Once, when asked about his writing routine, award-winning writer, E.L. Doctorow, said:

“Here’s how it goes:
I’m up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it’s lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it’s time to have a drink.”

Here is D.L. Doctorow’s bio. It’s definitely longer than 25 words and doesn’t at all sound like the bio of someone who lounges through the day.

As I’ve shared before, I write in the mornings, Monday thru Friday, from around 9 until 12:30 and then I do marketing in the afternoons, which involves querying agents and/or publishers, typing in changes to revised manuscripts, and promoting Seeking Sara Summers. If I was a drinker, I’d definitely drink in the afternoons.

What about you? What is your writing routine? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

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Author website.

To celebrate the new year, I’ve created what I believe to be the Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for writers, artists and creative types. See what you think.

1)     Create—practice your craft—every day.

2)     Believe in yourself as a writer and an artist. If you’re not there yet, “fake it till you make it.”

3)     Suspend judgment on whether or not you “should” be writing or allowing yourself to be otherwise creative. Avoid people who have the same judgment.

4)     Cultivate resilience.

5)     Give random acts of encouragement to other writers, artists, and other creative types.

6)     Assume an attitude of gratitude for every minute you find to create.

7)     Celebrate your courage and perseverance as you strive to get your work out into the world.

8)     Support the arts locally and globally: buy books, attend concerts and plays, frequent galleries, buy original art, etc.

9)      Experience beauty every day.

10)    Send your inner critic on an extended holiday.

Can you think of other resolutions that you’d like to add? Which one of these resolutions are you willing to commit to for 2011? I’d love to hear from you.

Author website.

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P.S. My novel,  Seeking Sara Summers , is available on Kindle, as well as iBooks and Barnes and Noble (on the Nook).

In case you missed it, there was an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by John Grisham over the weekend about how he became a writer. Here is an excerpt:   

 

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn’t sure how to start. Over the following weeks I refined my plot outline and fleshed out my characters. One night I wrote “Chapter One” at the top of the first page of a legal pad; the novel, “A Time to Kill,” was finished three years later.

The book didn’t sell, and I stuck with my day job, defending criminals, preparing wills and deeds and contracts. Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.

I had never worked so hard in my life, nor imagined that writing could be such an effort. It was more difficult than laying asphalt, and at times more frustrating than selling underwear. But it paid off. Eventually, I was able to leave the law and quit politics. Writing’s still the most difficult job I’ve ever had — but it’s worth it.

To read the entire article go to: Boxers, Briefs and Books. Check out John Grisham’s website here.

So what do you think? Is writing the most difficult job you’ve ever had? Or was it something else? 

I’d love to hear from you.

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Susan’s website.

I’m sharing a powerful quote with you today from Paul Auster, born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947. He is the author of The New York Trilogy (1985–86),a set of idiosyncratic detective stories that deal with questions of identity and existential thought, as well as a memoir, The Invention of Solitude (1982), and several other books, including the novels Moon Palace (1989), Oracle Night (2004), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), and recently Man in the Dark (2008) and Invisible (2009).

He wrote:

Becoming a writer is not a ‘career decision’ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

He also said:

I don’t know why I do what I do. If I did know, I probably wouldn’t feel the need to do it. … Surely it is an odd way to spend your life — sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist — except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.

“Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing?”

Good question. I am 200 pages into the writing of my new novel. If I’m really lucky, I’ll have a first draft ready by June. The process of building a story out of my imagination is intense and amazing, as well as exhausting. But building a story from the ground up is only the beginning of the process. To take a book (or work of art, or poem, or song) from inception to publication and beyond, is a journey of a thousand steps. It is the biggest mountain you will ever climb. And writing (or painting, sculpting, or singing) every day is only part of the training. 

Would I choose to do this if I were a sane, reasonable person? That’s debatable. I would prefer to do something much easier. Something that didn’t involve rejection and criticism. Not to mention, marketing! Yet I keep doing it. Day after day. Year after year. Despite the hardships which the devotion to an art undoubtedly brings, I keep going. Why? Because if I didn’t, I feel like I would lose the best part of myself. The part that is creative, resilient, brave and a believer in imagination and artistic expression. The part that believes in soul.

What do you think? Does an artists’ and writers’ vocation somehow choose them or do they have a choice? I’d love to hear from you.

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Season Nine

This is my first season of watching American Idol. The prior eight seasons have gone by without me because I thought that there would be nothing that I could learn from this particular reality show.

I was wrong.

There are life lessons in everything. And sometimes the biggest life lessons are found in the least expected places. Here are the 12 Life Lessons I’ve learned, so far, from watching American Idol:

1. Figure out who you are as an artist.

2. Experience and practice really matter.

3. Be true to who you are. Don’t try to be someone else. Discover where your gifts and talents lie.

4. Put your own twist on things.

5. Be honest. Let the emotion come from the heart. Express yourself in the most truthful way that you can.

6. Choose your platform carefully. (Are you a fiction writer, nonfiction, poet, playwright, singer, painter, dancer? Don’t try to be all of them. Choose one thing to focus on and do it well.)

7. Hone your story. Know what makes you unique, different, remarkable and talk about that.

8. Avoid self-indulgence. Focus on what you have to give. Not on what you want to get.

9. Connect with your audience in big and small ways.

10. Have fun. A person who truly enjoys what they do is very attractive.

11. Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way.

12. Be remarkable.

Crystal Bowersox

So what do you think? Are there other life lessons that can be learned from watching American Idol? I’d love to hear from you.

Buy my book, Seeking Sara Summers.

