Beware the seven enemies of creativity 08/05/2012
By Cara Gabriel I’m assuming you’ve heard of the seven deadly sins? Wrath, sloth, gluttony, pride and the rest. Lesser known are the seven holy virtues, which include chastity, temperance and charity (and are far less fun than the sins, but that’s a whole other story). Even less well know are the seven enemies of creativity. These little mental viruses can infect you at any moment, paralysing your ability to write and sending your word count into a tail spin. The good news is, once you know about them you can beat them, so read on to learn more and protect your creativity. The Procrastinator You’re going to start writing today, right? Well. Maybe next week would be better. But wait – there’s that big meeting at work on Tuesday, then Wednesday is parent-teacher night, then Thursday is footy practice, and Friday you’ve got that appointment with the dentist... But the week after? No problem! To ward off The Procrastinator, try this exercise: Remember when you missed school and your mum had to write a note? Next time you want to skip writing, take out a sheet of writing paper, and in your best ‘Mum’ handwriting, write yourself an excuse note: Dear Muse, Cara won’t be writing on Friday because she has to go to the dentist. Sincerely, The Procrastinator Now think about it – is this really a good excuse to do no writing ALL DAY? Or do you just have to reshuffle your schedule a little? The Victim All of us play this role at some point in our lives. It’s an easy way to avoid the challenge of creativity because The Victim points her finger at other people and says ‘I’m not creative because... · my family doesn’t understand me · my boss is a jerk · my housemates are noisy · my children are demanding’ The key to fighting The Victim is to stop complaining and realise that the only reason you don’t lead a creative life is because of YOU. To fight off an attack of The Victim, try this exercise: List the most common and frequent reasons you give for not spending more time being creative. Next to each entry on the list, write who is in control of that situation (hint: the answer is ‘me’. Every time). Now write your plan of action: for example, if your excuse is noisy housemates (or kids), your plan could be to fill your iPod with great tunes and plug yourself in when you write. The Talker The Talker is the enemy who just won’t shut up. You’ve got a great idea for a novel, and The Talker tells everyone. Your mum. Your writing group. Everyone at work. And by talking and talking and talking, she squanders your creative nest egg. When you finally sit down to put the idea into action, its dead, or at least not as exciting as it seemed a few days ago. To silence The Talker, try this exercise: When you feel The Talker wanting to take over, tell her she can talk about it when you’ve written the next scene. The urge to talk will abate as you immerse yourself in your writing again. The Critic The first thing to understand is that The Critic never goes away. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been published, The Critic still sits there and is never truly silenced. The best thing you can do with The Critic is to learn to be friends with him. Yes, seriously. As your writing career progresses, he is the one Enemy who can turn into a Friend, as he will help you to identify strong writing from weak writing. To become friends with The Critic, try this exercise: Sit down and commit to writing for a set period of time, maybe half an hour. Just write – it doesn’t matter how good it is. You can guarantee that The Critic will stick his head in at some point and offer some advice. When that happens, promise him that he can look at your work at the end of your scheduled writing time. At the end of half an hour, stop writing and let The Critic go for it. Let him pull it apart if need be. This exercise starts to build a trust between your Muse and your Critic – both learn that when they are working, the other one isn’t going to butt in and interrupt. The Judge The Judge is your conscience, and he appears when we feel guilty about spending time writing. We start to feel selfish for spending time tapping away. Isn’t there a better way to spend our time, to make money, rather than indulging in fantasies of publication and bestseller lists? To make The Judge chill out, try this exercise: Write about why you need to write. Call your essay ‘Why I Write’, and be brutally honest. Really dig down into the urge you have to write, and talk about how your life would be if you didn’t write (here’s a clue: The Victim would get even louder if you didn’t write). When The Judge starts picking on you, get your essay out and re-read it. The Author The Author is that part of ourselves that sees every moment of writing as important and valid ONLY IF it leads to publication. The Author is the one that urges us to follow the market rather than our hearts. The Author is the one who tuts away in the background if we spend a morning writing a short story when we ‘should’ be working on our novel. Or working on a character sketch that has nothing to do with our current manuscript. To give The Author a sense of perspective, try this exercise: Remember this – ALL WRITING IS GOOD. Every moment that we spend putting words on a page increases our creativity. And that character you’ve just sketched out could be your next heroine. Allow yourself a set period of time every day where you’re allowed to work on something else. Set up a separate notebook or folder for random writings, and use this to record ideas that don’t relate to your main project. The Muse Yes, she can be an enemy of creativity if you don’t learn to work with her properly. Sitting around waiting for her to show up is not how books get written. The Muse works best with a regular schedule – book time with her, and she will show up brimming with ideas. Meet her irregularly and she’s likely to forget you even exist. To catch up with The Muse, try this exercise: Woody Allen once said that 80 per cent of being successful in life is just showing up. For one week, schedule a specific period of time each day where you sit at your desk (or wherever you write). You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else either – no internet surfing, no emails, no texts, no phone calls. Having this quiet, regular time will encourage The Muse to visit with ideas. 7 Comments A writer's worst nightmare 19/03/2012
