Action: You’ll Never Accomplish Your Goals Without It

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’ll admit, I’ve been in a bit of a slump.

There are a lot of things going on my life right now. Kids. Parent. Work. Outside influences. More outside influences. Even more outside influences.

I’m normally a pretty upbeat person, able to handle any situation with aplomb, but every person has a top level of stress that he or she can optimally handle. After two and a half months of piling on and more piling on, my creative juices trickled and then shut down completely.

Yes, I’m depressed. I liken depression to an emotional fetal position. Your brain curls up and stops working.

I’m not only fairly upbeat, I’m smart. I went to the doctor. I have medication. I purchased a light box for the SAD that began two months early because of the horrible summer weather we’ve had. I force myself to run/walk on my incline trainer every day.

But creativity… it still wasn’t forthcoming.

This is when I realized the writing won’t get done until I plunk my behind in a chair (or resume carrying my notebook, or keep a pen in the car) and begin doing it again.

Action is the only means by which to accomplish your goals.

I might be minorly depressed, but I still have goals.

So… I signed up for another writing course, starting in October. If forced to complete tasks on a schedule, well, I can do that. I also applied for an authors’ meet and greet at a local chi-chi store, for October 26. I was amazed (and excited!) to be chosen as one of the participants. (Finding Cadence might not be a perfect work of art, but it’s mine, and I’m proud of it.)

In the meantime, I’m using the J. Peterman catalog as a writing prompt. If you’re familiar with the catalog, which was made popular by the TV show Seinfeld, it sells trendy clothing and accessories (think high-end Banana Republic). The catalog features catchy titles, and the first few sentences are usually not about the clothing. Instead, the short paragraphs might refer to a romantic rendezvous in Toulouse or chance meetings with a fetching red-head whose mane glistens in a harvest sunset. This catalog is evocative. Dreamy. I’ve never purchased anything from them, but love the catalog for its literary value.

🙂

So my current mini-writing assignment is to take each title in the catalog and write my own scene. Should take less than ten minutes.

The takeaway from my sad plight is to remember this: You have to ACT. Make a move, any move. Hibernation isn’t going to solve anything. Taking that first positive step might not be a joyous one, but it’s a step in the right direction.

After all, you can’t claim to be a writer until you write.

Posted in books, editing, Finding Cadence, Joanne Huspek, people, reading, rewriting, womens literature, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , Comment

What To Do When The Writing Dries Up

Posted by Joanne Huspek

This summer has been brutal. Exceedingly so. If you’d like to read about it, go here, otherwise save yourself some misery and continue on.

I have a confession to make: because of what was going on up there, I haven’t written a single word since the end of June. It’s not so much writer’s block as much as it’s been a writer’s sabbatical. I suppose I could call it anything, including laziness, but naming my lapse a sabbatical sounds so much more forgiving.

What have I been doing in the meantime? I mean, besides worrying about many things, including wondering if I’ll ever put another good idea down on paper? Lots of things. Many things many writers could try doing if they find themselves in a similar logjam of non productiveness.

1. I worked out. Physically, I mean. I ran every day. EVERY DAY. I know, I can’t even believe it myself. I forced myself upon my NordicTrack and pushed and pushed. Running (or fast walking, which is mostly what I do) makes your body breathe in regular intervals, not in gasping breaths. While I on my incline trainer, I emptied my mind. Or tried to. The jury is out on how successful I was.

2. I read. A lot. If you can’t write, you might as well read others’ writing. Luckily, I am never in need of books; my To Read pile is now more than a mountain, it’s a mountain range. Reading keeps the brain engaged. While reading, you are less likely to worry about your own situation, you’re taking a dip into another world. That’s what I need right now, other worlds.

3. I cleaned. Yes, I purged. Might as well, right? I wasn’t getting any writing done, and the energy had to be disbursed somewhere. While cleaning the basement (which hasn’t been cleaned since 2004, when we moved here), I located my old notebooks of poems and other writings. So it was win-win-win situation. Plus, I hope to make some serious garage sale cash next weekend.

