Crawling out from under my rock…

It’s always tough to come back after a hiatus without some sort of apology.  So I’ll just get it out of the way.

I’M SORRY FOR MY ABSENCE.  Very sorry!

Between writing non-fiction, consulting, mothering, PTAing and managing a household, life got the best of me.  This isn’t an excuse and it isn’t a woe-is-me-look-how-busy-I-am plea.  I know we’re all busy.  The truth is:

The bottom line is I’ve been finding excuses.  But this blog is important to me for several reasons:

1. I’ve made some wonderful virtual connections because of posts written here.
2. I’ve discovered the joys of interacting with readers and writers through blogging.
3. I’ve discovered my fiction writing voice because of this blog.

These are all important, but number three is HUGE.  Scour the internet and you’ll find hundreds of articles on voice. Articles from Writer’s Digest, from writer Nathan Bransford (I love his blog and my boys love his Jacob Wonderbar books), from Chuck Wendig, and even an entire book about it here.

Voice is an elusive concept for writers.  It is still an elusive concept for me.  But after so many years of honing a non-fiction “voice,” I was struggling with finding my fiction voice.  Consequently, I was struggling with fiction writing in general.  But thanks to this blog, I’ve come one step closer to unlocking that fiction voice.  I’ll be posting about this discovery, my experiences at the Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference this April, and lots more things in future posts.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear how things are in your neck of the writing woods.  Are you working on any new projects?

Happy Writing!

Visual Thesaurus for the Right-Brained Writer

Stick around for any period of time, and you’ll learn that I’m a visual person.  I buy books based on their cover. I buy cereal based on the box design (this sometimes leads to disgusting forays into cardboard-like spheres floating in my milk.)  I forgo the use of a Favorites folder in Internet Explorer or Firefox because I’m so in love with the slick design and visual kaleidoscope of Pinterest.

As much as I have my left-brained tendencies (anal about work organization, a perfectionist when it comes to household projects), my juices really get going when the right brain kicks into gear.  If I’m stuck on a problem, there is nothing better than a blank sheet of paper and 20 minutes of free flow writing or mind mapping.  Imagine how delighted I was when I stumbled upon a thesaurus that gives me a visual representation of my synonyms and antonyms.

I give you the Visual Thesaurus:

This program is a word playground.  You can see above, I typed in “bold” and it returned a full map of words.  The colored dots at the end of a branch indicate whether the word is a noun, adjective, verb or adverb.  To the right you can see definitions for the word.  Click on the megaphone symbol and you can hear the word pronounced.  Visual Thesaurus will even define and provide adjectives for proper nouns.

On the left, the program provides a word history so that while you are playing with the word “sausage blimp” you can always go back to your search for “reverberance.”  You can even create favorite word lists and name them.  See a word that looks interesting on the map? Just drag and drop it to your word list so that you don’t forget it.

Visual Thesaurus has myriad uses in a writer’s life.  The obvious? Find just the right word for the sentence.  Warning: don’t use this to overcomplicate things!  You’ve decided that your character is “bold.”  Bold doesn’t feel right because she’s not “fearless and daring.”  But don’t look at the list and throw in “temerarious” just because it sounds cool.  Maybe “bold” doesn’t have quite the right shade to fully describe your character.  Maybe it’s her careless unconcern that makes her “reckless” not “bold.” Or maybe she’s not “bold,” but ”emboldened” because she recently became “fearless” but hasn’t always been that way. Writing is all about the subtle shades of language and words.  The Visual Thesaurus can help you pinpoint those shades.

The more “temerarious” use? (Did you see how I did that there?) Use the Visual Thesaurus to build layers in your scene.  After you’ve written a scene, pinpoint the key emotion swirling around the action.

Donald Maass says in Writing 21st Century Fiction:

“To deliver a strong effect to your readers, you’ve first got to give yourself permission to go big. Big feelings aren’t bad; they’re just big. We all have them.  They’re dramatic. They connect. The only time they don’t is when they’re false: rote, hackneyed, pasted on or unearned. Think of them as primary emotions that take on unique hues in the heart of your main character. Love? Sure, but different this time. Rage? Never before like this one. Sorrow? Yes, but now utterly specific.”

