A Writer's Process: Paula Harmon

One November day I wrote a story.  Was it razor sharp in its dissection of the human soul?  No, just silly; it had Santa in it.

I saved it on the cloud rather than the hard drive.  Don’t know why.  Next morning I couldn’t access my story without a password I’d forgotten.  All that effort and the world was safe from reading it.   

At my first job interview, I answered “where do you see yourself in 10 years” with “writing” as opposed to “progressing in your company.”  Didn’t get that job but didn’t become a writer either. 

Paying the bills, building a career, raising a family - yada yada.  This year, I decided to change.  I entered a competition, posted stories on Facebook, signed up to do Nanowrimo (write a novel in a month) and a Flashnano challenge: 30 days of short pieces.  By 2nd November, I decided I was mad.  I had my novel outline, but the prospect of writing 50000 words while working full-time, ferrying teenagers, remembering to talk to my husband and running a home seemed impossible. 

I took my laptop on train journeys, wrote in my lunch break, ignored all but the most essential housework.  On one train journey a young woman behind me read over my shoulder as I typed and started a conversation.  I was so deep in 1943 that when she spoke, I screamed out loud - just a little embarrassing. 

Originally, I wasn’t convinced I would be able to summon up one story let alone more than thirty.  But the truth is that although coming home from work after a bad day, driving offspring around, meeting my daily Nanowrimo target and trying to think up a story including the word “orange” seemed too much -

I got on with it anyway.  Meanwhile in the background drums and pianos were practised, teenagers & husband offloaded and dinners burned. 

At the end of November, with my husband's support and encouragement from friends, I’d written 50000 words (just), all 30 shorts plus a few more. I felt more relaxed and fulfilled that I have done for years. 

The flashnano challenge was over and I missed it so much I set myself a different one - an advent calendar of flash fiction.  I’ve put 25 words in a jar (candle, angel etc) and I will pull one out each day and write a little piece prompted by each one. 

I just don’t want to lose the momentum.  I have learned that all the excuses I made (too much to do, too much noise, everyone will be annoyed) were simply excuses. 

By the way - I managed to retrieve the silly story from the cloud - the world is no longer safe from it.

Being A Better Boss

When I write, I divide my inner world in two. There’s the writer, and there’s the editor. Often they have an employee-boss working relationship.

The writer writes from passion, from the whole body experience of the material, from the instinctual.
 
The editor ensures the writer’s health during the immersive process, keeping me on track, despite the many doubts and uncertainties. It keeps me safe when I’m lost from the ‘real world’. The editor is the inner voice that reminds me to get up and go to my desk. It encourages me when my enthusiasm flags. It keeps perspective on what’s being written, so that an authoritative and balanced opinion can be offered. It uses the carrot or stick approach, depending on what is needed to get the job done.
 
Mostly, these days, the editor knows to keep quiet as I actually write. As in any workplace, conversations happen in the kitchen as I (we) wait for the kettle to boil.

Editor: So how did that go for you this morning?
Writer: Not bad. Bit lacking in motivation. But it’s moving forward.
 
 Or,
 
Editor: I see you’re feeling tired. How are we going to manage that? Perhaps a twenty-minute nap now, would, overall, result in a more productive day?
Writer: That’s not a bad idea.
 
Or,
 
Editor:  You’re nervous, because you don’t know where to go with this scene, but how about, instead of a fifth cup of tea, we just get something down, and then make some hot chocolate as a reward?
Writer: Well, if we must. 

The reality of being a writer is that there is often no one else to read and comment on our work.
 

When you don’t have an external boss, then creating a kindly internal boss, has benefits.

 
This is how it came about...As a university tutor of creative writing, I have offered feedback on thousands of stories, poems and biographical pieces. What I’ve found is that, quite often, the receiver of the feedback had already spotted the strengths and weaknesses in their work. But they’d felt they needed an expert to confirm it.
 

The bottom line is that we don’t trust ourselves.

We don’t trust that we know how to tell stories innately and instinctually.
 
I decided, with my own writing, to have confidence that I knew. I saw for myself that when I trusted my whole body sense, my gut instinct if you like (as opposed to a dis-embodied, thinking-mind opinion) that I too, almost always knew what was needed to make it into the best piece it could be.  It was, what I now call the internal editor, who piped up in spirited fashion with those spot-on answers.
 
