Programming note: Before we get on to Margie’s last blog with us, I just wanted to announce our second annual Author Crush Month. In honor of Valentines Day in February we are taking the entire month to have our favorite authors blog with us about their writing routines. (Use our search tool to find our “author crush” authors from last year!) It’s going to be a fantastic month, you won’t want to miss it.

Now, onto Margie Lawson! We are so going to miss her after this fabulous month of revision. In our behind-the scenes correspondence I’ve been calling it our Margie Extravaganza! Margie has been a joy to host. She is one hard-working lady! I know you have all benefited from her blogs this month. Here she is with her final word:

More Secrets to Writing Irresistible Fiction

MARGIE’S KILLER 5Q!

The Five Question Scene Checklist

My Five Question Scene Checklist is tough, tough, tough. It’s lethal.

I developed my Five Question Scene Check list (5Q) for writers to use as a tool to assess all the facets of Margie-style deep editing. That’s psychologically anchored deep editing.

If you know me, you know I’m a Deep Edit guru. I analyze people, books, characters, plot, writing craft . . . Analysis is my world.

Most of what I teach in my editing courses is what I’ve created. It’s not your 10^th grade English teacher’s editing.

I dig deep into my 5Q in the Deep Editing course I teach on-line in May. The 5Q consists of five questions. It’s the subsets that are killers.

The multiple subset questions make you analyze, assess, probe, and justify each line, paragraph, page, and scene.

Margie’s Killer 5 Q:

The Five Question Scene Checklist

1—ANY MISSED OPPORTUNITIES?

Power Opening:

— Opening Hook?

— Anchored Reader in POV?

— Oriented Reader to Setting and Function?

— Used Cadence?

— Optional:  Used Rhetorical Device?

— Made Opening Compelling in Other Ways?  How?

Power Scene:

Fresh writing?

Nixed Clichés?

Specificity?

Characterization?

Character Description?

Cadence?

Pacing?

Flow?

Used Which Rhetorical Devices?

The EDITS System – Balance?

– Emotion?

– Dialogue?

– Internalizations?

– Tension?

– Setting?

– DABS:  — Dialogue Cues

— Action

— Body Language

— Senses

MISSED OTHER OPPORTUNITIES to Add Power or Clarity?

Is dialogue character-specific?  Tight?  Natural?  Sentence fragments?

Can you put NYT in the margin by a line or paragraph that is so stellar it will boost you toward the New York Times Bestseller list?

2— CAN YOU TIGHTEN THE PAGE, SCENE, CHAPTER?

Backstory?

Throw-away words?

Attributions?

Walking the Dog?

Could you delete a section and replace with a narrative line or paragraph, and still keep your reader hooked – and informed — and pick up the pace?

3— WHAT WOULD ENHANCE EMOTION?

Is the POV character’s emotional set shared with the reader. How?  Where?

Add Power Words?

Backload?

Add more Body Language and Dialogue Cues?   Specify:

Rewrite Body Language and Dialogue Cues to make them fresh?

Add more Visceral Responses?  Write them fresh?

Add more Emotional Hits?

— Take Basics to Complex?

— Complex to Empowered?

Add Power Internalizations?

Does a Turning Point need to be Empowered?

Hook at end of scene or chapter?

4— HOW CAN YOU UP THE STAKES?

On every page, ask yourself, WHO CARES?

How can you make the problem count more?

Can you add a complication?

Can you make the situation worse?

Can you empower the writing to immerse the reader in the sentence? Paragraph?  Page?  Scene?

5—HOW DOES IT RATE?

1)  Scrutinize each line. Do you need every word?  Does every word work?

2)  When each line passes inspection, place a red check mark in the right margin by the last word in that line.

Is every line checked?

3) RATE EACH PAGE:  Choose 1 – 10, 10 being your best work. Write the number at the top of each page. Circle it. Is it a 10?

If you can’t give that page a TEN – Why not?

What do you need to add?

What do you need to delete?

JUSTIFY HOW YOU RATED IT.

If it doesn’t rate a 10, tweak it. Rewrite. Get tough. Rewrite again. Apply the 5Q again.

When you get it to a 9.7 – 10, KNOW WHY.

Be prepared to defend your rating with your critique partners.

BLOG GUESTS – ARE YOU STILL BREATHING?

Let’s dig deep into three excerpts. I’ll analyze the first one.

Here’s an amplified example from Harlan Coben, LONG LOST.  My Deep Editing Analysis is below the example.

I was about to crack wise—something like “tell all your friends” or “sigh, another satisfied customer”—but something in her tone made me pull up. Something in her tone overwhelmed me and made me ache. I squeezed her hand and stayed silent and then I watched her walk away.

ANALYSIS:

1. Showed WHAT WASN’T HAPPENING, what he didn’t say

2. Uses DIALOGUE CUE  –  describes how the dialogue was delivered

3. SPECIFICITY – throughout the passage

4. Rhetorical Device – A DOUBLE.  I made up that term – DOUBLE.   SOMETHING IN HER TONE is an intentional echo.  It’s almost the rhetorical device, anaphora — repetition of first word or phrases of three phrases or sentences in a row.   Powerful.

5. Second part of the DOUBLE – goes DEEPER.  Taps emotion.

6. TONE is used as a STIMULUS – and the reader gets FIVE RESPONSES from her TONE:  pull up (stop), overwhelmed, ache, squeezed hand, stayed silent, watched her walk away (did not follow her)

7. POV character shared what he intended to do, but didn’t – because of her TONE.

8. Rhetorical Device:  AMPLIFICATION:  developed emotion and showed all those responses

9. COMMUNICATION with HAPTICS – touch

10. Rhetorical Device:  POLYSYNDETON – Last sentence uses multiple conjunctions and no commas.  Makes the read more imperative.

11. CADENCE – strong.

12.  Show EMOTIONAL SET of POV character changing from playful to angst

13. TAPS EMOTION in reader

14. FRESH WRITING

15.  HOOKED ME.  DRAWS ME INTO THE STORY – Makes me want to read more.

Tana French, THE LIKENESS:

My hand was on the door handle when for a split second out of nowhere I was terrified, blue-blazing terrified, fear dropping straight through me like a jagged black stone falling fast.  I’d felt this before, in the limbo instants before I moved out of my aunt’s house, lost my virginity, took my oath as a police officer: those instants when the irrevocable thing you wanted so much suddenly turns real and solid, inches away and speeding at you, a bottomless river rising and no way back once it’s crossed.  I had to catch myself from crying out like a little kid drowning in terror,         I don’t want to do this any more.

Robert Crais, THE TWO MINUTE RULE

Wally came over and touched Holman’s arm with fingers as light as a breath.

“He was killed last night. I’m sorry, man. I’m really, really sorry.”

Holman heard the words: he saw the pain in Wally’s eyes and felt the concern in Wally’s touch, but Wally and the room and the world left Holman behind like one car pulling away from another on a flat desert highway, Holman hitting the brakes, Wally hitting the gas, Holman watching the world race away.

That’s powerful writing.

It’s cotton-candy-on-your-tongue writing.  It makes you want more and more and more.

