2012

When I was in grad school, we had project period contracts, approved by our mentors. I found that it helped a lot to focus in on what I really wanted to accomplish. After, some of us continued, but missed most of last year, so I started this year with a new one. How to do it? Below is one that has some of my tasks and objectives for 2012. Not all of them belong in public, hence the gaps, but it will give you a better idea of what I’m talking about. I left January’s pretty much intact. Make your own, sign and date it then exchange with another writer or give it to someone who will hold you accountable. It helps.

Establish your goals for the next 5 months, including the books you want to read. These should be craft books or fiction that will help your own work. When I was working on my comic novel, WRESTLING ALLIGATORS, I read Nick Hornby, Carl Hiaasen, etc. List those books at the end. It will help your writing a lot if you annotate them and see what you learned, what could inform your writing or what you want to avoid. Then submit that annotation to AnnotationNation.com and let other writers know what you’re thinking, how you work, what you find valuable. Anyway, after you’ve decided what you’d realistically like to accomplish and the reading that will support it, then break it down month by month. Which book are you going to read each month, how many pages will you write either per day or week, include updating any blogs or websites you maintain, include how many submissions per month both to agents and journals to keep you circulating your work. Keep your activities to 4-6 monthly tasks. My list of objectives is longer than usual because I have some things in the works and because I’ve done a number of contracts. Start slow, but challenge yourself. Also, do not beat yourself up if you don’t meet a couple of your goals. Just adjust for the next time.

In case you’re wondering, I was in the Citron cohort (referred to below) while attending Antioch (one of The Atlantic’s top 5 low residency programs). We still check in with each other every Sunday and they’re a tremendous source of support for me.

Post MFA Project Period Contract

NAME: Diane Sherlock   

TERM:      Winter/Spring 2012

PROJECT PERIOD: From Monday, January 2, 2012 to Monday, May 30, 2012

Post MFA Objectives:

• Continue to produce works of fiction

• Write critical analyses of literature

• Reflect on the place of creative work in community, culture, and society via my blogs and websites

• Raise visibility as an author

• Continue to develop a professional literary career

Project Period Objectives:

1.  Finish the polish of African screenplay

2.  Read at least a novel/book a month

3.  Participate in the Citron post-MFA conference

4.  Continue with blog and branding ideas

5.  Continue with Annotation Nation

6.  Apply to writing residencies and other interesting opportunities

7.  Sell WRESTLING ALLIGATORS novel

8.  Develop marketing strategies; continue to submit novel excerpts, short stories and flash fiction to literary journals

9.  Finish volunteer commitment, continue support in Ghana and Kenya.

10. Draft notes for the next novel; travel for inspiration and research

11. Develop TV series

12. Finish co-written book with Y

Based on the learning objectives, identify the activities for this Project Period:

Finish African screenplay & register with WGA

Edit WILLFUL IGNORANCE, format, submit to Smashwords 

Edit GROWING CHOCOLATE, format, submit to Smashwords 

Develop TV series, write synopsis and character list, meet with X for background info

Read from personal book list; annotate THE FAMILY FANG

Give African screenplay to V 

Date:  January 31, 2012

(part of a goal above)           ________________________________________

   (ditto)        __________________________________________

Update websites           

    (another from above)       _______________________________________

    (and one more to achieve your goal)       _______________________________________

           _______________________________________

 

Date:  February 28, 2012

           

           

Check status of submissions           

Brainstorm new novel            

           

Read from personal book list            

Date:  March 30, 2012

           

           

Update websites           

Read from personal book list with 1-2 pg annotation           

           

Date:  __April 30, 2012

 

           

           

           

           

           

Date:  May 30, 2012

List readings to be completed:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

(add more if you’re a fast reader)

 ______                                          _______________         

Signature                                              Date

What do you think? Will you try a contract? Please report back if it works for you. And feel free to post your objectives in the comments. Happy New (Writing) Year!

 

 

 

 

2011

How was your year? Any resolutions for the New Year? If I may: Finish your book! Or start writing the one you’ve been meaning to. Or write another. Get it done.

