Anatomy of A Writer’s Block…

Posted by Joanne Huspek

…or Why I Don’t Write

the-blank-pageThe blank page, dammit.

If there is anything more distressing to a writer, it’s the occasional so-called ‘writers block.’ After all, we as artists are hard-wired to create. Some of us create using physical materials; some of us create using the world inside our heads. When something gums up the works, when we are unable to produce, we feel anxious and upset. We beat up on ourselves. I call myself lazy, a procrastinator, a wannabe, a failed writer. All these terms are nice (or not) but they do not address any of the real issues.

Believe me, I know of what I speak. I’ve been suffering from the second longest dry spell in history (the first being the first 18 years of my children’s lives). I’ve been introspectively pondering the problem for the last year or so. If you are also suffering from writers block, I urge you to spend a few moments examining the root causes and devise a strategy for change.

My Story…

Real Life as a Cause: About a year and a half ago, one of my family members became embroiled in some major personal drama. It was also very serious, legally, psychically, emotionally. It also caused him to become very ill. In fact, he’s still very ill.

Of course, I love this person. I would move mountains to help. Unfortunately for me, I allowed myself to get wrapped up in this situation. I tried to devise solutions to problems that weren’t mine, and that was frustrating. This led to severe depression for me. When I am depressed, I can’t think of doing anything remotely pleasant. If I do write at all, I tend to pen very dark and depressing stories.

I’m currently battling a way out of my funk. I’m lucky in that I recognize what is going on and reach out to those who can help me. Medication helps.

Self-Doubt as a Cause: Last year, I had just finished what I thought was my final version of Virtually Yours Forever. Then I sent it to my editor. Then he called me and told me I should devise a parallel story to the current one to add interest.

I went along, but I couldn’t see this happening with my characters. Yes, I was half-hearted about the whole idea. It was a good idea, yes, but it wasn’t right for me, for this particular story. I spent a year on the re-write, fighting myself every day I opened the file. Meanwhile, I was berating myself for not getting it. What was wrong with me? This was a GREAT idea!

This entire episode bogged down my creative process.

I decided to take out the parallel story line and am in the process of the FINAL edit.

Laziness as a Cause: I know. I call myself *lazy* but am I really? I own several businesses. I run nearly every day. I make dinner five out of seven nights a week – yes! with my very own hands with fresh ingredients. I garden. I clean my own house (yes, even the bathrooms) and do my own laundry. I take jewelry classes. I read (when I can).

I can’t remember the last time I took a nap. If I have a spare minute of time, I can find something to do. (I am sooooo looking forward to retirement, when I can devote all of my time to pleasurable activities.)

I have determined that my form of *laziness* has only to do with getting my butt into a chair and actually typing something on that blank page.

Things you can do to unblock…

Improve your craft: Any artist can benefit from constant learning. You were not born a perfect writer, and any skill takes constant practice.

Take a class online (I do). Sign up for NaNoWriMo (I did). Find a Facebook group that throws out an occasional writing prompt (look up Meg Pokrass – she’s witty and I love her prompts). Sign up for a class In Real Life. Join a writers group, either a general one or in your genre. Invest in reference books. If you can’t afford to buy, there is that antique thing called a library. Every city has one. They will let you borrow books! 🙂 Find a mentor. Reach out to authors you like online; you’d be surprised, some of them will answer you back.

The bottom line: Make a commitment, even if it’s for ten minutes a day.

Read other people: Finding time to read is tough – especially in my life – but for your own sanity, make the time. Even if it’s just a chapter. Even if it’s just a page.

I get the most inspiration from reading, especially if it’s a genre I enjoy.

Again, it’s the commitment, even if it’s for just ten minutes.

Change your modus operandi: If your blockage is major like mine was (yes! was!), you might want to change up your approach. After all, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity – and it won’t move you toward your goal of words flowing.

Change your scenery. My creative juices always get rolling if I’m far from home and the worries of day to day life. It never fails. A mini-vacation will do wonders.

