Follow Your Passions

During a writing class I attended years ago, the tutor asked us why we wrote. There were various answers, most taking the high road of feeling the need to write, having something to say or wanting to entertain with our writing. The tutor smiled and said it was perfectly acceptable to admit we wanted to make money.

At that time I was in the naïve stage of the writing business, and still wondering whether an 'ordinary' person like me could ever aspire to calling themselves a writer.

Fast forward to now. There have been huge changes in the publishing business, and I think for writers they are good changes, giving us more of a say in what we do and how we choose to accomplish it. However, while there may be more people making money from their writing, I doubt many have been able to give up the day job.

If you are a writer, why do you write? 

There is nothing wrong in wanting to make money from writing, but I do believe if money is your goal, you’re in the wrong business. It’s easier to make money in almost any other way. The payment per hour of hard slog is negligible, and the lottery probably offers better odds.

I’ve never been under any illusions about becoming rich through writing. If I'm ever able to make enough money to pay the bills, I will be thrilled, but money is a secondary goal. Much higher up the list are improving my skills, becoming a better writer and entertaining people.

Maya Angelou said, ‘You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.’

If you don't love writing (or anything), purely for the thing itself, if you don't have a passion for it, you won't be able to put in the work that makes you excel.

This is easily seen with children. As they grow you can see characteristics and their likes and passions develop. The correlation between things they love doing and the growth of skills is obvious. Somehow that connection becomes fuzzy as we get older, and are bogged down with stuff we ‘have to do’.

Pursue your passions, and it shouldn’t seem like work!

Great Expectations

Someone asked me what I'm working on at the moment. I’ve just published Lies of the Dead so I’m in the phase of deciding which bubbling idea to go with next. I have two quite different book ideas I’ve been considering, but one is definitely making all the running at the moment.

I love this part of the process, although it’s so nebulous it can hardly be called a process. I recall vividly sitting in a café on the coast somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane – okay I recall the moment and the café just not exactly where it was - reading a magazine article, when THE IDEA struck. 

As with the previous ideas that became books, at that point THE IDEA was just a premise with the main character appearing as little more than a silhouette.

She (the main character) is still nameless. I always take a long time with names before the correct one comes, but I know a lot more about her now than I did in that café. I know how she feels about some of the things that concern her and how she will react to situations. I know her family situation, her husband’s job (which is important to the plot), and with each piece of the puzzle she comes a little further out of the shadows.

The thing I love most about this part of the process is that there is all this possibility ahead of me before the internal critic gets to work and tells me I haven't quite captured the brilliance of my original idea!

On this subject my favourite philosopher (Winnie the Pooh) says, 'When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.'

Neil Gaiman said, ‘Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.’

So I’ll keep moving and in the meantime I’m enjoying the nebulous part of the process.

‘Words have meaning and names have power’

A lot of years ago I had a short-term work contract at a university in Wales. To be honest, I don’t actually remember much about the job, but what I do remember is the large database of student names.

The full name of each student was captured, and while there were some interesting first names, there were many more unusual middle names.

Names tell a lot about a person. They are generally a good pointer to age, famous celebrities of the time, and in the UK they are also an indicator of social status. They also say a lot about the parents.

A few of those names have stuck in my mind. One male student was named after several famous soccer players – his father was obviously an ardent Manchester United fan. Among the females was a Tamsin Tinuviel and another girl called Arwen, their parents would have been fans of Tolkein, or at least had read Lord of the Rings.

Before Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter Apple, I knew a lady called Brie.

Choosing names for my characters is something that takes time, and the names are often changed several times as I get to know the characters.

In my current novel, Lies of the Dead, the names of the three main characters never changed. I think that is a first for me.

The oldest of the three siblings is Tom. He is pragmatic and reliable, and (to me) this name fits him well. I didn’t look up the origin or meaning of the name, so I may have it completely wrong, but for me it suited him totally.

Andi is the middle sibling, her name is Andrea but she shortened it to Andi as a child, hoping it would make her mother love her more. How sad is that!

Liam is the youngest of the three. He is always called that, though we discover early on his full name is William, which he hates.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, ‘What’s in a name?’  I think the answer to that is everything.

‘Words have meaning and names have power.’ 

‘Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.’ W.H.Auden

Train Your Brain

Much of my 'day' work is in the area of learning and development. I've always been interested in how we learn, and what we can do to retain more of what we learn. That knowledge would have been useful when I took exams at school.

Here are a couple of learning tips I like because I also relate them to writing. Some of the links are tenuous, but that's how my brain works!