It’s the caliber of writing you find in some New York Times Bestsellers. It’s the caliber of writing you will find in books by Harlan Coben, Tana French, and Robert Crais.   ))

BLOG GUESTS:  It’s your turn!  I’m giving you options.

Option One:  Analyze the excerpt by Tana French or the one by Robert Crais.  Share something Tana or Robert did right.

Option Two:  Analyze the excerpt by Robert Crais.  Share something Robert did right.

Option Three: Apply one or more questions from the 5Q to a page or a scene in your Work In Progress. What did you learn?

REQUEST:

I’d love to hear from you!

I’ll respond as time allows during my work day. I’ll be on-line in the evening (Mountain Time).

POST A COMMENT – AND YOU MAY WIN A LECTURE PACKET!

I will draw a name for a Lecture Packet, a $22 value, at 9PM Mountain Time. Winners may choose a Lecture Packet from one of my six on-line courses. Lecture Packets are available for all my courses through Paypal from my website, www.MargieLawson.com.

1.  Empowering Characters’ Emotions

2.  Deep Editing:  The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More

3.  Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist

4.  Powering Up Body Language in Real Life:

Projecting a Professional Persona When Pitching and Presenting

5.  Digging Deep into the EDITS System

6.  Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors

Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, writer, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques for writers.

Her Deep Editing tools are used by all writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers.  She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.

Over four thousand writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material.  In the last five years, she presented fifty-four full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Lectures from each of Margie’s on-line courses are offered as Lecture Packets through PayPal from her web site.  For more information on courses, lecture packets, master classes, and 3-day Immersion Master Class sessions, visit:  www.MargieLawson.com .

FYI:  BRENDA NOVAK’S DIABETES AUCTION!

NYT Bestseller, Brenda Novak, donates an amazing chunk of her life to fundraising for diabetes research.  She selflessly gives months of her energy, creativity, and what would have been writing time, family time, self-time to her DIABETES AUCTION.

For writers – it’s a warm-your-heart win-win.  Bid on one of the hundreds of items – support diabetes research and you may win an experience that changes your life. A plotting lunch with an agent or NYT bestseller at a national conference could contribute to a contract for you.

If you’re not familiar with this auction — it’s a gold mine for writers!
My husband and I love to support the Diabetes Auction.  With close to 1000 donations, if I don’t mention them . . . you might miss them.

Yikes – a Missed Opportunity!

Margie’s Donations:

1. A set of six Lecture Packets
2. A 50 page Triple Pass Deep Edit Critique

3. Registration for a Write At Sea Master Class by Marge Lawson on Deep Editing Power, April 4 -8, 2011; donation by Margie Lawson and Julia Hunter

4.  A FLYING GETAWAY FOR TWO

You select the destination – any place within 600 nautical miles from Denver.

A weekend, you and a friend, plus my pilot-husband flying our four-seater plane, me, and a two-hour deep editing consult. The consult is on the ground.

THE DIABETES AUCTION runs from MAY 1ST to MAY 31ST. You can tour the
Diabetes Auction site now.  http://brendanovak.auctionanything.com/

Brenda Novak is my hero.  What a way to give back.

Thank you for your time – and thank you for joining us today!

All smiles…………Margie

www.MargieLawson.com

Programming note: Today is number three out of four of Margie Lawson’s special guest blogs. Oh boy, but here is just a glimpse of what you can learn from her. Get out your highlighters because your manuscript is about to get a workout. (Notice the RWA ladies in the picture below? Their highlighters are at the ready as Margie walks them through her EDITS system.) If this system is exactly what you’ve been needing, sign up for one of her classes or purchase a lecture packet. I took a class last spring and I’m hooked.

More Secrets to Writing Irresistible Fiction

A TASTE OF THE EDITS SYSTEM

By Margie Lawson

TODAY – I’ll share some components of my EDITS System.

I’m taking a risk.

A HUMONGO RISK.

The Risk:  After you read this blog, some of you may think you know everything you need to know about analyzing your scenes with my EDITS System.

The truth is, you may know just enough to be dangerous.

Dangerous?  Ha!

I exaggerated. And I also used a cliché. Aack! Cliché alert!

The truth is, you may know enough to dissect your scenes and begin to analyze them, but not enough to dig deep into the analysis to add much psychological power.

I would need to blog for several hundred pages to share the full EDITS System here. Most of my courses have over 300 pages of lectures. I dig deep and use lots of examples to show hundreds of ways to add psychological power to your scenes.

Okay – Enough of my yammering. You all get it.

A TASTE OF THE EDITS SYSTEM

The EDITS System is a tool created for writers. A power tool.

The EDITS System shows writers where to add power. It shows writers how to analyze scene components. It shows writers what’s working, what’s not working, and what’s missing.

The EDITS System is the ultimate SHOW DON’T TELL power tool.

When writers use this highlighting system, patterns emerge for each scene. They may be surprised to see that in an emotionally-driven scene they wrote, they kept the POV character in their head, locked in internalizations. All thoughts, no visceral responses. If the writer slipped in a few visceral responses, they’d take the scene from the POV character’s head, and the reader’s head, to the reader’s heart.

The EDITS System helps writers find a compelling balance of emotion, dialogue, internalizations, tension, conflict, setting, description, action, senses, body language and more . . . that works for their specific scene dynamics.

A critical component of the EDITS System is highlighting EMOTION.

CAUTION!  CAUTION!  CAUTION!

Every component of a scene can carry emotion. Dialogue, thoughts, action, body language, dialogue cues, even setting can carry emotion.

Emotionally-connoted setting:  Show me a picture of a closed coffin surrounded by funereal flower arrangements, and I’ll have a visceral response. Guaranteed.

Writers have to know WHAT to highlight as EMOTION. If writers highlighted everything on every page that carried some emotion, their data would be diluted.

When I developed the EDITS System, I knew I had to be discriminating when highlighting emotion. To select only the strongest elements of emotion experienced by a Point of View character.

Readers identify with the POV character. Internally, readers rejoice when the POV character rejoices – and get anxious when the POV character gets anxious. If reading a well written novel, a reader’s heart rate increases when the POV character’s heart rate increases. That reader is so immersed in the story, they are viscerally engaged.

When creating the EDITS System, my goal was to determine what components of a scene set the strongest emotional hook. What made a book a page-turner.

Given that the story is compelling, the plot is strong, and the characters live in your heart or dreams or nightmares – what writing craft processes could make the difference between a skimmer and a winner?

What could writers do to keep the reader so committed to the read, that they’d rather finish your book, than sleep in, eat chocolate, or have sex?

The answer is the incontrovertible power of the VISCERAL RESPONSE – accelerated heart rate, sweaty palms, dry mouth, tight chest, clenched stomach, weak knees, blood rushing to chest, neck, and face, adrenaline pumping, heart pummeling rib cage . . . .

In the EDITS System, VISCERAL RESPONSES are the only things highlighted in PINK.

Got it?

Not a kick in the shins.

Not an expletive.

Not watching someone get shot.

If the writer neglects to have the POV character experience a visceral response after one of those emotionally-loaded stimuli -- NO PINK in that passage.

