Creativity Needs Time

OK, here I go again with the writer’s perfect gift. It is, this year, every year, forever and always, simply time. I wrote about it a couple of years ago, and I still cannot stress enough how absolutely true it is. But last time I suggested we ask for time from others. This time, I’m talking about giving it to ourselves.

I found this terrific little video that demonstrates this message more perfectly than I can:

Creativity requires time to muddle, time to mull, time to take root, time to grow, time to bloom. As much as we all want the satisfaction of results, those results can only be realized to their fullest with playful exploration and patience. A deadline might pressure us to complete the task. But the result might well be shoddy, a rough sketch (as in the video). Let go of the deadline to usher in the nurturing, creative mind-space that will bring forth our best work.

This season, and always, give your work the gift of time. To write. To play. And yes, eventually, to finish.

‘Twas the Tweet before Christmas…

For those of you who missed The Writers Circle’s terrific holiday gathering this past Saturday, here’s a little holiday treat written and shared by one of our circle, Michael Pilla. It’s a perfect re-envisioning of a holiday classic, just right for the moment in which we live.

‘Twas the Tweet before Christmas…

Michael Pilla reading "Twas the Tweet Before Christmas..." at The Writers Circle Holiday Gathering

‘Twas the Tweet before Christmas…
And all through the ‘net, there were last minute specials,
And shopping time yet!
Photos were sent to the cloud with great care
So family and friends would be able to share.
The usual gadgets, some small and some large,
Were all neatly plugged in for their overnight recharge.
And mom on her iPad and me on my Mac
Were Skype-ing our friends while having a snack
When then our connection was lost to the router.
I yanked off my earbuds to see what was the matter.
A tingling I felt, from my head to my toes
Spying a red Mini Cooper festooned with logos
Flying faster than video on 1080p.
The driver called out his sponsors, as clear as can be…
“Now eBay, now Apple, now Am’zon and Zappos
On Google, on Priceline, on Fedex and Fios.”
I knew in a moment, without any pause,
He was the new and improved Santa, “Cyber” Claus.
Struck speechless was I, much like a mime.
But I had to go greet him and grab some face time.
His clothes were Armani, to give him his due
He looked healthy and rested, and much slimmer too.
No more with the sleigh, or toys in the sack.
That was old Claus, with the bad back.
“I’m the Mayor of Christmas,” he chortled with glee
As he checked in with FourSquare, before speaking to me.
“With gadgets and cards,” he briefly explained,
“My job’s become easier, no need to strain.
I’ve streamlined my workshop. There’s much less to do.
Put a factory in China, reindeers in a zoo.
I laid off some elves as I now work part time
Since I developed an app to keep kiddies in line.
No more written lists of those naughty and nice.
I get real-time updates–don’t have to check twice.”
He dropped off some gifts that were both pretty and small
And sucked down the Red Bull I left in the hall.
Then quick as a wink he dashed out to his car.
It started right up, and was bright as star.
He texted my Droid as he drove out of sight,
“Like me on Facebook” and have a good night.

— Michael Pilla

…Revision, Revision (part 2)

More on Revision from TWC’s Associate Director, Michelle Cameron. If you missed Part 1, check it out here.

Once you are satisfied that the structure, character development, story arc and descriptions stand up to scrutiny, it’s time for…

STEP #3 – SEE THE TREES (and trim many of them)

Now it’s time to polish your work. You do this through judicious pruning, a careful eye for the details, and lots of attention to your fourth grade grammar teacher.

You might choose to take several sweeps of your manuscript to accomplish these tasks – though they’re certain to merge together as you revise:

• Trim the trees – you don’t really need all those words! A good rule of thumb is to look for where sentences are becoming wordy and revise them to be as simple and direct as you can. Realize that, while the reader loves your prose, less of it is generally more. Some things to keep in mind:
  • Are you using strong verbs rather than weak “there is…” constructions?
  • Do you need those adjectives and adverbs? Take them out of your sentence and surprise! You’ll find the sentence is generally stronger without them.
  • Check again – are you writing as directly and simply as you can? You don’t want to pull the reader out of your story to make sense of what you’re trying to say.
  • Wrong word choices – are the words you’ve chosen the right ones? Are there more appropriate choices available? Watch out for blindly substituting synonyms – words have nuances and what might work in one context won’t work in another. (The best way to know the difference, by the way, is to read widely – which, as a writer, you should be doing anyway!)
  • Dialogue – it’s through dialogue that we get to know the characters that people your manuscript. You need to make sure that it strikes a balance between too much and too little:
    • Do we know who’s talking at all times?
    • Have you overused strong dialogue tags such as “exclaimed, protested, shrieked”? Make sure you aren’t relying on the tags to carry the emotion – what’s being said should do that.
    • Can you trim some of those more basic dialogue tags – “he said, she said?” If we do know who is speaking, these tags will just clutter up your writing.
    • Is there enough context so that the reader is “grounded”? This refers back to description – make sure that just because your characters are speaking, that the reader is able to picture where they’re doing so, and what they’re doing as they talk to one another.
    • Grammar – yes, your fourth grade teacher was right all along. Your grammar needs to be pristine because nothing, I repeat, nothing, disturbs a reader more than an ungrammatical sentence. Make sure your sentence structure is parallel and your tenses (past, present, and future) line up throughout the manuscript. All other rules of grammar apply as well.
    • Spelling – the spellchecker is a good first step – but that’s all it is. It won’t catch the difference between right and write – a mistake I’ve made a number of times when righting this. One good technique is to print out a copy of your manuscript and read it backwards (a ruler can help by isolating individual lines of type).

