Not in the Mood to Write

I'm just not in the mood to write. I don't want to create, blog, edit or in anyway engage my writing gear. I want to veg out, turn off my 8 million thoughts and just be.

Only I suck at being zen. Yep, really suck at it.

I always have what ifs and oh no's swimming around in my head, bouncing off the the concrete and landing like a metal sliver in the back of my eye.

I worry. I wonder.

I get IBS and spend the weekend in the bathroom.

Normally, I write out my anxieties, my hopes but I'm just not interested. Not even if you smeared it with chocolate frosting and stuck hundred dollar bills in its g-string.

That's life.

My muse will wake up and stretch sometime soon but then, I may not be publishing much here or other wise.

It's summer.

It's hot.

I'm chubby.

Chubby girls should try not to sweat in July.

That's my excuse anyway.

LOL.

Tirz

Essay on Why I Write (Personal) Short Version

At the end of last year, I entered another contest on 'Why I Write', as usual I lost...lol. So I decided that since it doesn't seem to be publishable, I'll share my story here on my blog. To those of you that read it on TNBW, it's the Short Version.

To those that aren't on TNBW, my writing workshop site, this is why I write. It's not a sweet story but it's my story. Remember, this was a long time ago. I'm much happier now.

My mother’s a bitch.

Although, I suppose that term isn't really correct. My online therapist suspects she suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder but what does he know? He treats psych patients in a chat room at a dollar ninety-nine a minute. In a roundabout way, though, my mother is why I started writing.

One of my earliest memories is being a little kid and my mother accusing me of not brushing my hair. Somehow, we ended up on the floor, nubby carpet rubbing the back of my bare calves while she held a giant pair of sewing scissors up to my face, an inch from my eyes. The finger grips were calico, a swirl of black and orange.

If you want to be ugly, I'll make you ugly.

She grabbed a handful of my hair, her knee pressed into my chest and the scissors flashed open. I kicked out, tried to wiggle away. My nails dug into her muscled arms. Tears and snot flowed down my face in great sticky drips. I couldn't breathe. She yanked my hair. I shoved at her knee, needing it to move. I mouthed the words ‘no' over and over.

You don't tell me what to do, you little bitch.

I bit her.

She jerked away and I ran up the hallway, a dark tunnel of cheap wood paneling. I opened the door to my room, slammed it shut behind me, turned the lock. I burrowed into the closet, past trash bags of summer clothes and old purses, and waited in a far corner for her to come and kill me.

She howled at the door, "Let me in or you'll be sorry. I‘ll make you sorry."

The door shook under the pounding of her fists but it held. It held. I shivered.

Then, the bedroom door swung open with a rusty squeak. I whimpered, biting my lip bloody. Hands reached for me, grabbed at my ankles, my sleeve. I think I screamed. She'd come to get me.

Only it wasn‘t her, it was my older sister. Sis managed to take me home with her but the incessant calls, the threats, became too much for her. She brought me home three days later. My belly hurt.

My mother waited in the kitchen. She smiled like I'd been at summer camp and wrapped her arms around me, tight. She hugged me forever. My arms stayed limp at my sides.

Tell me you love me. You're my baby, my favorite. Tell me you love me. Tell me you'll never leave me again. Tell me.

I'll never leave you. No matter where I am, I'll never be able to get you out of my head.

I started writing to escape.

First, I wrote a diary but she read all my papers so I converted my ideas into poetry. Eventually, I branched into fiction even though I know I'm not a natural writer. I don't have a gift for quaint turns of phrase or stunning prose but I do have a love for the craft. Writing lets me make everything beautiful.

And I wanted the world to be beautiful for once.

Instead of a vent for my pain, my writing is an avenue for the best of me. I write romance. I love a happy ending. But I can write horror as well. I've been intimate with darkness and as much as I crave sweetness, I know most of us have pain lurking beneath our bright smiles. You can't ignore pain but you can shape it into something useful.

My bad days now are the days I can’t write. I need the words. They keep the silent dreams away. They make it possible for me to function as a real person, a kind person. I need to be kind. I need to make my pain useful.

