The LadyKillers

Take It From Me (or Not)

Advice?

- from Susan   

That’s a big topic. As a relative newcomer - three books in a series out by the end of next year and thrilled to be at that stage - I am balanced between sucking up all the advice I can get and perhaps beginning to have a few pointers I could share. I’ll do a bit of both today by passing along some of the best advice that I have received, pithy counsel that works for me and that might work for other writers who are not yet as rich and famous as my fellow LadyKillers. (What’s that sound of raucous laughter I hear in the background?)

Write regularly. Yes, every day if you can. But even if you’re carving out less time than that, make it the SAME time and the SAME day – think of it as a “date” with your computer or legal pad.

Set some kind of measurable goal for each session, be it number of words, pages, scenes, portions of acts…set something specific with no wiggle room.

Write down what your next day's problem/goal is before you quit for the day.

Write forward – only edit what you wrote the day before as a way of getting back into the rhythm. This advice is part of a set of tips related to writing faster, important when editors want more than a book a year.

Block the Internet during your writing time. Not everyone needs this, but I sure do. Trolling your messages is easier than starting a load of laundry or cleaning the refrigerator and doesn’t tend to put on the pounds the way compulsive snacking does. But you’re stealing time from yourself and your professional success.

Write what you know, even if you know it because you did a crash course in the subject for the project. If you know the time period in which your story unfolds, the place, the available resources, the people, the motivations that drive characters, the legal systems they live under, and so on, you can be specific, evocative, and convincing in telling your story.

There’s more, so much more, but I’ll leave it to my esteemed colleagues to share their own advice. The best advice I ever got was from my S.O., whose voice I still hear telling me whenever the going got rough to “Go for it!” Don’t give up, don’t get scared, don’t demean or discount your ambitions. And good luck!

 

Sound Advice By Michael A. Black

The funny thing about advice is we all like to give it, but few of us ever take it. I guess that would be influenced in large part by the advice and whether it was solicited or unsolicited. Unsolicited advice, despite its intention, is usually met with a certain degree of resentment.

Throughout my life various people have given me advice. Sometimes their words held special meaning. My dad, for instance, always counseled me on the dangers of negative thinking and not believing in yourself. Another bit of cogent advice he gave me right before I left for the army was, “Never lend anything you can’t afford to lose.” That got me through a lot of situations over the next three years with my money still in my pocket.

My high school geometry teacher, Mr. Lopotka, was fond of inserting bits of advice between theorems and angles. “The difference between an adult and a child,” he was fond of saying, “is an adult won’t do something unless he’s willing to take the responsibility for the consequences of his actions.” I guess that could be considered a theorem of sorts.

When I was a rookie cop in training we stopped a bunch of kids in a car, one of whom had possibly been involved in a burglary. As the low man on the totem pole, I was in charge of getting their identifications and handed one girl’s driver’s license to another officer since I hadn’t been cleared to use the radio. Somehow her license got misplaced and she was quite upset. After dealing with her screaming and then her irate father who subsequently showed up on the scene, we checked our pockets but the driver’s license could not be found. One of the other, more experienced officers gave me an unsolicited admonishment, “Let this be a lesson to you. If you take somebody’s ID, hold on to it yourself and don’t give it to anybody.” I took my lumps for that one, although I’m sure I gave it either to him or to my training officer.

But why do we feel compelled to give advice in the first place? Perhaps it’s a desire to help others . . . to give them the benefit of our experience so they can learn from our mistakes. Or, as in the case of the lost DL, it’s a chance to blow off steam by assessing blame. Whatever the underlying rationale, it’s good to consider what effect the advice will have on its intended target. Few of us are receptive to being lectured as to what we should or should not have done. And nobody likes to hear his shortcoming or mistake dragged out in public.

So here’s my advice, on giving advice. (If you don’t want to hear it, stop reading now.)

If you’re going to give unsolicited advice, consider the pros and cons. What’s your underlying motivation? Is it going to help the person or embarrass him? Consider how the person may react. If there’s a chance he’ll be embarrassed, pick your time and location carefully. No one likes to be criticized in front of others, so make it private if you can. And make sure you’re giving the advice for the right reasons. If you’re spouting off what the person should have done because you’ve both been involved in some sort of embarrassing situation, perhaps the advice giving is best left to another time, or skipped altogether.