Generally, I consider my workplace team to be a successful one. We get things done. But this January, the writer has been dragging her heels, and threatening to strike. In response, the editor has come in harshly, in order to keep me at my desk.  They have been reactive towards each other, and that’s resulted in the writing feeling, at best, like trudging through thick mud.
 
The disharmony has not been pleasant. I’ve also been aware that the writer’s behaviour probably represents an organic need that is not being heard. I believe we ignore those messages at our peril. So, with workplace relations turning increasingly sour, I decided, yesterday, to be a better boss to myself. I called the two of them in a room (metaphorically speaking), and we talked.
 

I asked the writer- what do you need that you aren’t getting?

The writer spoke. At my insistence, the editor listened.  She said,
 
The editor is judging, and editing with every sentence. My words are juddering and stilted. It’s cutting off the flow. I want to be told that I’m doing a good job, that I’m doing well, that I’m a good writer. And I want the editor to stay quiet, until the first draft is done. Then, we can look together at how it’s working.
 
The editor agreed to pull back a little, and to be more validating, in return for an immediate return to work. Now, I’m pleased to say, we’re back on track.
 
 

The Monthly Writing Prompt

Write a dialogue between two characters. As I’ve done, you can use your own creative process to inspire this. You might be surprised what comes out!
 
You can also write a fictional story, about a parent/child, or employer/employee interaction.  
 
 

A Writer's Process: Rachel Contini

When my beloved childhood neighbourhood was demolished I found a story. 

It was a small run of streets in the north of Liverpool, I loved growing up there, it was a place where everybody knew everybody and you could leave your front door open.  The houses were small but warm and friendly and the people the salt of the earth.  

The demolition project was called Pathways and it would become notorious thanks to George Clarke questioning the need to rip communities apart when the existing houses could be refurbished for a fraction of the cost.  Thus began the empty houses scandal. 

The personal stories behind my old neighbourhood were heart-breaking.  People were lied to from the start. 

They were promised like for like housing which never materialised, they were given less than the value of their homes which left them financially stretched when it came to buy a new one, and when the Pathfinder scheme ran out of money mid project some residents were left adrift in the middle of derelict streets, flanked by run down houses infested with rats and a target for vandals and arsonists.

I decided their story needed to be told.

That was the easy part.  The difficult part was finding out details.  I contacted a few former residents and asked for their story but they were not really forthcoming, they were probably a bit suspicious of this lunatic who’d suddenly appeared in their inboxes asking them to relive their heart-ache. 

So, with an absence of facts I did the next best thing – I made it up and bashed out a first draft.   Then I received some good fortune – I always believe if you get down to working the universe will help and that’s exactly what happened.  Somebody set up a Facebook group for former residents to share memories, I shared mine and suddenly a host of people I’d grown up with contacted me, and they all had the back story. 

I re-wrote and re-wrote filling in the blanks and fleshing out the story until I felt like I had something with real heart. 

I doesn’t have a happy ending, real life often doesn’t, but it has a hopeful ending.  People always have an amazing ability to pick themselves up and carry on; I wrote the ending I wished for these incredible people.

It’s now being considered by BBC Writersroom.  Watch this space!

What Are We Frightened Of? Part 1

When fear attacks...

This month so far, I’ve read three draft autobiographies. Each one has left me awe struck at the author’s bravery, their determination to recover from emotional and physical hardship.

Each of them has been trying to convey a life of great profundity and richness, of wild passions and strong desires.

In each one the wildness has been there, somewhere behind the words, struggling to be heard, roaring in its cage. In each one, to a greater or lesser extent, the writer has been afraid to release it. As we all are, some or most of the time.

Take this example:       I was walking along the street; my heels click clacking on the concrete paving. I smelt exhaust fumes. I heard horns, engines revving in traffic. Then I saw him, the ONE, the only person I hoped never to see again.       ‘Hello’ he said.       The next day I remembered back to that encounter….

