Lucky in Love (with Writing) on Valentine’s Day

Sure, I like my boyfriend, but my other love is writing!

By SHELLEY WIDHALM

When it comes to a romantic holiday like Valentine’s Day, do you think about your other love?

I do, though I’m not cheating on my boyfriend—I happen to love him and writing both. Valentine’s Day is about declaring your love for your love as in “Be Mine,” giving valentines to friends and enjoying all the different presentations and forms of chocolate. And it’s about the other loves—passions, hobbies and jobs.

This year, I’m showing my love for writing by setting aside at least a half hour a day, now that I got rid of a heavy burden on my schedule. I think of this time as a gift.

The Valentine’s Day tradition of giving gifts and exchanging cards developed out of Saint Valentines. Several Saints called Valentine are honored on Feb. 14, a day that became associated with romantic love during the Middle Ages. Traditionally, lovers exchanged handwritten notes and later greeting cards when they became available in the mid-19^th century.

Today, greeting cards and notes are a way to share sweet thoughts with friends and lovers. The written messages in them can be saved, reread and kept as physical proof someone is thinking about you. They’re also a way to spread love.

Here are 7 Things to Love about Writing

• Writing is a way to figure out what you really think or feel about something.
• It’s a way to play around with words and language.
• It’s a way to improve your understanding of words and the best ways to get your message across.
• It’s a way to express yourself, using your intelligent and creative minds at the same time.
• It’s a way to make connections with text, memory or experiences that you might not otherwise make by thinking or talking.
• It’s a way to tell stories and disappear into another world, where you don’t see the page and can’t tell you’re writing.
• It’s a way to be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do, going places and doing things you might not do otherwise.

Writing is a Perfect Match

It’s interesting to find out what it is you created after spending a few minutes or hours on a story or essay. It’s a process of discovery from seeing your thoughts written out. It’s a sense of accomplishment from meeting a word or time goal. And it’s reciprocal, because when you give your time and energy, you get back notes, then a rough draft and finally more as you keep working. In other words, you’ve found your match.

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Getting Lucky: Top 7 Writing Tips for 2022

The 3-inch snowman sits outside the Sheraton West Denver hotel following the Dec. 31, 2021, snowstorm that broke records falling so late in the winter season. The snowman can serve as inspiration for lucky writing.

By SHELLEY WIDHALM

In 2021, I pumped out a poetry collection in one month, writing all the poems afresh.

But then I got stuck. I kept writing poetry for my daily poem challenge, but I didn’t do any other type of writing.

Whether writer’s block is real is debatable. But motivation is as is doing something about it. That’s why I’m picking up Lisa Cron’s Story Genius and working through the plotting workbook for my next novel. Maybe I’ll figure out why I’m not writing anything longer than a few hundred words.

Part of it might be the “rejection effect“—I’ve submitted my novels to agents but have gotten the “not yet” or “not for me” responses. I moved past calling the responses hard and fast “no’s,” since getting traditionally published is a subjective, uphill trial requiring toughness and persistence.

With all of this “negativity,” I figured I need to get lucky. Here’s how:

Top 7 Writing Tips

• Create inspiration by doing the writing. Don’t wait for the feeling you want to write. Just start.
• Identify a place to write to establish comfort and routine. Then write in odd places to add variety.
• Make writing a plan with daily, weekly or monthly goals. Write for a set amount of time, such as one hour, or until a certain word count, starting with 500 or 1,000 words.
• Give up some of the control. Trust your subconscious to make connections your conscious mind isn’t ready to or won’t necessarily be able to make.
• Don’t be a perfectionist. Rough or first drafts are called that for a reason—the story or message unfolds and isn’t readily formed until it’s written.
• Accept that writing is supposed to be hard. Focus on the process instead of the results to make it more fun and enjoyable.
• Read and to analyze what you read. Identify what works and what doesn’t work and why. Apply what you learn to your own writing.

Get Lucky with Words                                                                                           

Once writing becomes a regular part of your schedule, it can feel like luck. You write. You produce. You have finished work as a result.

