DAMN YOU, STEPHEN JAY SCHWARTZ!

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Actually, that blog post title's a little harsh, because all SJS did to deserve it was blog about New Year's resolutions here before I could.  Oh, well.  How about the next best thing, i.e., a list of all the things I resolve to stop doing in 2013?

Because the key to being happy and successful, it seems to me, is not only a matter of developing a host of new, constructive behaviors, but putting an end to those things we habitually do to sabotage ourselves.  For instance, I am promising here and now that I will try my damndest not to do the following things in 2013:

-  Procrastinate

Putting things off that need doing is a sure-fire way to guarantee they'll either get done poorly at the last minute, or won't get done at all.  In 2013, I'm going to take care of business now, not later, no matter how boring or inconvenient it may be to do so.

-  Make excuses

There are no doubt several reasons your latest manuscript failed to sell, or the last six agents you queried turned you down,  but using them as a rationale for not working harder is a recipe for disaster.  Nike may have turned the expression "Just do it" into the punch line of many a joke, but as a philosophy, it's sound as hell.  Don't obsess over why you can't do something; just do the damn thing already.

-  Work without a plan

Zoë touched on this subject last week, and it really struck a nerve with me.  Creating a work schedule that you're absolutely, positively committed to following has always sounded to me like a great way to make widgets, not write a book.  We creative types need to be free from such conventions, right?  To do our best work, we need to allow it to come naturally, not in accordance to some predefined set of parameters.

At least, that's how I've been approaching my writing up to now, and the results would suggest it may be time to re-think things.  Structure is not a four-letter word.  Neither is discipline.  Writing like a free spirit is okay if you're a poet with no career ambitions whatsoever, but if you expect to make a decent living as a writer, attention must be paid to output.  This year, I'm going to write as if my life depends on my making a daily page quota --- because it just might.

-  Devote more time to social networking than is necessary

Yes, I've made a lot of professional contacts and brought more than a few new readers into the fold via Facebook.  But more than half my FB time of late is spent on highly entertaining nonsense, and that's time I can't afford to waste any more.  In 2013, I'll continue to have a strong and regular FB presence, because dropping off the site completely would run counter to contemporary laws of productive self-promotion, but anybody expecting to find me "liking" this or commenting on that thirty-five times a day is destined to be gravely disappointed.

-  Renege on any of the above

Making promises is easy.  Keeping promises is hard.  Highly successful people do what they say they're going to do, when they say they're going to do it.

You guys are my witnesses.  If any of you catches me making a liar of myself, please don't hesitate to call me on it.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Resolutions/Writing One Day at a Time

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Oh, okay, yes, the year is still new and I am finding myself compelled to do a New Year's resolutions post.

One good thing is about writing a blog is that it makes one – well, me, anyway – more inclined to make public resolutions. I’m not actually sure how useful a list ever is. When it comes down to it, we all have kind of the same resolutions every year. Basically. Write more books and be a better person, right? Yes, okay, and look hotter, somehow.

But this year I wanted to do a list, mostly because as I said recently, 2011 was so hard it’s amazing just that I survived it.

I complain about the abject agony of writing all the time, but this year writing has been lifesaving, just to have one familiar thing to do every day.

But things are getting better. I’m feeling that I could move beyond survival to actually enjoying myself again.

So resolutions make sense, because they imply there IS a future, at least until the world ends in December. JUST KIDDING.

First, the standard ones:

Working out. This is one I don’t have to worry about. Exercise has been periodically too much of an obsession; I’m one who more often needs to tell myself, “You don’t REALLY need to take that two-hour Boot Camp class today.” I know if I don’t work out every day I become a rabid animal within 48 hours; it’s my version of antidepressants (depression being, as David pointed out yesterday, the real health hazard for writers). But these days I’m more balanced about working out. I take mostly dance classes, which is the way I most like to move and it’s so habitual by now it’s never a big deal to get myself to class to do it. So dance four or five times a week and one killer ab/ass class on top of that, not as much fun as dancing but the results are so immediate and visual, it’s addictive. No, I mean, it’s good.

Eating. Pretty good about this, too. I don’t eat too much, I eat mostly the right things, I know how to combine proteins, and I don’t keep anything like ice cream or Cheetos or macadamia nuts in the house, ever. One thing here - I am going to try to eat more Superfoods next year – why not, right? Salmon, blueberries, pomegranates, almonds, yams, dark greens; I love all that stuff anyway. I am finding it very MESSY to eat pomegranates, but wow, are they good.

Getting out more. Well, with my conference schedule this year I don’t have to worry about a social life, even though I have the typical author problem of feast or famine in this department. You live like a hermit while you’re writing, and party till you drop at the conferences. These days I’m mostly paid to go, a big perk of the job. But I am resolved to say yes more than no to social events.

