Writing is Like… A Walk on the Beach

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Ah,I’ve been reveling in my week in San Francisco spent on the beach (mostly) before the San Francisco Writers Conference which starts later today (Thursday). Oh, and I’ve been editing, but as we know editing is not my favorite activity so it’s been a long sloggy slog. Still, I find inspiration from the beach and the ocean, so I’ve been jotting things down furiously. (Thank you, iPhone, for your note app.) Hopefully, I will have lost a few Midwestern pounds by the end of my trip.

As a beach walker and someone who dabbles in other arts such as drawing and jewelry and metal work, I’m always on the lookout for found objects that I can use in my work. Interesting shells, very small sand dollars, unusual and small pieces of driftwood, and now sea glass – I pick all this up for a later installation. Or maybe I’ll get it home and decide it wasn’t worth the five calories to bend over and pick it up, I don’t know. I won’t know until I begin to build whatever it is in my head.

It’s always a wonder: where did this piece of glass come from? Where did this limb originate? How far did it travel? Across the Bay, or somewhere thousands of miles from here?

It’s not always a successful day of scavenging at the beach. Sometimes you can walk for miles and not find a thing of interest. Just sand, just waves, just seagulls. Wild wind, sunshine, maybe dense fog. (Although some of those things are interesting, you just can’t take them home with you.) Sometimes the debris looks toxic or dangerous and um, no… I won’t touch that.

Other times you arrive and start walking and all of a sudden things twinkle, and you bend down to find THE MOTHER LODE of sea glass. Or you may happen upon an area that is littered with sand dollars, all perfectly formed from the size of a quarter to bigger than your hand. Or you’ll be the only one on the beach to find a starfish curled up and dying.

Walking the beach is like writing a novel. First, you clear your head. Then you look around you. You pick up what you think might be compelling and start your story. There may be days when you go back to the beach for inspiration and you might not find any you can take home, but you just might find something intangible that will fit the story somehow. Some beach days are miserable, cold, wet, windy. Others are glorious, warm, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Yet all points are needed. Some finds might be garbage, but you remove the unwanted once it’s apparent.

I don’t really believe in “muses” but I need the beach, just as I need the mountains. Both seem to stir the creative deep inside.

The first step is to get there; the second is to submit.

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The Unraveling

Posted by Joanne Huspek

One thing I learned in the last few months: Starting something new is infinitely easier than taking something apart.

Why did I think it would be different with a business? One we’ve spent three decades and more working in. There’s a bubble above you thinking “This will be a cakewalk. This will be so easy.” Add, subtract, multiply, divide – it’s all numbers, right?

No. Unraveling anything takes more work. Look at marriage. Anyone with a pulse can get married with very little hassle. But once you start talking divorce, you’re thinking about alimony, child support, visitation, the house, dividing the possessions, who’ll get the dog, etc. You don’t think these things walking down the aisle; if you had, you might not have made the trip all the way to the minister in the first place.

I realized that I love beginnings. I love writing new stories; I love spinning the tales and seeing where my words will take me. Once the story is out, however, it sits in my hard drive (now my external hard drive, my stories had clogged up my laptop) where I might think about editing. Then again, I might not. The pressures of everyday life take over and I might not open a manuscript for months. A year once.

This is not acceptable! I should finish a few things I’ve started. (I should finish them all, but let’s start in baby steps.)

Well, the hassle and strain of the last few months are behind us now. I am officially retired from my Day Job (YAY!), and will only return sporadically in the next week to tie up loose ends. My next step is to unravel some of those stories that have been taking up space in my hard drive.

It’ll be tough, tougher than writing a first draft, but I think now I can can give writing ALL of my attention.

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I Made It! Hello 2018!

Posted by Joanne Huspek

the page after the last day 2017

The calendar rolled over to another year while I was sleeping soundly and peacefully. (I don’t like to say “Happy New Year” in advance. What if I die before midnight? The person I said it to might have a happy one, but if I’m dead I’m likely not a happy camper.) I’m too old to stay up all night. If I make it past nine, that’s a late night. The last time I saw the ball drop was in 2000 – Y2K. I had to stay up to see if the world was going to end or not. (It didn’t.)

I spent the entire month of December doing nothing but scribbling furious notes on my NaNoWriMo effort of November. I thought I might want to open the file and start working, but I know from experience that most writing has to marinate in silence for a time. You can’t hurry it, you have to let the words age like a fine wine. A couple of weeks doesn’t do it. A month is long, but sometimes not long enough. A year is probably a good number. 🙂 Actually, twenty or thirty or forty years is a fairly good expanse of time. When a writer looks at aged work, it’s with a more objective eye that when the writing is fresh and new. Kind of like the difference between looking at your brand new baby and looking at the same person as a teenager.