I find that doing things helps. While in Colorado recently, I felt compelled to write a short story about running, after spending ten days running with my dad’s dachshund. It was such an intriguing story line, I’m thinking of expanding the story into novel length. I’m also inclined to think about writing when I’m gardening – it’s something about getting your hands into dirt that starts me thinking. Or when spring cleaning – which I’ve just put off until recently, so I guess it’s fall cleaning now – I pull out bits and pieces of my life from nooks and crannies and think about the history in my hands. (Plus the house gets decluttered and dusted. Win-win.)

It also helps to change up where you write. I used to only write in the comfy purple chair in my bedroom. Now I sit at a table where the activity is more a job than a whimsical past-time. I turn off EVERYTHING, even the phone, and I write like hell for an hour before I get up.

No matter what, patience: Blockage is temporary, yes, even if temporary = twenty years. You can and will get back on that bicycle and ride off! Trust me! Don’t compare yourself to other writers; you’re not running a race against them. You own your own creative process, and how you get to your goals will definitely not match up to other writers.

Trust me. A writer can work his/her way out of writers block. It just takes time and constant tending.

 

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Finding Character Voice

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’m armpit deep into writing a story I’ve been toying around with for the last two years. After much research (it takes place in the fairly-distant past so I’ve been beefing up on books from the period), some writing (short sketches and scenes), and a little thought (I know! I’m such a pantser, but now I’m planning ahead?), I’ve decided to narrow down my main characters to three very distinct and different people.

My problem, as I’m sure other writers will admit as their own, is that my characters begin on the written page sounding like me. Which, yes, parts of me are in every story I write, but if you have three people who sound the same telling basically the same story, the reader is going to notice in a heartbeat. What a turn off.

I hadn’t noticed this flaw until my Editor for Life pointed it out to me as he was reading the first draft of the first novel I sent him. Seven characters, six of them women, and they all sounded alike. (Like ME.) Only the male character didn’t sound like me, because I’d based him *roughly* on an author friend of mine – wildly enhanced, of course.

My same-sounding characters had to go through a personality change, so that the readers could differentiate who was who. Granted, this isn’t hard to do when you have a completed 90k+ manuscript, but it does take some time. As outlined by my previous blog posts, the best way to accomplish this is to have each character answer a series of questions, both on physical characteristics and emotional foibles. No two Real people are alike, as are no two characters, even if they are the best of friends.

It’s one thing to come up with a story line, a sequence of events, a beginning-middle-end, but it’s another thing altogether to come up with believable characters who sound fresh and realistic and unique.

In my current work, one of my characters is a young woman in her 20s who has been wronged by her husband. She’s grown up in the 1960s in a traditional family. Like many women of that era, she believes her main purpose in life is to provide for her family (husband), and when she learns he’s flawed, her entire world falls apart.

This character is probably the easiest for me to write. She’s me, through and through. (In fact, I’m giving her my genetics and some of my life events as well as my personality – more on that at a later date.)

The next one is a teenager who has run away from home in search of a better life. She is not like me. She’s brave and pragmatic and open to possibilities. She doesn’t see beyond today, beyond this minute.

She’s so not like the first character I described.

The third is an older woman with a grown child with mental issues and a substance abuse problem and a young teenager. She emigrated from another country and is very old school, like to the point of being sadistic. But this is how she deals with her anger, at being a widow, and at having this adult child who is out of control.

She’s totally not like either of the other characters. In fact, she is so unlike me, I’m having a hard time writing her.

I’m not an actress, but if I were and had to play this woman, it would take me a long time before I could get the nuances of her character down, before I could play her to perfection. One, she’s not very likeable. (I might redeem her at the end. Still toying with that idea.) Her world view is narrow and sharp. I like to think of her as broken glass. She’s mean, too, mean enough where it comes off as malicious.

It takes a great deal of effort to write a character who is diametrically opposed to how the author is. I have to sit in a room and play out her motivations in my head. In essence, I have to become her. Which could get messy. I could become just as mean-spirited and negative as my character. (Just a warning.)