Make a list of other words that can add subtle layers to increase the tension in the scene.  Here’s an example.  Maybe your character is “angry.”  Let’s type in “angry” and make a list:

• Sore – “Causing misery or pain; hurting; an open skin infection”
• Tempestuous (i.e., tempest) – “A violent commotion or disturbance”
• Smoldering – “Showing scarcely suppressed anger”
• Indignant – “Angered at something unjust or wrong”
• Wrathful – “Condemnatory”

You can see from the list above that “angry” has many hues.  What type of anger is your character experiencing?  If you find just the right word to define the type of anger, you can build the scene around those hues and make your character’s anger uniquely her own.

Pretty amazing that you can do all this with a simple online program that costs $19.95/year.  Or $2.95/month.  Sure, you could open up your 15 lb. Roget’s Thesaurus, but for me seeing the visual connections between words and the ease with which I can click on a new word and follow it down a separate rabbit hole is priceless.

You can check out the details of Visual Thesaurus here:

Online – http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

Twitter – @VisualThesaurus

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/visualthesaurus

Nope.  I wasn’t paid or perked for this write-up.  I plunked down my own $19.95 to gain access to Visual Thesaurus. When I love a program, I simply want to share the love with others.

Writer’s Notebook: An Idea Gold Mine

Take any writing class or read any writing book, and the first thing you will learn is, “Keep a writer’s notebook.”  It sounds elementary, but so many writers today don’t keep that notebook tucked away for capturing random thoughts before they are lost.

I started keeping a diary at the age of nine or ten.  At the time, I was obsessed with unicorns, so receiving this diary was a dream for me:

Unfortunately, this isn’t the original diary. (I found the picture on Ebay.)  I haven’t seen mine in years, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere in my parents’ garage along with that popcorn tin that holds all of my carefully folded, hand-written notes from middle school.  Back then the idea of a diary was romantic.  I had very little real drama in my life, but it was fun to pretend that my boy crushes and straight-versus-curly haired days were traumatic and secretive.  I went in phases during which I wrote every day and other times where six months passed between entries.  But writing in that diary was always like coming back to an old friend.  Turning the wheel on the combination lock never lost its appeal because I knew that my secret thoughts waited inside.

In middle school and high school, I spent many years diary free, but I did write poetry.  Some were tormented poems about the boy who was in love with my best friend.  (They ended up getting married.  So I guess it wasn’t meant to be between us.)  Others were more esoteric poems about imagination, the industrial revolution or gargoyles in Paris. I just found a box of these in my own garage last weekend.  They are a treasure trove of embarrassment and a time capsule of my life.  I love the way these poems instantly transport me back to the 80s and 90s.  I can often picture the exact place I wrote the words.

In college, I continued with my writing, but it was more class-driven. Somewhere on that Brother word processor, which I so proudly carried to my freshman dorm room, live files filled with comparative literary papers and poems about Mott the Hoople, sunflower seeds and a sunset from a mosquito-filled dock.  These images became a diary of my life at a college in the middle of rural Indiana.

But many of these words and images are locked away in the bowels of technology.  Yes, I did refer to my antiquated Brother word processor and box filled with floppy disks as the bowels of technology.  And my thoughts are trapped in these bowels. Sure I can fire up the Brother, but I can’t open a dusty box, pull out a stack of notebooks and immediately connect with my most treasured images.

Today, it’s even easier for our fleeting thoughts to get lost in “the cloud.”  I’ll admit, I’m a technology junkie.  I record my thoughts in Evernote, Pinterest, Scrivener, Word documents, and the Notes app on my iPhone.  In spite of the convenience of technology, there are times when we need to simplify these recording mechanisms.  That’s why a few years ago, I finally wised up and decided to go old-school again.

The notebook!