That’s my plan for 2022. To write another book and get unstuck.

Outfitting the Writer’s Tool Kit

My writer’s tool kit includes my bookshelf of writing reference books, which help spark the passion engine.

Every writer’s tool kit has different tools, but the most essential is the desire to write. It’s what keeps the passion engine going.

Learning about the elements of writing—storytelling, story structure and word usage—is similar to using an instruction manual to fix a car without the wrenches, pliers and other tools.

Diagnosing the problem, looking at a chart pointing out the parts of the car and reading about the necessary steps doesn’t mean the problem will be solved. The missing element could be the desire to do the work, or the confidence and skill to complete it so the car runs. Even if that passion is there.

The Work of Writing

Writing requires work, and to do that work, there needs to be motivation, discipline and, I believe, a love for some or several aspects of creating or the final creation. Do you love words, individually or how they sound in sentences? Do you love telling stories? Do you love solving story problems? Do you want to make readers feel? Do you want to feel?

Or maybe you like to see your name in print? Or to have finished something?

Writers need spark, just like cars need spark plugs to fire the ignition. For me that spark is a passion for words and getting lost in the story or poem I’m writing, so that what comes out feels like dancing and breathing and living, while I lose awareness of my physical self.

Setting Aside Writing Time

Like cars that need gas in the tank, writers need the space and time to be present for writing. If the tank drops toward the E, writers need to ride out their writer’s block or frustration with the knowledge that these emotions are not permanent.

I find that I get frustrated having so little time for writing.

The result is I save up words, emotions and ideas like money in the bank for when I do get to hang out with my laptop. I let go of my editor and inner critic, plus any negative emotions I have, because now it’s time for my date with QWERTY.

I schedule my writing time, not to specific days but to two to three times a week. I log in the hours I write, so I can see that, like an odometer marking the miles, I am making progress toward a goal. I get excited about every 5,000 words I finish in a novel’s rough draft.

The Writing Fuel

All of this is my fuel for not giving up when I am unpublished with a burning, driving, raging yawp to get my words out into the world. I want my words to be heard, read and even sung.

I don’t necessarily have a map with every step plotted out, but what I do have is a giant imagination, a spark of creativity without which I would fade and a passion for this art I cannot stop loving.

Loving Writing on Valentine’s Day

Zoey the Dachshund makes for a cute valentine!

Does writing fit with a romantic holiday like Valentine’s Day? The day is all about declaring your love for someone, but why not for a hobby or a passion?

As you check the aisles in the grocery store filled with pink and red from Valentine’s cards and heart-shaped candy to teddy bears holding stuffed hearts, do you think of a red notebook? Do you want to set aside maybe even just a half-hour for writing—or do you need to, ensuring the blog, article or short story meets deadline?

Do you see writing as a gift? This gift giving and exchange of cards developed out of Saint Valentines. A number of Saints called Valentine are honored on Feb. 14, a day that became associated with romantic love in the Middle Ages in England. Traditionally, lovers exchanged handwritten notes and later commercial cards when they became available in the mid-19^th century.

On the surface, greeting cards and the notes in valentines all involve the quick correspondence about friendship and romance. Communicating through writing has a universal appeal (think notes passed around at school before texting, texting, Facebook messages, emails, letters and cards). What’s written can be reread, saved and kept as a memento (even texts, if you copy them into a notebook or journal) and serves as physical proof that someone is thinking about you.

Writers do the same thing, compiling poems, short stories, manuscripts, ideas for writing and processes for doing the writing. They become collectors of the written word, saving their work toward the day they will be published. Or they simply write out of a passion and because it’s their hobby.

They do it because of love. For me, my love is writing, and a close second is editing.