By Cara Gabriel There’s a part of the writing process that I really don’t like. Just the thought of it sends chills down my spine and sends me scurrying for my secret chocolate supply. Querying. Or rather, the idea of selling myself, which is essentially what querying is. Writing is a solitary profession, and by nature us writers tend to be sensitive souls. We’d rather sit at our desks, frantically transcribing the musings of the people who live in our heads, than deal with actual people. You know, face-to-face and everything. Unfortunately there comes a time when those musings, edited, trimmed, polished and pummeled into a gripping narrative, need to see the light of day. You need to – gasp – query an agent! And this is where you need to get comfortable with the idea of selling yourself; anathema to a writer more used to talking about their characters and plot. The reason for this is very simple. Agents receive thousands upon thousands of submissions every year. Some of them will be very good. A few will be excellent (as is yours of course). The trick is to make sure you stand out from the pack. How do you do this? Follow the submission guidelines to the letter, have a killer synopsis/query letter and, perhaps most importantly, convince the agent that they want to work with you. Show your commitment. Demonstrate your professionalism. Sell yourself. Jessica Faust at Bookends Literary Agency’s sums it up beautifully: ‘Your opening line should also include any details that make you stand out from the crowd. Are you published? A major award winner? Do you have editors reviewing requested fulls? All of this information can help get you to the top of my stack’. To all those pre-published authors out there, my challenge to you is to start thinking about this now. Don’t wait until you’re writing the query letter and be faced with the tyranny of the blank page. Why not start right now? Use the comments to practice selling yourself. Tell me why you’re great! Ten things you must know about your heroine 27/02/2012
By Cara Gabriel Romance novels are driven by characters. Sure, we all like a nice, juicy plot, but ultimately what drives the book forward is the conflict, and that conflict comes from your characters. So it makes sense that you should get to know your hero and heroine really well. Better than you know your nearest and dearest. Maybe even better than you know yourself. There are heaps of resources that tell you how to fill out your heroine’s character, but many of these focus on things like recording what colour eyes she has, or where she went to school. I think the idea is that then you don’t get her eyes changing colour half way through the book. Sure, it would be annoying to realise you’d switched her from a blue-eyed babe to a brown-eyed girl in chapter six, but something that superficial is actually pretty simple to fix up during your edits. What’s much harder to fix is a character who is inconsistent or illogical in their behaviour; where this happens, it not only jolts the reader out of the story (something we want to avoid at all costs), it also creates distrust in the reader’s mind. It's imperative that you really know your heroine – and that goes way beyond eye colour and what she studied at university. Delving that deep into a character can be tough however, so I’ve put together a list of ten questions that I like to be able to answer about my heroines. 1. What does she carry in her handbag? Why? A woman’s handbag is a microcosm of her life. Beyond the usual requirements of purse, phone and keys, you need to know what she carries and what that tells you about her. Old receipts, discarded lipsticks, a handful of Euro coins, appointment cards, a cheap plastic ring from a cracker, scribbled phone numbers… (and that’s just my handbag!). Check out this flickr group for more inspiration. 2. What’s her favourite CD of all time and why? Why? Music links very strongly to powerful emotions. It’s possible to remember what was playing the first time you met your partner – even decades down the line. The last great summer between school and university might have its own soundtrack. Or perhaps there’s a break-up album that she can’t get rid of. Either way, if you find out what music she loves, and what emotion in provokes in her, you can start to understand some key elements of her backstory. 3. Tea or coffee? Why? Little details like this do matter due to what they tell us about her character and her backstory. Maybe she loves afternoon tea because it reminds her of Sunday afternoons spent with her grandmother. Or maybe she only drinks a boutique Guatemalan blend thanks to spending six months there doing charity work. 4. Cats or dogs? Or neither. Why? Having a pet gives you roots – you can’t jet off so easily when you have a furry friend to worry about. So a heroine on the run (either physically or emotionally) might be petless. If she does have a pet, what is it? A pedigree cat is much more high-maintenance than a mutt from the animal shelter, and might suggest similar about their respective owners. 5. She’s running late for work, the car has a flat and….? Why? It’s important to understand the way she reacts under stress. Does roll her sleeves up and change the tyre herself, or does she call roadside assist? Perhaps she decides to work from home, or does she see it as a sign she needs a day off, and head off to the shops? 