This little gem is a Moleskine knock-off I found at Target.  At 5.5″ x 3.75″ it slides right into my purse and goes everywhere with me.  And at $5.99, you can’t beat the price.  This notebook is my savior.

When I was young and had few responsibilities, I could afford to linger for hours on a mosquito-filled dock and wax philosophical about beautiful images and life.  But as a writer, mom, wife and chronic over-committer, I rarely get to linger over anything.  Consequently, inspiration strikes at the most inopportune times.  Usually when I’m washing dishes or driving in the car.  Enter: The Notebook.

This little baby is filled with thoughts and images.  Here are some examples from a randomly-selected page.

• A quote from an interview I heard with Anthony Hopkins: “As a child I wrote to escape the desert of my mental emptiness.”
• A description of the woman accepting my donations at Goodwill. She appeared to have been badly burned at some point.  The smooth texture of the scar tissue on the side of her head was beautiful and heart wrenching at the same time.
• Notes about the tattoo a friend’s brother just got – an Illinois license plate.  Why would someone want “the Land of Lincoln” tattooed on their arm?  Fascinating!
• A quote from an interview on NPR about the new Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again.  “You can take parts away, but Chitty is still Chitty.”  Something about the gestalt-ness of Chitty (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) makes me love this childhood icon even more.  AND…
• An entire conversation between my MC and her love interest about fish scales which came to me all at once while I was elbow-high in dishwashing suds.

Many of these images will never leave this notebook.  I’ll page through it now and then and find myself transported to a stuffy backroom at Goodwill, but that kind woman accepting my donations may never make it into the pages of a novel.  However, this notebook is my gold mine.  It is the place I go when I’m stuck.

Just yesterday, I discovered a note about the song “Danny, Dakota & The Wishing Well” by A Silent Film.  This song wafted through my car while I was waiting in line to drop my kids off at school.  I’m not sure why I wrote down a snippet of lyrics, but at the time the words struck a chord with me (no pun intended!) Reading over this note yesterday, it suddenly dawned on me how a climactic scene between my MC and her love interest can work.  That’s the magic of the writer’s notebook.  Disparate thoughts have a chance to stew together.  In the end that stew of thoughts becomes the Stone Soup of your writing.

Now it’s your turn.  Do you keep a writer’s notebook?  Scan the pages for a minute and tell me your favorite (or most random) snippet from the past week.

Here’s a great post on the pocket notebooks from 20 famous writers including Hemingway, Twain and Beethoven.

Please loosen the corset

I’m smack in the middle of a rewrite.  When I say rewrite, I don’t mean simple revisions.  I mean ripping out the guts, adding in another 1/3 of the story and changing the narrative from third person to first person.  This is the type of revision that terrifies me.  Give me a full-length line edit and I’m in heaven.  Armed with my red Uniball pen and my Post-it notes, I can whip through a manuscript in a couple of days.  But this ripping out the innards, twisting them around and placing them back in the same body can cause any writer a severe case of anxiety.

Here’s how the week has gone:

Day 1: After weeks of scheming and planning, I was hesitant but happy to drag myself back to the computer. I even got a few new words down on paper.  The first person voice was bland, but Anna, my main character, is tricky.  (At least that’s what I’m telling myself.) And phew, it feels good to have 2,091 words under my belt.

(The truth: 1,800 of the 2,091 words weren’t new at all.  I copied and pasted scenes from my old manuscript, cleaned up the verbiage and changed the tense.  A few new dialogue tags and we’re ready to move on.  Right?)

Day 2: Coffee.  Computer.  Quiet house.  Ready to write. BUT nothing is happening.  I’m internally flogging myself for being a cop out.  Cut-and-paste was not the intention of the second draft.  So instead of setting off on the yellow brick road in search of my courage (and my MC’s voice), I’ll just draft a few blog posts and find out what’s happening with Hurricane Isaac instead.

Day 3: Run from meeting to meeting – all the while distracted because I’m the Cowardly Lion of writing hiding in a PTA mom’s body.