4. I worked with my hands. Gardening, making jewelry. It’s been mostly too wet to garden, and my mind is too consumed with problems to make any jewelry of real import. But… the type of jewelry I make depends on many small parts. I used this fallow writing time to construct a lot of small parts. When the creative juice kicks in once again, I’ll be good to go.

My days of non-writing are drawing to a close. A true writer never stops writing and really never has a block. My last sabbatical lasted 20 years, and I know this one won’t take that long. I know in order to get out of any funk, you have to force yourself into action, and that’s what I’m doing today. I have a book of writing prompts and I’m going to start at page one and work myself as far as it will take for me to pick up writing again.

Sometimes you have to kick yourself in the ass when your writing dries up.

 

Posted in books, editing, music, violin, writing, women, life, NaNoWriMo, people, querying, reading, womens literature, writing | Tagged , , , , , Comment

Part Time vs. Full Time Writing, or Why I Must Cut Myself Some Slack

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I recently read a blog post about a woman who finally “retired” from her Real Job and began working full time as a writer. After all, you can’t really say you’re a working writer until you start doing it full time.

While I instantly cheered her good fortune, a part of me ignited with jealousy. I would move mountains to quit my day job and write hours every day. I am heading in that direction, but it’s a slow slog. I happen to like a few things in my life, including food, a roof over my head, and basic needs like health insurance. I’ve never been very good at being a starving artist. I like food too much.

After my initial envy died down, other, more dangerous emotions flared up. Feelings of incompetence. (“So, why haven’t I made enough money by now so I could retire and do what I want to do, instead of what I have to do?”) I felt trapped by my situation, depressed that when I do sit down to write, those minutes are stolen. And yes, there was some anger, directed at myself for being such a boob as to let myself be dictated by such things as food and a roof over the heads of me and my children. Anger because I don’t have the luxury of time. And sadness, because I wonder about all the stories that have come to me and have gotten away, ever since I began writing stories. I felt sick to my stomach. I wondered if I would ever finish anything ever again.

Then after my anxiety attack (also brought on by some personal issues my family has been having), I decided there was only one thing I could do: Cut myself some slack.

Writers should never compare themselves to other writers. My reality is not the same as anyone else’s.

I can only do the best I can with the time that I have. Since my creative time is limited, I have to prioritize my to-do list. I have to pack as much as I can into the smallest bit of time.

Someday (like when I hit the Lotto or if a wealthy, non-existent uncle dies), I may have unlimited time to devote to writing. For now, I’ll plug along as best as I can and make my strides in baby steps, not lopes.

Am I a “real” writer? Even though I’m part-time?

I think so.

Posted in books, DIY, editing, Finding Cadence, indie publishing, Joanne Huspek, people, querying, reading, rewriting, Self publishing | Tagged , , , , , Comment

The Excavation of Words

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I don’t know how I’ve been struck with the ambition, but I am in the middle of deep cleaning and purging my house, in advance of a monster garage sale I plan on hosting late in August.

I’m not a consummate slob. I tend to veer toward the lived-in but not dangerously germy look. Deep cleaning is something I haven’t done in the ten years we’ve been here. Just consider: a four-bedroom house with plenty of nooks and crannies, a basement full of boxes (most of which haven’t been opened since we moved), and a walk up attic bulging with the hastily packed mementos of my children’s school years. (Yeah. I didn’t oversee that operation, and I should have.)

Back at another place I wrote for online, an orange, hazy, huge toxic bubble, I remarked in a post that I had misplaced my folder of poetry, and asked the pressing question, “Where the hell is it?” The resulting comment thread blasted me for being a dumb ass, and how the hell would the Internets know where my poems were?