The EDITS System Consists of Six Parts:

1. Emotion – PINK Highlighter -  for Visceral Responses Only 

2. Dialogue – BLUE Highlighter 

3. Internalizations – YELLOW Highlighter   

4. Tension and Conflict  -- ORANGE Highlighter

5. Setting and Description – GREEN Highlighter  

6. Nonverbal Communication – RED Pen

BLOG GUESTS – If this is your first time reading about my EDITS System, you are probably experiencing a visceral response!

At first, it seems like a lot to learn – and a lot to do.

I PROMISE, if you study how to use one color at a time, it’s easy to learn.

AND – after you have learned the full system, and highlighted about five chapters, you have the highlighting system imprinted in your mind.

You see the colors in your mind while you write and edit. As you write, you add psychological power.

One of the coolest features of using the EDITS System — is that when a scene doesn’t work, you can figure out why.

Are you with me?

The EDITS System shows you what’s not working.  Cool!

When you analyze the components of your scene, determine why it’s not working, you know what to do to fix the scene, and make it stellar.

Way cool!

Let’s look at each color and what it covers.

DIALOGUE:  BLUE

Think – talked a blue streak – and you’ll remember BLUE is for DIALOGUE.

Always START with BLUE. Highlight what is between the quotes in blue.

Read the dialogue from one scene or chapter out loud. Read it straight through like it’s a script. You may catch twenty-plus critical dialogue-related flaws.

VISCERAL RESPONSES:  PINK

Use the pink highlighter for INVOLUNTARY PHYSICAL REACTIONS TO EMOTION, VISCERAL RESPONSES, including stomach lurching, heart pummelling chest, shallow respiration, tight throat, sweaty palms, shaky legs. Write it fresh, not tried and trite.

Writers need to embrace four points about visceral responses:

Placement in Scene

Placement in the Motivation Reaction Unit

Writing them Fresh

Level of Intensity of the Visceral Response

NOTE:  You won’t have as much PINK as you think. Use PINK when it counts.

SETTING & DESCRIPTION:  GREEN

GREEN – Think setting, green grass, then slide it over and cover character description too. Green covers every component of setting as well as physical features of characters and what they are wearing.

INTERNALIZATIONS & MORE:  YELLOW

YELLOW –Internalizations. Narrative, Exposition, Backstory, Flashbacks, Omniscient Narrator . . . It is ALL highlighted with YELLOW.

BEWARE:  If you have several lines or paragraphs of green or yellow, be sure they work. Readers have a tendency to skim sections of green and yellow. Agents and editors do too. Or worse, they quit reading.

TENSION & CONFLICT:  ORANGE.

USE ORANGE IN THE MARGIN. Use DOTS, SHORT DASHES, LONG DASHES, or SOLID LINES.

ORANGE WILL OVERLAP OTHER COLORS

Put dots of orange in the margin next to a few paragraphs where tension is picking up. You could put short then long dashes that become solid lines on the next page or pages as tension builds and builds.

When the orange drops off, you may notice that you pulled power with comic relief, or a character introduced another topic, or a distraction presented. Did you intentionally break the tension? Or did you inadvertently pull back on the power?

If you planned to break the tension there, good for you. If you didn’t realize the tension deflated, an unintended fizzle factor, you know what to do. Increase the tension.

UNDERLINE ALL NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION  with a RED PEN.

Nonverbal Communication covers several areas. Think DABS for dabs of nonverbal communication.

DABS:

D – Dialogue Cues  — how the dialogue is delivered

A – Action – choreography, movement

B – Body Language – facial expressions, posture, proximity

S – Senses – all six:  sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, intuition

Remember –  The RED Pen covers all DABS.

Overview of the EDITS System:

The EDITS System helps writers analyze patterns on the page as well as what’s missing. The overall read is enhanced, and the writer’s voice remains intact.

Applying the EDITS System to your Work In Progress breaks out the component parts of a scene and shows the writer what they need to do to improve that scene. Using the EDITS SYSTEM is one of the steps that can contribute to making your book a page turner.

YIKES!  I threw a lot at you . . . I hope some of it sticks.

I’m teaching Empowering Characters’ Emotions (ECE) on-line through PASIC in March.

You can read a course description for ECE on my web site under Lecture Packets. www.MargieLawson.com.

I’ll be back next Tuesday to share more secrets of writing irresistible fiction. Now it’s your turn.

PLEASE CHIME IN!

If you have used my EDITS System, please post one thing you learned that made a difference in a scene, or made a difference in your writing.

If you are not yet addicted to highlighters, have not yet used my EDITS System, please post how you think it could help you analyze your scenes. A general comment is fine. No deep analysis required.

If you post a comment to the loop by 9PM Mountain Time, you are entered in the drawing for a Lecture Packet ($22 value).

I will draw a name for a Lecture Packet at 9PM Mountain Time. Winners may choose a Lecture Packet from one of my six on-line courses. Lecture Packets are available for all my courses through Paypal from my website, www.MargieLawson.com.

1. Empowering Characters’ Emotions

2. Deep Editing:  The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More

3. Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist

4. Powering Up Body Language in Real Life:Projecting a Professional Persona When Pitching and Presenting

5. Digging Deep into the EDITS System

6. Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors

Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, writer, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques for writers.

Her Deep Editing tools are used by all writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers. She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.

Over four thousand writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material. In the last five years, she presented fifty-two full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Lectures from each of Margie’s on-line courses are offered as Lecture Packets through PayPal from her web site. For more information on courses, lecture packets, master classes, and 3-day Immersion Master Class sessions, visit:  www.MargieLawson.com .

Thank you for joining us today!

All smiles…………Margie

www.MargieLawson.com

Once again I am delighted to introduce Margie Lawson as our January Guest Blogger. She is here to teach us More Secrets to Writing Irresistible Fiction…and she’s brought another give-away!

More Secrets to Writing Irresistible Fiction

Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist

By Margie Lawson

A whopping 93% of all communication messages are nonverbal.

Anywhere and everywhere — only 7% of the communication can be attributed to the words.

We are always communicating.  There’s no OFF button.

What’s the implication for writers?  The odds are good that writers need more nonverbals on the page.  They need more subtext to qualify and deepen the interactions.

Body language includes:

HAPTICS – communication by touch

KINESICS – communicating by body movement

PROXEMICS – communicating by body positioning

TELLS – unconscious signals that communicate anxiety, aversion, and deception

GESTURE TYPES –  movement of arms and hands associated with speech

DIALOGUE CUES – how writers inform readers how the dialogue was delivered

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS – include eyes, eyebrows, lips, mouth, jaw, forehead, full face, and flicker-face

BLOG GUESTS:  Wish I could cover all those topics in the blog today.  I’d need to fill several hundred pages . . . like I have in my on-line courses and Lecture Packets.

TODAY – I’ll share examples of Dialogue Cues and Facial Expressions.

Dialogue Cues

I coined the term DIALOGUE CUES (DC) to describe the phrases and sentences that  inform the reader how the dialogue was delivered.  Dialogue Cues share the SPEED, TONE, QUALITY, VOLUME, and PITCH.

