driveway and I left it on for the kids while I stomped through snow drifts trying to find an open door and, when there wasn’t one, breaking into the house. We listened to it over the next week every time we drove from one house to another, because this was rural PA, where the minimum driving time between any two locations is 25 minutes. We listened to it when the cousins joined us in the car and we needed entertainment (so that I didn’t go crazy in my stressed-out, overtired state.)

So: it was with great interest that I sat down Saturday morning for Coville’s Keynote address. I came to the conference seeking inspiration and encouragement—and he didn’t disappoint. But more on that in a few days…

:) Cheryl

*Yes, I know. The weather is BOUND to be horrendous somewhere along a cross-country drive at that time of year. See overly optimistic, above…

Writing Friends…

…are the best antidote to writing stress. I met with my writing buddies Chris and Laura at the Huckleberry this week, where we enjoyed freshly-brewed chai and scrumptious breakfast creations like their salmon omellette with fresh herb cream cheese, seasoned potatoes, and buttermilk biscuit, all in this cute lavender building in the Louisville Historic District.

Two hours of talk and food and de-stressing. Yay! We have to do this more often!

:) Cheryl

Flora and fauna reports a la The Artist’s Way

Tuesday morning, for the first time in a while, I woke up feeling energized and ready to face the day. This comes during week three of working through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way, which is a fantastic course on getting your head straight as well as fostering creativity.

In it, Cameron writes about the importance of taking time to notice things. “Flora and fauna reports,” is her example, an aunt’s lengthy letters detailing the flowers blooming in her garden, the cottonwood’s leaves, and other snippets of beauty and joy. My ability to notice and enjoy the world around me is one of the things I like about myself—but when I get crazy busy, it’s one of the first things I stop doing. I duck my head and plow forward, trying to survive one day to the next.

So Monday night, I took a break from the endless to-do’s to spend a little time in my garden. Not long: I spent about half an hour watering flowers, pulling weeds, and collecting windfall apples from my lawn to compost. For half that time, I press-ganged my older son into picking apples with me as the sun sank behind the mountains. I got my hands wet and muddy; the smells of crushed mint and sage filled the air from the flower beds; and we ended up with a full compost bin and a colander full of red and green apples.

I spent the next half hour luxuriating in those apples, cutting and chopping (there were quite a few bad spots to remove) and plopping them into a few inches of water in my pressure cooker. I have a great pressure cooker cookbook by Lorna J. Sass, so I turned to it for guidance on how long to cook apples to make applesauce. Instead, I found a recipe for cranberry applesauce…and since I had a wayward bag of cranberries in my freezer, I decided to give it a try. I added one bag of frozen cranberries and about two cups of water to my apples (6 cups or so), brought the pot to pressure, and cooked for 5 minutes (the advantage of a pressure cooker!). Then I put it all through an applesauce maker (a sort of pot with a strainer on the bottom and a hand-turned crank that presses the soft fruit through the strainer while leaving peels and seeds behind), added a few tablespoons of chopped candied orange peel (the recipe called for orange zest, but I didn’t have any), a bit of sugar and a dollop of agave nectar…

…and the result was this jewel-toned creation. It satisfies the senses in every way: bright, colorful, tart, sweet, yummy.

And the next morning I awoke refreshed. Coincidence? I prefer to think of it as a sign that I’m on the right track.

:) Cheryl

More Character Exploration

Had a blast from the past last night when the kitchen staff at my sister’s ski area got a bit overwhelmed by the influx of hungry motocrossers. I jumped in to help take orders, deliver baskets of chicken wings, and replenish the frontside coolers.

The difference between past and present was that this ski area restaurant has a bar, where I had to do crazy things like distinguish Bud Light from Budweiser and Coors Light on tap from the stuff in the bottle and discover that there is no Bat’s Blue beer.

Can you tell I’m not a beer drinker?

But tending bar…that could be kinda fun, at least if you always had as friendly and hyped-up a crowd as we have here tonight.

Maybe a bar tender isn’t the kind of character to show up in most of my children’s fiction, but I could definitely see revisiting the small mom-and-pop restaurant kind of work that I remember being such fun when I was in high school. Hard work, don’t get me wrong, but fun. I like interacting with all kinds of different people, which I don’t do as much in my safe little world these days.

And I like being able to go home afterward and decompress.

:) Cheryl

 

Moto-cross!

Today, I discovered a whole new sport: Moto-cross. Not MOTORCROSS, as I learned this morning, but MOTOCROSS, a sport where riders of all ages navigate dirt bikes around a hilly, bumpy, jumpy dirt track in a noisy and extremely impressive-looking manner.

It’s a little hard to see, but the next picture shows one of the riders catching some air going over a bulldozed dirt mound on the track. 

Why, you ask, am I foraying into the moto-cross world? Because my family runs several small ski areas in Pennsylvania and New York, where the ski season runs only three months at best, so they’ve been exploring alternate ways to generate income on a snow-free ski area. This was a suggestion from a friend of a bartender’s boyfriend (or something like that), and it’s turned out to be a good one. Tonight is the second practice event—apparently, there will be a race/competition for actual money the first weekend of August, but courses often offer practice events so riders can familiarize themselves with the course.

I asked my eight-year-old nephew, Micah, if he’d like to try moto-cross, since there are quite a few kids his age out on the course on little 50 cc bikes. (At least, I think they’re kids: they could actually be hobgoblins or elves, because they’re completely hidden beneath their protective gear.) “No,” he said. “It looks like fun, but I think it would hurt a lot more if I fell over than when I fall over skiing.”

I don’t know…it looked mighty fun to me. It’s a really nice crowd of people, too, who apparently all know each other, because they all go to the same events and such.