I’m not sure how others find their characters’ voices. For me, this is the only way.

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When THIS Writer Does Something Else

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Summer is underway, so it’s almost time to get back to serious writing.

I’m fond of calling myself a procrastinator, a slouch, a lazy ass, etc., etc. with regard to my sporadic writing schedule. Some periods of time find me pounding away at the keyboard (or in my notebook) like a possessed soul; other times, I’m absent. In speaking with someone who has helped me edit a novel but who is now concentrating on her other business as life coach, she pointed out that we make choices in life. I make choices in life. To write, to not write, to do one thing and not another.

In my case, I’ve been waylaid by the purchase of a Money Pit (more on that later…if I survive it) and also by preparing for the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I have also entered into a major art competition (more on that later…if I make it in). Gardening has also been a huge part of my life.

This afternoon, I have finally finished my spring planting. We had a late start with this year’s non-traditional spring. One day it would hit 80 degrees, the rest of the time we were dealing with frost warnings, so Michigan went from winter to summer in less than a week. It snowed (!) the weekend after Mother’s Day! Okay, so the stuff didn’t stick (thank goodness), but it was still snow.

I managed to plant potatoes during this crappy spring, but as they grow underground (for the most part), I didn’t have to worry about frost. Now my first batch are nearly as tall as I am! The second and third crop, planted three and four weeks later, are beginning to show over their bags. All around me is the promise of good eating: cherries that survived the crazy frost, a few pears, spindly asparagus, blueberries I hope I’ll get to before the birds find them.

1g1h1j

I love planting; I love growing my own food, mostly. Gardening is time consuming; sometimes it feels like a constant chore. I look at gardening as not so much a diversion from writing, but the opportunity to ponder what I’m going to write next. It’s alone time, just me and my little shovel and hours of quiet. As I pull weeds, I think about characters – usually ornery ones that are like weeds. Recalcitrant, problematic, forever bad with no redeeming qualities (at least on the surface). Characters are the fruits of our labor; if given a good start, lots of fertilization, sun and water, they’ll turn out wonderful and real.

1l1e1c

Digging in the dirt can be a very Zen experience. Worms and spiders remind you that we are surrounded by layers in a complicated life. Much like our protagonists. Writers have to carefully construct these characters with layers that our readers can peel away, and in the process perhaps learn something about themselves or at least be entertained.

Is it any wonder that I gave one of my characters the gardening bug? 🙂

Gardening also beautifies our dreary (especially in Michigan seven months out of the year) lives, much the same way reading a good book brightens our lives.

1a1d

But now that my last radish seed has been covered with soil, it’s time to move on. The gardening gloves will be stowed away, my fingernails finally clean for more than a minute. I’m making the solid commitment to put my musings onto paper. Hopefully, in a way that makes sense to the reader!

All things fall into place. The choice is yours.

And mine.

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Sometimes a Writer Has to Live

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Wow, this has been some year.

Sickness, death, destruction. Problems, big and small.

Sometimes I feel like I’m my own firehouse. I’m putting out fires left and right. I’m rescuing cats out of trees and running my own EMS station, 24/7/365. (Yup, no rest on major holidays either.) I’m running from one thing to another, and while I’m in the car, calling on yet another problem. (Blu tooth, no hand-held for me. And I never text and drive.) When I fall into bed, I’m exhausted. Sleep comes too easy.

No wonder my hair is gray.

Yes, I appear to be a maniac on steroids and Ritalin. But here is a Real Truth: People are not wired to do everything. There is no such thing as a super-mom, a super-woman, or a super-person, except perhaps in the world of Marvel.

Yeah, yeah, I bought into that super-woman stuff years ago when my kids were little. I tried my best. I practically lived in my car with those kids, racing from one event to another. After a while, the frustration increases as your sense of self decreases. Things boil and bubble until there’s an explosion (or implosion).

I’m pretty old and not the smartest, but I have learned one thing: Living is all about moderation.