Wear more colors.  I'm terrible about always automatically reaching for one of the five thousand black things in my closet (but they're all different!). I mean, with my hair, I don't really worry about standing out. Or rather, I do worry - about standing out too much. I KNOW why big city dwellers constantly wear black; it's anonymous (and hides city dirt. And SO slimming....) But I also love dressing up for conferences, where I feel safe, and one of the most fun things is having people enjoy what I wear. So yes, a conscious effort to mix up the colors a bit this year.

Giving more. I am grateful to be feeling financially stable, and am glad to plug my favorite charities at the beginning of the year: Children of the Night, Kiva, Equality Now, Equality California. And don’t forget Wikipedia – you KNOW you use it.

- Children of the Night - Rescues teenagers from prostitution.
- Kiva You can pledge $25 or more as a microloan to small businesswomen in developing countries, the loan will be paid back and you can loan again to someone else.
- Equality Now Ending violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.
- Equality California - Advocates for civil and legal rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Californians.

Writing more?

Okay, this one is not possible without a total brain meltdown.

My problem here is not that I’m not writing enough, but that I have too many concurrent projects. But I had a really productive December and am on track to finish my latest paranormal by my deadline at the end of January, which will make me less frantic about my contractual obligations. And I am closing in on finishing the thriller that I’ve been working on this year, sometimes just a few minutes a day. But five minutes a day for a year equals a book.

Did you catch that? I’ll say it again. Five minutes of writing a day for a year equals a book.

Which is what I really wanted to write about today, because I don’t think it’s said often enough that you CAN write a novel (or a script, or a TV pilot....) in whatever time you have. Even if that’s only five minutes a day. If you have kids, if you have the day job from hell, if you are clinically depressed – whatever is going on in your life, if you have five minutes a day, as long as you write EVERY DAY, to the best of your ability, you can write a novel that way.

I don’t know if I’ve posted this here before, maybe a million years ago, but I wrote my first novel, The Harrowing, by writing just five minutes per day.

My day job was screenwriting, at the time, and yes, it was a writing job, but it had turned into the day job from hell.

But fury is a wonderful motivator and at the end of the day, every day, I was so pissed off at the producers I was working for that I would make myself write five minutes a day on the novel EVERY NIGHT, just out of spite.

Okay, the trick to this is – that if you write five minutes a day, you will write more than five minutes a day, sometimes a whole hell of a lot more than five minutes a day most days. But it’s the first five minutes that are the hardest. And that often ended up happening. Sometimes I was so tired that all I could manage was a sentence, but I would sit down at my desk and write that one sentence. But some days I’d tell myself all I needed to write was a sentence, and I’d end up writing three pages.

It’s just like the first five minutes of exercise, something I learned a long time ago. As long as I can drag myself to class and endure that first five minutes of the workout, and give myself permission to leave after five minutes if I want to, I will generally take the whole hour and a half class, and usually end up loving it. (There are these wonderful things called endorphins, you see, and they kick in after a certain amount of exposure to pain...)

The trick to writing, and exercise, is – it is STARTING that is hard.

I have been writing professionally for . . . well, never mind how many years. But even after all those many years—every single day, I have to trick myself into writing. I will do anything – scrub toilets, clean the cat box, do my taxes, do my mother’s taxes – rather than sit down to write. It’s absurd. I mean, what’s so hard about writing, besides everything?

But I know this just like I know it about exercise. If you can just start, and commit to just that five minutes, those five minutes will turn into ten, and those ten minutes will turn into pages, and one page a day for a year is a book.

Think about it.

Or better yet, write for five minutes, right now.

So what are other people's resolutions? And what are your tricks for actually following through?

Happy New Year, everyone!

- Alex

Reframing

by Pari

Yesterday, after I took the kids to their father’s house, I spent the first Christmas in 19 years alone.  It was a good day . . . contemplative. On a long walk, under the kind of blue sky that stings it’s so gorgeous and clear, I realized that much of my life has been ruled by obligation. 

How much of yours is too? 

It’s easy to see how this happens. Our various life roles come with obligations: parent, spouse, partner, child, writer, friend, worker, manager and so forth -- each is at least moderately defined by the social circles and cultures within which we live. Yesterday, while staring at the bare winter branches against that stunning sky, I wondered what it would be like if I could transform at least ¼ of the should themes in my life into want-to themes. What if I framed my daily writing requirement into a privilege?  What if I looked at exercise as a time for joy?  What if the deep emotional work I’m doing isn’t so much a shedding of the old as an exploration of the unknown?