Cutting away from the action in this way, just as the tension, emotion, or drama rises, is one strategy that us writers employ (usually unconsciously), to stop ourselves from having to make contact with memories that are just too hard to face, emotions that are too painful to feel again. Because what happens if we feel that deeply? We implode or explode, we destroy ourselves, or others, don’t we?

So, to be a freer writer, and a more liberated person, try this:

Always move towards events that carry emotion, tension or drama. Write them out fully. Linger. Let the reader feel.

Don’t cheat yourself, or them, of an opportunity to feel deeply, to process those emotions by letting them move through the body, and swell and dissipate in their own good time. Cutting to the next scene is for mundane events, events that are not significant to the emotional journey of your hero.

Learn to notice when you cut away. And when you’ve learned to spot it in your writing, try to notice it in your conversations, and in your thoughts too. What’s in the white space between your paragraphs? Write and let me know, please.

This blog was first published on October 22nd 2012

A Writer's Process: Cherry Gilchrist

Just over a year ago, I sat alone in the house, struggling to write a book proposal.

I was on a deadline to turn out a detailed outline for a book on the Tarot, along with a sample chapter, and marketing back-up too, such as the ‘why my book is different’ pitch. I had an invitation to submit to a publisher in the USA, so all I had to do was develop the idea.

I say ‘all’, but it’s one of the hardest parts of writing a book. I mostly write what I call ‘creative non-fiction’, a mix of personal experience, imagination, ideas, and real-life observation, rather than a dry compilation of facts.

I’m with biographer Michael Holroyd when he says its high time we found a better word rather than slapping a ‘non’ label on it.

But nevertheless, it is not the same as novel writing and needs a firm hand in the early stages to map out the course of the book. I need to work out how I am going to develop the ideas; the blueprint that I lay down now will inevitably guide the way I write the book later on. The outline embodies my vision, and must sustain the spirit of the book.  So it’s worth trying to get it right at the beginning.

The proposal writing usually marks a new stage for me, when I’m well along the line with gathering thoughts and material and am ready to shape them.

I’ve learned over the years that ideas take their time, and you can’t hurry them too much. But I’ve also learned to love deadlines, which concentrate the mind wonderfully and stop me from being too precious about my work.

So here was a deadline – the publisher’s December acquisitions meeting – and I took the opportunity to write the proposal on a solitary retreat at home, while my husband visited his family in Yorkshire. I do not normally shut myself away as a writer – I’ve written on planes and trains, in hotel rooms, cafes and odd corners. But on this occasion, I embraced the chance. The days fell into a pattern; I interspersed long hours at the keyboard with blissful walks by the river Exe in the late autumn sunshine, and cooked myself simple meals -  baked potatoes, fried eggs and chocolate featuring prominently on the menu! And I resisted the temptation of diverting to admin or domestic tasks. The windows will always need washing – leave them until another day.

At the end of the five days, I had finished the proposal; the publishers liked it, issued a contract, and in early 2015 I started writing ‘Tarot Triumphs’. I wish that were the end of the story!

But some months later came a bolt out of the blue – they were going out of business.

It was a huge shock, but I hastily revised the manuscript into a ‘good-enough’ state, and after further submissions, it was accepted by Red Wheel Weiser. Publishing is tough: a writer has to be philosophical, and my view is that some you win, some you lose, and better not to become embittered along the way. I’m keeping my fingers crossed now that there won’t be any further glitches, and the story will end here.

Tarot Triumphs: Using the Tarot Trumps for Divination and Inspiration, by Cherry Gilchrist Red Wheel Weiser, to be published Fall 2016.

The Caged Writer Roars: My Writing Process

Bridget in a moment of post-writing relief

This is a photograph of me at 4pm this afternoon. I started today feeling almost the most miserable I have ever felt, and have ended it a little better. Can you see my relief?

Today I finished a first draft of chapter 1 of 20 chapters, of what is provisionally (and slightly long-windedly) entitled Tracking The Wild Animal: A journey to living in freedom and creativity.

You’ll find it here.

Before Christmas I realised, with regret, that, given my other work commitments, I wouldn’t manage to seal myself away for the large chunk of January I’d planned. So, I decided that the best approach was to devote one half-day per week to writing a short chapter of this book on our wild creative nature. I hope to finish the first draft book in 20 weeks.