Writers need to consider the EMOTIONAL SET of their characters, the SETTING, and the SITUATION.  Those three dynamics impact the SPEED, TONE, QUALITY, VOLUME, and PITCH of dialogue.

Let’s check out how authors capture Dialogue Cues on the page.

Here are some DIALOGUE CUES from HARLAN COBEN’s 2009 release, LONG LOST.  For this section – I selected dialogue cues that all speak to TONE.

1.  I expected Jack to give an “awww, Mom,” but maybe he heard something in her tone too.

2.  I had thought about the strange tone in his voice, near panic.

3.  “Must be divine,” Win said in a voice richly marinated in sarcasm.

“Oh, it’s nothing special,”  Paintball said, not picking up on Win’s tone.

4.  I was about to crack wise—something like “tell all your friends” or “sigh, another satisfied customer”—but something in her tone made me pull up.  Something in her tone overwhelmed me and made me ache. I squeezed her hand and stayed silent and then I watched her walk away.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Note the Stimulus and Response pattern above.

5.  I made eye contact with the man I’d fought with in Paris. I kept my tone even, controlled.

DIALOGUE CUES – From THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, by DAVID WROBLEWSKI.

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY:

It took David Wroblewski fourteen years to write THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE.  During that fourteen years, David earned an MFA, and quit writing for over a year.  He thought the book would never be fit to be published.

When he returned to writing, he reviewed his 500+ pages of his INCOMPLETE BOOK – and went back and switched it from 3^rd person to 1^st person POV.  It took him over two months to complete that POV switcheroo.

He spent another few years finishing and polishing the book.  He queried literary agents – pitching his 770 page manuscript.  He got an agent.  He got a contract.

Oprah liked his book.  She selected it for her book club.  WOW!

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE resided at the top, #1, or near the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for over a year.

Here are some of David Wroblewski’s dialogue cues.

1.  Ida didn’t hold out her hands or come around the counter, nor was there a grandmotherly note in her voice.  If anything her tone was incurious and weary, though benign.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Showing what wasn’t happening (above). A powerful technique I cover in DEEP EDITING.

2.  “I’ll stay here,” he calls back. The wind makes his voice tinny and small.

3.  Something in the sound of her voice made Edgar’s legs go weak.

4.  Then his mother was calling, “Edgar! Edgar!”  Her voice toylike and shrunken.

5.  “How did he know?” she said. She took a tremulous breath. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She began to walk toward the porch, hands fisted at her side. Then her strides lengthened and she was running and her voice rose to a wail, asking the same question over and over.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Lots of EMOTIONAL HITS in the example above.  The Dialogue Cue was slipped in to add power.

DIALOGUE CUES from BLACK OUT, by LISA UNGER:

1.  I snap back to the conversation and listen for signs of skepticism in her voice.  But there’s just her usual light and musing tone, the wide-open expression on her face.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Contrasting what wasn’t happening to what was happening.

2.  His tone has shifted from friendly and chatty to slightly more serious. He has stopped nodding and smiling and has fixed me with his gaze.

3.  I kept my voice flat and unemotional. I didn’t want him to know my heart—how afraid I was, how much I needed him.

4.  “You promised me,” I said, my voice sounding childish even to my own ears.

QUICK ANALYSIS:   POV character describes own voice (above).

5.  Gray’s gaze keeps shifting back and forth between me and his father.  “Are you telling me he was there?  Marlowe Geary?  That she killed him?  His voice is a hard edge, tight with emotion; his fists are clenched at his side.

Dialogue Cues from SUSAN WIGGS’s historical, HALFWAY TO HEAVEN.

1. The man said a word Abigail had never heard before, though his furious tone made her blush.
2. His tone indicated a decided lack of interest.
3. His tone was mild enough, but she knew his every nuance. A subtle censure edged his words.
4. “I loved him with all that I was,” the princess said, her voice taking on a tone of confession.
5. Though she spoke beautifully, there was a subtle undercurrent to her tone that Abigail disliked.

The examples below are from DONNA DALTON’S release, THE CAVALRY WIFE, from The Wild Rose Press, 2007.  I chose all tone examples for this section.

1. I may just let you have her. (IN ITALICS)He was joking, of course. Yet something pinched. His tone. The quickness of the remark, as thought the thought was already formed.
2. A cold bite laced his forceful tone. Will ignored the warning.
3. His unreadable expression and even tone revealed little of his mood.
4. The Indian chief narrowed his eyes and studied her as though looking for some sign of deception. When he spoke, his tone was a stiff mixture of skepticism and expectation.
5. The brave jabbed his flag-draped branch in the air and spoke in his deep, guttural tongue. Though he didn’t understand the words, Chase understood the tone.  Forceful and unrelenting. His gut knotted.

QUICK ANALYSIS:   Powerful use of Stimulus/Response, including a visceral response.

Looks and Gazes and Glances and Facial Expressions

C.J. Box, THREE WEEKS TO SAY GOOD-BYE

1.  Garrett looked at me blankly. Something in his eyes disturbed me.  It was as if he saw me as someone who couldn’t possibly understand him, and I was not worth an explanation.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Fresh and amplified interpretation of a look.

2.  Then he smiled outright, and something danced behind his eyes.  I felt a chill roll down my back.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Stimulus/Response

3.  And I caught the “See?  What did I tell you?” look Garrett gave Luis after she was gone.

4.  He locked eyes with me, and I felt a chill that made the hair on my arms rise.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Stimulus/Response

5. On the sidewalk, he paused, and I caught up with him.  I’d never seen him so furious.  The skin of his face was pulled back, slitting his eyes and making his mouth a snarl.

Brad Meltzer, THE BOOK OF LIES

1.  On my left my father stares at Ellis, then Timothy, then back at Ellis.

Then he looks at me.

I see desperation every day. For the homeless, it overrides despair, depression, even    fear.  But when my dad’s wide eyes beg for help . . . I’ve seen that look before—all those years ago when the cops came and they arrested him.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Using an amplified internalization about a look – to slip in backstory.  Powerful.

2.  To be honest, I thought my dad was bullshitting when he said he didn’t know what was in the truck, but from the confusion on his face, this is news to him.

3.  Most people turn away when you ask them a hard question. Serena continues to look straight at me, and her yellow blue eyes . . . I hate to say it . . . there’s a real depth to her stare.

4.  She looks at me in silence for what seems like a full minute.

5.  “And stop giving me that my-boy’s-become-a-man-look!”

Lisa Unger, BLACK OUT

1.  He barely reacts, but I see a muscle clench in his jaw beneath the shadow of black stubble.

2.  I saw the ugly in him for a second, a dog baring his teen.  Then he softened, turned a sweet smile on my mother.

3.  We’re staring at each other, neither one of us looking away. Finally she smiles. But it’s not a friendly smile; in it I see some combination of malice and pity. My gut lurches a bit. I look away quickly.

4.  Vivian walks over and sits beside me, rests a hand on my leg. I examine her face for signs of judgment and disapproval.  But I just see compassion and worry.  And the shade of something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Haptics (touch);  sharing what was expected, but didn’t present; included vague expression

5.  I remember his face from last night; he’d seemed nice. Kind and without artifice. I’d liked him. But there’s something else I see in him as I open the door that I don’t like:  suspicion. Today he’s a wolf at my door.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Showed contrast. News of a difference.  Added metaphor of predator.