Day 3: (8:14 p.m.)  All’s quiet on the Miller front. Kids are in bed and hubby is checking the baseball scores.  The first line of my revised manuscript just floated through my head.  It’s odd and a little edgy, but it works.  I sit down and manage to spit out 379 polished words in 21 minutes.  And boy are they a complete departure from the original manuscript!  Anna has suddenly taken on a life of her own.  She’s opinionated and shy and bold all at the same time.  And she’s talking about condoms.  Whoa!  Where did that one come from?  You know what?  It felt great – condoms and all.

Here’s the beauty of it.  I was playing.  Playing with words and playing with ideas.  We get ourselves all wrapped up in the seriousness of our craft.  (At least I do.) Thoughts of deadlines and ditching the dangling participles can paralyze us.  I, for one, get very Victorian when I’m writing — trussed up tight and worried about how my words will be perceived.  On Day 3, however, I threw caution to the Victorian winds and loosened up the whale-bone corset.  And once those strings were free I felt like I could play.  My MC’s voice came to life.  She was throwing off the lace tablecloths that covered her dining table legs, she was using the word “leg” instead of “limb.”  She was even talking about… condoms.  I was blushing (and she was blushing). Our collective Victorian chasteness was threatening to tighten that corset back up with every keystroke.  But I filled my lungs with air, exhaled and tore those laces to shreds.

Here’s hoping that playtime will continue with every writing session.  It’s so much more rewarding to write when you’re having fun doing it, and it secretly feels a little bit exciting to throw off those Victorian shackles along the way.

What about you?  Have you (or your characters) done anything surprising this week?

Words of Wisdom for Writers – Thanks to Pixar

Pixar didn’t get to be Pixar, the biggest name in animated movies today, by stocking up on schlocky storytellers.  Take heed, my friends. The people behind that cute hopping lamp know what they are talking about:

Numbers 13 and 22 are my favorites.  Which Pixar rule do you try to live by?

Writers Conference #1 – My ah-ha moment

I attended my first ever writers’ conference in April – the Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Can you believe that I’ve been writing professionally for 16 years and I’ve never attended a writer’s conference?  Here’s the rub.  I attended this conference not as a journalist, not as a non-fiction writer.  I attended as a fiction writer – a novelist.  Initially, I didn’t feel like I had a leg to stand on.

We arrived in the lobby of the Marriott hotel admidst a flurry of writers.  People were already hovering around the bar (at 7:30 in the morning.)  To be fair, the bar area doubled as a Starbucks until after lunchtime.  Most of the writers were holding out for their morning shot of espresso, not their morning shot of vodka.  Although, who knows.  Some may have had both in those recyclable cups.  I’ll admit that I felt like I could use a shot of something to calm my nerves.

Why was I so nervous?  I’m usually the epitome of calm when it comes to professional engagements. Although I’ve never attended a writers’ conference, I’ve attended plenty of professional conferences.  Usually I roll in composed and maybe even a little annoyed that this professional development opportunity is taking away from the daily grind of my ever-looming to-do list.

But in the case of PPWC, I didn’t have a novel-ing to-do list waiting for me back at the office.  Sure, I needed to whip through some article writing, but since my fiction writing hiatus started at the end of March, I didn’t have any novelist to-dos at all.  In fact, I wasn’t even a novelist.  I was an ASPIRING novelist ready to take off the mask and declare myself to the greater writing community.  I felt a bit like the green-faced woman in the painting above – hovering on the outskirts of the smartly dressed novelists at the bar and reeling from the anticipation of it all.  In her case it might be the absinthe that has her reeling (not the writer’s conference nerves), but regardless of the potion (distilled Green Fairy juice or novelist-coming-out-of-the-closet anxiety) I was a bit green around the gills myself.

