Is Writing Selfish?: What I learned from two years of blogging

Jaclyn47 Comments

Two years ago, I started a blog.  I was scared.  I had spent the better part of my adult life running away from writing.  In an attempt to cover up this fear, I had told myself that writing was just selfish.  Why did I think that what I had to say needed to be heard by other people?  What did I have to share that the world needed to hear?  I’m no expert in anything.  And really, isn’t writing really just narcissistic and self-centered?

But there was always this little voice inside me, this little part of me that felt unfulfilled when I wasn’t writing.  I travelled the world, teaching and volunteering in developing countries, devoted myself to helping people learn and grow.  I had the most amazing adventures and there was still something that was missing.

“If money were no object and you didn’t care about what people thought, what would you do?” my friend Ram asked me.  I didn’t stop to think about it.  “Write.”

But it was still too scary, too intimidating.  Everyone knows that being a writer is a tough job.  There’s no job security.  What if the muse doesn’t come anymore and you can’t buy groceries? What are you going to do about a retirement plan?  Worse than the practical issues were the emotional repercussions.  What if I bared my soul and no one wanted to read it?  What if I sent my writing to thousands of publishers and got thousands of rejections?  Am I strong enough to keep even through all of that?

So I did what seemed least risky at the time.  I started a blog.

I posted my first blog post steeling myself for negative comments or zero views.  Maybe only my mom would read it.  Perhaps that was all I could hope for, but hey, at least I would be writing.

That’s not what happened.

What did happen is that I learned the most important lesson that I’ve ever learned about writing.  I got positive comments, empathy from other WordPress writers and readers. People from all over the world read and followed my blog. I grew a writing community.

Can writing be selfish?  Sure, but it doesn’t have to be.

This is the thing about writing: writing has an enormous possibility for connecting with others.  Sharing your writing means sharing bits of yourself, putting yourself out into the world and trusting that other people will connect with you.  Every “like,” every comment is a connection.  Every description of scenery is a connection to that place.  Every word about an emotion is a connection with that feeling.

To me, connection, however fleeting, is what life is all about.  Each smile, each moment in the present, each shared experience with another person: these are the things that last once we’re gone.  These are the things that people will remember about us, and the things that we will remember on our deathbeds.  Writing is an extension of that.  Writing allows us to have these moments of connection with more people than we would be able to otherwise: people who are far away, people we haven’t met yet, people who were right there with us for the experiences we write about, and the people who couldn’t be.

So, thank you, writing community, for teaching me something that I really needed to learn.  I have no excuses anymore and nothing to be scared of.  Each time I write, I am fulfilling my highest potential – I am connecting, with myself and with  you.

A big thank you to Matti Vinni from flickr for the creative commons photo of  Essi Korva’s sculpture, Connection.

My 500 Words Challenge

Jaclyn12 Comments

It’s amazing sometimes how the universe seems to be sending very distinct messages, as if it’s conspiring for goodness.  Pronoia.  After writing a post about forming writing habits and a post about writing word by word, my reading of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life presents me with this food for thought, which she refers to as “comfort for friends discouraged by their writing pace:”

“It takes years to write a book, between two and ten years. Less is so rare as to be statistically insignificant… Thomas Mann was a prodigy of production. Working full time, he wrote a page a day. That is 365 pages a year… At a page a day, he was one of the most prolific writers who ever lived.  Flaubert wrote steadily…For twenty-five years he finished a big book every five to seven years.  If a full-time writer averages a book every five years, that makes seventy-three usable pages a year, or a usable fifth of a page a day… On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.” (13-14)

Then an email from Jeff Goins over at Goinswrites.com shows up in my inbox with an invitation to participate in a 31 day 500 word challenge.  Jeff’s advice echoes Annie’s:

“Here’s what I know about writing: It happens in small bites. Step by step. One little chunk at a time. You don’t write a whole book. You write sentences that turn into paragraphs. And paragraphs turn into sections that, then, turn into chapters.  In other words, it all begins with words. You don’t control the outcome, just the process.”

So, clearly, the cosmos are trying to tell me something and I figure that I don’t really have much choice other than to join the challenge.  I won’t be holding myself too strongly to the word count, but I’ll be working really hard to make sure my butt is in my writing seat for at least an hour a day, as per my New Year’s System.  And I’ll be using the My 500 Word Challenge as extra motivation.  Nearly 700 other writers have signed up so far, so it should be some excellent community-building.  I’ll be tracking progress here.   Feel free to join us!

