Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
I’m an overwhelmed writer who’s been hiding from my writing for a week or two…or three. But not writing makes me feel even more overwhelmed. It’s not a cliche. Whether you’re an artist or not, if you’re not interacting with what inspires you in the world, you’re pretty much guaranteed to make whatever funk’s messing with you worse.
It’s easy to feel burned out these days. As parents and business people and friends and lovers and, yes, creators of things that inspire others, we’re doing more each day and often getting paid less, which means if we want to pay our bills that even more doing looms on the horizon. And our souls can suffer, bottoming out and leaving us in a mental fetal position where we feel we have nothing else to give ourselves or others.
And then it’s not quite winter anymore and not quite spring, and crawling under the covers (at least mentally) and feeling blue seems like a good one-day, short-term solution…until it turns into weeks of letting ourselves off the hook.
It’s so easy to stop interacting with what challenges us and feeds us at the same time. It’s human nature when we’re on overload to scale things back to the bare minimum. We get the day-to-day done that keeps the water coming out of the faucets and lights on, while we’re emotionally absent in ways that at first protect us, but then begin to drain us.
There’s a common ground to find. There’s a balance we need to seek, instead of the oblivion of just turning our creative, vulnerable, softer side off for a while, so it can lick its wounds.
We think backing away from what makes us uniquely us (and the part of us that’s so exhausted, because we’ve put so much of ourselves out there already) is the answer. And maybe for a a day or two, it is. But not feeling stressed (or telling ourselves that’s the ideal) is a gateway drug. For a day or two, it’s a lovely zen. Then it becomes a hideout, and then an addiction in which we convince ourselves that we don’t want to go to that stressed place again. Ever.
Creatively, stress is most often what drives us. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, inspiration, Mimosa Lane, Montlake Romance, reader, romance, writing, writing articles, writing coach, writing craft, writing resources
Posted in Anna's Soul of the Matter | 10 Comments »
Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
I’ve been frozen. My fingers have been still. But my mind has been racing. I’m a writer who’s been in one of those fugue states between projects that is full of thinking and planning and anxiously wondering, but not full of words. They’re not coming. They’re not my friends right now. They want to be now, but I’m mute. They’re jealous and needy and greedy and bitchy, and I’m not sleeping, the way I don’t when I’m on deadline. I can’t write. Not yet. But I will. Soon. Why can’t the words understand that?
I stress about and regress into and resist these times between most every major project. I should be catching up on business and planning. I should be enjoying the peace and freedom of a deadline well met. But I’m angtsty instead. Writing is my natural state. I feel at loose ends and a little like I’m lazy when I’m not. But I’ve delivered three books in a row in the last nine months, and my mind needs a break–whether it wants one or not.
People are waiting for me to get up-to-date on emails and commitments and plans for the rest of 2013. Friends are wanting to catch up, and so do I! But I’m still wanting to hide a bit. Okay, a lot. The pressure hasn’t let up, and I’m not sure it will until the next story is flowing. It’s not natural for me–this down time. But it IS part of my writing, and it’s time I accept that.
I need to conquer this state of letting go that renews and gives me direction and fills me with the hope (often unreasonable hope) that the next book will be magic, just as the last one was (you know, once I’d revised it like 100 times, because I was dreading working on it not to long ago, the same way I’m dreading the new words).
We need to trust the not writing parts of our creative process, the same as we do the writing ones. We need to see that we can’t always be ON, and that trying to force ourselves to be will defeat us in the end. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, inspiration, Mimosa Lane, Montlake Romance, reader, romance, writing, writing articles, writing coach, writing craft, writing resources
Posted in How You Write | 4 Comments »
Sunday, February 24th, 2013
Resting isn’t for the faint of heart. Resting with purpose, that is. Being lazy has its place, no doubt. But resting isn’t all we need, when rebuilding is the goal. Revitalizing. Renewing. Reconnecting with who and what we are beneath the work and the responsibilities and the demands on our emotional selves that drive us to the brink. These are the intricate, delicate bones of real rest.
Good times, bad times, all the time that we spend being and doing and saying what the world accepts we are… Our outward selves are important. But it’s the inner us that only we know how to feed, and it’s our own renewal that only we are responsible for in the end.
To others, we are the combination of everything they’ve seen and heard us do and say, and everything they’ve thought about that person they’ve watched perform for them. But unless we come with our own running narrative (too bad we can’t all live in a novel, right?) others don’t know what we really fee and need and aren’t getting, not unless we tell them. And who wants to be that needy girl, right?