And finally, what’s the best advice I ever got?

I’d have to go back to my childhood and recall some advice that my grandfather gave me a long, long time ago. My grandfather was a navy lifer with little formal education, but he was what you call self-taught. He loved to read and gave me my first Thesaurus. I still have the book and my grandfather’s inscription inside the front cover: “A man’s thoughts are, by necessity, limited by his vocabulary.” He was also a great chess player and taught me to play as well. When I once asked him how he’d gotten so good at the game, he replied it was all about learning to read the other guy and not letting him know what you had planned. This philosophy had made him a champ in the navy boxing circuit as well.

And what, you may wonder, was this cogent advice that he gave me?

“Never overlook an opportunity to keep your mouth shut,” he said.

If I would have done that simple thing a lot more in my life, I could have avoided a lot of unpleasant situations.

News and Advice (the good, the bad...)

NEWS FLASHES!!!

• Michael A. Black has an opinion piece in the New York Times: "I Carried a Gun, and It Was Heavy." Check it out here.
• Camille Minichino (aka Margaret Grace) has signed a contract for the 7th book in her miniature mysteries: Madness in Miniature!

We're here to tell you

Advice. It's the topic this coming week. Bring your cuppa to the table, and you can take it or leave it (the advice, that is!).

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. ~Oscar Wilde

 

Vacations Devoid of Writing

I write almost nothing when I’m on vacation. As soon as I load the suitcases in the car, the writing portion of my brain falls into a deep slumber and doesn’t awaken until I return home to sit in my usual writing spot.

Take my recent trip to Legoland. It’s a seven hour drive down a long, straight stretch of I-5. Surely, I could manage to write something in that amount of time. Always the optimist, I put my writing tablet and pen in the middle console before we even pulled out of the driveway so I couldn’t use the excuse that I had nothing to write on or with. I also vowed not to fallinto the trap of getting distracted by every cow and billboard I spotted out the car window, which is about all you’ll see on parts of I-5.

And it worked. At least in the beginning. I managed to write my blog for the LadyKillers site due that week before we'd even hit Fresno. But that was all. My initial progress became my only progress. I played with the GPS device, passed the kids snacks, and fiddled with the radio. I did everything but write.

Once we got to San Diego, I didn't get any better. Between relaxing after all the hustle and bustle of the day and trying to convince my kids it was really, truly time for bed, I barely had enough energy to watch TV, let alone concentrate on writing.

Past trips have yielded similar results. The previous year, on that long drive to Disneyland, I plotted out part of my second book, but mostly in my head. I jotted down very little. When I went to Mendocino for a brief visit, I didn’t even pack a notebook.

But I've decided that's a good thing. Sometimes I need to step away and not worry about the plot point I’m stuck on or how to smooth out the latest chapter. Instead, I need to take the opportunity to recharge my energy level without the pressure of trying to get any work done. I like to think that
when I return to the story, I’m better able to spot issues and sort them out. In fact, I think I should take a vacation every month. That sounds like a plan worth pursuing.

 

Les vacances et l’ecriture*

*Vacations and Writing

by Margaret Lucke

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists
 of either writing or thinking about writing.
-- Eugene Ionesco

Ionesco may be right. Even when writers take time off, our brains keep chugging away on the story. Plot details pop into mind at odd moments. Characters whisper secrets in our ear. No matter what we’re doing, the story is humming in the background.

So, yes, we're always writing. But that doesn't mean we have to stay chained to our desks. Sometimes a change of pace in a fresh environment--in other words, a vacation--is exactly what our creativity needs.

A writers group I've belonged to for many years used to have a wonderful tradition. Each autumn, we held our own writers retreat. We rented a pair of cottages in the nearby seaside town of Stinson Beach (see photo at right) and spent a week there writing. No phones. No families. No errands to run. Just our stories and the companionship of other writers. We each had our own room to work in and a long beach to walk on. Fresh air. The sounds of the wind and the gulls. Everyone brought her own food for breakfast and lunch. In the evenings we took turns making dinner and gathered by the fireplace for wine and conversation. We went home with our spirits rejuvenated and lots of work accomplished.                        