I did the only thing I could: took a deep breath, picked up my registration packet and jumped in with both feet.  The weekend was phenomenal.  The people were friendly.  I don’t know if it’s just that Colorado has a kick-a$$ group of writers or if it is writers’ conferences in general, but the majority of attendees were truly interested in learning about and supporting their fellow writer.  The weekend was exhausting.  Taking a break from the daily grind and spending 10+ hours/day focusing only on the craft and business of writing was inspiring… and exhausting.  The weekend was epiphinous.   More on this writing epiphany in a bit.  But first, my top five tips for surviving your first writers’ conference:

1.  Have a plan:  Study the schedules, biographies and class descriptions ahead of time.  Wandering aimlessly from session to session is definitely an option, but carefully selecting your sessions ahead of time will give you the most bang for your buck.  Let’s face it writers’ conferences are expensive, and I feel like I got my money’s worth because I went to sessions that were right for me rather than following the herd to the next big-name presenter.  (Note: I did attend several sessions by the “big name” presenters also, and let me say that Donald Maass and Jeffery Deaver did not become “big names” accidentally.  The insight these guys offered an aspiring novelist like me was priceless.)

2.  Deviate from the plan (or follow your gut):  I wasn’t pitching a novel because I didn’t have a completed novel to pitch.  I wasn’t drafting query letters because I didn’t have a finished work about which I could write a query letter.  In spite of the fact that I wasn’t ready to face the query or the pitch, there were two sessions on the agenda that kept calling my name.  And I’m so glad I deviated from my plan and went to those sessions.  The first was a Read-and-Critique session which was open to the public.  Authors read their own first page and a literary agent responded.  In this case, the agent was Taylor Martindale from Full Circle Literary agency.  Martindale provided valuable feedback in a very kind-hearted way.  I think the writing of everyone in the room will benefit from her evaluations.  And the courage of the authors to read their first pages buoyed me.  As I sat green-faced in the corner imagining that I might pass out if forced to read my fiction in public, these authors made me realize that next year (PPWC 2013), I too can survive the firing squad and learn something from reading my own first pages in a public setting.

The second deviation proved to be my smartest choice of the weekend. Agent Weronika Janczuk from Lynn C. Franklin Associates led a breakout session call Crucial Compactness.  I took more notes during this one-hour presentation than I did the rest of the weekend put together.  She discussed the writing and editing of compact queries, synopses, and first chapters. You wouldn’t know it from this long-winded blog post, but I learned a boatload about compactness.

3.  Take a walk:  10+ hours sitting in hotel banquet chairs and three meals a day of hotel banquet food can be hard on the mind and the body.  Make sure to schedule time to take a walk.  Get up early or skip half of the lunch session.  Fresh air and sunshine will keep your body in sync with your brain and might even allow some time for the muse to swoop down in the midst of the information overload.

4.  Be friendly:  I’m a shy person by nature.  I have a hard time being the first to stick out my hand and introduce myself.  I had an even harder time at the conference because as a novelist I didn’t feel as legit as many attendees.  What I quickly learned is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve published five novels or only written five pages.  The majority of the writers at the conference were not only interested in their own craft, but the craft of their fellow writers, too.  As writers we spend a great deal of time talking to (and about) the voices we hear inside our heads.  Make-believe voices.  Voices that our spouses or friends may never understand.  To sit in a room with 400 other people who also talk to the voices inside their heads was a breath of fresh air.  Take advantage of the unspoken commonalities and enjoy being a part of the larger whole.

5. Embrace the bigger picture:  I arrived at the conference thinking I was working on a YA historical fiction novel.  I left realizing that my long abandoned 2009 NaNoWriMo manuscript was the story I need to tell.  This realization dawned on me while sitting in a session called “A Survey of Childrens and Young Adult Books” by Denise Vega.  Somewhere in the midst of Denise’s description it dawned on me that Sliver of Souls deserved a different title and a suspenseful/thriller twist.  The pieces all came together and I almost jumped from my seat.  I’ll admit that this ah-ha moment had nothing to do with the deconstruction of a board book storyboard, but something Denise said resonated with me.  She quoted Madeleine L’Engle: “You have to write the book that wants to be written.”  It dawned on me that FOR NOW writing my historical fiction novel was like putting a round peg in a sqaure hole.  It didn’t want to be written – right now.  Sliver of Souls? That story has been trying to crawl out from under the bed since I finished NaNoWriMo in 2009.  Maybe it was time to let it see the light of day.