But writing can't just be therapy. Writing needs to ripen ideas so they can fall from the vine, ready to be crushed into something better. It needs to be an act of creation, not destruction.

That creation is what saves me. And no matter how much I wish I could shrug off the past like some old snake skin, I just can’t. Instead I deal with it the only way I can, I put it on paper. In some strange way, I guess I have to thank my mother for my writing. She isolated me from everyone so I turned inward and ‘inward’ is a fascinating place full of strange roads.

She gave me the suffering I turned into art.

I still don't think I can be grateful though.

The woman's a bitch.

Writing With Dialogue (Story included)

The following is a dialogue exercise that turned out pretty well. Natural dialogue is not easy and telling a story through dialogue is even harder. So occasionally, I'll write a story with only the speaking parts.

The key is to make each character an individual through word usage, line length, and pauses. Pretend you're watching a movie with a blindfold on, how do you know who's speaking?

Inflection, pauses, and word choice.

You can transfer that to your writing. Read your voices out-loud. How does that character speak? Would they say bull or bosh? Would they just roll their eyes?

I attached my little writing exercise below. I hope you get a laugh at the dialogue.

You should try it. It's torture...lol. Misery loves company. But if you can master it, you're dialogue will sing on the page. Plus, if you can tell back-story through your dialogue in a seamless fashion, you'll save yourself hours of flashbacks.

Plus, good dialogue will make a reader spend their cash to read your work and we all could use some cash, right?

Right.
____________________________________

TITLE: Jumping The Shark (Comedy)


"Okay Bill, one more time. You circle around to the left and cross in front of him. Larry will do the outer circle and I'll cross on the right."

"My left or yours?"

"My left, it's always my left. Geez, you'd think we'd never done this before."

"Larry, Larry stop chasing your tail-fin and listen. I don't want a repeat of what happened last time."

"Ugh, what happened?"

"Remember Larry, you bit the leg off that scuba diver?"

"That was so not my fault. He practically shoved his foot down my throat. I lost three teeth and he tasted like rotten seaweed."

"Yeah, we'll we had to hide from the local fishermen for most of the summer and nothing is more boring than the deep ocean in summer. Bill, Bill get away from that darn cruise boat propeller. You want to lose your other eye? "

"I know I can catch it. You just have to figure out the spin"

"Oh for the love of tuna, Bill, you run head first into another propeller and so help me I'll help the other sharks eat you. Now guys, listen up! Same rules as the last time. No biting, no touching the board. First one to get him off the board gets five points. If he pees his wetsuit, you get a bonus five. If you touch the board or the windsurfer, you get nothing and you eat last for the rest of the week. Got it, Bill?"

"Sure, I'm not stupid."

"Larry?"

"What?"

"Larry, why didn't your mother eat her young? Get ready, here he comes. Bill go left."

"Whose left?"

"Oh for the love of tuna..."

Writing With Passion

One of the keys to good writing is to write with passion. Passion is a gift. It makes readers follow your words and look for your name. So many people now write from the head and not the heart.

To get readers attention, you have to hook their attention.

In the cyncial world of now, people roll around in their apathy like a dog in crap and most of them are happy to be there. They don't care, they aren't happy, they aren't sad. The buggers aren't even angry. If you can't get sad or mad then you need to lower the dose because the meds are working too well.

It's okay to feel what you feel.

It's okay to rant and laugh and scream a bit.

It's okay to care.

When you care, your writing has bite. And that's what a reader wants. They want to be interested. They want to care or laugh. Hell, they even want to be mad enough to call you an asshole. Writing should inspire something in your reader.

The writing might make them think about their life, it might make them giggle hysterically. Perhaps it makes them throw the book across the room and yell 'idiot' at the book cover.

A book with passion will always inspire something.

The worst thing you can do as a writer is write something that only inspires apathy.

How do you make your writing passionate?

Choose topics that hit your hot buttons. You know what your hot buttons are. Maybe it's the teacher at school who refuses to follow your child's IEP. Perhaps it's the chick in the drive-thru that consistantly gives you the wrong order. Maybe it's the humor in every situation that excites you.

