Conscious Writing

If you’ve been reading this blog the past year, I don’t have to tell you about the importance of fostering creativity in your life. I’m pretty sure most of my readers are also writers – bloggers, memoirists, novelists, and storytellers.

While embracing your creativity, don’t forget to let it loose as well. Cultivate the habit of running with your craziest ideas, even if they seem unworkable or impossible to bring to light.

Go wild once in a while. Brainstorm your craziest notions. You may not be able to use your wildest ideas, but the freedom to think with abandon may bring you to other thoughts, connections, and ideas that you can realize. Don’t hold back.

Throughout the year, I’ve focused on the positive elements of creativity – our motivations, the sense of fulfillment and accomplishment, and the people who support and inspire us. Though I don’t like to dwell on them, I’ve also written about the people who drag us down. Whether it’s family or online critics, friends or writing peers, there always seems to be a Debbie Downer in the mix. Someone – intentionally or not – will always try to make you feel weird about what you love.

I still struggle with this, despite myself. I like reading and writing in a variety of genres, including what you might call “literary”, but I still find it hard to admit to enjoying comics and space opera and Dungeons and Dragons. I’d never call them guilty pleasures, because guilt is not an emotion I indulge, but I’m more likely to acknowledge that I read Frank O’Hara or Joyce Carol Oates before Philip K. Dick or Harvey Pekar.

Let’s dump that energy in the New Year. Your work is not for other people. Your work is for you. Maybe my D&D friends wouldn’t like my family drama and maybe my other friends wouldn’t be interested in my space epic, but I like them both, and that’s all that matters.

Today, think of someone who drags you down or inhibits you in some way. It might be someone who criticizes you or a fellow writer who is constantly in despair or disarray. Maybe there’s someone in your life who might think your interests are silly. Brainstorm what you might say to this person the next time you encounter their resistance. Think of something affirming but nonjudgmental, and practice saying it firmly and with the best intention. Even if you don’t get the chance to say it aloud, repeat your affirmation to yourself, as needed.

I’m a big believer in internal clocks and biorhythms. Technically, it’s pseudoscience, but I believe that humans are more in tune with the turnings of the heavens and earth than we realize. At its simplest level, we all have habits and preferences that influence our natural schedules.

Unfortunately, the world rarely takes these rhythms into account. I’ve read studies purporting to show that most teenager would function better in school if they were allowed to stay up later and sleep in until mid-morning, with school hours adjusted accordingly. Does the world care? It does not. Instead, we force kids to get up at 6 or 7 and begin classes when some science suggests they’d be better off asleep. The working world is equally unforgiving. No one ever asked me what time I’d prefer to work.

Most likely, you fall into your natural rhythms when your time is your own, on weekends or on vacation, or after you retire. As a believer in our internal rhythms, I think it’s important to recognize our energy and sleep cycles, so that we can time our creative work to the hours when we’ll be most productive.

I’m an early to bed person. I hit the wall at about 10 o’clock, and that’s not an age thing. Even in college, 10ish was my optimal bedtime. If I were going out with friends, I had to push back the 10 o’clock hour to get my second wind. It still happens. I’m perfectly capable of staying up past 10, but if I do, I have a hard time falling asleep later, and it wrecks my sleep cycle, because I still wake up at the same time in the morning. Optimally, my wind-down time coincides with my internal clock. My watch agrees. If I hit the hay before 10, I’m more likely to get a solid eight hours of sleep. Any later and I toss and turn, lucky to get six hours.

I used to do my best creative work first thing in the morning. I’d get up at five and write for 2-ish hours before having to go to work. However, the older I get, the more wakeup time I need in the morning. I’m not real productive right away. On the weekends, noon to five are my prime writing hours. I try to force it sometimes, but I’m low productivity early in the morning. Based on some manual time tracking, I’m also least productive on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so those have become good nights for research and reading.

When do you do your best work? What times would you prefer to go to bed or get up? Do you work with your rhythms or against them?

The latest trendy internet insult disguised as advice is “Go out and touch some grass.” This is usually directed as someone prone to sharing conspiracy theories (left or right) or who worries way too much about the feelings and activities of fictional characters or who thinks having purple hair and septum piercing are equivalent to having a personality. Rarely uttered in good faith, this advice generally means you need to start agreeing with whatever the advice giver agrees with, and if you don’t, your lack of grass-touching is evidence that you are emotionally stunted and perhaps unhinged.

On the other hand, it’s also good advice. There’s a reason moms and doctors recommend fresh air and direct sunlight. Science agrees that touching earth is good for our spirits, whether we prefer the beach or the woods, the mountains or the fields.

This week’s forecast for Aquarians agrees, urging us to spend some time in nature. Rob Brezsny promises that we will have no dangerous encounters, that we’ll learn a lot, and that our spiritual lives will thrive.

I wish he hadn’t given this advice in December in Maryland. I can’t learn anything when it’s this cold and dark.

Whether we like them or not – or even know them – everyone is born into a family. Maybe mom or dad didn’t stick around, but you had one of each. Most of us, even those lucky enough to be born into a relatively happy family, also incorporate acquired family members into our circle.

Found family may include a loving adult or role model in your life, your best friends, a special co-worker, an ex you don’t hate, or other people you find at your church, in your neighborhood, or through your hobbies and interests. These days, our found families include people we meet online, many of whom we’ve never met in real life.

Do your protagonists have found family? What roles do these acquired family members fill? How did they meet? What do found family members provide that your hero can’t get at home?

I’ve written before about my difficulty breaking out of my shell and getting to know other writers, especially in a workshop setting. I have lots of excuses, but the fact is, I feel intimidated. I worry that other people won’t like me or my writing. I made some progress this year, and I’ll keep trying. It probably doesn’t help that I work from home and live alone. I have no other forced human interaction, so it’s hard to get motivated to commit.