6. “Detective Harrison,” I say, offering my best fake smile. “Are you checking in on us?  I keep my body in the door frame, careful not to welcome him in with my words or gestures.

QUICK ANALYSIS:  Interprets body language for reader.

7. The detective is looking toward the door now.  He hasn’t seated himself again, stands with his hands in his pockets. He does a little rocking thing, heel to toe, toe to heel. That Cheshire-cat look he had is long gone. He’s a coward, I think. The kind of bully who would corner the skinny kid on a playground, then lift his palms and wider his eyes in mock innocence when the teacher comes.

Stephen White, MISSING PERSONS

1. The fire in her eyes, if focused, could have ignited candles across the street.

2. The glare degraded into a face that was merely suspicious.

3. Our gazes failed to connect by about ten degrees. It was as though he were blind, wanted to find my gaze, but couldn’t quite manage to make eye contact.

4. He suddenly shifted his gaze and we locked eyes for a period of time that was about the duration of a solitary flap of a hummingbird’s wings. There, and then gone.

HELLO AGAIN!

Now you’ve had a taste of how to write fresh body language and dialogue cues. I dig deep into teaching mode in my lectures. I dissect hundreds of examples and provide detailed analyses.

I’ll be back next Tuesday to share more secrets of writing irresistible fiction. Now it’s your turn.

PLEASE CHIME IN!

POST A COMMENT – OR A FRESH BODY LANGUAGE OR DIALOGUE CUE FROM YOUR WIP – AND YOU MAY WIN A LECTURE PACKET!

I will draw a name for a Lecture Packet, a $22 value, at 9PM Mountain Time. Winners may choose a Lecture Packet from one of my six on-line courses. Lecture Packets are available for all my courses through Paypal from my website, www.MargieLawson.com.

1.  Empowering Characters’ Emotions

2.  Deep Editing:  The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More

3.  Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist

4.  Powering Up Body Language in Real Life: Projecting a Professional Persona When Pitching and Presenting

5.  Digging Deep into the EDITS System

6.  Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors

Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, writer, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques for writers.

Her Deep Editing tools are used by all writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers.  She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.

Over four thousand writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material.  In the last five years, she presented fifty-two full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Lectures from each of Margie’s on-line courses are offered as Lecture Packets through PayPal from her web site.  For more information on courses, lecture packets, master classes, and 3-day Immersion Master Class sessions, visit:  www.MargieLawson.com .

Thank you for joining us today!

All smiles…………Margie

www.MargieLawson.com

I’m so excited to introduce Margie Lawson as our month-long January guest at Routines for Writers. Her bio is below, but let me just tell you she is a friend to writers! She is an energetic and encouraging teacher. If you take her advice, you will be amazed at how much better your writing will be.  Good news: she also loves a good contest. She’s running one for us today, and if you check out her website you’ll see she’s got an even bigger one going there! Let’s have fun, and learn together this month.

A writer strives to select every word to build momentum. The perfect words create page turners.

Every word counts. Writers can’t allow lazy words to add weight to their work. No slackers!

Audition your words.

Hold each word up and evaluate it. Be sure it’s a keeper.

Imagine a word line stretching from New York City to San Francisco. Picture each word of your book strung on that line. It’s your job to push a ladder cross country those 2909 miles, step by step, hooking every letter to the word line.

Each word that’s the perfect fit has a quality that’s magical. When you hook the last letter of the word, an invisible force keeps those letters from adding weight to the word line. If the word works, its weight is self-supporting.

The magic works both ways. If these words become superfluous based on subsequent words added to the line, they lose their power and add weight, creating sag.

Extraneous words, tautologies, unnecessary phrases, echoes, excessive description, fluffy dialogue, vague and wasted words—all become as heavy as tombstones. Tombstones weigh down your line and run your story into the dirt. Your word line may stretch from New York City to Newark above ground, then go subterranean.

Books with few wasted words allow the reader to zip along the word line on a smooth trip from New York City to San Francisco. That’s a compelling read.

We’ve all read books that start strong and fresh and draw us through the first few chapters or maybe the first third of the book, then BLAUGH. Something doesn’t work.

We put the book down and forget to pick it up for days. When we return to the story, we can’t remember the story.

If the reader can abandon those characters for days and not recall what’s happening, either the plot is plodding or the craft of writing is as burdensome and arduous as climbing Mount Everest.

Without oxygen.

In that can-put-it-down book—the snoozer—what writing craft changes would have made it an irresistible read?

1) Getting input from a strong Critique Partner.

2)  Writing tight – nixing unnecessary words and phrases

3)  Writing fresh – including fresh body language and dialogue cues and fresh visceral emotion.

4)  Analyzing scenes with the EDITS System.

5)  Using a wide range of rhetorical devices.

6)  Practicing Deep Editing – including my 5 Question Scene Check List

Let’s look at items one and two.

1.  Getting input from a Strong Critique Partner.

Writers frequently use the phrase, TIGHTEN, when critiquing other’s work. It’s so easy to see the flab in someone else’s work. Not so easy when it’s the words you may have struggled through hours of labor to deliver.

What does tighten mean? If a critique partner brackets half of one of your pages and scribbles TIGHTEN in the margin, there are multiple interpretations.

Is the passage too slow? Do you need to keep the length, but make it more active?

Is it too long?

Is there too much description? Too much dialogue? Too much dreck?

Did you meander? Follow a tangent? Does the tangent need to be cut, or just parts of it?

Does the passage need to be cut by 10%?  25%?  50%?  95%?

Is tightening enough? If tightened, would the passage soar?

Are there any lines that absolutely don’t work and others that are winners?

How invested is the critiquer in having you tighten this section?

When critiquing, it’s helpful to provide as much input as possible. Take a few extra seconds and share WHY something works when you compliment their work.

– Great simile!

– Fresh writing.

– Love how you added power with anaphora!

On the flip side, you can also add information when you share YOUR TAKE on why something doesn’t work. You may share notes like this:

–Dragging. Too many internalizations?. Tighten by 30%?  Break it up by inserting some of your dialogue here?  Or add a Dialogue Cue?

– Light on setting . . .

–Vary sentence structure?

–Backload?

–Choppy.  For me – it’s too many short sentences in a row.

–Great visceral, but I think you need more. Maybe add a hit of Internalization (YELLOW) to support the visceral (PINK) – then add another line of visceral (PINK)  after the internalization (YELLOW).

Those comments are nudges. Gentle suggestions.

One of the bonuses of DEEP EDITING someone else’s work is that you learn more.

By being a strong EDITING PARTNER –you’ll be a better writer.

2.  Writing Tight

Echo words and phrases become cognitive trip-wires. The reader has a blip in their reading, not a fall-on-your-face speed-bump, but a stumble. I think of it as a synapse pause.

It pays to review for echo words. Each writer looks for their favorite words. They could be all forms of words like grab, grip, glance, look, see, lean, tug, pull, cross, tap, turn . . .