So! I survived!

Resolutions: I don’t like to call them that, because to resolve to do something doesn’t seem quite strong enough. Self-cattle-prodding is more like it. Or cross my heart and hope to not die. I only want to accomplish one thing (clearly I will not lose weight or eat sensibly – life is too short!), and that is to make an entry EVERYDAY in my Hobonichi. (I thought about daily blogging, but that’s a huge commitment. I did it for my experience, My Life in Instagram 2013, but that was all Instagram photos.) I nearly filled my Hobonichi Techo last year, missing only a handful of days. This year the journal WILL BE completely covered from the first to the last page.

I will try to do more on this blog and others I maintain, but I can’t promise. Who knew that life would be more complex after the kids are gone? With any luck, the current hurricane of events will settle down by the end of the month and then I can resume the rest of my life.

The other big project I’ll be working on is the Great Purge (continued). Got to get ready to move out of the massive house into something more sensible for two people, a dog, a cat, and a Steinway. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

And I promise to release Virtually Yours Forever. Because that one has marinated way too long.

Other than that, I’ll be living clean and light. The best way to go.

Happy New Year, y’all. (Now that we are firmly into 2018.)

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2017 NaNoWriMo Update and a Few Other Things

Posted by Joanne Huspek

November 20, and I’m so happy to announce that I have hit over 38K words in NaNoWriMo thus far. (That’s not counting what I’ve written in notebooks. If push comes to shove, I’ll type directly from my written notes. That will account for a few thousand words I’m sure.) It’s a good thing I’m ahead, because Thanksgiving is in 2.5 days and I’m going to be busy. Not only that, but I’m doing an artist market Sunday. My hope is to get so far ahead of the game where a couple of days off won’t be devastating.

While not revealing the story,  I’ve been writing like a fool because I’m really enjoying myself! Sometimes, when I sit down to write, I’m so overcome with nothingness that it’s painful to write anything including a grocery list. I’m here to say that with interesting characters, plot twists I’m surprised I thought of,  and secrets galore, the writing job-gig can actually be fun! Without pre-planning too! Woo-eee!

It’s not a finished product, but I’m happy of where I’m letting the words take me.  It will be enough to work on to perhaps make it a worthy novel – you never know.

I’ve not been this inspired since Virtually Yours.

As for the rest of my life, smashed my hand, put out my back, and have a terrible abscess in my tooth. The weather went from summer in early October to winter by the end of the month. It snowed yesterday! Not looking forward to winter, for sure.

And now…I will continue to write. Might as well while I’m hot.

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October Wrap Up; November Countdown

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Last Sunday, I was at Leon and Lulu’s Books and Authors event, which is always, always a fun time, even if you aren’t selling a lot of books. (I sold a few.) This store is a great place to people-watch (any day, any time), it’s funky and comfortable, and everyone is super friendly. They feed you, they give you coffee, and my couch was to die for. I even made a new friend, a fellow artist from across the Detroit River!

I even survived my 15 minutes of reading time! I chose “The Campbell’s Tomato Soup Tragedy” – my San Francisco Writers Conference First Place Contest winner of 2016 *pats back with own hand*, “Just Before Turning on the Furnace,” and “A Love Story in 50-word Chapters” to read. I was nervous, as it was only the second time I’ve read my work aloud to P-E-O-P-L-E. The first time, last February at the conference, I was sufficiently juiced up; this time, I’d only had coffee and popcorn under my belt.

It wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. There were less than a handful of listeners, and even without a mike, I did okay. (My voice is very low – unless I’m screaming, and that’s just not attractive!) Maybe I spoke too quickly. I know I didn’t emote like Dr. Andy. Later on, I wondered why the stage fright. I regularly karaoke, and do my best at it without alcohol. I’ve learned to belt out tunes from my diaphragm instead of my throat.

Hmm… perhaps this works with reading? I should give it a try.

Still working on the final draft of Virtually Yours Forever. I was waylaid by smashing my right hand into my granite counter top, which resulted in a bruised and purple mess. (Don’t ask how, just know Purrby was involved.) It was entirely too painful to type for nearly a week.

We are days away from November, which means NaNoWriMo! Yes, I will give it the old college try again. I have a story in my head, about sisters who return home when their father dies and old dysfunction and past grievances come to light, ya-da ya-da, and (perhaps) in the end, they kiss and make up. (I say “perhaps” because as you might know, I like my characters to suffer.) I will attempt to make a NaNo post if my word-count will allow.