Even back then, my feelings were rarely hurt. Just temporarily slapped silly. I imagined I’d thrown my folder out by accident (I grew up in the Ice Age, and had only the typewritten copies, having not had the time or inclination to put the work on an actual computer, where my words could be backed up on a flash drive or by Carbonite), or maybe the guy we had staying at our home as it was being sold decided to run off with my silly scribblings.

Eventually, I chalked up my loss as a learning experience. My teenage and new adult angst-ridden lyrics and poetry forever absent, never to be enjoyed by posterity.

(Now I back up in several places and pay Carbonite for the stuff I’m apt to forget.)

Imagine my pleasant surprise last weekend. After fighting years of cobwebs and nearly retching over an army of dead bugs, I opened a box labeled “Kids Books” to find my folder of poems prominently sitting atop well-loved copies of Pat the Bunny and every book ever penned by Mercer Mayer.

Win! (clean basement) – Win! (possible garage sale windfall) – Win! (my book of poems). I momentarily died and went to heaven.

I spent an hour reading them. Most of my “poetry” was set to music. I played the guitar back then, and wrote simple songs with (what I thought were) tender lyrics about unrequited love and loss. Reading the words brought back the music, and I found myself humming. Most of my songs were god-awful, music and lyrics, but some of it wasn’t half bad.

What was most interesting that my writing voice back then isn’t that far removed from my writing voice now. The excavation of words cements the fact – in my mind – that I was destined to write.

Now, to celebrate my wonderful find, I will regale you with one of my favorites, written after a trip to Sioux Falls, SD, where we lit sparklers during a midnight tornado warning after ingesting Black Star.

 

Black Star

 

his grandpa was a cowboy, he said

you nod in silence–

your dreams are riding the range.

 

a little wine, a little smoke

helps to ease the loneliness,

shake off the chains —

lose those midnight blues.

you laugh and joke,

ha! your smiles are plastic

flowers molded from pain.

and still you choose

too much wine and smoke

the strawberry madness.

so you’re backed against the floor.

from another galaxy, he leans toward you

and shouts in a foreign frequency

heyareyouallrightdownthere?crazybroad!

o-zoned again.

 

lonesome cowboy,  roll me in your arms

just once.

i know i ruin everything good

but sometimes one kiss is all i need.

 

what space tripper? you’re returning home?

but you’ll soon return to ride the range

blue skies your rolling prairie

unlimited, weightless, darkened void.

you’re always searching for the light

in a heaven that gives no easy answers,

in a heaven where the sun

is just a black star.

October 28, 1978

Posted in books, DIY, editing, indie publishing, rewriting, womens literature, writing | Tagged , , , , Comment

When Life Throws a Barrage of Lemons at Writers

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’ve sort of been absent and silent on the Internet lately.

Oh, I’ve been on (a little) but I haven’t been commenting (much).

People who know me know that I’m not just a writer. I own a business, and we’re in the middle of our bread and butter season, meaning a 12 hour work day is not unheard of. I have a house which is currently undergoing renovations – let’s just say the dust bunnies are multiplying faster than the real bunnies. I have a yard in sore need of weeding. I have children – yes, they are grown, but they have problems of monolithic proportions. I’m married to a man who is not the healthiest person on earth and I can’t get him to make a follow up doctor’s appointment re: his Christmas Eve pulmonary embolism.

So in the face of a rainstorm of lemons, my writing has kinda-sorta taken a back seat.

Except for participating in Christina Katz’s 21 Moments Challenge (since February) and goading my ED for Life regarding the edit to my sequel to Virtually Yours, I haven’t been writing as per usual.

I’ve been writing, but not in a linear projection.

I’ve filled a notebook with pencil scribblings, a page and a half or so each day. A moment here, a moment there. I’ve been using my angst over certain situations as fuel. I have dissected my broken heart and used words to describe the agony, 500 words and 20 minutes at a time. I’ve written passages specifically meant for works in progress. (Good Lord, there are a LOT of them.)