One thing that teachers have always known, and anyone sitting through a long PowerPoint presentation, is that we don't pay attention to boring things. Apparently research shows we check out after ten minutes. Believe me I've sat through some presentations and not even reached the ten-minute mark before my mind was somewhere else.  On the positive side emotion helps the brain to learn. There are talks I heard 5+ years ago that I remember clearly, because the presenter used stories or created a talk rich in emotion.

How does this apply to writing. Boring is not going to cut it, especially in fiction. If you absolutely have to read a non-fiction book for a test or exam then you'll do it, but how much better if you can enjoy what you're reading. Non-fiction doesn't have to mean dry and boring, we can use stories and anecdotes to make information relevant and easier to remember.

In fiction if the story doesn't grab me I'll put the book down. What does hook us is emotion. What type of emotion? That depends on your genre. The emotion used for a horror book will be different to writing a romance - at least I'd hope so, though I enjoy a touch of humour added to most things.

We have short and long-term memory. Moving something from short-term to long-term memory works better if we can link it to relevant existing knowledge or memories. Retrieving a piece of information, such as a name or a memory,  is much like searching for a book in a library - the better the storage system, the easier it is to retrieve what we want.

As you probably already knew, smell is very good at triggering memory.

How to use these things in writing. I watched the start of a mystery/thriller a few nights ago. A lone police officer turned up at an isolated house in a desert area. He walked around the house knocking on doors and windows, but couldn't get any answer. Up to that point it had been silent, but then came the sound of a single fly. Aha - there has to be a dead body. The viewer or reader links new information to current knowledge. 

There is an informal agreement between the writer and the viewer/reader. This is basically that if we put emphasis on something, the reader will assume it is important. If the police officer had merely swatted the fly and driven off, I would be unhappy, as I expected more. If we name and describe a character the reader puts effort into remembering this person. Futile and annoying if the character is just delivering pizza and doesn't play any further role. As the quote goes, 'If you put a gun in the first act, then it should be fired in the second act.'  In the case of the thriller, as the police officer approached the shed so the buzzing increased, as did the number of flies once he turned the corner.

Don't forget to use smell in your descriptions. I'm sure that became pertinent to the police officer as he got closer to the body. Smell is very evocative, and too often we spend a lot of time on visual descriptions and forget this very important sense. Likewise sound, the buzz of that single fly was a strong signal for what was to come

Now I just need to remember to apply all this. Simple!

It's Not Too Late

I've always loved reading.  As a child, and even an adult, I was in awe of writers and their ability to take me on journeys to different times, countries, and sometimes, different worlds.  It took me years to even dare think I might be able to do that.

There are days when I wish I'd begun this journey much sooner.  They are few, because I don't believe in wasting time on regrets and wishing I'd done things differently.  We can't change the past (unless we really can go back in time - anyone got a DeLorean?), but we can change our direction from now.

The one thing all famous authors, actors, musicians, athletes, or other achievers have in common, is that they began their journey before they were famous or skilled. The important thing is THEY BEGAN.  

The Sound of Thoughts

I received an email from a friend this morning. It had eight or nine photos of groups of people in various locations – sitting in a café, a restaurant, by a beautiful painting in a museum, at the beach, at a game, driving around the city in a convertible.  The point of similarity in each of the photos was that everyone was totally absorbed in their phone. 

The quote at the end of the email said, "I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots." Albert Einstein.

I’ve been away for a few days in Sydney - a mixture of work and fun. Sydney has a population of approximately 4.6 million people compared to Auckland at 1.5 million, and as I mostly work from home and live in a sleepy coastal suburb, I really notice the difference in pace and energy in my surroundings.

I love visiting Sydney for this vibrant, enthusiastic atmosphere, and it gives the writer in me an opportunity to people watch and listen to snippets of conversation.

I think you can tell a lot about a city by watching the residents early in the morning. At Circular Quay people exit the ferries from suburbs on their way to work. The weather was hot and sunny while I was there, and what better way to get to work than by cruising past the Harbour Bridge and Opera House on a ferry. Walking across Anzac Bridge from Darling Harbour another morning, people were walking, jogging and running to work.  The monorail runs above the bridge and later in the day (when it was close to 30 degrees) the only shade on the bridge was immediately under the monorail. There was a trail of people (myself included), like a line of schoolchildren following their teacher, walking across the bridge in this sliver of shade.