All in all my first writers’ conference was a triumphant success.  I signed up on the spot to attend the 2013 conference.  You can belive that as a “veteran” attendee, I won’t be quite so green when I walk through those lobby doors.  I’ll be ready to read my pages, ready to pitch, and more than ready to join that smartly dressed group of novelists at the bar.

Start Running (even if you need a bucket)

My family spent many hours watching the Olympics this summer.  It surprised me how taken my young sons were with track and field.  They especially loved the sprint races.  Every night we crowded around the television to watch Usain Bolt or Allyson Felix run their hearts out. However, these sprint races were hard for me to watch.  With each crack of the starter pistol, I found myself getting more and more tense. My hands would sweat, my heart would pound and at times I had to physically leave the room.

These sensations took me back to running cross-country in junior high school.  I loved it… and I hated it. Before every race, my stomach tied up in knots.  My arms ached from the adrenaline coursing through my body. I dreaded that starter pistol.  I used to hear the starter pistol in my nightmares. I used to wish that the pistol would jam and or the race monitor would faint before he could pull the trigger.

In spite of my hatred, the pistol always fired.  And there I was standing at the starting line with no choice but to run or scurry back to my parents waiting with anticipation.  Peer pressure was the only thing that got my feet moving.  All of my pimply-faced, lanky runner friends were already skipping along the hilly course in front of me.  The dread of public humiliation always got me going.  That and my coach yelling at me from the sidelines, “Start running!”

Start running I did – every time.  And once I settled in, my arms loosened up and my stomach (although still a bit queasy) untied its knots.  Two miles later, I would find myself still running.  Somtimes I surprised myself and finished the race ahead of the pack.  Other times (the majority of the time), I arrived at the finishing chute solidly in the middle.  Regardless of my race time, I always finished.

Over time, and after many races spent wondering whether I would need the bucket my mother so discreetly placed next to the start line, I realized that I was a dependable and solid runner. However, being armed with this hard-earned knowledge that I was consistent never made it any easier to get my feet off the starting line. The nausea never went away.

This is the way I feel about writing most days.  Today I find myself at yet another starting line.  I took the summer off from fiction writing (and blogging) to focus on my paid non-fiction work.  I have to admit, pulling myself out of the fiction “race” was a relief.  Isn’t it always easier to not write at all than to line up at the starting line and face the blank page in front of you?

I knew I couldn’t stay away too long though.  The stories keep coming and the characters keep talking to me when I’m drifting off to sleep at night.  So I’m lined up for the race again.  I unearthed my 3/4-completed draft and dragged it to the start line.  The problem?  I’ve been in the starting blocks for three weeks now.  I’ve wasted more time thinking about starting the race than seems humanly possible.  It’s harder as an adult.  I don’t have my posse of pimply-faced friends threatening to whisper snidely behind my back if I don’t get off the start line.  It’s just me and the computer.

Rationally I know the minute I get my feet off the blocks, I’ll settle in to an even pace.  My body will loosen up and I’ll begin the process of one foot (or in this case, finger) in front of the other.  But this morning as I type this, I’m still crouched in the blocks with my puke bucket tucked securely by my side.  Have you seen that Geico commercial?  I’m thinking about hiring my own posse of junior high girls to follow me around.  Instead of “Ew…seriously…so gross,” I’ll pay them to say “really…coward…start writing.”  Any takers?

20 Best Gifts for Writers

It’s that time of year again.  The time of year you start giving gifts to the writer in your life.  Gift giving? What? Shouldn’t this post have been back in November before the holidays?  Well, yes.  But think about all those gift giving opportunities on the horizon.  Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, June birthdays (I don’t know about you, but I know so many people with birthdays in June.  Maybe people just get frisky when back-to-school rolls around.), and teacher appreciation gifts.  Then there are summer vacations.  I’m always looking for great hostess gifts for the multiple friends who house us on our annual summer road trips.  See, anytime is a good gift giving time!