What was 2011 like for me and where do I want to go in 2012? Still pondering. Here’s my year in review:

Wrote 2 screenplays, housesat for 2 friends, went to JPW in the spring and a Navy-ND game in the fall, plus London, Kenya, long hours of volunteer work, pitched my novel in NYC, put out another on Smashwords. Thought I had ADD but when I went primal and off grains most of the time, didn’t need drugs, just fish oil and better vitamins. Queried agents and publishers, submitted and entered contests, applied for residencies and very little of it came to anything. Still, I believe in this novel and the screenplays and am not giving up. Was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Started dating, started the Steve Jobs bio, starting realizing I need to spend more time reading and dating. But not at the same time. Stopped going to the gym and got a pullup bar. Helped a friend after her knee surgery then up to see my brother after his liver cancer diagnosis. Had met some of the celebrities who passed, but… no one close to me died this year…. Went to the theater, went to concerts, went to church, heard words of wisdom from one of the wisest, smartest men I’ve ever met in a tiny one near Kibera. Heard nuns at dawn singing like angels. Had lunch with women with profound neurological disorders, fed one named Joy, heard a briefing by human rights attorneys, met an economic anthropologist, walked the slums of Dandora and Kibera, sang and danced and rejoiced with Kenyans and the Masai. For the first – and last – time drank cow blood, tried goat intestine soup and ate brains (not at the same meal because that would be gross! heh) Learned a little Swahili and a few words of Maa. Became an honorary Masai, which was a lot more appealing before they put on the full court press of haggling. Loved the majesty of the Masai Mara in sun and rain. Saw the Big 5 plus endless herds of wildebeests, a shy hyena, ostrich, zebra and giraffe strolling red oat plains, lion cubs playing, a lone vulture above scattered fields of white bones. Had a drink at the Hippo Bar on the Mara and the Library Bar in Hollywood. Finally made it to the top of the Empire State Bldg. Watched revolutions and news of bin Laden’s death and Downton Abby and lots of movies and of course ND football; went to gamewatches & drank a Nutty Irishman while the Irish threw away another game and had a Bloody Mary while the 49ers won. Ignored the Chargers. Made new friends, saw the end of one friend’s marriage and the beginning of another’s. Tailgated for the first time & learned I might have a talent for Flip Cup, but not Beer Pong. Attended my first doctoral dissertation defense and celebrated a wonderful young friend getting his PhD. As usual, it was the best year for some I know and the worst for others. It was, on the whole, one of my better, yet bittersweet years. I was blindsided and disappointed and amazed and complimented and ignored and celebrated. I saw more poverty, more suffering, than I have in a long time, but also more joy and hope right in the middle of it all. Laughed more than perhaps any other year. Went to more parties. Me and mine are healthy and happy.

That is a blessed year.

 

on North Korea

The news of Kim Jong-Il’s death reminded me of an article I read about six or seven years ago, about a man who escaped North Korea, aided by Christians. I wish I still had the article. It struck me not only because it was a powerful story, but also because there was a local family at my kids’ school who had escaped North Korea. The man in the article was imprisoned for trying to provide humanitarian aid (for details from a rare Westerner allowed into N Korea, there’s an article at Mother Jones). For obvious reasons, the article did not provide his name or some key details, but it prompted me to write a rare poem, Can one man make a difference, which I read at Beyond Baroque.

Can one man make a difference?

I cannot tell you his name, only that he went into North Korea in winter

He cried at the bitter cold conditions and gave them clothing

I cannot tell you his name when they began the interrogation

but the name of his savior is Jesus

Can one man make a difference?

His crime against the People’s Republic of North Korea

Was to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ

The hopeless and starving saw a ray of hope

The sick and the dying saw the face of God

He told them the names of the great I AM:

Jehovah-jireh (the Lord will provide)

Jehovah-rapha (the Lord who heals)

Jehovah-ra-ah (the Lord my shepherd)

He cannot tell you the name of the man arrested for stealing

beaten until he begged for death

Released.  And then arrested again

Rationed to morning beatings with thick bats

Rationed until his diarrhea became uncontrollable

Rationed to eating dirty rags used to clean toilets until he died.

Can one man make a difference?

I cannot tell you his name

When they arrested him again.

Only that he had hope, he had the Word

He had been to the mountain of spices

54 more days knowing kicks and blows of judo experts

54 more days knowing the living corpses around him

54 more days knowing the young woman sentenced

to 3 years for 1 Bible.

I cannot tell you the name of the man

Beaten and twisted and starved in the bitter cold

Until he could not stand

I can tell you he did not renounce his God

Do not throw the word torture around like a beach ball

Do not use the word torture when you mean interrogation

When you mean inconvenient

When you mean incivility

When you mean insensitive

Can one man make a difference?

He will tell you Jesus did and the Christians who paid his debt

But he cannot tell you their names

He will tell you they bought his freedom

He will tell you he would have died to save their money

I cannot tell you his name

Only of his apology for using that money to return alive

Only of his gratitude to be alive to share the love of Christ

As an enemy of the state of North Korea.

 

and then we came to the end

heh

…but not of the blog! No, the end of your novel. How do you know when you’re finished? Last night, I had dinner with a group of writers and one reminded me I’d said I knew I’d finished my novel when I was so sick of the thing, I couldn’t go over it one more time. Well, there is that. But there’s also experience and feedback from your readers.