The FIND function in your WORD program may become your best friend. I recommend keeping a list of your FREQUENTLY USED WORDS and do a FIND on them after every chapter, from page 1 through your current page. Add to your list.

Using the FIND function is also a great way to track which facial expressions and dialogue cues you use frequently—which gives you a chance to expand your repertoire and provide more fresh writing. If you do a FIND for EYES and get lots of hits, and do a FIND on MOUTH and LIPS and get none or few—that’s good information. You know what you need to do. Nix some eyes. Add more mouth and lip responses. And write them all fresh.

Think of the ways you typically share physical emotion and do a FIND on the key words. You’ll know what you have, where, and decide which you need to rewrite.

I’ll be back next Tuesday to share more secrets of writing irresistible fiction. Now it’s your turn.

PLEASE CHIME IN!

POST A COMMENT – AND YOU MAY WIN A LECTURE PACKET!

I will draw a name for a Lecture Packet, a $22 value, at 8PM Mountain Time.  Winners may choose a Lecture Packet from one of my six on-line courses.  Lecture Packets are available for all my courses through Paypal from my website, www.MargieLawson.com.

1.  Empowering Characters’ Emotions

2.  Deep Editing:  The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More

3.  Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist

4.  Powering Up Body Language in Real Life: Projecting a Professional Persona When Pitching and Presenting

5.  Digging Deep into the EDITS System

6.  Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors

Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, writer, and international presenter—developed innovative editing systems and deep editing techniques for writers.

Her Deep Editing tools are used by all writers, from newbies to NYT Bestsellers.  She teaches writers how to edit for psychological power, how to hook the reader viscerally, how to create a page-turner.

Over four thousand writers have learned Margie’s psychologically-based deep editing material.  In the last five years, she presented fifty-two full day Master Classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Lectures from each of Margie’s on-line courses are offered as Lecture Packets through PayPal from her web site.  For more information on courses, lecture packets, master classes, and 3-day Immersion Master Class sessions, visit:  www.MargieLawson.com .

Thank you for joining us today!

All smiles…………Margie

www.MargieLawson.com

          In the small Southern town of Enterprise, Alabama, stands a statue of a woman in a flowing gown holding a boll weevil in her upraised hands. The plaque at her feet reads, “After the boll weevil destroyed (1910-15) the area’s cotton, locals began diversified farming. In gratitude for the resulting prosperity, the city erected a monument to the boll weevil in 1919.”

          This monument was erected as a tribute to the truth that great success can be born out of even the most bitter failures. When the boll weevil migrated from Mexico in the early 1900s, it devastated the cotton crops in the area. One enterprising businessman convinced an almost bankrupt farmer to change from growing cotton to peanuts. It was a success! The next year he had paid off his debts and was selling peanuts to other farmers planning to do the same.

          When tragedy strikes, when our dreams lie in ruins at our feet, when everything we do seems destined to crumble to dust, how do we react? If this Enterprise farmer and others across the South, had never tried planting peanuts, how would Alabama’s future be changed? It is speculation, of course, but the addition of peanut farming throughout the South is certainly at least partially responsible for the increased production and consumption of peanut products. Towns all over the South lost crops to the destructive boll weevil. Many towns dwindled or died in the resulting crisis. Other towns could look back after several years and see the economic wisdom and stability gained from diversifying into peanut farming. Only one town actually put voice to that truth. Only one town chose to honor the very thing that brought about the destruction, recognizing that it also brought the opportunity for the subsequent prosperity that followed their change of direction.

          I feel like that farmer. The difference is I can’t pinpoint the exact cause of my “crop failure”. All I know is it seems as though my creativity has completely dried up. At one time each passing overheard conversation fired my imagination. My mind would fill with characters developing desires and motivations. I would create stories the original speakers would have found hilarious. Passing images would ignite connections in my brain, creating even more stories. That fire, that well-spring of inspiration and creativity is trickling and sputtering. Unlike those cotton farmers of turn of the century Enterprise, Alabama, I’m not sure what has destroyed my crop of creativity. All I know is that it is dying.

          Like that farmer, I need to change my crop. Not forever. Not completely. Just for now. Just as those Alabama farmers changed some of their farmland to peanuts, I will change my writing focus. Instead of continuing the struggle to force myself to write fiction, instead of continuing to try to eradicate whatever has attacked my creativity and instead of continuing the effort to pull reluctant stories from my mind, I’m going to diversify. I have several ideas for non-fiction books and booklets. Some personal, some with commercial potential. I’ll focus on those projects and let the field of fiction lie fallow for a time. Maybe a month, maybe a year, maybe something in between or even more. For this season of my life, however long that might be, my crop is non-fiction. I’m hopeful that soon, like that turn of the century farmer, I’ll have a productive harvest and bright future.

          What about you? Do you need to diversify? Or perhaps you need to narrow your focus. Whatever your situation, I hope 2010 is a year of success!

It took me years to discover that I am an A.D.D. writer. Though I don’t have a startling amount of Attention Deficit in my everyday life, the facts don’t lie and my A.D.D. shows up in my writing like a big ugly neon elephant, along with my fear of commitment.

[I’m sure some of the single female readers are thinking, “She sounds just like a guy I’m dating. . .”]

For a decade I’ve gone from manuscript to manuscript, even jumping from one to another then back again. I wasn’t having a writing problem, I was having a finishing problem. I’d crank out 100-150 pages but I wasn’t completing any novels. For a while, I’d simply write a short story whenever I was stuck on a book (and I have at least ten of those piled up). Then I’d alternate between feeling great that at least I finished something and berating myself that I was batting zero at finishing my novels. There are at least five unfinished books that came out of this ten year long learning process, which equals a lot of pages that spent years going nowhere.

I tried everything, going to workshop after workshop to learn what other people knew about finishing books that I didn’t. I’ve created outlines, which worked out fine for knowing what happened in the book but definitely stifled my creativity. I’ve tried seat of the pants writing, rushing through the first three chapters to find out what the book is about. Character studies, synopsis writing, praying to the creativity gods…really anything and everything I could do to get a book off the ground and enjoy the process.

The enjoyment was the biggest rub, along with the commitment. Typically, I’d get stuck on one of three things:

1. It was boring to do it this way, and my creative side isn’t very patient or structured.
2. Once I knew what happened, I didn’t want to write the book any more.
3. Transitions are pure hell for me and I’d get stuck on them.

The first two are just my own lovely personality flaws (back to the A.D.D.). The last one is something I hope I get better at over time. I can write emotional scenes or funny scenes all day long with complete focus and pretty good results. However, if you ask me to get the heroine out of her office and over to a restaurant for the next scene, I go blank and dither around, either writing too much or getting complete writer’s block.

Finally, in desperation, I asked my critique group if I could just ‘get a pass on transitions’ and they were sweet enough to say yes. We have a system worked out: I highlight a note like “Get heroine from point A to point B please” and they help me fill it in later, after the first draft is finished and in the bag. In return, I help them amp up their humor or their emotional scenes. We have another member who writes the steamiest sex scenes you’ve ever read. I believe this is the magic of a great critique group – everyone has their talents and when you combine them all, everyone gets a fantastic book out of it.