Of course, you know where this is going: yes, I’m thinking what an interesting story premise or situation I might pull out of this sport. Maybe a book about a girl who wants to race or…

Except, of course, I would never DREAM of plotting another book while I have several waiting on my to-rewrite pile…

:) Cheryl

Portable Prose

I’m writing from the road again, this time from PA—and I have to say, the scenery couldn’t be more different than when I last wrote. I’ve traveled from the desert sunshine of Lake Powell, Utah, to Potter County, PA, where the world is green and lush and—for my first few days here—very, very wet.

 

Since I was traveling here for the Eastern Traditional Archery Rendezvous, you’d think this would be a problem, but the rain cooperated. Mostly. That is, it cleared up long enough for some outdoor fun on Friday and Saturday, and when it rained, well, we wanted to spend some time checking out all the vendors inside, right?

 

My writing brain is a bit dizzy right now, though, because I have so many projects to think about. (Yes, I’m on vacation. This is what I do for fun. Think about writing projects :).) These include:

1. Setting research for my next book, which will take place in PA. (I love Pennsylvania. I love it even more as I look at it with a writerly eye, taking note of ferns and skunks and the smell of crushed mint along the streams and the way a sudden downpour floated a bin of t-shirts right out of the big tent at the archery festival….)
2. Putting together a few nonfiction queries for new magazine markets I’m trying to break into.
3. The YA rewrite (Voice), which seems a little less daunting if I look at it slantwise, like when I’m hiking or driving down a rainy road.
4. And, of course, the miscellaneous to-do’s needed to keep current projects moving forward: reviewing an article galley, answering emails, collecting and processing manuscripts for the Rocky Mountain Chapter SCBWI’s 2010 Manuscript Critique

Maybe that’s what vacations are for: letting old ideas simmer, collecting new ideas, recharging, and playing. This is my “working” vacation, the one where I’m carrying about notebooks filled with prose and projects…but I don’t feel like I’m working. I feel kinda like I’m playing hooky to do all the writing things I don’t usually have time to do.

And that, dear readers, is a very good thing!

:) Cheryl

Things I love about writing on the road

Summer vacation descended on my household like a flash flood: sudden, overwhelming, and somehow unexpected, even though we do live in the flood plain, so to speak. I guess I'm one of those people who gets so absorbed in the present that I perpetually forget about what's coming down the pike...or maybe I'm just a goofball. That's also a distinct possibility.

In any case, I like getting out and away from the hamster wheel of cooking, cleaning, email, errands...there are still things I have to do when I'm traveling, but it's different.






But I digress. What I really wanted to write this post about was how travel can enrich your writing life. Hope I inspire you to hit the road this summer--and bring along your pen!

Things I love:

1. Removal of distractions clears my mind.
2. Change of scenery inspires new setting details.
3. Change of scenery triggers ideas for nonfiction articles.
4. People-watching: travel takes me out of my usual Boulder circles.
5. Long car drives provide uninterrupted time to talk, think, listen to a new book on CD, or read aloud to each other.
6. Escape from the usual bombardment forces everyone to find other kinds of entertainment--like cards, photography, badminton, and practical jokes.
7. Quiet time let's my wandering mind come up with lots of ideas and frees creative blocks.
8. Ample opportunities to eavesdrop on conversations and quirky actions perfect for character development.

The key to a writing vacation, Cheryl-style, is lots of unscheduled, unstructured time--and that's what I'm getting this week. It's heaven.

Happy writing!

Cheryl


-- Post From My iPhone

On the road again...

I've taking writing on the road again, as the kids and I take advantge of my flexible work schedule to do a bit of traveling.




The question is: will I actually get any writing done? Or maybe I should ask: Should I actually get any writing done? Because the truth is that I've managed to slide into that unfortunate state of overwhelm, where I'm working on so many projects in so many directions that I feel like a crashed computer.

I had grand visions of querying a couple magazines with article ideas related to this trip (destination: Lake Powell) but it didn't even come close to happening. And I'm glad. I'm looking forward to a bit of time when my only writing is deadline-free.

Time to recharge and fill up with writing inspiration! I hope to report back soon, but may be off the grid. Go figure :)

~Cheryl

-- Post From My iPhone

Food for the Soul

Does food affect your mood? It does for me, but I didn’t realize how much until I thought to ask the question. Beyond its obvious ability to taste good, provide energy, or give me a stomach ache, food can trigger a remarkable number of emotions and mental states. Popcorn makes me think of drive-in movies (happy); corned beef and cabbage brings back unpleasant childhood memories, even though I think the stuff is tasty (now. Not then). Particularly salty or greasy foods prompt me to eat quickly, whereas particularly flavorful foods, of any sort, trigger me to slow down and savor—an attitude that tends spill into areas of my life beyond eating.

I’m thinking these things for two reasons:

1. Sometimes my mental state distracts me from writing (a bad thing), and
2. I just ate a scrumptious bowl of split pea soup that leaves me feeling warm, well-fed, and content (good things).

I’m fully cognizant of the fact that if I eat junk food for lunch, my energy will crash an hour or so later and I’ll get nothing done, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that a simple bowl of soup could stoke my mental energy as well as recharge me physically.

Next time I’m tempted to slide through lunch on coffee and a few chips, I’ll remember this.

As for the soup—it’s a recipe from my new favorite cookbook, Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, by Lorna Sass. She takes a standard recipe for split pea soup, takes out the ham, adds lots of herbs and spices (fennel is the most surprising and works really well with the other flavors) and adapts it to the pressure cooker, so cooking time is only 7 minutes even at Boulder’s higher elevation.

If you’d like to try some of her other recipes,  check here for a scrumptious selection she’s posted online.

Just had to share…

 

For the full story, visit: http://www.salon.com/life/youtube/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/