Have a logical argument about health reform? Be passionate and clear and I'll listen. Because passion is addictive. When you care as a writer, the reader starts to care as well.

But remember how I said passion is one key to good writing? The other key is editing. Write with your heart, edit with your head. Write your article or blog, let your heart spill itself all over the page. Then set it aside for a couple of hours.

Take a walk. Play with the dog. Cook dinner.

Then come back to your article and read it again. Use your brain to build in facts to back your argument. Make sure you're being passionate but not doing a mindless rant. Okay, a mindless rant can be fun sometime, just make sure your idea isn't lost in the energy.

If you can join fact with passion, then everyone will want to read what you write.

Now if I could just follow my own advice.

;-)

Tirz

When Everyone Succeeds But You...

Lately, I've been surrounded by success. Not mine. Several of my writer friends have recently published, several others have gotten agents. Another few have finished their manuscripts.

I'm happy for them. They've worked hard and their books are really good. As happy as I am for them, part of me feels like a big fluffy failure each time another one of them succeeds. Now this isn't their problem, it's all mine.

I know it's petty. It isn't their fault that I haven't made it, it's mine.

I'm not focused enough on my writing. I break my self-imposed deadlines. I don't submit material much any more and that's why I'm failing.

You can't succeed if you aren't trying your hardest and I'm not trying hard enough.

I've made some half-hearted efforts with my writing. I sent out a few short stories to contests, all rejected. I sent forty-eight poetry submissions last year, all rejected.

Finally I stopped sending writing out. It's hard to believe in yourself when the editors in charge don't agree with your writing's worth. I'm not a horrid writer, I know that. Am I Steinbeck? No, but I'm not Carrot Top either (Okay, he's not a writer but he is odd in a creepy way and not funny at all).

But what I write doesn't seem to impress editors, contest judges, or anyone in charge.

I'm not telling you this to feel sorry for me. I'm doing a great job of that on my own. I'm sharing the experience so other writers know they aren't alone.

It's okay to feel a little lost when everyone seems to have figured out the how's of publishing and you can't even find your pen.

What I need to do is get some impartial person to tell me if there is a weakness in the writing itself. If the writing is solid, I need to target my entries better. Sending submissions out in a scattershot format doesn't work. All I get from random entries is a headache.

Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I need to get off my butt and make a plan. Then, I actually need to follow said plan.

And if that doesn't work, I can always trying sleeping my way to the top.

Men love middle-aged chubby women, right? Right.

Okay, so I need to work hard on the plan because I don't think the sex for success idea will work. Not unless publishers are kinkier than I think.

LOL.

Tirz

Writing With A Potty Mouth

Now I admit if you’re writing Christian fiction or a book on the saints, you may not have a use for foul language, but for the rest of us, how do you handle it?

Where does the line fall? I think it all comes down to character. No, not your character but rather that of the person you’re creating. If you’re writing a book on prison, then having your characters speak in sanitized Queen’s English isn’t going to be believable.

A murderer isn’t going to to say, “Oh darn you, you rotten scoundrel. I’m going to have to stab you in your posterier with my shank.”

Cussing is almost required in that situation.

But how much is too much? We’ve all watched movies or read books where the f-word becomes so overused that it doesn’t have any meaning anymore. As a writer, you’re going to eventually get a feel for your character’s cadence and style.

Until you get a feel for it, here are a few tricks to help you.

If you’re not sure if the swear words should be there, then take it out and read the line aloud. Would you still know your character made that statement? If the answer is no, you’ll probably need to put it back.

But that doesn’t always work.

So ask what is the point of the swearing?

Is it for emphasis? Is it showing a character’s anger, strain, or loss of temper? If so, then use it sparingly so it stands out like a red dress at a black and white ball. The use of one ‘fuck’ will catch the eye of the reader more than if you litter the page with it.

However, if the swearing is to show the character’s upbringing or true demeanor, use the foul words more in dialogue and less in description. Remember, every word your character says or doesn’t say reflects on who they are. Description reflects more on the narrator/writer.

How does it show character? A person answers, “Have a nice day,” with a “Screw you, Asshole,” isn’t the same person who’d answer it with “Fucking hippie” or “Thanks, you too”. These three answers reflect three distinct personalities. So all words, even the bad ones, really matter.