What I really am is a scene writer. I can manage to stay sustained and interested in a single scene. Most of the time, I can even manage to write it from start to finish since I am lucky to write fairly quickly. I work really hard to focus on nothing else besides that scene because the end of the book always feels like a big black scary hole to me. If I think about it, I get stuck. So I don’t even consider THE END OF THE BOOK until I’ve finished the first draft containing all the scenes I think need to be in the novel. I know I can put them together later, sort of like shooting a film out of order, then sending it to the editing department.

My process has evolved into something pretty close to the following:

1. Like most writers, each book usually starts with an idea or a scene that comes into my head. I write that scene when it comes to me so that I have it out of my head. This process seems to get the juices going for more scenes to come crowding in.
2. I try to write at least five days a week as it keeps my brain open to receiving new scenes. When I let more than a weekend go by without keeping my work in progress on my mind, I start to lose focus.
3. I take some time out from the writing to bat some ‘what if’s’ around with the people I plot with, decide on the overriding theme or message for the book as well as the internal and external conflicts for the protagonist and antagonist.
4. If I’m really lucky, the turning points get decided in advance too. I’m not always lucky and sometimes I have to have a second plotting session over this one. At the very least, I take time with my critique group to discuss what I think the turning points are to see if I’m remotely on target and if it all sounds believable. (For a good summary of Jenny Crusie’s Turning Point breakdown, read this blog.)

The good news is, now that I understand my process and the simple fact that I’m a scene writer, I can stop berating myself for what I’m not and just focus on the joy of being what I am. I finally understand why I’ve been able to finish short stories: they come to me as one long scene and I can hold my focus long enough for that.

Two writers I deeply respect – Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series) and Janet Fitch (White Oleander) – are both scene writers. For Outlander, Ms. Gabaldon wrote the scenes that came to her and stitched them together later, like a quilt. Janet Fitch published White Oleander originally as a series of short stories which she later realized were chapters in a larger story that she combined into a novel. Everything worked out well for them, right? I remind myself of that whenever I feel myself losing focus and force myself to slow down, breath and take things one scene at a time.

Jenny Hansen is a software trainer by day and writes women’s fiction, chick lit and short stories at night. She has been a member of the Orange County chapter of RWA since 2000. Currently expecting her first child, she’s hoping to be well on the road to publication before her world morphs into Baby Land.

Routines for Writers is pleased to welcome Janice Elsheimer as our special guest every Tuesday in November. While we’re all busily writing away, Janice will give us tips and ideas for increasing our creativity. Please join us in thanking Janice for being with us this month!

After my first book was published, I experienced post-partum depression. My child had been born and was beautiful. Except for a misprint on the back cover (which was corrected in the second printing), my baby was perfect. I was too young an author to understand that the real parenting work—marketing—was just beginning. In fact, I kept waiting for my publisher to send me on a book tour, get speaking gigs for me, and otherwise launch this book out of obscurity into stardom. I was lucky in that WaterBrook nominated The Creative Call for a book award and it received second place in the inspirational category. A star, I thought, is born.

Nine years later, I know better. Whatever happened to The Creative Call to bring it to the attention of the reading public was through my own efforts and the grace of God. And whatever happens to raise up my next book, Garden Graces, to become worthy of praise will happen through my own efforts. I’m bracing for long sleepless nights (in motels as I travel to speak at garden clubs and flower shows), and long busy days (sending out brochures, postcards and e-mailings announcing the March 1, 2010 birth date). Because this book is about gardening, I’ll be paying extra attention to preparing the “nursery,” my own gardens, which will come under a certain amount of scrutiny. I’m already referred to as “the garden lady” in my neighborhood, but am now passing myself off as an expert on gardening to the whole of the reading public. My gardens better be show-stoppers.

We writers labor for as long as it takes our work to be conceived, to gestate and finally emerge as a new being. We hope it will someday stand on its own without our constant tending. But we delude ourselves if we believe that the work of writing ends when the first copies of our book arrive on our doorsteps. Without continual attention, our “child” might only live through one printing. Unless we are making arrangements for lots of play dates, lots of opportunities to introduce our child to other people and experiences, we will not have the pleasure of watching our offspring blossom and grow into a whole, healthy individual.

Whether we are parenting or writing, we are on a hero’s quest. We are “called to adventure” and expected to leave the familiar and venture forth into the unknown. God honors our courage by supplying us with “companions, weapons and amulets” to help us on our way. If we are courageous and wise, we use those gifts and press on, winning the battles that aim to prevent us from reaching our goal. But once we’ve won the battle, the quest doesn’t end there. It only reaches completion when we bring “the prize” back to the people we left in the first place, our community, both local and global, so that it can benefit not just ourselves, but others.

As writers our adventure can be seen as setting out to write our book; the battle is all that the world throws at us to keep us from succeeding; and winning the battle can be equated with finally finishing the book and getting it into publishable shape. But we’re only half way there: we have to bring the work back to the community for which it was written, our audience, by getting it published. And then we have to make sure our people are aware of the offering we bring them by doing the marketing we are also called to do as writers.

Once we begin to see our writing life as the hero’s quest, we will understand and appreciate this metaphor in a way that makes all the parts of our lives make sense. Whether we are in fact birthing a baby or writing a novel, we are involved in a process that doesn’t end when the baby or the book leaves our insides and goes out into the world. The rest of the story is bringing that baby up and making sure he or she becomes a person who will make the world a better place. The rest of the story is making sure, after we produce the best book we can manage, we do all we can to put it out to the world.

So I return to my home in Florida today after another 5-day trip, recommitted to the work I’ve set my hand to: becoming a better writer, speaker, and marketer. I don’t do this to lift myself up, I do it because it’s the work I’m called to do. And the more I do it, the more I realize that the writing life is both a quest and a “ministry.” As I conclude this final guest blog for Routines for Writers, let me encourage you to see your desire to write and talents for writing as a call and an opportunity. It’s more of a process than an event, and wherever you are in the process, the fact that you’re leaving the ordinary for the extraordinary possibility of being a writer shows that you are already on your own hero’s quest. I wish you traveling mercies as you follow your own Creative Call.

Author and speaker Janice Elsheimer delivers the message that creativity is a pathway to personal and spiritual growth. Writers, visual artists, musicians, actors–folks who want to start exercising their artistic muscles fill her workshops, seminars and classes. They leave with a new sense of what is possible: a conviction that they can enrich their lives by developing God-given talents.

Routines for Writers is pleased to welcome Janice Elsheimer as our special guest every Tuesday in November. While we’re all busily writing away, Janice will give us tips and ideas for increasing our creativity. Please join us in welcoming Janice!

How did life get so…well, lively? Do you remember when a month into summer vacation, you’d complain about being “bored”? Can you imagine feeling that way now?

Surprisingly, I know adults who still whine about being bored when they have too much time to themselves.

These people are not writers, that’s for sure.

When we talk about our lives with other writers, the main thing I/we bemoan is the lack of time to do our writing life. Now because I’m working on a deadline here, and I need a nap after a full day of teaching fifth grade gifted kids, and I have a meeting in a couple of hours that I have to attend, this blog will be on Making Time, and I promise not to waste either yours or mine.