My 500 Words Widget

January 1: 1087

January 2: 675

January 3: 940

January 4: 545

January 5: 629

January 6: 1201

January 7: 524

January 8: 0

January 9: 1152

January 10: 1398

January 11: 540

January 12: 513

January 13: 583

January 14: 503

January 15: 1159

January 16: 278

January 17: 0

January 18: 1097

January 19: 506

January 20: 537

January 21: 1302

January 22: 2173

January 23: 0

January 24: 0

January 25: 634

Reading for Writers: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Jaclyn23 Comments

Chapter 1.1

In her first chapter of The Writing Life, Annie Dillard begins to explain the complexities of writing.  She hones in on the process.  She starts with the importance of the word as a tool, a hammer, a pick, that gets to the root of the gold you are searching, plumbing depths and getting you closer to truth.  But she also asserts the need to know that many of your words will need to be scrapped, thrown away for the good of a piece.

This first chapter is a perfect example of sparseness that works.  Dillard moves back and forth between musing about writing and metaphors for writing.  For example, she tells of the inch worm that is constantly searching climbing a blade, “in constant panic” (7).  When putting forth her metaphors, she does not fumble with explication or transitions. Instead she boldly throws the metaphor out juxtaposed with her thoughts about writing and allows her reader to draw their own conclusions about the meaning and purpose of the metaphor.  This book would be a quick and easy read; this first chapter is a mere 21 pages.  But Dillard trusts that her reader will stop and parse the nuance behind her words.  This makes for an enjoyable, engaging experience for the reader and an excellent example of how to write in a way that engrosses the reader.

I loved her discussion of why to write word by word:  “The reason to perfect a piece of prose as it progresses – to secure each sentence before building on it – is that original writing fashions a form.  It unrolls out into nothingness. It grows cell to cell, bole to bough to twig to leaf; any careful word may suggest a route, may begin a strand of metaphor or event out of which much, or all, will develop.” (15)

Though she also discusses the merits of writing like a steam train, without thinking and just going, going, going, this quote really resonated with me and with the way that I write.  I love a little thesaurus.com and Wikipedia.org while I am writing.  Sometimes I feel the need to find just the perfect word and when I do, it leads me on a new idea or metaphor that runs away into the sky in beautiful swirls of words.  This happens also with Wikipedia. Often I have a question or want to know more about some small detail I am including and once I get into Wikipedia, I’m off on new paths that I never imagined but are wonderfully complex and inspire the piece I am working on to go further than I ever thought.

My creative nonfiction professor balked when I told him how long it took me to do our weekly three-page exercises.  I was often spending hours on an assignment that was intended to take only one or two. “You’ve got to learn to write faster. There’s going to be demand for your work and you’re going to have to fill it.”  I tried to explain that I wasn’t being overly meticulous or editing as I wrote, necessarily, but that my process for creativity and association took a lot of time and consideration to come about.

I love the non-linear, associative, over-the-top writing of someone like Tom Robbins (some of you might know that he’s one of my favie faves), who said in an interview with the New York Times, “The reason I write so slowly is because I try never to leave a sentence until it’s as perfect as I can make it,  so there isn’t a word in any of my books that hasn’t been gone over 40 times.” I think this kind of consideration and thorough thought about each word is exactly the reason that Robbins’ sentences are so jam-packed with meaning and imagery and purpose and humor.  They leave me both feeling full and always wanting more.  In the same interview Robbins says that he often starts with just a title, and you can easily imagine how you can go from just a title to a whole whirlwind of a novel if you building it word by word in this way.

The quote above from Dillard helped me to remember why I write this way.  After a failed (well, 17,165 words, which was excellent for me, but not the 50,000 word target) attempt at NaNoWriMo and a push from my nonfiction prof, I was doubting my process and this little aside in The Writing Life reminded me that my process is my own. It does get results and I do love what comes out of it.  So, I can let go a bit on this insistence on word count and instead remember that what I need to put in is time.  Sit so the muse will show up.  And when she does, I’ll be there, listening slowly and conscientiously, even if she gives me only 100 words a day.

 

*This post is part of a series on the craft of writing called Reading for Writers.  This series examines a variety of authors to ascertain the choices they’ve made in their writing and the effects of those choices so that we as writers can make better decisions in our own writing. May contain affiliate links.