So we muddle through–the kind of muddling that takes a lot of skill and deflection while we take care of our own stuff, on our own, so others won’t see so much of it that they’d get fed up with how demanding we could really be if we let our insecurities off their leash. That kind of muddling can be exhausting. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, inspiration, Mimosa Lane, Montlake Romance, reader, romance, writing, writing articles, writing coach, writing craft, writing resources
Posted in Anna's Soul of the Matter, How You Write | 5 Comments »
Friday, February 22nd, 2013
Ever panic, thinking you might never be able to do what you love again?
Me? I love writing. It’s my job, but also my passion; how I enter the world. And after a season of not feeling well enough to do much of it, I was on a roll in 2012. That is, until the great crash of early 2013.
Hello, my name is Anna. And I haven’t been able to write for over two weeks. Not even a blog post. Me–and I LOVE to blog. Three, sometimes four times a week, blogging is my morning writing exercise.
It’s how I prime the creative pump. It’s the blood that flows first, engaging my creativity, helping me smile or think or dig a little deeper until I’m ready to tackle my daily pages. But ever since I turned in the final developmental rewrites for Three Days on Mimosa Lane the first week in February…nada. The well wasn’t just dry–picture a bunch of two-by-fours nailed across the opening, daring me to rip through them and face the big, bad ugly lurking beyond.
But why? Have the two and a half weeks been about being lazy? Giving up? What about the month before that, when I barely had the energy to complete the TDOML developmental edits and didn’t blog in January, either?
You’ve heard of bone tired. I think I’ve stumbled across the state of being I’m going to call Soul Tired.
Overwhelmed. That’s where we sometimes find ourselves, whether its about writing or family or friends or other commitments that we love but realize we can’t face. Not right now. Not with a smile on our faces and a I’m so glad to be here hug.
When you’re soul tired, you’re disconnected. Sometimes, you’re overwhelmed. But always, always, you’re looking at the world around you and realizing you no longer know or feel your place in it. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, anna's world, Christmas on Mimosa Lane, creativity & inspiration, Mimosa Lane, Three Days on Mimosa Lane, writing, writing articles, writing coach, writing craft, writing resources
Posted in Anna's Novels, Anna's Soul of the Matter, How You Write | 23 Comments »
Sunday, December 9th, 2012
Samantha Perry was all dressed up with someplace to go. Yet it was closer to midnight than dawn in her winter world. Amidst what wouldn’t be a flowering garden for several months, as if a July morning’s warmth surrounded her, she paced another lap around her community’s park.
The sun was due. It would soon be another January day like any other day in their northern suburb of Atlanta. Another harmless moment to get through. Nothing yawned more threatening than getting her sleepy family ready for their Mimosa Lane Monday. But on a scale from nervous to freaked out, Sam had been silently racing toward a meltdown the entire weekend.
Somewhere around three o’clock last night she’d risen from beside her still-sleeping husband, showered and dressed for the day and bundled into the heavy coat Georgia demanded from only a few months each year. Heading downstairs and through her cozy kitchen’s French doors, she’d escaped into the peace that being outside and alone brought her. She’d been night walking for hours.
Opening Draft
Sweet Summer Sunrise
Seasons of the Heart
Book Two
***
It’s a crazy work and personal weekend.
I won’t go into the details, except to say that opportunities are taking off all over the place, and so is the stress, and so is the upheaval in my “away from work” life. It’s usually like that. You never see the good or the bad stuff coming, and you never appreciate the calm until the storm’s upon you.
So, of course, I owe my publisher the second book in the series that’s taking off like no one expected, with it’s Christmas novel launch.And on top of my life being overwhelmed with back-to-back holidays AND promoting a book release that keeps (YAY!) going strong, I’m facing the rewriting of a 380 page rough draft that means so much to me–but isn’t at the point where I think it’ll mean anything to anyone else unless I recraft it over and over and over again, until it’s talking on it’s own.
Publishing isn’t for sissies, my friends.And it’s always about the next book. And the next. And these days, success in digital publishing about having an ongoing series with lots of backlist titles. The only way to do that is to keep writing forward and building into what readers are buying–and somehow maintaining the integrity of your work and stories and characters, so you keep pleasing the fans who are loving what you’ve already done. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, best-selling romance, Christmas on Mimosa Lane, Contemporary Romance, creativity & inspiration, draft writing, drama, dreaming, editing, Emily Dickinson, freelance editor, holiday memories, holiday romance, hope, improvisation, manuscript planning, NANOWRIMO, poetry, revision, Women’s Fiction, writer, writer resource, writing, writing coach, writing craft, writing process, writing resources
Posted in Anna's Novels, How You Write, Publishing Isn't for Sissies | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 3rd, 2012
October and November contest winners below! Thanks to everyone for being so patient. Amazon gift certificates and spooky cereal and even a vintage Trifari Rudolf pin, so check out the list and see of you’ve won. Oh, and my December contest is up–more Amazon free stuff AND I’m giving away a vintage Trifari Christmas Tree Pin just like the one Polly and Mallory love in Christmas on Mimosa Lane. It’s a shorter contest this month, so you can have your tree to wear during the holiday and your gift certificate to buy something special to read during your time off ;o). So be sure to enter before the 15th!