What has been incubating for two years now, is an 18 step theoretical approach to moving from block to flow in work, relationships and creative pursuits.

It’s a broadening out of the theory I use when working with writers through Wild Words. This systematic approach uses the metaphor of ‘tracking a wild animal’. I came up with this approach over several trips to track wild animals in the Himalaya’s, and Pyrenees.

Recently, in my own life, I’ve been rather echoing today’s writing subject ‘The Caged Animal Roars’. Yesterday, forgetting the key to my office did not help my general mood. I did the first 2 hours work on this chapter outside before someone let me in. Luckily, being outdoors always makes me feel better, and that happened yesterday. It was extraordinarily mild for a January day, and I could hear the river rushing in the gorge.  My eyes were able to rest with each pause in the writing, as I looked at the mist hanging over the far mountains.

I’ve spent two months trying to work out how to write this first chapter. I knew that if I could get that right, the rest would know where to go. It’s been unremittingly horrible. There is nothing that makes me more depressed than floundering around unable to find the heart of my writing.

One sticking point here has been how to bring the theory together with my personal experience, as well as how much to write fiction, and how much autobiography.  Reading back what I’ve written, I see it’s about half fact, half fiction. Which is which, I’ll keep to myself for now.

The other major block to the process has been the complexity of the theory. There’s the vast terrain of our relationship to nature, to ourselves, and to creativity to explore through the book. And I won’t begin to name all the psychology theorists that will inform the story as it goes on.

With the completion of this first chapter today (albeit extremely rough at the edges), I feel released. That’s the addiction of writing. I know from experience I’ll remember this thrill and forget the horrors of the process. Oh well. At least I live with passion and vibrancy!

Thinking of you all as you beaver away in your solitary writing spaces this week. Wishing you great freedom of word and expression. 

A Writer's Process: Gabrielle Mullarkey

CARRIED BY THE CURRENT, NOT SWEPT AWAY

 

I’ve been thinking more about the creative process in writing since I finished my MSc in creative writing for therapeutic purposes, and started volunteering in the day centre of a local hospice.

Here I meet lively, diverse men and women who share details of their lives, and then kindly allow me to recreate their stories on paper.

Stories shared with me have included looking after a pet parrot, travelling overland to Kathmandu, a first kiss in wartime Glasgow, and winning a ballroom dancing championship.

 

Each life and story is brimming with richness, sometimes lying untapped inside the tellers themselves, who might listen politely to my little spiel about ‘writing in the hospice’ and then say, with natural modesty rather than dismissiveness, ‘I don’t think you’ll find anything that interesting about me.’

It has been a steep learning curve, as well as a privilege and responsibility, to recast these riches and return them to their keepers, (hopefully) true to the originals.

Talking to people who may never thought of writing down their stories, I have found that the creative process, a dynamic, fluid, living thing – a slippery rabbit – is informed not only by this collaborative interaction, but also by the environment (radio playing in the background; drinks trolley coming round; storytellers with an eye on the door or an ear cocked for the reflexologist or beauty therapist’s arrival) and my own sense of commitment and discipline to respecting and rendering.

Alongside this process, I have maintained other strands of writing – my own commercial fiction and my self-therapeutic ‘mental doodling’. I dip into as many forms as possible: short stories, articles, poems, interior dialoguing and the maintenance (a garden metaphor is appropriate) of my website.

In the hospice, it’s a challenge and a risk for people who tire easily or are living with overwhelming life changes to gift me their precious moments and stories, and a challenge for me to do justice to their words. We are mutually alert to signs of their fatigue and my RSI!

 

I think we’re also mutual gift-givers, so it’s important that I don’t treat encounters in this context as a resource or a repository of multi-layered anecdotes to plunder fictionally at a later date.

Equally, because so much of my commercial fiction writing is a private, solitary endeavour, each encounter with another storyteller has made me feel part of a larger creative continuum. I have slipped in and out of moments, edged between cracks to celebrate hidden blooms and tried to – as a workshop leader put it recently – let myself be carried by the current without losing sight of the shore.

 

www.gabriellemullarkey.co.uk

@authorgabrielle

www.metanoia.ac.uk/msccwtp