I first studied reframing intensely in graduate school. There, while training to be a therapist, I saw how powerful it could be. Indeed, much of therapy depends on reframing to be successful for without viewing things anew, a person stays mired in his or her uncomfortable present. In more recent years, my practice of daily gratitude forces me, on occasion, to apply the technique when I most want to pity myself . . . or when I want to blame others for something in my life.

As happens frequently with my walks, I had a small epiphany. I realized that many of my New Year’s resolutions also stemmed from a center of obligation. (Do you see how insidious shoulds can be?) So how could I reframe my heavy sense of have-to around this time of year into can’t-wait-to? 

Here is the beginning of what will probably take me most of the week to settle into, but I thought I’d share my resolutions so far . . .

In 2012, I can’t wait to

1. reward myself for trying something new without any thought to success or failure
2. dance as often as I can
3. look for an adventure and take it
4. eat dessert first  
5. relish days when I don’t have to do anything
6. play as much as I think while writing
7. embrace . . .

So what about you?  What New Year’s resolution do you want to stand on its head?

How 'bout those resolutions?

By Alexandra Sokoloff

Yike, a month gone already.  I’m still trying to get the hang of the new year. 

Well, good excuse for a check up on things, so I’m going to be eclectic today.

First, I would not be a human being if I did not say that I have been riveted and awed by the power of the Internet as used by the citizens of our planet as a tool for revolutionary change in the last few weeks.  I would never disparage our own quests to create art and entertainment; it’s one of the ultimate promises of a free society.   At the same time, anything I talk about today pales in comparison to what’s going on in Tunisia and Cairo.   I feel unworthy to use Facebook or Twitter.

That being said - an update in no particular order.

As part of my New Year intentions, I said I wanted to dance more this year, and that, at least, is one resolution (I mean intention) I’ve kept.  I signed up for a two-hour, three-day a week college jazz class. 

College dance classes are no joke.   So many people want in that you’re only allowed two absences.   Considering my schedule, which I am afraid these days even to look at, this is a HUGE commitment.

And yes, I am sore.  

I remember this feeling.   Specific pain, unspecific pain, a nagging worry about hairline fractures in the top arches of both my feet…. mitigated a lot by the fact that all the other dancers in the class are constantly discussing their specific and unspecific pains in detail, a topic of conversation second only to sex, of course, and dance shoes as always coming in a close third.

On the other hand, after just a week of this, I feel my center all the time.   I enjoy every move that I make – sitting, standing, walking, driving – everything in my body feels the way movement should feel like.   One of the all- time great feelings on the planet. 

And at least for 6 hours a week and the few hours after class, I am calm.  The absolute immediacy of dance relaxes me in about the same way that sitting in sand and staring at the sun on the ocean does.

I also have to say that anyone who thinks college is the peak of a human being’s physical power is delusional.  At twice the age of some of these kids, even with possibly broken bones in my feet, I am still about ten times stronger.   It makes me worried for them out on the street, actually.

But beyond just musculature, I don’t have to struggle with the thing that makes dance or any art so hard:  doing everything all together at once, without having to think of the component parts every single second.  In dance they call it “muscle memory”.   And I wish there was a term for it in writing.   Well, maybe there is, I’d love to hear it!

I don’t know at what point in my career that kicked in for me, the point I realized I can always finish a script or book – that no matter how bleak it looks I will be able to pull it off.   No guarantee (actually no hope) of perfection, but completion, for sure.   All elements pulled together into a whole that is recognizably a story.   That’s a good thing to remind myself of today, before I start writing, because I’m doing something I haven’t done before and it’s VERY uncomfortable, like trying to do a triple turn (on the left!) when you’re used to doing doubles. 

What I’m doing is a double point of view, when all my other books have been a very close third person from a single focus.   Actually, that’s not true – The Shifters alternates between the female lead and the male lead, but this feels completely different, much, much harder.  I guess because even though I am inside both characters’ heads, I am holding back so much information inside one of the characters.  Not exactly an unreliable narrator, but an opaque one.   And I’m not sure if that character’s POV should be present or past tense.  And then there’s the nagging feeling that I might need to have another character’s POV as well, which feels completely overwhelming.

Anxiety is a constant companion right now.   It always is in a first draft, though, I have to keep telling myself that.   Also the world situation, not to mention the publishing industry situation, might have a bit to do with it.

But it doesn’t make writing any easier when in a way you have to teach yourself how to write every single novel – from scratch.   You have no idea of what the real problems are going to be until you’re actually in there fighting them.

Still, I sit down every day, and I do the pages, and if I have to do a lot more structural rearranging in the second draft, that’s doable. 

And I have to remember, the story chose ME, right?   Not anyone else.   I have to have a little faith that it knew what it was doing.