Ways to find time to write:

• Unplug your TV and get rid of cable. No matter how hard you think that will be, I absolutely promise you that after a month you will wonder how you ever had time to watch it before. Ever wake up in the morning and not remember what you even watched the night before? Or if you do remember, you have to strain for the plot line? Trust me, you may have to plug it back in to watch something special from time to time (or go over to a friend’s house and make it a party), but you will buy HOURS every day that you can devote to creative pursuits like your writing.
• Turn off the ringer on your phone and don’t listen to the messages coming over your voice mail except once or twice a day. Return calls when you feel like it (or better yet learn to text message and send short notes that won’t get you involved in hour-long conversations.
• Set a time to check your email. Turn off the alarm that lets you know when you have a new message.
• Treat your writing time the way you would (or do) treat time at a job away from home. When you start putting out to family and friends that you take your writing seriously enough to protect it from well-meaning but invasive distractions, the people who used to impose on your writing time will get the message.
• Learn to say “no.”
• Quit your day job.
• (Just kidding.)

There was a pastor in one of my Creative Call workshops who said, concerning my suggestion that we not answer our phones every time they ring, “But I’m a pastor. I have to answer my parishioner’s calls when they come in.”

“Really?” I asked. “What about when you’re at the pulpit delivering a message to your congregation? Do you stop and answer your cell phone then?”

He got the message. You are the gatekeeper of your time. Carl Sandburg wrote, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

In The Creative Call, I wrote, “Serving our gift is not self-serving; it is God-serving. As we become servants to our talents we become more fulfilled. We stop trying to please others at the expense of nurturing the artist within us. We become happier, more at peace, less resentful, and more fun to be around. Saying no to other people is saying yes to God’s desire for us to develop the gifts he gave us.”

Until next week, may the Spirit who guides us when we make the time to listen give you the strength to say no to those things that are eating up your writing time.

Author and speaker Janice Elsheimer delivers the message that creativity is a pathway to personal and spiritual growth. Writers, visual artists, musicians, actors–folks who want to start exercising their artistic muscles fill her workshops, seminars and classes. They leave with a new sense of what is possible: a conviction that they can enrich their lives by developing God-given talents.

          NaNo this year has been a crazy roller coaster ride. Most of the month has been filled with frustration, interspersed with a few brilliant flashes of creativity and success. Routine family activities have mushroomed into schedule-crunching emergencies. Small tasks have grown huge and stolen time from the writing. The novel has dug in its heels and refuses to go anywhere. I’m ready to throw in the towel!

          Is it quitting or is it appropriate rearranging of priorities? This is the first NaNoWriMo ever that I have had to make myself want write on my NaNo project. It’s not just that I’ve been extremely busy. I’ve been busy before. In 2005, I won NaNo while working full-time and participating in lots of outside activities. It isn’t busy that is strangling my muse. The few bright sputters of creativity have reignited the fun quotient of writing, but the story just does not want to be written now. The sirens calling my name have nothing to do with fiction and fantasy.

          Every time I sit down to write, several non-fiction projects call out to me. The most insistent is my personal webpage, which I have woefully neglected in recent months. I have been telling myself there is time enough to write on those other projects come November, December or even January. My heart just won’t hear me. To my utter shock, the fun, the consistent flow of ideas, the spurts and sputters and engine explosions of ideas are fueling my non-fiction projects, not any of my story ideas. Fifteen minutes spent on website plans netted two months of blog ideas. Another fifteen the skeleton of the next post. Hours of fingers to keyboard have barely netted 3000 words on the NaNoNovel. The decision is made. My body and mind are leaving this track and transferring to the one where my heart and ideas is racing.

          (I’m thick-headed, but I finally get the message.) NaNo 2009 is not for me. This is not the year I will not write 50,000 or even 35,000 words of brilliant fiction (or rotten fiction). This year, as I’ve said in other posts, I will reclaim the fun of writing. That for me means working on what excites and inspires me at this moment.

          I’m sure the stories will flow from my mind and heart again, but for now it’s time to create compelling and interesting non-fiction. Any one out there feeling the same thing? Feel free to join me. All of us? Go, go, go! Write what you love!

I am simply falling over from exhaustion. My eyes are half-closed as I type and they fully close every time I stop to think of what to say. {zzzz} Oops, sorry!

I love NaNoWriMo, and I love the book I’m writing, and I love my friends, and I love my husband, and I love sleeping, and eating, and showering… but there doesn’t seem to be time to keep up with it all. After I post this blog, my next act will be either eating or sleeping; I’m not sure which I want more.

But it’s worth it. Today I set the alarm for 30 minutes three times, in between other things. Each time, I wrote for about 40 minutes. In the end, I had 3043 new words! Yesterday I was 5000 words behind the goal; today only 4000. Hurray! Being tired and hungry is worth seeing this story come to life.

Earlier this week I was having a difficult time figuring out which scene to write next. I told you about the huge pieces of paper that I used to write all my initial thoughts and ideas on in October. They were great for brainstorming, but less useful for keeping my thoughts organized once I began writing.

So after a particularly tough 30-minute session on Monday (or was it Tuesday? I’m too tired to remember!), I set my AlphaSmart aside and sat down on the living room floor with a pack of index cards. I wrote down a one-sentence description of every scene I had imagined, envisioned, or already written. I spread them out all around me and set to the task of trying to organize them. I think it was a couple hours before I had them in a stack on the desk, the index card for the next scene on top.

This morning when I woke up after too little sleep (awesome fun meeting last night with the Romance Writers of Australia group I’m now a part of!), I sat down with my AlphaSmart and the index cards and started typing! Voila! Beautiful!

I wrote two consecutive scenes in two 40-minute sessions during the morning and early afternoon. By the time I got to the third session, I was too tired to be peppy and witty, so I thumbed through the cards looking for something I little more in line with my mood. I found a card, pulled it out, and started typing.

To make sure I don’t get lost, I put a little check mark on the index cards that I’ve written into scenes, but I make sure to keep them in what I believe to be the correct order for the book. I am so happy! I’ve done this before, but the time in between the first few pages of one book and the first few pages of the next includes too many months during which I forget what works well for me.

Ah, the feel of organization. It’s a beautiful thing.

I hope this helps some of you get your thoughts down, keep the momentum up, and stay as organized as you can be during this crazy stage of writing.

One other bit of advice that might help you. Yesterday’s NaNo pep talk came by email and of course I read it before I started writing. But as soon as I read the first words, “Lynda wrote her pep talk with a pen. You can see a PDF of it in all it’s handwritten glory here,” I had to see it in it’s original form. I think you should read it in the original form, too. It might give you a creative boost! Click here to go to the NaNo page, then read that first line and click on the word “here” to open the pdf. Very powerful message! I wrote like she suggests last week, and while it does take longer, it really does feel different, better. This week I’m typing so I can catch up in my word count, but maybe next week… Well, read the pep talk.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for encouragement today. Hope you’re all feeling good about the writing you accomplished today. Even if it was 100 words. Rejoice! There is much to be grateful for!