STEP #4 – READ THE FOREST

When you complete all this, you’re still not done. Making changes always carries the risk of introducing new errors. And if you’ve taken my advice to “slash and burn” too much to heart, you may find you have excised some of the music out of your prose.

So it’s time to read the entire manuscript – aloud. If you can do it for an audience, that’s great. If not, head to a quiet room where you won’t be interrupted, supply yourself with plenty of fluids (I always resort to tea and honey for this stage of revision) and read.

You want to listen for any places where you struggle, where you aren’t reading what’s actually on the page. Your voice knows better than your eyes at this point. Trust it and make any further adjustments necessary.

By this point, your manuscript should be polished and ready for readers – whether they be agents, editors, or just family and friends. Could you continue to revise? Sure. But if you’ve gone through these four stages of revision, you should be feeling pretty good about the work. And that means it’s time to let it go, to start something new, and to fall in love with writing all over again.

Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day with Guest Blogger Jenny Milchman

“Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing…It must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The magic is in me—in all of us.” —The Secret Garden

These famous words by Frances Hodgson Burnett adorn the walls of my local bookstore.

For me, bookstores are the magic. That’s why I began Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day.

When I was a child, two places besides my home offered respite, bookstores and libraries. (And I promise: as soon as Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day is firmly entrenched, Take Your Child to a Library Day will be next!)

There were four independent bookstores in my not-large town when I was growing up. Four. Each had a unique identity of its own. One had books you couldn’t find anywhere else. Another had everything that was popular with my classmates. The other tended toward big books with color photos, its children’s section hidden.

I watched as the wares began to tend more and more toward cards and gifts. I watched as one morphed into a toy store. Another closed and a restaurant came to inhabit the space.

We have two bookstores left in town, and I realize that makes us lucky.

When my children were born, I began taking them to story hour at the bookstore long before they could sit up for it. I held them in my arms so we could all listen. I would get a cup of coffee—and often a book. The bookstore was a place of respite for me again.

How many children, I wondered, knew the pleasures of time spent in a bookstore?

I floated the idea for Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day in late November 2010. If it were celebrated on the first Saturday of December, maybe it would encourage people out of the big box stores and into bookstores for holiday shopping. The Day could support local businesses as it enriched children’s lives.

Bloggers took the idea for the Day viral, the publishing industry e zine, Shelf Awareness, and the American Booksellers Association’s magazine picked up the story, and within two weeks, eighty bookstores were celebrating.

In the intervening year, I decided to visit some of the participating bookstores, and so we took our family on the road. We drove from New Jersey to Oregon, stopping at sixty bookstores along the way. My kids were not just going to story hour now—they were getting a roadside view of our country, seen through the prism of a bookstore.

And what a country it is. Bookstores are hubs of the community. Book clubs meet there, and writers groups; churches hold socials, and home-schooling families congregate. One bookstore we stopped at has an amphibian room decorated with the skeletons of animals, which the son’s owner collected for science class.

The cross-country trip helped Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day grow to over 250 stores participating in almost every state. As the second annual Day approaches on December 3rd bookstores have hung posters, distributed bookmarks, planned author events, baked cookies, and blown up balloons.

I have goals for the third annual Day next year. For one thing, I would like to establish grants for children who are unable to visit bookstores on their own. The grants would provide transportation for the child and a parent or caregiver, plus offer a gift card from the bookstore.

Maybe the biggest goal I have for the Day is what it can say about the world we’re creating, each and every one of us, every day. A place where we value uniqueness and the slower pleasures of interacting with people who know our likes and dislikes. A place where we stop in and say hello instead of just clicking a button. A place filled with treasures we can see and touch and smell.

I want my children to grow up in a world like that.

I want them to be surrounded by magic.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer from New Jersey. Her short story ‘The Very Old Man’ has been an Amazon bestseller, and another short piece will appear in the anthology ADIRONDACK MYSTERIES II in fall 2012. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the Made It Moments forum on her blog. Her debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, will be published by Ballantine in early 2013.