If you’ve gone over your manuscript 10-20 times, corrected the grammar, polished on multiple levels (sentences, paragraphs, chapters, sections, plus imagery and sensory details) checked for your personal writing tics (phrases, adverbs or adjectives that you lean on too heavily – do a word check for “just,” “really,” “suddenly” and so on; as my friend said, those are the “ums” of the literary world) and read the entire manuscript out loud, you might be finished or close to it. If your readers light up, saying you have something, that you’re close, and you trust them to tell you the truth and not what you want to hear, you can send excerpts to literary journals and see what kind of response you get. If you can afford it, hire a professional editor, preferably someone who’s taught literature and composition. Do your best to assemble a team who will inspire you to bring your A game, who will push you to do better and do it with kindness and generosity. Do the same for them if you’re exchanging writing/reading favors.

The final test comes from Rob Roberge – does your story reach a point where it could open up in a new way? That is where you want to stop. That will protect you from the “tie it all up with a bow” pat ending. You certainly don’t want a sentence – much less a paragraph – that sums up the book or the plot or the theme. Trust your reader.

By the way, the novel, And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris is a fun read.

 

how to raise a writer: UPDATED

"The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a luxury it becomes...how soon and...easily our dream-life and our material life become...so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, anymore." ~ Mark Twain

First, issue the disclaimer: you can’t really set out to raise a writer. The real question is what goes into the creation of a fiction writer? I will say I’ve noticed that my writer friends roughly fall into two categories: offspring of writerly parents in a relatively healthy atmosphere and those of us who grew up in dysfunction central, people without a voice who took refuge in books, inspired to try it ourselves.

If you hover, if you monitor every movement of your child, chances are the only book they’ll write is the one you don’t want them to. Writers, well, we like to be left alone. To daydream, to scribble, to figure things out and finally, to write. My advice on child rearing – teach them to work hard, but let them find their own passions. There are some areas where it’s better if you feel called and the creative arts are among them. It’s hard. It’s not “Deadliest Catch” hard or brain surgery hard – no one will die if you write a bad book – but there’s typically a lot of rejection and it’s not something you ever have down. Every novel is a new experience. But therein is the joy.

What was your journey in becoming a writer? Was your home supportive or not so much?

UPDATE: some of what I’ve been blogging about in terms of 12 things happy people do. Good advice for writers!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Spiraling in control

This morning I had a brief exchange with another writer about stories and endings. It’s easy to write someone going downhill because it’s easy to go downhill. People do all the time. It takes effort not to. But whether you write about someone’s rise or fall, only a satisfied audience creates a hit, that is, connects with your story. People always remember how you make them feel. True in life; true on the page.

Going down is easy. It’s easy to write about destructive and self-destructive characters: addictions, laziness, not paying attention, there are all kinds of ways to go down. These are the stories where life sucks and then things get worse. Well, hooray. There’s nothing to hang on to.

What about the stories of people who pull themselves out or handle misery with humor or style? Those are the ones that seem to last, that resonate the most with people. And I think they are also the most challenging to write. If a character completely changes, the audience won’t believe it. Same goes for the “happily ever after” ending. Rob Roberge (yeah, I’m going to quote him again because he’s the best writing teacher around) made a strong case for a good ending being where the story can open up into a new place. If you can master that, you will avoid the trap of the Hollywood ending as well as the kind of ending that makes readers want to slit their wrists in despair. My friend’s agent asked for an ending where the reader is somehow assured the people in the story would be okay (which suits that story). I’m not saying you can’t write tragedy. Funny and sad go together. Tragedies happen and there’s usually a tragic element in the most memorable stories. Speaking of tragedy, you should know what it really is and for that, I give you David Greenspan (it’s only 2 minutes):
http://www.getty.edu/global/video/gettyplayer.swf

Consider something besides the currently popular downward spiral. Consider the upward spiral. That doesn’t mean your characters won’t suffer. Think of an autumn leaf taken up by the wind. It can be a harrowing journey, but harrowing doesn’t always mean down. It takes time, understanding and a tolerance for learning about human suffering – something our culture is only too happy to try to deny, fix or avoid. But any good novelist knows that when their characters try to deny, fix or avoid the suffering they’re experiencing, well, that’s when things get interesting. And when you explore that, your readers will remember how you made them feel.

 

take care: UPDATED

get a free hug!

Do you take care of yourself? It’s important no matter who you are or what you do, but it’s also important for the writing itself. Your writing will do better if you the writer get enough sleep, some exercise, some snuggles or hugs, and time to daydream and ‘refill the well’ as Julia Cameron put it. I’m housesitting for a couple of artists and it’s a treat to be surrounded by art. I don’t take enough time out to go to plays, concerts, museums, galleries, readings, get a massage, etc.