One of the things I noticed is how plugged in we are. On the city streets during the peak commuter times the majority of people wore headphones, and the same was true of most people at any time on the underground. I like to listen to music on noisy flights, and I need music with a good beat when I’m running (it’s the only thing that keeps me going!), but I also love going for walks with just my thoughts as company, and I wonder in all this world of noise we have, whether we’re losing the capacity to enjoy quiet times.

Rest, Recovery and Pushing Boundaries

A few years ago I worked with a personal trainer of the ‘keep-fit’ gym variety.  From her I learnt the necessity of pushing beyond my comfort zone to stretch my capabilities, and also the importance of rest and variety.

For example rather than just walking or jogging at the same pace all the time, intersperse that with walking faster, or running flat out for a minute.  

Recovery/rest periods are as important as the workout, as it allows muscles to recover and build, and doing different types of exercise helps to stop us getting bored, and also means we work different muscle groups.

If you're wondering whether this blog has been taken over by someone else, no, it's still me, and there is method in my madness.

When I'm really pushed by a deadline, the first thing to go is my morning exercise or walk, and I head straight to the computer and start work.  I also tend to forget to take small rests to change posture/position, or to stretch muscles.  At the very time I need to work smarter, what I'm doing is working harder, and the stupid thing is - it doesn't work. 

Staying at my desk for longer, not taking breaks, or stretching doesn't help me produce more.

The intermittent recovery period is as important in the mental/work aspects of our life, as it is in the physical side.  Thinking uses up a lot of energy.

To stay focussed, inspired, and to work positively, we need short rest and recovery periods, together with a brief change of channel.

When up against a deadline I feel a self-imposed pressure to work through any tiredness or lack of inspiration.

I asked myself where I am when I get my inspiration, whether for my own writing, or for non-fiction contract work.

I would bet it's in similar places or situations to most of you reading this.  I get inspired when I'm out walking, exercising, in the shower, or sometimes I'll wake up with the answer.  Most times it's not when I'm in front of the computer.

Yet I will stay at the computer struggling to create an assessment for training material, or trying to come up with a way of making a dry piece of information interesting for the people who will take the course.

Here is a quote from Leonardo da Vinci.  'Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment.  Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller, and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony or portion is more readily seen.'

Who am I to argue with da Vinci?

Drama

John and Mary had a beautiful wedding day, even the weather behaved.  As the years went by John received several well-deserved promotions, and they bought a large house.  Their two daughters, Anna and Jenny, were always top of their class in school, and excelled at university.  Anna became a lawyer and Jenny a doctor.  When John retired, he and Mary were rich enough to spend the winter months cruising around the world.

Are you bored yet?

While we might wish ourselves a happy and prosperous life, it doesn't make an exciting read.

'Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.' - Dalai Lama.

Drama, tension, conflict - call it what you will, but these are elements we need in our storytelling.

What type of drama?  That depends on your genre.  If you're writing action, then it might be a bomb.  If you write murder mysteries, then it will probably be a body.  But it doesn't always have to be drama on a huge scale.  If the reader is emotionally invested in the character they will feel the tension and conflict the character feels.  

I've read books with 'small' drama's that have gripped me as much as large scale conflicts.  We just need to make sure we cut out the dull bits.

A Net for Catching Days

Writers often moan about a lack of hours for writing, due to fulltime jobs, family and a myriad of other responsibilities. I also do my fair share of moaning about this, although I don't think we have a monopoly on 'not enough hours in the day'.

This quote by Annie Dillard resonated on a number of levels.

'How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.'

The word schedule often feels like it could be swapped with straightjacket,  something that constricts us and removes our freedom.  I'm certainly against a schedule that leaves no room for spontaneous activities, but I've also seen how much time I can waste when I don't have a plan for a project. I love the line 'It is a net for catching days.'  What a beautiful thought.   

'A mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked...'  The faked sounds a little like some of my plans, or at least my suggested timings for tasks!  I always seem to under estimate.

'A peace and a haven set into the wreck of time.'  I can certainly agree with that.  Starting a new project can be overwhelming, and I find myself doing other jobs simply because I don't know where to start.  That's when I need a plan.

Voyage of Discovery

It's been a week for quotes - the universe must be trying to tell me something.

'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new lands, but of seeing with new eyes.' Marcel Proust

I love the way I start seeing my local area in a different way when I have visitors to stay.  It begins even before they arrive, as I try to think of interesting places they will enjoy.

Working with a writing group or beta readers is much the same. I'm always fascinated by the way people see meaning in elements that maybe my subconscious added (if I'm that smart).  Or irritated at the errors I've missed over numerous edits. I hate that one - how did I miss typo?