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Salon/iStockphoto

 

There is a really good article at Salon.com this week by Laura Miller. She offers advice to the novelist on how to write better books. In her piece she mentions a Guardian article  called Ten Rules for Writing Fiction which is really good, too. If you aspire to write a novel or are already a novelist, you might find both pieces interesting.

Here is a  brief excerpt from Laura Miller’s piece:

Readers are what every novelist really wants, so isn’t it about time that a reader offered them some advice? I’ve never written a novel, and don’t expect to ever do so, but I’ve read thousands. Here are my five recommendations for the flailing novice:

1. Make your main character want something.

2. Make your main character do something.

3. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting.

4. Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can’t recognize “good writing” or don’t value it that much.

5. A sense of humor couldn’t hurt.

She explains each point in the article. Read it here and let me know what you think.

Buy my novel, Seeking Sara Summers, here.

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According to The Writer’s Almanac, today is Toni Morrison’s birthday. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford in Lorain, Ohio (1931). Lorain was a steel town. Her father worked at the steel mill and in construction, and her mother raised the kids. Morrison said about her mother:

When an eviction notice was put on our house, she tore it off. If there were maggots in our flour, she wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt. My mother believed something should be done about inhuman situations.

Morrison went to college, got interested in theater and traveled around in an acting troupe, then went on to get a master’s in English. She loved to read, but had never been a writer except for a few stories in high school. But after she got married and had two children, her marriage started to dissolve, and she needed an escape. She said,

It was as though I had nothing left but my imagination. I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly. Compulsively. Slyly.

She joined a writing group, but after she had workshopped her stories from high school, she was out of things to share, so she wrote a story about a black girl who wanted blue eyes. And then she started to expand it into a novel called, The Bluest Eye (1969). She went on to write eight more novels, including Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987), and most recently, A Mercy (2008). And she was the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.

Do you write secretly, compulsively, slyly? If not, I recommend it. Sometimes secrets are good, especially if there are critics nearby or you can be easily influenced. Part of the task of being a writer is to protect your new creations. Some of you may do things totally differently, but I know that if I start sharing too soon, the piece loses energy. So I don’t talk about or share anything I’m writing until I have completed an entire first draft.

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According to the American Heritage College Dictionary I keep on my desk, the definition of resilience is: the ability to spring back and recover quickly after being bent, stretched or compressed.

Let’s face it; life has a way of bending, stretching and compressing us, even when we do our best to avoid it. Resiliency is a trait that can be helpful to everyone on the planet. But it can be especially helpful to writers, artists, and creative types.

Artists (and people with artistic sensibilities) are often bent, stretched or compressed by rejection, society’s lack of interest, and/or the critics within and without. But I think the roots of resiliency go deeper than just being able to bounce back after criticism and rejection. I think it can also involve a basic attitude about life. In my mind, resilient people have several characteristics in common.

They basically have:

1. a positive outlook on life
2. a sense of a bigger purpose at play in their lives
3. a certain level of trust in themselves and the processes of life
4. flexibility when life throws a curveball
5. an ability to keep going in the face of fear
6. an ability to find many solutions to a problem
7. an acceptance of diversity and differences
8. a desire to grow and change

On a scale of 1 – 10 where do you fall?
1 = “I’m not the least bit resilient.”
10 = “I’m the most resilient person I’ve ever known.”

I feel like I’m at about a 7.5. But I’d like to get that number even higher. How resilient are you? I’d love to hear from you.

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One thing that it is commonly agreed upon at writer’s and artist’s conferences and in books about craft is that those who somehow make it in the art and book world are those who possess one trait above all others: perseverance.

A recent New York Times article by Deborah Sontag entitled “At 94, She’s the Hot New Thing in Painting,” solidifies this point.

In an era when the art and writing worlds idolize, and often richly reward, the young and the new, Carmen Herrara, age 94, “embodies a different, much rarer kind of success, that of the artist long overlooked by the market, and by history, who persevered because she had no choice.”

In the article it tells of a time when her good friend, the painter Tony Bechara, raised a glass. “We have a saying in Puerto Rico,” he said. “The bus — la guagua — always comes for those who wait.”

The Cuban-born Ms. Herrera, laughed gustily, and responded, “Well, Tony, I’ve been at the bus stop for 94 years!”

In Carmen Herrera’s own words:

I do it because I have to do it; it’s a compulsion that also gives me pleasure. I never in my life had any idea of money and I thought fame was a very vulgar thing. So I just worked and waited. And at the end of my life, I’m getting a lot of recognition, to my amazement and my pleasure, actually.

How many of us have this level of stamina and perseverance, this level of dedication to our art? Hopefully, you won’t have to wait 94 years, but how long would you wait at that bus stop for your creative talents to be recognized?

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If you read my blog with any regularity you know that I am a champion of creativity and creative types, offering encouragement to all manner of artists, whether they are writers, painters, poets, dancers, sculptors, et al, or people whose creativity (or inner artist) has not yet found an outlet.

Below is an excerpt from a book I am currently reading by Lewis Hyde entitled The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. See if it resonates with you.  

The art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received. Even if we have paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which has nothing to do with the price. I went to see a landscape painter’s works, and that evening, walking among pine trees near my home, I could see the shapes and colors I had not seen the day before. The spirit of an artist’s gifts can wake our own….Our sense of harmony can hear the harmonies that Mozart heard. We may not have the power to profess our gifts as the artist does, and yet we come to recognize, and in a sense to receive the endowments of our being through the agency of his/her creation. We feel fortunate, even redeemed…the gift revives the soul. When we are moved by art we are grateful that the artist lived, thankful that she labored in the service of her gifts.

Are you laboring in the service of your gifts? Have you experienced art lately that revived your soul, delighted your senses, or offered you courage for living? If so, I’d love to hear from you.