Two other authors are talking about very different things, but both tie into this. First, Steven Pressfield has a great piece about some of his hardest years when he was learning how to write and the results were less than impressive:

Was I doing good work? Hell no. Everything I wrote was crap, and mainly I didn’t write at all. I had nothing to say. I had no point of view. I knew nothing and thought nothing. But still I was desperately driven. I’d work, save money, take a year or two and write a book. I say “book” but they weren’t books; when friends would read them, the look on their faces was excruciating. They were mortified.

Any of that familiar? Read the whole thing and save it for the hard days and those days will come. Will say, my closest friends had better poker faces! I also didn’t show anyone my earliest work until a guy at college asked to see a paper with the remark, “If you won’t let me read it, how will I ever get to know you?” (note: I was also painfully shy and so didn’t talk much). He said it with such kindness and genuine curiosity, I handed it over. Can’t say enough about kindness in this process. Anyway, even if you approach is steadier, it is usually a long hard slog to get your writing where you want it, where the reader enters the ‘fictive dream,’ and that takes us to Aaron Gansky’s latest on how to do that. I’m right there with him – when I read a book or watch a movie, I want to slip away into another reality. Creating that? A bit harder than receiving it:

As a writer, your job is to create a world that is tangible, experiential, and then hide yourself among the bushes so those who walk through the world cannot see you, cannot hear you. There’s nothing worse than a hyper self-aware writer….

Most are subtle traps we fall into, namely melodrama and over-writing. This is why subtlety is so important; it removes the writer from the forefront of the reader’s mind.

Read the rest for the ‘how to.’

Routine can be a great friend in getting past blocks and getting the writing done. Take care of yourself, establish a healthy routine. Which reminds me, there is that long association of writers and drinking/drugging. It’s possible to be creative, but it’s not necessary to the process (no matter what excuses you make for it- it’s not) and it shortens your career dramatically. Novelists can work all their lives, but add drugs and/or alcohol to the mix and you’ve got maybe 10 good years.

Do something nice for yourself today. And write something amazing. Keep going.

UPDATE: Here’s Haruki Murakami on taking care of yourself as a novelist (especially when you’re writing 1,000 pg novel):

Murakami’s cool benefits from an un-nerdy background running a jazz club in his 20s, and his equally un-nerdy Ironman routine. As he detailed recently in his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami rises at 4am on most mornings, writes until noon, spends the afternoon training for marathons and browsing through old record stores and turns in, with his wife, at 9pm. As a regime, it is almost as famous as his novels and has the clean, fanatical air of a correction to the mess of his 20s. It is also the kind of discipline necessary to crank out 1,000 complicated pages in three years.

To Murakami, built like a little bull, it’s a question of strength. “It’s physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.”

His habit of repetition, whether a stylistic tic or a side-effect of translation from the Japanese, has the effect of making everything Murakami says sound infinitely profound. He has written about the metaphorical importance of his running; that to complete an action every day sets a kind of karmic example for his writing. “Yes,” he says. “Mmmmm.” He makes a long contemplative sound. “I need strength because I have to open the door.” He mimes heaving open a door. “Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It’s a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door. So it’s literally physical strength to open and shut the door. So if I lose that strength, I cannot write a novel any more. I can write some short stories, but not a novel.”

Is there an element of fear to overcome in those actions every morning?

“It’s just routine,” he says and laughs loudly. “It’s kind of boring. It’s a routine. But the routine is so important.”

The whole thing is worth reading.

 

RIP, Steve Jobs

 

the primacy of story

Gorgeous sentences, breath-taking images, metaphors that lead to a flash of insight… there are all great things. But are they the most important? Go read the series Lisa Cron is running at her site, Wired for Story, “Everything You Learned About Writing is Wrong.” At first, it bothered me. I love great writing, but she has a point: we read and tell each other STORIES. It is first and foremost about the story and we writers can forget that as we learn the craft of writing (and it is important to master the craft of writing – I still laugh at the image of a high school English teacher I know hurling The DaVinci Code across her living room after a few paragraphs, cursing the level of writing). My first pleasure in reading was getting swept away into another world. I was not crazy about the world I was in, so escape was blessed relief. Your readers want to get swept away into the world you’ve created. Tell them a great story. Then go back and rewrite it until your prose is sterling.

It’s not an either-or proposition – the great books are great stories well-written – but start with your story. Sometimes it will come to you in a piece and sometimes you will discover it along the way, but pay attention to Mark Twain, “I like a good story well told.” He went on to add, “That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”