Then our horizons expanded. One of our members, Joan, was offered the opportunity to spend September and October of that year in a grand maison in a medieval hilltop village in Provence. The cost was extremely reasonable, and the house would accommodate a large number of guests. Why not, she suggested, hold our annual retreat there?

 
The village of Venasque

Why not, indeed? So off we went to Venasque, which sits east of Avignon in the midst of vineyards and lavender fields near the slopes of Mont Ventoux, the southernmost peak of the Alps. We couldn’t all stay for the full two months but each of us got there for at least a few days, as did some of Joan’s other friends. I spent all of October in France, one of the most memorable months of my life.

The days quickly settled into an agreeable rhythm. Church bells woke me at seven. I'd read in bed or write at the table in my pretty blue bedroom until nine. That gave me time for breakfast before the daily tour began at ten. Several of us would take off in our leased car to visit a museum or a monastery, or explore a Roman ruin or a medieval town, or stroll through a picturesque outdoor market. We'd stop at a patisserie with an outdoor terrace for a café crème and a pain au chocolat, then head home for dinner and a glass or two of the local wine. Around nine we'd start drifting to our rooms, some to sleep, others like me to write for a couple of hours.

Here I am, enjoying a cup of tea in our Venasque kitchen

We were enthusiastic tourists, yet we got a lot of work done. There was no computer, no phone, no TV, no billboards along the roads, no job to go to--none of the constant distractions and demands for attention that we experienced in our normal lives. And there were plenty of new sights, sounds, and scents to stimulate both our senses and our mental story engines. Going home was hard, yet the positive effects of the trip lasted for a long time. I still get a boost just from the memories.

France was a hard act to follow, and that trip proved to be the writing group's last retreat. The next year, and again the one after, we couldn’t find a week when we were all free to go to Stinson Beach, and the tradition died. Lately, though, some of us have been reminiscing about what a boon those little vacations were. There's been talk about doing it again. If that happens, sign me up.

The Nano-vacation vs two-week vacation

Ann Parker here, every other Thursday at the LadyKillers, and not on vacation at the moment.

Well, maybe I am, as I meander around the Internet, looking at photos of Hearst Castle.

As I mentioned in my comment on Priscilla's thoughtful post, I don't think I've had a real vacation in a long time... as in, two weeks with nothing to do but take in the sights or walk the trails. As I was thinking about this, my eyes happened to settle on a snapshot of me taken back in... late 1970s? early 1980s? I believe that's it. The hair gives it away. I was trying for a perm (remember all those fluffy 'dos back then?), and something went horribly wrong. I remember a colleague at work looking at me in consternation and saying in a comforting tone, "Oh well. It'll grow out." The funny thing was, I liked the results. At least at the time.

On vacation (with scary hair) in Maroon Bells, circa 1980.

 Anyhoo, it was a true vacation, rambling around Colorado with my sister. We took a short hike around the Maroon Bells outside of Aspen. I can remember the feeling: nothing more on my mind than enjoying the sights and the company of my sister.

Hearst Castle came to mind because it was the last family vacation before my first book, Silver Lies, was published. I remember the vacation pretty well, because we camped (as in tents, sleeping bags, and so on) in San Simeon. Usual family vacation: grumpy kids, tired adults, we went here (toured San Simeon), there (to the Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville in Oceano)... you know, doing things we (the grownups) thought would be fun. Of course, the kids, being kids, really just wanted to stay put by the beach, build sand castles, jump around in the waves, etc.

Hey kids, let's go jump around in this! The Neptune Pool at Heart Castle. Attribution: Stan Shebs

During that vacation, I was reading my final, edited draft of Silver Lies (all in hard copy, of course, with the editor's remarks penned in the margins. This would've been 2002 or so.). Even then, it occurred to me, somewhat vaguely, that this might be the last "carefree"  vacation I would have for a while... The publisher wanted a second book, and with day jobs, family responsibilities, and the book promotion, there wouldn't be much time for lazing around.

I was right.