If you’re anything like me, you’re always looking for the perfect gift to put a smile on your favorite writer’s face.  I’ve compiled a list of my Top 20 Best Gifts for Writers.  Enjoy and be sure to let me know if you’ve received any writer’s gifts that have knocked your socks off.  I’ll add them to my list.  If you use Pinterest, you can check out my post on Pinterest for Writers here and you can check out all of these gift ideas on my Pinterest board “Gifts for Writers.”

1. 

Bamboo Custom Carved Keyboard and Mouse Combo – $89.98  I can just feel my fingers gliding over this sleek looking keyboard.  It’s an earth-friendly keyboard which connects to your computer via USB.

2.  USA Literary Map – $19.94  An original hand-lettered poster which features 226 geographically connected authors.

3.  Conceal Bookshelf – $16.09  Make books float on your wall with this gravity defying bookshelf.  I can picture my office covered with stacks of books hovering from the walls.

4. 

“Writing is Rewriting” Cuff Ring – $13.95  Etsy.com is one of my favorite places to find one-of-a-kind gifts.  This ring is hand stamped with the phrase “writing is rewriting.”  It will serve as a daily reminder that the hard work doesn’t end the first time you write “The End.”

5.  Gift certificate to Moo.com for 50 Mini-Moo Business Cards – $19.99  These cards can be custom designed with multiple images.  They would be great to feature quotations or images from that new novel your writer friend has coming out.

6.  Hand-Painted Business Card Holder – $48.00  Speaking of business cards and speaking of Etsy.com, this San Francisco-based Etsy artist creates beautiful works of art on metal business card holders.  Your favorite writer friend will feel proud to pull out this holder when networking at the next writer’s conference.

7.  “Shut up and write.” Canvas Totebag – $25.15  We all need a reminder now and then.  Filled with groceries or library books, this tote will serve as a constant reminder to the procrastinating writer.

8.  Writer’s Flask – $20.00  We all need a little liquid courage sometimes.  Regardless of what it’s filled with, this flask will give your favorite writer a laugh (and maybe the courage to fight back that inner editor) every time they sip from it.

9.  Pop Art Edgar Allen Poe T-shirt in Pink or Black – $26.99  The image of Edgar Allen Poe on this t-shirt is created out of the words of his famous poem, “The Raven.”  If you follow me on Facebook or Pinterest, you know I love fun t-shirts.  This one will definitely find its way into my closet.

10.   Stick-Up Weekly Calendar – $10.00  What better way to remind yourself of those weekly wordcount goals than with a self-adhesive calendar stuck to your computer monitor.  Remember appointments with your doctor, your friends or your keyboard with these handy little Post-It note calendars.

11.  Bracelet made from Vintage Typewriter Keys – $85.00  Many writers love the nostalgia of the good old days.  This bracelet harkens back to a time when writers were hunched over their Remington keyboard clacking away.  Made from real typewriter kays, this bracelet is a must-have for the writer’s jewelry box.

12.  Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own Teatowel – $14.67  The Literary Company has a wide selection of teatowels, posters and mugs imprinted with original book covers by the world’s favorite authors.  I also love The Great Gatsby poster and the Slaughterhouse Five mug.

13.  Magnetic Poetry Writer’s Remedy – $13.60  The gentle relief of Writer’s Remedy helps with all writers block.  The bottle has over 200 magnetic tiles with words like “beauty,” “pickle,” and “confess.”

14.   “Please don’t make me mock you in my novel” T-shirt – $18.95  This shirt comes in men’s and women’s sizes with all different colors to choose from.

15.  “If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” Necklace – $22.50  This wooden pendant hangs from a sterling silver chain.  The quote by Lord Byron perfectly captures the feeling that many of us have that if we don’t capture all of those thoughts on paper, our minds might explode or go mad.