Living is also not about beating yourself up. There are plenty of opportunities out there to get beaten up by outside sources. 🙂

It’s hard, but I try not to beat myself up about anything, including writing/not writing. Some of the time, I’m the most prolific person out there (or it might seem so because I never throw anything away!). But most times I’m just plain *lazy* – i.e. otherwise consumed by some other time sucking activity. Sometimes (like in this last year), I’m just too depressed/angry/worried to write.

Some of the creative out there think they must be doing something creative every single day of the year in order to be considered an artist. I’ve heard some claim that if you cannot play music every day, you’re not a real musician. The thought is that you breathe, so you’re a person, and you have to breathe all the time, ergo you must be playing every day in order to be considered ‘serious.’

Hold your horses, Mozart. What about living?

(Speaking of Mozart, although the man was a genius, the guy was a paid hack. Had to do it in order to survive, and he did a horrible job of it.)

This weekend, I opened my inbox with my Medium daily email and find this lovely post by one of my favorite authors (Michelle Richmond) regarding not writing.

Thank goodness! At last someone admonishing would-be writers out there to go to your son’s ball game or watch a movie with your husband! In my case, it’s stripping and refinishing old doors, digging up my yard, wire weaving, or planting potatoes.

Creating art should not be a chore. Your mind has to be clear and open. Yes, you need your butt to be in a chair (although the thought of a standing work station is very intriguing), but the true artist is creating in her head all the time. As I’m out there pulling up bindweed and dandelions, I’m thinking of plot twists and back story. The Notes section of my iPhone is full of tidbits of information, things I will use later on when the dust settles.

We are so busy in this modern world, attacked by Internet and TV and pretty flashes of content, that we have forgotten how to live. Writers need to live in order for the words to flow and the stories to surface. That’s why I’ve laid off the Twitter and the Facebook and Instagram. Sometimes you have to be you, not the content.

Which brings me back to the video I posted at the top of this, Words, by the BeeGees. In my 6th grade mind, I felt the pop group was telling me to write a story.

Because it’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.

🙂

 

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Poetry Unearthed: Treasures There for the Digging

Posted by Joanne Huspek

elvis

It’s amazing what one can find rooting around in your house.

During a little spring cleaning, I found this poem I’d written a long time ago, between pages 136-137 in this Elvis Costello song book.

This book belongs to my now-husband. We met each other in 1983, at a time when Elvis Costello was all the rage. Such sassy lyrics and danceable rhythms! (I give it a 95…) He wasn’t punk, he wasn’t rock, he wasn’t country or blues, but a strangely pleasing British combination of everything. My husband plays the piano and I was learning at the time. These were difficult songs for a beginning pianist.

I’d written more than a few poems for my husband during the courtship period. I must have written this poem during then, and dropped it into the book, probably hoping he’d fall upon it by chance. (That’s what romantics do; hope for a random slice of kismet to strike the object of their affection just so – preferably during some lonesome dark and stormy night – and thus jump start the yearning.)

(It’s so funny that I titled the poem “Ironies” – because I think of Elvis Costello as being entirely ironic.)

I’d sent my husband the other poems I’d written to him. We dated long distance for two and a half years (Twin Cities – Detroit), before the Internet and cell phones. My long distance bill used to kill me, so I wrote letters nearly every day. But I don’t remember writing this one. I must have slipped it into the songbook soon after finishing it and forgotten all about it.

If a diamond is trapped inside the earth and never sees the light of day is it still a diamond?

I think so.

And now, with a little editing brought to you by 28 years of fermentation, I bring you (parts of):

 

Ironies

Dreams were once so easy, always crystal light,

rich and verdant like springtime glens,

purer than April snow melt.

But that was such a long, long time ago,

so long that you forgot when.

Life was a simple game when you were but a child

and dreams will lose their luster

as you struggle all the while.

Child of promise, child so bright;

they think you don’t need help.

They leave you to yourself.

Oh, how they want you to grow straight and tall.