6. What Disney film did she love as a child? Why? It’s all about the heroines in those films. Does your heroine love Sleeping Beauty (sitting around waiting for Prince Charming), or is she more of a go-getter like Pocahontas? Does she swoon at the idea of Cinderella and having a fairy godmother give her everything she wants, or is she like Ariel, willing to sacrifice everything for love? 7. What is she most proud of achieving? Why? This will give you a hint about what she’s most passionate about. It may have nothing to do with her current career, relationship or lifestyle, which will also give you some ideas about her internal conflicts. If she’s a corporate lawyer who’s most proud of her charity work, what does that tell you about her character and place in life? 8. What is she most ashamed of doing? Why? What she’s ashamed of doing is an important part of her backstory as it will colour everything she does from that point onwards. Going forward, her actions might revolve around hiding her past actions, or going out of her way to make sure she never does it again. Either way, one action from her past is impacting all her present actions. 9. What stops her from sleeping at night? Why? Waking up at four am guarantees one thing – your mind will start enough mental gymnastics to make sure you’ll not see sleep again that morning. But what back flips and somersaults does your heroine’s mind attempt? Is she worried about money? Her family? The environment? Where our mind goes when there’s nothing else to stop it shows us what we’re really worried about, which in turn reveals a lot about your heroine’s conflicts. 10. What would she spend her last $20 on? Why? When we were asked this at a recent team building event, there were some interesting answers; depressingly, most of the room said they would spend their last few dollars on cigarettes or red wine. But what about your heroine? Would she buy a train ticket and hand deliver her manuscript to the publisher she’s always wanted to work with? Would she donate it to charity? Or would she buy a toy for her favourite niece or nephew? Really understanding your heroine means asking questions that will highlight her deepest fears, strengths and beliefs. What would you ask your heroine today? By Cara Gabriel Each month at MRWG, we set aside part of our meeting time to talk about our writing goals for the coming four weeks, and reflect on what we’ve achieved so far. Why do we do this? Why do we submit ourselves to the scrutiny of fellow Guild members and the potential embarrassment of admitting we’ve not achieved what we wanted to? While the chocolate rewards we get for meeting goals do help, there’s more to this process than expanding our waistlines. Setting goals and holding yourself accountable to those goals is a powerful motivational exercise. Don’t believe me? Here’s five benefits of goal setting that can positively impact your writing. 1. Work out your long term vision and save energy Setting goals helps you to work out where you want to go in life. Whether your goal is to become the next Nora Roberts, or simply to finish your next novel, the important thing is that you know what the end picture looks like. This has two interlinked benefits. Firstly, you’ll know where you need to concentrate your efforts and secondly you’ll be able to easily spot the distractions that are keeping you from working toward your goal (next series of Downtown Abbey, anyone?). 2. Keep yourself on track Goals are great for keeping yourself on track. By setting a clear big-picture goal for say the next five years, you can then set smaller, more manageable goals to help you work towards it. Setting and achieving these mini goals means you’ll see progress on something that may otherwise have seemed like a long, endless grind. What’s more, meeting your goals will improve your self-confidence as you recognise and celebrate your successes. 3. Get ready for the big time You’ve done it. You’ve secured your contract and your book is going to be published. Once the celebrations are over and the chocolate eaten, a certain uncomfortable truth may come home to you. Your contract has dates in it. And what’s more, you’ve signed it, which means you now have to meet those commitments or risk being in breach of contract. In reality, contractual dates are no more than externally imposed goals (i.e., someone else is telling you what you need to do by when). If you’ve developed the self-discipline to set, work towards and complete internally imposed goals during your pre-published years, then meeting your contractual requirements will be easier. 4. Learn when you don’t make it… Sometimes we just don’t make it. Maybe the goals were overly optimistic, or maybe life has just thrown you one too many curve balls. We all have those weeks (months… years…). Not reaching your goals every now and then isn’t an issue as long as you learn from it. Try to work out what went wrong and come up with some ideas to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But what if you’re regularly not meeting your goals? Then it’s time for some soul-searching – letting goals slip time and time again can indicate that you’re really not that passionate about them. So in this case, it’s time to be honest with yourself and work out whether your goals need a major rethink. 5. Celebrate the wins The best bit by far – celebrating when you reach a goal. At MRWG, the celebrating usually involves chocolate, and December’s meeting was no exception. Only this time we were reviewing our goals and achievements from the entire year. All thanks to our goal setting, as a group we managed to: · write over 1.5 million words; · start 28 books; · finish 19 books; and, more exciting of all… · sell 5 books! Setting goals works – the MRWG’s results prove that. And while making the commitment of working towards a goal can seem daunting, it is precisely that commitment that will drive you towards where you want to be. What are your goals for the coming year? Emmie Dark won Romance Writers of Australia’s Emerald Award and did a wonderful job as MC at the Awards Dinner on August 13 at the Hilton. Cara Gabriel snagged second place in the Little Gems. Ebony McKenna’s The Autumn Palace was voted the best cover in the twenty years of the RWAus Cover competition. To round the competition year off Louise Reynolds was awarded the Lynne Wilding Award. Fantastic ladies and well done!!! |
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