 

 

Books for Writers: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Writing Tips from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life How to Be a Writer: Lessons from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. A book every writer should read! Learn how to develop a writing practice and get useful advice for writers about how to cultivate a writing life. This writing inspiration can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #mustread #writing #nonfiction #books #memoir #tbr #amwriting #tipsforwriters #inspiration #writinglife #creativity
Books for Writers: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Writing Tips from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life How to Be a Writer: Lessons from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. A book every writer should read! Learn how to develop a writing practice and get useful advice for writers about how to cultivate a writing life. This writing inspiration can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #mustread #writing #nonfiction #books #memoir #tbr #amwriting #tipsforwriters #inspiration #writinglife #creativity
Books for Writers: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Writing Tips from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life How to Be a Writer: Lessons from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. A book every writer should read! Learn how to develop a writing practice and get useful advice for writers about how to cultivate a writing life. This writing inspiration can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #mustread #writing #nonfiction #books #memoir #tbr #amwriting #tipsforwriters #inspiration #writinglife #creativity

2014 New Year’s Resolutions: Process over Goals

Jaclyn15 Comments

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard

As I begin this new year, I can see that I’ve reached many of the goals I set for 2013.  I made some big goals.  I started an MFA Program in Writing, so now writing has become the focus of my life.  I’m studying writing, teaching writing, and most importantly writing writing.  I’ve gotten some good publishing under my belt and even won some awards and nominations.  This is, of course, extremely exciting.

As I look into 2014, I realize that what I really need this year has less to do with goals and more to do with systems.  My writing goal long-term is actually not to write a book or make money, but to build a writing life.  For me, this has more to do with habits than with milestones.

This morning I read an article on m.entrepenuer.com that suggested we trade goals in for systems.  It’s a pretty compelling argument.  The author asserts that goals suggest that we are not good enough in the moment, whereas systems give us something we can work at any moment and we will be successful just by virtue of working on them.  He goes on to propose that systems are more motivating in the long term because they release you from the emphasis on results and instead concentrate on the process.  Lastly, goals can often include aspects of things that we can’t actually control, whereas systems are always within our control.  For example, it might not be within our control to set the number of pounds we might lose this year, but it is within our control to set a number of hours each week to exercise.  Whether we lose 5 pounds or 15, we can feel accomplished by having gone through with the routines we’ve set.  Not only that, but this works much better in the long term, because we won’t stop once we’ve reached our goal, but instead we will have developed daily habits that support us in going even further.

The most helpful part of this article, for me, comes at the end.  He writes, “None of this is to say that goals are useless.  However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.”  In some ways, this is what I’ve been doing all along.  When I do a Submission Bonanza!, my goal is obviously to be published.  But also, the decisions that editors make are out of my control.  What is within my control is that I am sending my work out there, on a regular basis.  Also, in doing the Submission Bonanza, I accomplished things that I hadn’t even considered in my goals.  Not only was I published, but I was published 4 times, highlighted as a featured author,  and nominated for Best of the Net.  I wouldn’t have set these things as goals, but the process that I followed lead to these things.

I, for one, have always been skeptical of routines.  How can you grow if you’re doing the same thing every day?  Are you living a thoughtful, authentic life if you’re just following a script?  But Annie Dillard’s above quote is making me change my mind.  How do I want to spend my life?  I’d better make sure that that’s how I’m spending my days.  That’s how I’m going to be living conscientiously.  Not by sitting mindlessly in front of the computer or the TV when I feel like it, but by being thoughtful about how I’m spending my days.  It seems to me that setting routines is an excellent way to be conscious of this.  Instead of being distrustful of habits, I’m coming to see them as cultivation, the planting and nurturing of seeds that need time and attention to grow.

So for me, 2014 will be about creating habits.  My resolutions will be processes, systems instead of goals.  So here they are:

My 2014 Resolutions

  1. Writing Treadmill: 1 hour per day on writing, also keep track, so that at the end of the week, month, or year I can look back and see how much I’ve accomplished.
  2. Submitting Treadmill: 1 submission per day (eep!).  This is basically a year-long Submission Bonanza!, but think of the results!  In terms of process, I’ll spend one hour a day working toward this.  This can include editing pieces, researching magazines or actually submitting.
  3. Mental, Emotional, and Physical Health: 1 hour per day on this, as well.  Yoga, meditation, running, hiking, whatever!  This semester (can I blame the busyness and my first winter?) I’ve lost sight of the importance of these things and I need to make sure that I’m devoting time to keeping myself sane.  In the long run, it’s more important than finishing that last chapter of reading for a class and I need to remember that.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a little more from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life:

“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.”