Sometimes it’s a wonder to grow at all.

On a trip to see your sister

you marveled at the comfortable little house,

overgrown with plants, the babes all around, the simple style.

You long to own that easy smile.

But easy doesn’t come to you the way it comes to everyone else.

You choose to sleep alone at night

though men profess to love you some,

your heart is frozen in time and space

you’re holding out for that special one.

He’s beautiful and funny,

sensitive and wise,

but can he love that stranger inside you,

that darker spirit that lies within?

What will they say when it’s over and done

before your ashes meet a Rockies’ sun?

Will the eulogy be

“The woman was a saint.”

“She was a martyr too.”

For she waited her love

for someone like you.

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Writing for Fun OR Profit

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Please take careful note of the title. Writing for fun OR profit. Not fun AND profit. Because I’m not sure you can do both at the same time.

I had been thinking a lot about this recently. I had quite the nonproductive last nine months. A reverse gestational period, if you must, where ideas didn’t germinate and blossomed, but withered and died. Not to beat a dead horse to pulp, but personal issues, work issues, and attempting a major re-write of a completed novel that I thought was ready to go killed the creative spirit in me. I didn’t write for eight months (except the occasional blog post) and couldn’t create any jewelry for nearly that long.

I became grayer over the rewrite (which wasn’t a bad idea, just not a good idea for this particular story) and sunk into a writerly depression. I over analyzed my characters and my work to where I couldn’t see past the task at hand. I began to hate them, and myself. I didn’t know why I was attempting this rewrite. (Add some spice? Reflect current events? Maybe turn my story into something Hollywood would love?) And a funny thing happened: the story that took me only 30 days to write and that had given me great joy while doing so was now becoming a huge boulder hanging from my neck. I groaned every time I opened the file.

In other words, writing was no longer fun. (I hope lightning doesn’t strike me dead. Better find a ground wire.)

I’m not saying life should be a bowl of cherries and a day at the beach (I know, cliches, give me a break) every day, every minute. Life just isn’t like that. It’s freakishly hard and heartbreakingly sad. Life never goes the way you think it will. NEVER. Even when you’re my age. Even if you have money. The problems just get more complex, therefore taking more time and energy.

It’s the same with work. Take my day job (please!). I really don’t mind it. It’s interesting. I get to problem solve. I find that I’m good writing business letters and can keep a fairly mean spreadsheet, formulae and all. I interact with customers, which sometimes is a joy. I keep my husband (kinda-sorta – the jury is still out on that one) in line so that his part of the business doesn’t fall to pieces.

But if you find yourself (as I do) being ground to powder by the mean customers, if your aggravation exponentially increases with every bonehead move your employees make (over and over, and over), if you put in seven days a week and your rewards don’t seem to reflect the effort you put in, if the self-satisfaction isn’t there, it’s difficult to be engaged.

So.

I have since decided I have to stop looking at both my day job and my writing as a profit making venture. I have to see these activities as creations I have control over, and not let the outside world rule what is happening inside my head.

You see, I was much happier writing for the sheer fun of it. When I started writing online about ten years ago, writing was an exercise in joy. The ideas flowed easier. I often wondered how I could blog post off the top of my head while working, and realize that it’s because I was having a great time doing it. Sometimes I go back to those posts and think, “Damn, that was good!”

Perhaps some people can write for fun and profit, but I can’t. And since it’s that way for me, I’d rather write for fun.

🙂

booksandauthors

P.S. The other day, I received an email from BookBaby (where my eBook sales originate) informing me that they were making a deposit into my checking account. I hadn’t ever withdrawn anything from my BookBaby, ever. Surprise, surprise, it was a tidy little sum! Not that I will become greedy and think to write for profit again. Nope. I’m writing for unexpected gravy.