Writing in this way is not advised. I prefer to have chunks of time (at least three hour blocks) dedicated to fleshing out my stories. However, I’m giving myself a one-time pass for using the patchwork tactic. Partially because it seems to be working, and partially because I *think* there may be a light at the end of the tunnel.

In the meantime, I have a notebook of moments, scenes, dialogue, sketches, rants, that I can draw upon later.

After all, summer’s almost over. When I finally snag an afternoon of solitude, I’ll be prepared.

Lemonade, anyone?

Posted in Uncategorized Comment

Finding Inspiration Everywhere

Posted by Joanne Huspek

While I feel writing is my artistic outlet, there are times where producing actual writing is hampered, by real life, by other interests and responsibilities, by the lack of time. This happens to be one of those two week periods where finding a good, solid block of writing time is just not possible.

It’s not that I’m lazy – well, yes, I’m kind of lazy, although I’m trying to reform myself. It’s not like I’m lying around eating bonbons and watching daytime TV (which I guess is now NOT soaps and might be Judge Judy). I work – a lot, in fact, it’s a holiday and I’m taking a break from work right now (and the phone is ringing off the hook! Shouldn’t they be barbecuing or something?) I have a huge house and a bigger yard that I maintain on my own (with the help from the other half), and there are other commitments that eat into time. It’s not unusual, in fact, you could say that outside influences are a prevailing factor amongst us “struggling” artists. It’s a monumental struggle to create.

Still, you can find inspiration everywhere.

I force myself to do writing prompts. I’m currently doing 21 Moments (I’d link you, but this month will be the last set). Short writing prompts are the easiest. They take about 30 minutes to complete, perfect for those days where a block of three or four hours just doesn’t exist.

Even without the prompts, life gives you plenty of opportunities to explore your creative side. I have a huge vegetable garden, and have had to devote many days recently (thank heavens the days are sunny and clear!) to tending it.

At my age, I rather enjoy gardening. There’s something organic about the human hand digging in dirt, getting rid of the weeds, planting new material and seeds. There’s an order, a certain Zen about it. It’s the circle of life, and hopefully in a few months, I’ll be able to bring the fruits of my labor to the table. In the quiet of the early morning hours, I can entertain entire conversations in my head, play out plots and scenes, and think about the larger picture.

During breaks, I scribble down the meat of the moment. I’ll uncover it later, and use it in my writing.

It might seem strange, but I find cooking gives me a similar artistic charge. Many modern people think cooking is a bore, that it takes a lot of time, that you can nourish yourself a lot quicker through a drive-through or with ready-made meals. Not me. Home cooking takes a little forethought but it’s not difficult. There’s a care and love in making a meal, and the machinations always translate into tasty literary morsels. In fact, I’m working on a story with food as an underlying theme.

(I used to be able to write at work; unfortunately, things are more stressful now than they used to be.)

Art can be born of any action. The artist has to take a germ of an idea and go from there.

Any art takes a commitment. The artist has to be able to carve out time from the day to create.

It’s a daunting task, but you can find inspiration everywhere.

Posted in books, editing, Finding Cadence, indie publishing, Joanne Huspek, people, querying, reading, rewriting, Self publishing, writing | Tagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

And Now a Few Words That Have Nothing to Do With Writing

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I am currently armpit deep into a MS with a beginning and a middle but no end, and waiting on my Editor for Life to provide feedback for another finished novel. My head is full of [too many] words. So I guess I’ll just unleash a rant on a completely unrelated subject.

Equality and the Fairness Issue

For some reason, there’s been a lot of emphasis put on the “virtues” of being “equal” or “fair.” I really don’t get it.

I know. I’m old. I’m a freaking dinosaur. I’m definitely not hip. I’m so opinionated that I’m politically incorrect. I’m also busy with my own pursuits; I don’t have time to luxuriate in new (maybe imagined?) slights.