What if it’s situational swearing?

Try asking yourself, ‘Who is this person talking?’ and ‘What kind of day are they having?’

Always consider your situation.

Even a priest might say “hell” if he just got shot in the groin. But whether or not he says it illuminates who this priest is as a person. If he suffers in silence, passes out, or prays for his shooter, it gives you a look at his true character. People under extreme stress usually stop pretending and be themselves.

Don’t be afraid to say damn, hell, shit, fuck, and piss. But don’t love it so much that you don’t when to hit the erase key. Keep your key questions in mind. Why is there swearing? Who is my character? What kind of day is my character having? Does it make the same statement without the bad words?

After awhile, you won’t need the questions, you’ll just know.

Until then, have a nice damn day.

*Also posted on my collaborative blog, Journeys In Ink.

the light: A Poem

the light came through the window
like spears
it cut me in two

as God allowed him to be cut

sliced my insides in thin, round slices
and served me
to the uninvited guests

they took their piece
tasted
and found it bitter

bitter black as his box

through the glass
into the clouds, past heaven
I looked to the light

looked for the answers
or even the questions
and found heaven deserted

I was alone as he now was

as he was laid back
into the arms of the earth
I looked to the sky...

and found no mercy,
no God,
nothing but the light

how it empties my soul

Back Up Your Writing!

Ah, you write the last sentence of the final paragraph of your 200,000-word epic American Novel and you hit save. You’re exhausted, you’re elated. You’re just a little bit smug. I’m sure you’ve hit Twitter to brag to all your writing frenemies out there in the web world.

Then, the next morning you push your computer’s little ‘Go’ button and the screen remains mysteriously black. Mmm, that doesn’t look good. You check all the cords and it’s plugged in. You hit the button again, several times. Because repeatedly hitting it always works…lol. Still, just a black screen.

Now, your heart is pounding, little droplets of sweat start to stream down the crack of your ass (the sign of real desperation).

You call all your friends, a couple of enemies, and even your sister’s idiot husband who thinks he’s good with computers. Nothing works.

Nearly hysterical by this point, you get in the car in pajamas and flip-flops and drive to the nearest computer fix-it shop. You hold your broken laptop out to the 12-year old with the name tag and blubber, “ahbubhabib broken, boghsdiguy novel”, which he understands as ‘My computer is broken, please retrieve my novel.’

Only three hundred dollars later you know your laptop is dead forever. The boney kid swilling AMP at nine in the morning manages to save a couple of files. You have the draft of six chapters, about twenty-thousand words.

You literally lie down on the sidewalk and wait to die. God is not merciful.

Eventually, the police make you get up. Authority figures rarely understand the pain of losing your writing. And it’s best to go the heck home to start all over on your novel or to throw yourself on the bed and scream. Whatever works for you.

If you’re in an apartment, I suggest you scream with your head buried in your hypo-allergenic pillow. Neighbors don’t understand creative pain either.

Next, you’ll twitter all your friends about your bad luck. Several of them have the nerve to snicker a bit at your expense.

Don’t let this be you!

How can you avoid the humiliation?

First, back up your writing in multiple places. At the very least, set up a free yahoo or g-mail account and email each chapter to yourself. This way it’s waiting in a third party email account that you can access from anywhere.

Second, put it on a flash drive. Then put your flash drive where children can’t flush it down the toilet. Don’t trust the dog around it either. My male dog did something unspeakable to my flash drive that I can’t even repeat here for fear the porn police will arrest me.

Third, put it on an old-fashion disc. There’s a reason we used those things all these years.

Fourth, sign up for a third party writing site that allows you to load your writing but not display it. I use a couple of these sites to ‘store’ my writing for emergencies.

And the last thing to remember is not to dwell on what’s lost. It’s gone. Have a good cry, a beer, or kick a stuffed teddybear but get over it. Either re-write it or write something new.

And back your writing up!

But if you forget and erase something, remember to tell everyone how great it was. After all, they can’t prove otherwise, now can they?

Good Writing!