So, these days, I work on my nano-vacations, which is akin to being "in the moment" (and not "in the writing"). When I take a walk--whether in my local town, in Boulder, Colorado, or New York City, New York--I try to truly clear my mind and focus on the senses: View the people walking by and the window displays, feel the weather, hear the sounds. When I fly, I read for fun (unless there's some deadline or other looming crisis, in which case I work). Reading is a great nano-vacation: You can just disappear into a well-crafted world and relax. Going to a movie is another way to take a great little nano-vacation. Sometimes (okay, this is going to sound crazy), vacuuming. And believe me, with all the dust bunnies hiding in the corners, there's always PLENTY of vacuuming to do around here.

So, what about you? Do you have favorite and easy "places" that you go for nano-vacations?

Intro to Vacationing

Site of Vacation #1 for Camille

The first vacation I ever took was to Peaks Island Maine, a beautiful spot. Imagine my utter delight at staying for 2 weeks in August in a house right on the ocean. We could walk to the beach or out to the rocks and sit and read or meditate all day if we wanted to. When we heard the bell, we filed back to the house and into the dining room and were served a delicious fish dinner.

A great intro to "vacationing!"

I was 25 years old and a nun.

It did seem a little strange to me that once I took a vow of poverty, I was exposed to all the things rich people had—running hot water, showers, medical doctors on call, meals served, and vacations. Strange, maybe, but who was I to question it?

I wrote on that first vacation, a kind of prose poem like the "Picturesque Speech" entries in the Readers Digest magazines we were allowed to read (with about 40% redacted). I'd probably be embarrassed to see the passage now. I'm sure I used phrases like "crashing waves" and "majestic rocks" and "salty breezes."

I don't remember writing much before that, but it was kind of a thrill when the short piece appeared in the order's newsletter.

I haven't thought about that vacation or that bit of prose in many years.

You never know what memory a LadyKillers topic will bring to the surface.

 

Vacations and Writing = ?

After reading the article about writers under greater pressure to write more books each year, I wonder if we might all soon ask: what is a vacation?

No matter what our profession we need time off. Doctors and attorneys have to get away so they can continue to see what others do not in order to be successful at healing and justice. Those who work in industry must turn off the phone and turn away from 24/7 to regain perspective and refresh the imagination so products can be improved and new ones developed. Government employees need time away from a public that may include an ax-wielding claimant or a disgruntled person who starts making obscene phone calls at midnight. As writers, we must get away from the routine and let the mind drift so it can find a quirky new plot, let an intriguing character be born, or discover a different route our characters might take.

Writing is a craft. It is not an automobile assembly line. Yes, it is a business, but companies slide into a slow death when they stop producing a quality product. In the writing craft, we have to keep creating clever plots, gripping prose, and three-dimensional, evolving characters. We can all name authors, once loved, who fell into the slough of same plot, same characters just put into a different town and given different names. With regret, we gave up on them.

So three cheers for time off from the craft we love! As an author, I find traveling to conferences the perfect time not to write. After the most recent book is done and before the next is begun, I stop all work to let the mind float quite irresponsibly. After all, the most creative people are often children when they have the freedom to play. Watching what they can do in a park or play area is something from which private business, government, professions, and the publishing industry could learn much.

Antenna at the Beach

 A quote from Bob Newhart:

Comedians are never really on vacation because you're always at attention... that antenna is always out there.

Sounds like writers!

 

News and Next Week!

News

Ann Parker will be appearing in two Historical Fiction panels, part of the Santa Clara County Library’s Summer Reading Program. The first is Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 7:30 p.m., at the Los Altos Public Library, Los Altos, California; the second is Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 7:30 p.m., Milpitas Public Library, Milpitas, California.

Next Week

Writers fight for all the free time they can get: so when it's time for a vacation, it can be tempting to bring along the laptop, edited pages, and the old Strunk and White. Which begs the question--is that really a vacation? More than one famous writer is known to hide in a hotel room for a week, where they do nothing but write, eat, and sleep. That doesn't really sound like a vacation either...except sometimes, it really, really does!

So join us next week as the LadyKillers sound off about writing time, vacations, and everthing in between.

If you're thinking "I could get so much done," you may be a writer...