There seems to be some consensus that if only the playing field were level, people would be happy. If only minorities could get a special dispensation for being minorities, they could get into college. Or if only the Evil Rich One Percent would give away all their money, the poor wouldn’t be poor. Even our President and our Pope says we have to do something about income inequality.

If only we could get special consideration for our shortcomings, no matter what they are.

If only, if only.

(Let me say right here, right now, that I’m several shades of minority, I’m a woman, and I’ve been on the dole – for three months, the worst three months of my life. So I’m not an over-privileged white person who has never had to struggle.)

It’s not fair! *stomps foot* Remind you of something? Like a headstrong toddler who wants candy NOW or a defiant teen who wants a later curfew? As if demanding “fairness” will make the world right.

The world isn’t right; it was never right. It’s not going to be right, ever.

Life is not fair, so what?

I might be in the minority, but the purpose of life is not to get everything you want. The purpose of life is to work for everything you want. It’s to take your struggles, puzzle out a solution, and come out on the other side a better person.

The past might be a bad thing, full of heartbreak and injustices. So what?

At what point do you drop the past and journey into the present (and the future) on your own two feet?

One should build (positively) on the mistakes of others, instead of falling back on the negatives of the past.

And here, for my own personal rant of things that aren’t fair:

1. It’s not fair that my ancestors were Native American. It’s not fair that my great-grandfather had to take my grandmother (when she was a toddler) and hide her in the northern bogs of Minnesota to escape the Bureau of Indian Affairs and their plan to put them on a reservation. It’s not fair that for much of her life my grandma couldn’t vote, hold property, or drink alcohol because she was 1/2 Chippewa.

2. It’s not fair that the male members of my Greek grandfather’s family were killed by the Turks, and that he had to travel across the ocean all by himself to start a new life in America.

3. It’s not fair that my father had to join the Army to escape poverty. It’s not fair that after he married my mother, she had to wait in the immigration line for two years and accumulate 4 inches of paperwork to come here and become a citizen.

4. It’s not fair that I had to quit college before finishing my degree. It’s not fair that eating and putting a roof over my head became more important than my education.

5. It’s not fair that my health insurance is so high (even though for an old lady, I’m in fairly good shape) that I’ll probably have to work the rest of my life just to be able to afford it.

6. Speaking of that, it’s not fair that I’ve worked since 16 (actually 13, if you count the time spent working for my father in his gas station) and that I’ll NEVER be able to retire.

7. It’s not fair that I have to pay taxes. It wasn’t fair that my tax dollars couldn’t fund a decent school system and we had to pay out of pocket of our kids’ education, or that our tax dollars aren’t enough to repair the city-owned sidewalk in front of our house and we’ll have to pay for that ourselves. Or that we pay exorbitant fuel taxes to keep the roads up, but they’re still like driving on the moon. (I wouldn’t mind taxes, if I could see a return on investment that wasn’t lining some millionaire politician’s pocket with retirement possibilities.)

I guess I could throw a couple more trivial unfairness issues on that shit pile, ones that have to do with writing. It’s not fair that I don’t have unlimited time to write, or that I don’t have a wonderful agent, or that I’m not traditionally published, or that I’m not sitting on a pile of writing-related money.

*********This part of unfairness rant over. It didn’t feel good, so it was likely not worth it.************

My husband (who is very wise) says that for some the whole “fairness” issue is not one of leveling the field, but rather it’s borne out of jealousy. Whipping out fairness (or unfairness) is the easy fall-back explanation for everything not right in your world. It’s a way of blaming everyone else for your woes, instead of working toward fixing the problem on your own. You can give people whatever they want, but you can’t give them happiness, or equality. These things come from within.

As for me, I’m going back to doing what I do best: making my own world better, despite my shortcomings, my history, and my circumstances.

And I’ll be happy no matter how unfair life is.

 

 

 

 

Posted in books, editing, indie publishing, Joanne Huspek, NaNoWriMo, people, reading, rewriting, Self publishing, writing | Tagged , , , , , , Comment