And finally, fall has finally fallen, after most of September and October feeling absolutely tropical. The leaves are beginning to turn, riots of color. It’s not my favorite time of the year; it’s pretty, but what follows is cold and snow and wind and unpleasantness. But winter is a good time to hibernate and write.

If you want to buy Shorts, it’s available on Amazon HERE. Or, if you want a signed copy, email me at jlhuspek [at] msn [dot] com and I’d be happy to get one out to you. (No, I have not figured out the buy button thing yet.)

 

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Introducing “Shorts”

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Warning: Shameless self-promotion

It only took three weeks of monkeying around with the layout of Shorts (the worst part of self-publishing, if you ask me!). Word of advice to poets: it’s likely your layout will not survive the digital age. Unless you are some sort of computer guru. Me? I’m stumbling around in the dark. If I find an answer to my prayers, it’s probably by accident. Formatting a novel is so much easier. Compiling the material for Shorts was the easiest task, once I found the material.

The hard copy will be printed by CreateSpace (using my imprint), and BookBaby is working on the eBook. Just as I sent my thirtieth edit in to CreateSpace, I received my eBook file. What a mess! Not their fault; again, it’s the poetry that whacks up the way it appears.

The problems weren’t limited to the interior. While my cover was done by someone on fiverr, it wasn’t complete. Tweaking had to be done there too, which is soooooo frustrating. Here again, I am familiar with Adobe products as I use them in my Real Life job, but Fireworks? NO. Trial, error, trial, error. Oh well, it’s how I learn. Just hope I don’t forget when I attempt this again in the near future.

Now I’m waiting for the final proof and then voila! My chap book will be ready to go.

What did I learn?

It’s far easier to write than to complete the after-writing tasks, like editing, formatting, etc. Ugh, and the marketing. As you might know, I’m a rather lackadaisical promoter. NOT looking forward to this part of the book equation.

I also learned that I need some technical skills. Perhaps when I’ve retired from the Day Job, I can take a few advanced classes on Adobe InDesign. Or at least watch some YouTube videos.

I also learned everything takes time. Writing a cohesive book takes time. Editing and re-writes take even more. The rest of it is a time suck for sure. Which is why we shouldn’t waste time (but I do anyway). I’ve learned my lesson, and am going back to the grind, with nary a break.

Signed copies will be available through this web site (once I figure out how to add a “buy” button). I’ll also be at the next Leon and Lulu Books and Authors event, Sunday, October 22 from 11-5. If you are in southeastern Michigan, hope to see you there! (I volunteered to read. 🙂 )

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Out From Under

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I have returned after ten mostly restful days in San Francisco and northern California.

(I know. HOW? How is it that I’ve returned? It’s a major effort to drive back to the airport each time. I’d just as soon stay there.)

My son and I decided to hit up way NorCal and spent a few days in Eureka. We ate too much good food. We explored the redwood forest and spent one day driving up the coast, missing the record breaking 102 degree heat wave in San Francisco, but suffering under the smokiness of forest fires – not from California, but from Oregon.

One thing: I’m especially taken with the tall trees. They are thousands of years old and so enormous, it’s hard to compare them to a regular pine tree. Using a car or my son for scale doesn’t fully reveal the enormity of them. Three hundred feet tall! Imagine, they were there before…anything! This country, other countries, wars, Jesus… And they go for miles and miles in Humboldt county, so majestic and peaceful, just as they were back then. It was a great way to spend a few days.

But…

Eventually, one must return to the *ahem* grind, which is what I’ve been grinding at since I arrived Tuesday. As much as the previous ten days have been relaxing, the last four have been an absolute whirlwind.

One thing I did take away from my mini-vacay is that it is necessary to step away from your work in order to make it better. This applies to Real Life work and creative pursuits. Call it breathing room, call it contemplation or meditation. Call it seeing the trees and the forest. Call it doing nothing and thinking about doing nothing and not feeling the least bit guilty. (I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not the expert.)

All I know is at this moment I appear to be at peak performance, not only at the grind work, but in my writing. Poetry! Scenes! Journal entries! Drawing! The flow has resumed. Hallelujah and pass the margaritas!

Try it. You might not be able to physically go somewhere cool (I rarely take time off), but take ten minutes a day to go somewhere in your mind. Slow your breathing, clear your head. Make it a habit. You’d be surprised at what pops out from under the clutter.

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