November Contest: Rudolph Vintage Trifari Pin and Amazon Gift Certificate
- The winner of this Rudolph Trifari treasure: Mary Preston, who commented on October 27th.
- The winner of the $5 Amazon Gift Certificate: Felicia Plastini, who commented on November 20th.
October Contest: Spooky Cereal and Amazon Gift Certificate
(more…)
Tags: Amazon, Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, brainstorming, Christmas on Mimosa Lane, Contemporary Romance, creativity & inspiration, Excerpts, Montlake Romance, romance writer, Trifari, Women’s Fiction, writer, writer resource, writing
Posted in What About Everything Else? | No Comments »
Monday, December 3rd, 2012
Look for a October and November contest winner announcement next. But before we go there (so I can link THIS announcement into that one ;o), we continue to celebrate the season and Christmas on Mimosa Lane’s release (currently the #1 Family Saga on Kindle!) with a short December contest for my fans and supporters and blog faithful. This beautiful Vintage Christmas Tree from Trifari, just like the one little Polly loves so much from her mommy’s collection in COML could be express mailing its way to you on December 15th!
To enter, share your favorite Christmas Morning Memory in the comments before December 15th.
Christmas on Mimosa Lane, as a title, is all about the ending of the story: How do Pete and Polly and Mallory make their “perfect” Christmas morning dreams come true? Later today, I’ll blog the second of my Reader’s Guide/Book Club posts about that very thing–what makes Christmas perfect for you, what does your ideal morning or holiday look like, and do the commercials and promotions and more materialistic flood of media messages this time of year make your holiday happier or maybe a little harder to deal with?
To get you started, check out last week’s reader’s guide/book club post: Happy Ever After Holidays.
So, overall, how do your holidays find their way to your hearts and how do you share what’s most special to you… And what does perfect mean in your life, on that magical morning we wake and rush to our trees to celebrate our blessings?
Chat away in the comments for your chance to win a priceless Trifari Christmas Tree of your very own!
Oh, and a second winner will receive a $5 Amazon Gift Certificate ;o)
Contest closes midnight December 15th!
Tags: Amazon, Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, brainstorming, Christmas on Mimosa Lane, Contemporary Romance, creativity & inspiration, Excerpts, Montlake Romance, romance writer, Trifari, Women’s Fiction, writer, writer resource, writing
Posted in Anna's Novels | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
So, you’ve participated in NANOWRIMO. Now what? NOTE: I didn’t say you’d finishedNANO. I saw a tweet from someone yesterday saying she wasn’t going to finish her NANO project this year, and that she was likely never going to finish this book at all. And that’s just sad to me. It’s the worst of what can happen with an extreme challenge like this: demotivation. Or even harder to watch than that: any writer, no matter how new, deciding after a month of dedicated draft writing that she CAN’T do what she wants to with a book–to the point that she’s giving up before giving it a real chance. Don’t do that, my friends. DON’T!
Remember our revision discussions:
ANYONE can learn to deconstruct and rewrite story. It’s always better if you approach a draftingproject with as much planning as possible, at some point WE ALL feel lost while we draft, even multiple-published authors.
I just finished a 3-day writing retreat where I’ve drafted 150 pages. Which just about killed me. And not because of NANO. Because I have a book due–NOW. And sometimes in this business, no matter how much we’d like to for every book, faster has to take precedence over slow and thoughtful and story slowly evolving in its own organic way. It’s an unfortunate fact of our world that getting the next book out sooner rather than later is key to maintaining and escalating reader interest, particularly in a series like the one I’m writing in my Seasons of the Heart books for Montlake. Christmas on Mimosa Lane is selling well now, readers are asking for Sweet Summer Sunrise, and by God I’m going to finish this draft so I can promise them it’s coming on time next June.
The question became very quickly once I’d squirreled myself away from all distractions to create, “Could I? Would I?”
I’ve been drafting UGLY. Really ugly. But there’s also beauty in what I’ve created.