Another new thing this year – I am back in school in a completely different way: I’m teaching a class on story structure at Otis Parsons, the LA art school.   And for those of you who wonder what’s the point of blogging, I was asked to teach because the chairman of the Digital Media Department read my blog. 

While I’ve been teaching several workshops a year across the country, they have been very short intensives, geared toward adult aspiring and professional novelists.   I’ve never taught a college class before, so it’s a huge luxury to have a whole semester to explore story – and specifically visual storytelling - with such bright and committed young filmmakers.   (But thank God it’s only a half day a week!).

Because of the class I’m watching a lot more movies these days (TCM is the world’s greatest film school, if you ask me), and I can’t help thinking that this intense, targeted exposure to film is going to work a profound change in my creative process and product, just as the discipline of taking an intensive jazz class three days a week will have a profound change in my dancing and body makeup.  And that’s an exciting thing.  I don’t know what those changes are going to be, but if you’re not constantly growing as an artist, you’re dead.  So I’m really grateful that even in the fog of confusion that was last year, I have been put in places that I know will take my work to the next level.

And it must be said – I’m grateful for Southern California weather.

So I’d love to get reports on everyone else’s New Year, so far.  How are those resolutions?  Or did the year decide to make some changes for you all on its own?

And I’ll copy Brett’s reminder:  to anyone in or around Los Angeles on Monday, it’s The Mystery Bookstore's final day, and there will be a party starting at 6 - if not earlier - and going until whenever.  Brett, Rob, Steve, and I will all be there along with a lot of other writers and fans.   And they’re giving away some fabulous prizes.   Hope some of you can make it!

- Alex

Kinder, gentler resolutions

by Pari

It’s late night, the time when I thank God for the remote. Flipping through the now limited channels of our basic cable . . .  past the evangelists preaching last-minute salvation, the telenovelas with characters that definitely need saving, and the news shows that make me wonder if anything holy exists  . . . I can’t help but notice a change in the timbre of the commercials.

Yes, folks, it’s resolution time. The time when we shake our heads and ask,
“What the hell happened to last year?”
“What do you mean it’s almost 2011?”
and “Hunh?”

Last year, on December 31^st, I taped my resolutions to the inside back cover of my daily calendar. Smart, hunh? Well . . . not really. It’s amazing how skillful I became at opening the thing so that I didn’t have to look at them.

I think I'll take a look now . . .
Why's this clip here?
What's that glue for .  . . 

Actually, I’d completely forgotten that I only posted the “writing goals” for 2010 in my working calendar. That was a good idea. No additional emotional trauma about gained weight, missed exercise or being a horrid mother and spouse. I’d have to go to the complete list of resolutions I typed up on the computer for that and, well, I don’t even remember what I filed them under.

Whew!

But let’s look at those writing goals:

1. Write at least two pages of fiction daily.

2. Write and mail at least one short story per month.

3. Write and propose/mail at least two original novels.

4. Reach 10 items in the mail at one time.

Um . . . not bad. Manageable. Humble. Achieved?

Nope.

I have no clue if I've been writing anything close to two pages a day, but I'd bet I haven't. (More on that in a minute.)

I've sent/queried maybe six stories this year. Maybe less. Though I’ve written a YA novel and a novella, I haven’t even begun to edit them or to think about potential markets. And, at most, I had four or five items in the mail at one time. So I’m majorly behind on that curve.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Guilt.

Guilt, who?

Guilt that helps you hammer your ego into oblivion, causes paralysis, and makes your inability to write feel totally justified because it feels sooooo good to feel bad.

Um. Gee. Thanks, but I already gave at the office . . .

Really. I look at that moderate list of resolutions and I'm not sweating the fact that I didn't meet those expectations. You know why? It’s because I’m in a better place creatively than I’ve been in in long long time.

And I’m more consistently productive than I’ve been in years.

You know why. No trick. No smoke or mirrors. I'm just writing fiction every day. Anyone who follows my little fan page on FB knows some days I only get to 100 words or so. Other rare days my word count is up in the thousands. But call me “Turtle,” because, baby, those words add up.

So what for the New Year? The same list of resolutions? A shorter one? A more ambitious one since, come on, really, a writer who wants to be read does have to get her work out instead of hording it.

Okay, okay. I think I can do this . . .

Here goes:

1. Write fiction every day.

2. Send a work of fiction I’ve written out into the world to be read. (That gives me great squiggle room; I can post on Smashwords, try to sell someting etc etc etc. Yeah, I like that one almost as much at #1.)

Success breeds success, right?

In that case, I’ll have good news in December 2011.

How about you?

Do you make resolutions?

Want to share one or two with the ’Rati?

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Thank you to all the wonderful members of Murderati -- the writers and our community here -- for a truly beautiful, supportive, and intellectually motivating year. I hope 2011 brings joy, health and success to us all.