Creative Commons love to Nikos on flickr for the inspiring picture.

Flecks of Inspiration to Ring in the New Year

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These are a few things that I’ve found inspiring over the years, some ideas that have helped me cook up some creativity, punched procrastination in the face, and take a battering ram to writer’s block.  I hope you find them as helpful as I do.

Creativity as Play: John Cleese on what it takes to be creative

Look Up More: The shared experience of absurdity and how it comes to play on storytelling

Cat Exploded? Make Good Art: Neil Gaiman on the creative process

A Vessel for Genius: Elizabeth Gilbert on how to talk to your muse

 

Creative Commons love to Jon Delorey for the photo!

Prompts to Start the New Year

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I always feel like there’s an excitement in the air this time of year, a freshness that’s just waiting to be plucked.  The new year is pregnant with possibility and is just waiting for us to snatch it up.  In celebration of that, here are some revisited prompts to get your creativity and inspiration going.  Enjoy!

The Encyclopedia Game

Myths in New Places

Anagrams

Reimagining History: Rasputin

When the Goddesses Come Out

Write Fast

 

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartmaguire/ for the photo! Thanks!

A Mess o’ News

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For those of you keeping track at home, you’ll notice that it’s been nearly two months since I posted.  It’s been a whirlwind around here and my poor little Lightning Droplets blog had been put on the backburner because of it.  Lots of exciting things have happened, though, and I’d like to share!

My last post was in November, when I — bravely? insanely? masochistically? — took on my first NaNoWriMo in the middle of my first semester of an MFA Program and my first semester teaching college composition.  I did not reach the goal of 50,000 words, but I did feel like I accomplished a lot.  I started a novel I’m quite excited about and reached my all time daily peak (6,000 words in one day!) and even my monthly best at 17,165 words on one piece (I did write a few other things in November).  You might know from my Write Fast post that I am not a fast writer, but in November, I averaged over 500 words a day.  This is about the same word count as Tom Robbins, who is a favie fave of mine, so I am feeling pretty good about that.

Also in November, I found out that I won a grant!  The grant pays for my class to publish a collection of essays written by my students.  It also pays for me to go to two writing conferences.  So, anyone going to AWP this year will see me there!  Woohoo for a free week in Seattle!  I’ll also be going to the Pacific Rim Conference on Literature and Rhetoric in Anchorage, so that will be a nice little weekend, too.

By the time the end of the semester rolled around, I had been nominated for Best of the Net, published in Yemassee, Flash Frontier, Exegesis, and Saw Palm (forthcoming), written 15 solid pieces in three different genres, done two panel presentations, a roundtable discussion, two craft papers, a position paper, and two Prezis, contributed to the WriteAlaska website, produced a full-length book with my students, read 18 books,submitted work to sixty literary magazines, and drank many, many pints of Alaskan beer.

You can see why my little blog here has been neglected.  I have lots planned for next semester as well, but Lightning Droplets will hopefully get a little more attention as I settle in more to my new life and my new home in the Arctic.

Update: Also, just to let people know, I have joined Amazon’s Affiliate Program. So… Lightning droplets is now a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Call for Submissions: Exegesis Journal

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Issue 4:Money

‘Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons’

– WOODY ALLEN

Exegesis, the academic e-journal of the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, is now accepting submissions for the Spring 2014 edition on Money. For this issue we hope to attract creative writing dealing with money in all its forms and implications, reviews of work on the contemporary cultural scene that engages with (or rejects) the demands of the fiscal, and literary, historical and other critical readings engaging with issues financial, commercial, economic and numismatic. Authors may choose to investigate this topic literally, metaphorically, or theoretically, and in terms of specific texts, authors, times, or places.

Articles and creative pieces might address, but are not limited to, any of the following subjects:

–          Greed, austerity and financial crises

–          Money as object: designed, collected, exchanged

–          Inheritance, legacy, wills

–          Culture in the marketplace: the value of art

–          Mass culture, consumerism, globalisation

–          Employment: labourers, servants and slaves

–          Class and caste

–          Charity, welfare, international aid

–          Capitalism and communism: money and the structures of power

–          Payment, repayment, debt

–          Putting a price on people: dowries, prostitution, industrial compensation

–          Insurance and investment: money and risk

–          Theft, blackmail, fraud

–          Misers and spendthrifts: money and morals

The deadline for submissions is 13th January 2014. Please submit via the following email addresses: to submit a critical work, critical@exegesisjournal.org; to submit a creative work, creative@exegesisjournal.org; to submit a book, theatre, conference, film or exhibition review, reviews@exegesisjournal.org. After peer review, refereed submissions will be selected and published in our April 2014 issue. Please take note of the Guidelines below.

SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES:

Exegesis invites submissions from postgraduate students and early career academics from the field of English Studies and beyond, multi- and cross- disciplinary researchers, and any scholar with interesting and relevant work. We welcome previously unpublished essays, short articles, reviews, and creative pieces on each issue’s theme, and encourage you to fully explore its meaning.

Essays and short articles should be between 4000-6000 words and reviews around 1000 words (including all references). Creative pieces of no more than 5000 words are welcomed. All work should be submitted using the template and guidelines available on our website, at www.exegesisjournal.org. We adhere to MHRA formatting style. Your submission email should include your name, academic affiliation, the title of your submission, 5-7 keywords, and a 3-5 sentence abstract of the article or review piece. All attached submissions should be unnamed, to ensure impartiality during the selection process, and should be sent as Word documents (.doc format).

Sharing: An Explanation, Of Sorts by Ingrid Sykora

Jaclyn8 Comments

I never cease to be amazed by the gems found by wandering around wordpress.  There are some amazing writers out there.  Some pieces are so great that I just need to share.  Like this one:  An Explanation, Of Sorts (Flash Fiction)  by Ingrid Sykora.  Check it out!

An Explanation, Of Sorts (Flash Fiction)

by ingridsykora

I wish I could say that my father is a cruel man. To say he was cruel would be a way to rationalize his behavior, to make him seem more human. It would be a way to make sense of him, to categorize him and thus feel safe, knowing he has been placed in a sort of box, even if that box is only a label, a word, a concept, nothing more. It would be a way to imprison him, in a sense.

But he slips beyond categorization as effectively as he slips past any other kind of prison. For thousands of years, people have tried to imprison him. In mythology, his story is repeated endlessly: the imprisonment of Lucifer, the castration of Set, the acid fate of Loki, the casting of Cronus into Tartarus, &c. In human form, he has been put into solitary prison a half dozen times, has been killed by poison, electrocution, beheading, firing squad, and sunk to the bottom of the sea with weights. He returns in a different form every time, but it does not matter–eventually, his transgression mount, and he is killed or imprisoned again. But it only lasts until he escapes, and leaves behind nothing but a fuzzy memory, and people wondering, “Wasn’t there someone in that prison cell? Who was I bringing this meal to?”

My father whispered in Hitler’s ear, though granted, Hitler did not take a lot of encouraging. My father inspired Stalin and Mao. He drove the making of the atomic bomb. He nurtured the religious extremism that led to the crusades, the terrorists attacks, the holy wars, the kool-aid drinkers. My father is so twisted and evil that he came up with the concept of God, such that people would be inspired to commit atrocities without hesitation or remorse. Any civil war, any partisan disaster, any mass murder or serial killer has his roots in my father’s dark embrace.

x

Back in the eighties, my father decided that it was time to produce offspring. Why, when heroin addictions, AIDS, and class warfare were a few of the many rampant problems in the world, he felt the need to add greater chaos and darkness, is beyond me. He had never before held an interest in such things, and I have vowed to discover his reasoning before I die. He bedded a woman who was institutionalized for a triple homicide.  I was born nine months later by caesarian, and the woman died–though how much the doctors intended to deliver her to such a fate is unclear.

It would seem that goodness, as it is typically identified, is a spontaneous genetic quality. My father has not an ounce of goodness in him, and my mother certainly lacked it, even when turning her attention on herself. But from an early age I have resisted my father’s call, the call of my blood, the call that encourages chaos, destruction, murder, murder, murder.

The abilities that come most easily to me are those that are along this line. It takes a single look to kill a man. It is almost effortless to start a fire that cannot be put out by mere water. Telekinesis is second nature, and sharp objects respond with particular alacrity. I can read tarot cards or tossed crystals or tea dregs in any dark manner I wish and it will come true. Harder to produce is an aversion to a coming danger or crisis.

But, whether it’s youthful rebellion or a true difference in nature, I have no desire to follow in my father’s footsteps. I direct people away from harm when I can. I protect them when I see the need. I guide them away from dark thoughts and shadowed roads.

I have taken it upon myself to reverse every plotline my father has set into motion, to snap every thread he has spun. My name is Eris, and this is my story.