Here are a few things to love about writing:

• Writing is a way to figure out what you really think or feel about something.
• It’s a way to be creative.
• It’s a way to play around with words and language.
• It’s a way to improve your understanding of words and how to be concise with language and how to effectively get message across.
• It’s a way to express yourself, using your intelligent and creative minds at the same time.
• It’s a way to make connections with text, memory or experiences that you might not otherwise make by thinking or talking.
• It’s a way to tell stories and disappear into another world, where you don’t see the page and can’t tell you’re writing.
• It’s a way to be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do, going places and doing things you might not do otherwise.
• And it’s interesting to find out what it is you created after spending a few minutes or hours on a story or essay. It’s a process of discovery.

Writing is the perfect match:

Lastly, writing gives you a sense of accomplishment after completing a story, meeting a word or time goal and finishing a novel or other large project.

In essence, it’s reciprocal, just like love, because you give your words and you get back a product, starting in rough draft form. But as you get to know each other even more, you develop a relationship, turning something rough into your perfect match.

 

Prepping for Poetry’s Arrival

Waiting for the poem to arrive is like waiting for a butterfly to land and stay still.

Writing poetry is all about form and discipline, or is there more to it, such as invitation, invocation and imagination?

After attending Loveland poet Bhanu Kapil’s workshop earlier this month on “Writing the Poem Before It Arrives” at the Loveland Public Library, I realized I’d been leaving out an important aspect of my poetry practice.

I write a poem a day. I write poems when I feel inspired. And I write poems to practice form from short haikus to odes and the occasional sonnet.

But I never thought about prewriting poetry, engaging in exercises of the imagination to set the stage for a poem’s arrival.

“You’re receiving whatever comes. This is your writing. This is for the poem,” said Kapil, who decided to become a poet in 2003 and now works as a part-time instructor at the Naropa University and Goodard College’s low-residency MFA program. She is the author of several full-length poetry/prose collections, including “The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers,” “Schizophrene” and “Ban en Banlieue.”

Poetry Meditation

Kapil began the 2 ½-hour workshop with a meditation and exercise. She asked that the lights be turned out in the library’s community room and the 30 or so poets close their eyes and imagine that it’s nighttime in the middle of the daytime.

“We’re in a space with other poets who have a desire to write, a feeling to write before (the poem) arrives,” Kapil said. “Make contact with your imagination. Shift time with your body. Make contact with the notebook life.”

Kapil asked the poets to imagine changing their time and location to that of a sea cave, while still keeping their eyes closed. To get there, she had them visualize being somewhere in the plains and grabbing the desire to write and tucking it somewhere, while also noticing the sounds, feel and shape of things and the birds, vegetation and flowers in the environment. She mentally took the poets into a sea cave, and then had them open their eyes, draw a circle with what they thought about placed inside the circle, and then write a poem. The result is what has arrived, she said.

“It’s a connection with a near image and something you’ve been carrying with your writing,” Kapil said.

I drew a lopsided circle that ended up looking like a clock with a swing flying from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. and my flip-flops flying off with ocean waves at the bottom lifting off at 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. At 8:30 a.m. is my sun with my notebook at 10 a.m. and a bird in flight that also looks like a cross at 11:30 a.m.

I wrote a poem that starts off: “Jump onto swings/ lose flip-flops/ ready to go to the sea’s edge/ no time clocks or check in …”

After writing, we traded poems with a writing partner. Mine said that all off my images are off the hour, the way childhood play is. The last lines of my poem are about letting go of the sea cave to fly on my swing, “my feet reaching to that sun.”

Poetry Pilgrimage

Kapil had the poets engage in a second exercise, but I had to go to work, doing the opposite of my fun, childhood play. She called it the “Completely Imaginary Experience in the Library,” the idea of bringing together fragments or pieces of notes and ideas into poetic form.

One way to do so is by taking a pilgrimage in your own environment—Kapil has 12 questions she travels the world with and keeps asking and answering. She asked the poets to find a book in the library and use lines from the book to respond to one of the 12 questions.

“Ask a question and let your hand drift to a book,” Kapil said. “The poem you write is a response to one of the questions. Include one word or fragment from your notes. And also attend to that message from the book you open. You really have to commit, and then integrate it that way. Write toward that line.”

The poem that comes cannot be entirely controlled but comes out of the process, Kapil said.