It’s hard for writers, since by nature our work is solitary. Even writers who collaborate on a project cannot literally write in the same document at the same time. We must be alone with our thoughts.

Are you out of practice? Do you hesitate to make personal connections with other creative people?

If so, here’s a trick. Imagine I’m the one of those other people, who is as reticent as you. The truth is, we’re surrounded by people who want to make authentic connections but who are woefully out of practice making introductions, small talk, conversations, and dates.

If we all muster a little courage and cut ourselves some slack, we might find an appreciative audience.

Human minds are prone to seeking out what’s wrong. It’s the primary way early humanity kept itself safe. It’s why we take care around outsiders and notice when something in our territory is missing or out of place.

However, in the modern world of relative safety and abundance, it’s may also be a reason why we fixate on what we lack or what goes wrong. When I compare my health and living situation to an 18^th century settler, I’m doing great. When I compare myself to the Kennedys or Kardashians, I may feel I come up short.

Creative people do this as well. On one hand, it’s part of the learning process. We have to stay mindful of what we don’t know or which skills we haven’t yet mastered. Otherwise, we’ll never grow creatively and we risk crafting stories that are beyond our means to write well.

On the other hand, we have a bad habit of beating ourselves up. Our language is not as lyrical or heartfelt as we’d like. We don’t handle multiple POV as well as George R.R. Martin. We don’t sell as well as the next writer. We’re not as funny as Carl Hiaasen.

Today, take a moment to focus on what you bring to the creative table. What do I have?

• Skill with scene setting, characterization, and description
• A strong personal voice and intuitive sense of sentence flow
• Perseverance
• Lots of ideas
• Curiosity and willingness to learn
• Love of writing

Many successful writers started with less. What do you have?

Despite our best plans, we may find we have very little control over our creative lives. We schedule writing time every day, but then we get sick or duty of some kind calls us away. We have word count goals, but some days it’s a struggle to reach half that. We have a novel mapped out, but when we reach the halfway point, that cool revelation we planned falls flat.

Of course, if you’re like me, some of your plans weren’t realistic to begin with. If they were, I’d have finished 2 novels and a few short stories this year, started my podcast, learned video editing software, started a writers’ group, and taken some art classes. Honestly, I could be retired and wouldn’t have time for all that.

I’ve learned I’m much happier and more creative when I allow myself to let go of my plans. I need goals and weekly schedules to keep myself on track, but when life strikes – as COVID did this past week – I also have to let go and let life happen.

I don’t think life was trying to “tell me something” when I got sick. There’s no “reason” for it. I haven’t been reckless avoid contagious viruses or overworking to the point I make myself ill. It’s just a thing that happened. And when things happen, it’s ok to admit you can’t control your schedule or your attention span, and instead pay attention to what needs doing.

Yesterday, I wrote about creating imaginary troubles for your protagonist. Even the strongest-willed among us engages in unfounded worry and irrational fear, despite knowing better. While we’re accustomed to crafting Rube Goldberg-Level plot complications for our heroes, sometimes the strongest obstacles arise from our own thoughts.

Today, let’s look at another counter-intuitive concept – loving the unlovable.

In fiction, we are more accustomed to having our characters reject what is unlovable about themselves. The classic redemption arc portrays a character negating their past to become a better person or perform one significant heroic deed.

However, in these scenarios, we rarely see the after-effect. The redeemed character often is used a sacrifice so that the true protagonist can win the day. Even when an unlikeable character survives the story, we see only the pivot, not the longer journey.

We see this other side more often in non-fiction. We love stories about people who hit rock bottom in some way, who crawl back to become a better, stronger individual. An addict may recover, a criminal may pay his dues, a bad parent repairs their relationship with their kids. Often, such people will describe rock bottom as the best thing that ever happened to them. They absorb the lessons they learned down there and appreciate the second chances they discover.

When we see this journey in fiction, it’s with characters who face dramatic physical defeat, the hero left for dead, the champion brought low by a hungrier opponent, occasionally the drunk who wipes out. In those cases, we see that the worst blow was exactly what the hero needed. He comes back stronger, having learned physical and emotional lessons from his defeat.

Your protagonist or other character doesn’t need to spend time in prison or on skid row to hit rock bottom, and probably doesn’t need to have the stuffing knocked out of him. But consider, as you put your hero through his paces, that he can love as well as learn from his worst moments.

How many of your protagonist’s troubles are all in their head?

From one angle of storytelling, all the important troubles reside internally. Your hero has a negative self-image, skewed world view, fear, or poorly learned lesson that creates habits of living that hold them back from achieving their true greatness. This forms the basis of your character arc.

Of course, from the other angle – plot – your character’s struggles are external. Whether your antagonist is a former lover or bad weather, a flat tire or the Evil Empire, your protagonist has to overcome external physical challenges before he can achieve his objective.

There’s another layer of antagonism we can add to our stories, one with which many of us may be familiar: Shit we make up.

Like our hero’s emotional tribulations, his imaginary troubles may be linked to what’s happened in the backstory, the bad experiences or failed learning that created a limited world view. Unlike those troubles, imaginary fears and provocations may have some basis in truth. It is normal to be afraid of snakes, even if your fear of encountering a snake in certain situation is unrealistic.

As you’re building your hero’s journey, consider what imaginary threats they may have to face. A character being chased into the woods may fear the crack of every twig. Another overcoming illness may tense up at every minor ache or pimple, certain that this is proof of a worse condition. A character whose boss comes to work in a bad mood may fear being fired, despite lack of reason or evidence.

Add up the things that scare, upset, or anger your protagonist, and consider how many of them exist only between their ears.