This dark but creative place that crashing a draft out becomes is what I teach students when we talk about Improvisation. The story and characters and community I’m dreaming up as I type like a mad woman (with purpose, because I have the bones of a story outline) have taken over at this point. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, creativity & inspiration, draft writing, editing, freelance editor, improvisation, manuscript planning, NANOWRIMO, revision, writer, writer resource, writing, writing coach, writing craft, writing process, writing resources
Posted in How You Write, Publishing Isn't for Sissies | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012
So you’re in the middle of NANOWRIMO and typing words and pages every day until your fingers fall off and your brain short circuits. But what are you creating? Is it anything you’ll keep once December arrives? Drafting with creative freedom is key in this sort of challenge, but creating with purpose is the linchpin to your success.
Write without constraint, yes. As I said in last week’s How We Write post, draft without clinging too tightly to planning or expectation. BUT you have to revise every rough word you draft. And you don’t ant to have written yourself into so many dark corners and black holes that a finished novel that you can sell will be impossible to carve out of your draft.
How do you lay the groundwork for the “rework” you know needs to be done, while you’re giving your story the creative freedom it needs to come to life?
Me? Remember that I’m a geeky, techno-loving girl who while drafting must continually slap my hand and let go of the overly organized stuff that enables the more analytical side of my brain. So nix on the forms and charts for me. But keeping track of changes I see coming and new things I draft into the story on the fly is my thing. Being analytical while I create is crucial, without allowing the right side of my brain to interrupt the left’s mad dash toward a draft’s finish line.
I’m in the midst of writing Sweet Summer Sunrise, the next book in my Seasons of The Heart series for Montlake, and I’m crashing things as usual on a pretty tight deadline. Layered, emotional, complex things. Four points of view–one of them a child. Community. Romance. Psychological and relationship realism that’s more valuable to me than all the rest. At least three subplots going on at once, and that’s just the external stuff. Internal journeys are even more sensitive to overwriting and wandering, because you have to be subtle about how you share a character’s journey so the reader doesn’t feel beaten over the head with it.
Of course there will be mistakes in my rough draft. I have to learn to accept that and again, as I said in last week, allow myself to write crap for a while so the better stuff will flow, too. A mistake I can always do something about later. An empty page, not so much.
My reality is that the whole package of what I’m writing is too complicated a thing to come together in a single draft.
Yet I need that first draft, so I have something I can revise and refine and rework until the story I’m dying to tell takes shape. So how do I keep up with everything I want to do, but am not quite doing yet, as I draft–without break the delicate flow of my creativity of these first words on paper? (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, creativity & inspiration, draft writing, editing, freelance editor, improvisation, manuscript planning, NANOWRIMO, revision, writer, writer resource, writing, writing coach, writing craft, writing process, writing resources
Posted in How You Write | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012
NANOWRIMO… Write a book in a month… Easy, right? NOT.
How about we just talk about writing every day for a week, for those of us who have trouble with the grand scope of NANO. One day at a time for seven days, how will you draft every day–with PURPOSE–so that by the end of a week you’re motivated and enthusiastic and encouraged enough to go for another week. Screw the month-long pressure of being finished with a completed novel?
I teach draft writing, even though it’s my downfall. I’m currently drafting a new book and it’s driving me CRAZY because I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen next. But I can’t know, not for certain no matter how much I plan what I’m going to do, until I draft the darn thing.
So why all the drama?
Frailty, they name is woman???
No, I’m just a perfectionist who doesn’t feel good when what’s coming out of my mind rough isn’t the golden, beautiful thing I want it to be yet. I have to give myself permission to write crap for a while, in order to have something that I can polish later. Shudder. Not my happy place, but this week I’m going to dive in and rough stuff out regardless.
Join me, won’t you?
Here’s the plan:
- Write into a new story or book every day. EVERY day. Not thinking about it every day. WRITING it every day.
- Don’t get up from your computer until your daily progress is done. Finished. DONE. No exceptions.
- Don’t buy into the excuse that you can’t, because it’s too hard. It’s supposed to be hard, especially when you’re distracted or afraid or worried or mired in some other details of your life.
- Don’t think you’re alone. I’m right there with you. If I can deal with it, you can. So, deal with it ;o)
And you know I wouldn’t leave you floundering without some, hopefully, helpful suggestions to keep you writing, right? (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, creativity & inspiration, draft writing, editing, freelance editor, improvisation, manuscript planning, NANOWRIMO, revision, writer, writer resource, writing, writing coach, writing craft, writing process, writing resources
Posted in How You Write | 2 Comments »