“It’s something that wants to be written,” she said.

The workshop and a reading the evening before were sponsored by a number of poetry groups known as the Community Poets, including the Columbine Poets of Colorado, Northern Colorado Chapter; the Friends of the Loveland Public Library; The Writing Lab; the DazBogian Poets; and several community sponsors. The workshops are held twice a year in April and August.

“For her, there’s a whole ritual doorway into the place from which we write from,” said Veronica Patterson, Loveland poet and a member of the Community Poets. “She was describing it from the sea cave, where she writes, which I loved. It’s not writing from the surface, but how to get to a deeper place in ourselves.”

Being Thankful for Writing

Thanksgiving is a time for showing gratitude. What are you thankful for?

Giving thanks is a given for Thanksgiving, and the way my family and I said thank you added fun and creativity to last year’s holiday.

My brother and I had visited our mother at her assisted living place for the noon meal. Before the staff served the traditional fare of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and cranberries, the volunteer director of activities told the 50 or so people in the room to find their tags next to the silverware and write what they were thankful for.

My first one was easy because it was about my dog, Zoey. I wrote “My dog, Zoey,” and my mom said, “I knew you’d write that one.”

Next, I put my apartment, because I love it and where I live, feeling like it’s the first place that’s a perfect fit and so me. I also love books, and I love writing and the fact that I love to write, but my list could go on.

The important thing I saw from the activity is to take a moment to reflect—not just on Thanksgiving but every day. Here are a few reasons I’m thankful for writing.

Writing is a Way:

• To be creative.
• To play around with words and language.
• To improve your understanding of words and how to be concise with language and how to effectively get the message across.
• To have a hobby (or a job) that can result in a physical product.
• To figure out what you really think or feel about something.
• To express yourself, using your intelligence and creative mind at the same time.
• To make connections with text, memory or experiences that you might not otherwise make by thinking or talking.
• To tell stories and disappear into another world, where you don’t see the page and can’t tell that you’re writing.

What is the End Result?

It’s interesting to see what you create after spending a few minutes or hours on a story or essay. It’s a process of discovery that also can give you a sense of accomplishment after completing the project, meeting a word or time goal or reaching the final page of that first or 12^th draft.

What are you thankful for? What parts of writing make you grateful that you love to write?

This blog is reprinted from my monthly Shell’s Ink Newsletter, where I provide, fun, useful and inspiring tips about writing and editing. Sign up here. or at http://shellsinkservices.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=16ad8aefe047fb117d01164c2&id=098e54aecf

Finding Work-Life Balance with Writing

Balancing writing with the rest of life is important to avoid too much time in front of the computer and to gather experiences for even more writing.

I don’t like sitting, and I don’t like being in front of a computer—at least for long periods of time.

But I used to not even think about my tools of writing. They were just there for me to use—and replace every so often when they got old and nonfunctional.

I write for a living, and I write for fun with the goal to make the writing I want to do—writing novels—full time. It’s a lot of writing, as a result, but I try to balance it with daily exercise—running and lifting weights—and doing social things.

Balance, how do you achieve it when you work life and dream life both involve computers?

Finding the Work-Life Balance:

• First of all, make sure you read.
• Set aside certain times for writing, but don’t guilt yourself if you don’t write.
• Vary where you write, such as at home, a park, a restaurant or a coffee shop and find something stimulating in that environment to think about or absorb—such as the grinding of the coffee beans or the way the air feels as time shifts from high noon into the afternoon.
• Take breaks every few minutes to stretch, or take a mini-walk for a mind refresher.
• Make sure you have free time to do whatever you want that gives you a break from the routine, particularly if it doesn’t involve writing.
• Try writing in a notebook if computers are your normal tool, or vice versa. The switch may cause you to see and write differently—handwriting slows you down, while typing causes you to lose the pen-hand connection and get lost in the writer’s world.
• Find a new interest or hobby, or even forge a new friendship, to learn something new or see things from a new perspective.
• Congratulate yourself when you write when you don’t feel like it.