 

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Writing Class: What I Learned From Michelle Richmond

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Recently I took an eight-week online master writing class with Michelle Richmond. You know her. Author of The Year In Fog. And other wonderful works.

words

I am a HUGE proponent of taking classes. I’ve been known to take music classes (piano, violin), art classes (both in college and after), and plenty of writing classes online. For God’s sake, I’ve been in the same wire wrapping class for the last five-plus years, and I’m not ever giving that one up.

It’s not that I’m stupid or dense. It’s not that I’m a stalker (although I felt that way at first with Michelle, because I have to be one of her hugest fans. I have almost all her books including the reference material and writing workbooks).

Life is a constant state of learning. Learning keeps your grey matter hopping. I can almost feel the electrons coursing through my brain when I’m in any class. I want to learn. I need to learn. And I’m not so full of myself that I think I can’t learn something new. The nice thing about being my age (finally! a plus!) is that you appreciate education and you’re in the class for your own benefit, not to score a grade. If you join a class, you are reaching out, for guidance, for knowledge. As I told my kids when they were attending college and experiencing difficulty, the instructor is there for YOU. YOU extract whatever information he/she has, whether he/she wants to give it to you or not.

Classroom situations are nice. You get to compare and contrast. You’re allowed to try and fail, and learn from your mistakes (or as they say in the jewelry world – design change). But if you’re a working adult, it’s hard to carve out time for a class for which you must physically be present. Online classes might not be the answer either. It’s tougher with online classes because you rarely see what the others are doing. At least with the master class, we had a once-weekly video meeting. It was so helpful to interact with the other students, to have Michelle offer her words of wisdom in real time, and to read other writers’ work.

To be a good student, you have to be able to listen to criticism, weigh it, and to make adjustments. This is especially true of anything having to do with the creative. I remember taking my first drawing class at the University of Minnesota. I’d always been so-so at drawing and painting, and hadn’t yet declared a major. Drawing was a class to fill my schedule.

My professor liked my work. He would stand behind my easel, his hand on his chin, and after a few minutes, offer a comment like “Try this.” or “Consider this.” Having only taken art classes in high school where it was a free-for-all, I was unused to constructive criticism. I learned then what a good thing it was to get input on your work from different eyes. I had always believed I was meh– not good enough. This professor actually convinced me to major in studio arts.

Now…for Michelle Richmond…

The first thing I learned? Read your email. Then reread your email. I missed the first video class because I somehow thought the meeting time was later than it was. (East Coast/West Coast mistake. Happens all the time, as my son lives in San Francisco. I love when he calls or texts me at 3 in the morning Eastern, just as I’m sure he loves it when I call or text him at 7 a.m. Eastern.)

The second thing I learned: A series of scenes does not a novel make. I’ve been working on various incarnations of this story for the last couple of years. I have a handwritten book full of scenes. I know what is going to happen – sort of. I really needed to figure out a beginning, middle, and end. Since I had three characters, I had to decide which was the protagonist. (I’d started out writing all three as the protagonist.) Through the weekly exercises, I learned who was the strongest and who was expendable.

I also learned there will be one common thread that draws the three characters together. Now I just have to weave the story line. I call this the “Story by Quilt” phase. Pick one thread and move it slightly to the next patch.

The third thing I learned: Don’t be afraid to do something out of the ordinary. Our last assignment was to write the final chapter. I hadn’t even thought of the final chapter, much less what I was going to do with it. What I learned in skipping over to the end was that 1. it was enormously fun to write, and 2. I’m going to rethink my original rather foggy plans for the end.

I also learned (also from a workshop at the San Francisco Writers Conference) that it’s preferable to have a title that depicts what may happen in the story. I’m not bad at writing a story, but I stumble at headlines and titles. (Remember, it took almost the two years I wrote Finding Cadence to finalize the title.) My new working title will be Bridging the Intersection of Truth and Casualty. Subject to change at any time, of course.

I needed those eight weeks with Michelle. I needed the kick in the pants, because my writer’s block was becoming a nuisance. I needed the camaraderie of other writers, to get out of my little cave. I needed to hear encouraging words from strangers regarding what I was doing.

Classes are learning experiences. They can also save your life.

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