16.  Virginia Woolf “Orlando” Totebag – $15.78  You can never have enough totebags, and the Virginia Woolf quote on this one is particularly fitting.   Not only does it capture the frantic life of many writers, but it hits a chord for me on days when I’m juggling family, work, friends and writing.  This jumbled mass of humanity (with or without the gin and the birthing in the next room) is sometimes the perfect (and only) atmosphere for my writing.

17.  Edgar Allen Poe T-shirt – $27.00  You can’t go wrong with Edgar Allen Poe gifts for writers.  This t-shirt is printed with one of Poe’s most ominous, albeit true (in his case) quotes.  “I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.”  Some days just feel like that, don’t they?

18.  Ampersand Earrings – $8.00  I, like many writers, am a sucker for typography.  These simple acrylic earrings make me happy every time I see them. Not only is the ampersand a beautiful piece of typographic art, but I love the possibilities that a lone ampersand (or a pair of them) provides for life.  And… and…  and…

19.  “We are such stuff as dreams are made on” Sterling Silver Cuff – $97.00  This adjustable wrist cuff is stamped with a quote from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  And what better way to sum up the world of writing than with this wise and poetic sentiment?  Writers truly are such stuff as dreams are made on.  How else could we keep plugging away at it everyday?

20.  F-Bomb Paperweight – $45.00  Sometimes, there is nothing better than an appropriately shouted (or stifled) f-bomb.  This paperweight makes me giggle everytime I see it. Yes, it’s crass.  Yes, it’s irreverent.  Yes, that’s what I love about it.  Aren’t we all just the tiniest bit crass and irreverent sometimes?  That’s why we’re writers, right?

How about you? Have you received any perfect writer’s gifts?  I’d love to have this list up to 50 ideas by November, 2012 – just in time for the next round of holidays!

Have you been writing? I have.

Wow!  A break of 20 days feels like an eternity.  I should have warned you ahead of time, but it didn’t start out as an intentional break.  It started out as a long weekend in the mountains which led to several weeks filled with deadline sensitive work and then led to several days of complacency.  Writing is like anything else you do regularly – it takes discipline.  And once you’re out of the habit, it’s harder and harder to bring yourself back to it.

The good news is that I’ve been writing – a lot.  The writing has mostly been journalistic endeavors and non-fiction pieces, but that’s what pays the bills.  And I do love my bread-and-butter writing projects.  They are comfortable and easy and keep my fingers limber and my mind active.  I’ve also been plugging away on a business plan for a nonprofit organization in our area.  Business plans go hand in hand with the strategic planning arm of my consulting business, but I’ve never actually penned one start-to-finish.  What an in-depth project!  And time consuming.  It’s always exciting to watch a young organization transform from a small mom-and-pop organization to a fully staffed and sustainable nonprofit – at least on paper.  Once that part is finished, the work is in the hands of the capable volunteers (soon to be staff) of the organization.  I couldn’t be happier for them.

I’ve also taken a stab at reorganizing my schedule to include more time for fiction writing.  At the end of February, much to my chagrin, I realized that I was spending more time writing about fiction writing than actually writing fiction.  That needed to change.  So I got back to my fiction writing with a vengeance.  I’m attending a writer’s conference at the end of April, and knew that I needed to have some serious wordcount under my belt in order to feel legitimate in the fiction workshops.  I’m pleased to say the ideas have been flying onto the page.  The “map” has been a wonderful tool – and as it always goes with fiction writing, my characters have taken on personalities of their own and are leading me to places that aren’t even on the map.  Those magical places surfacing from the crevices of my subconscious are the best gifts you can receive as a fiction writer.  In spite of the fact that I feel fidgety when my characters veer from the safety of the map, I know that these adventures are the ones into which I need to dive the most deeply.

How have you all been? How’s the writing going?

Words of Inspiration for Writers

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. – ERNEST HEMINGWAY

 

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. – NORMAN MAILER

 

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.  – RAYMOND CHANDLER

 

I love being a writer, what I can’t stand is the paperwork.  – PETER DE VRIES

 

You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it. – VOLTAIRE

 

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven. – WALTER BENJAMIN