One Final Note:

Lastly, realize it’s the writer’s life, that constant need for discipline, motivation and encouragement. Make sure to get out to the 3D, real world to gather those experiences that are much needed for the writing life.

 

A Perfect Match: Coffee and Writing

National Coffee Day is Sept. 29. I’m writing and drinking coffee to celebrate the day, though I feel weird taking a Selfie!

Coffee and writing go together—for me, they’re not exclusive. I have to have coffee when I write.

National Coffee Day was Sept. 29, a day dedicated to coffee shops giving discounts and free java. I have multiple stamp cards from the coffee shops I visit, because I seem unable to live without coffee and writing most days of the week.

A perfect cup of coffee has aroma, body, acidity and flavor. The same goes with writing that’s near perfection—writing can be crafted, edited and revised but never absolutely impeccable.

Coffee’s aroma is both in the cup after it is made and when the roasted beans are ground for brewing.

Writing and Coffee Components

In the case of writing, the aroma is the detail, or the layers of description that draw readers to the plot’s action, bringing life to what happens along the storyline, without hurrying to the end. The details for making coffee are in how the beans are grown and what happens along each step of the way, with stories about the coffee’s region and how it’s grown and crafted. The process of making coffee also cannot be hurried.

The body of a cup of coffee presents its main content, just like the body of a story is the storyline or the story arc of action from beginning to middle to end. It’s what happens to draw in the reader and gets them to the climax of the story and keeps them staying to the end. A good cup of coffee brings coffee lovers back for that second cup—in fiction, it’s wanting that sequel or to reread the story, because parting is too hard.

Contributing to a coffee’s good body is the coffee bean, the roast and the brew. The bean affects the flavor and texture—which is the mouthfeel, such as silky, creamy, thick or thin. Flavor also is affected by the roast from light to dark, or less to more body, and how the coffee is brewed, such as in a coffee pot or by using a French press.

Elements of Storytelling

With writing, the elements of a story and how they’re put together affect the texture and flavor of the telling. Is the focus more on character insight and identity? The genre might be young adult or literary. Or is the focus more on the plot action, such as in mystery and romance?

A coffee’s setting, or region, affects its acidity, while setting in a story can affect a character’s culture, background and attitudes, create atmosphere and mood that ranges from dark to light, and offer insight into a character’s emotions and responses. For coffee, higher elevations often result in better quality and acidity levels, with flavors that are brighter and dryer.

Coffee lovers appreciate both the flavor and the boost of caffeine—I like both, and in the case of writing, I like the details I can discover in the process of writing and the boost of inspiration and motivation that comes just by showing up.

For me, it’s that morning cup of brew I need to get going with my day. And it’s the morning sip of writing, or daylong trips back and forth to the coffee pot, that fill me up for more words.

Am I a Lazy Poet? (daily poem challenge a little too revealing)

Writing a poem a day, instead of waiting for magical inspiration to swoop in, showed me I’m kind of a lazy but also a good writer.

I’m lazy because I don’t want to write a poem a day.

I’m good because that’s how I have to think about myself (it’s my career and my passion)—plus, there are a couple of gems within my daily poetic forcedness. I found if I wasn’t too tired (I often procrastinated until the end of the day) and let the poem take over, I lost the words I typed and fell into the images, hanging on as I wondered, “What’s next?”

Poem A Day Challenge

Yep, I took on the daily poetry challenge to write a poem a day for one month, which I started Sept. 1 for the month of September. I’m going to continue the challenge in October, but I also know, at this point, I can’t commit to more than 30 days at a time. To see a vast endlessness of a daily poem requirement is a bit daunting—that would mean 365 poems in a year and writing a poem Every. Single. Day.

Instead, I have to shrink my view of the daily writing commitment into something I can mentally handle before I can turn it into a habit. It remains a chore some days, instead of something to look forward to, excited at what will happen.

So far, I’ve met the challenge, or mostly, in that each day has its poem, though I skipped a day or even two days three or four times and had to backtrack to fill in the poem slots.

Some days I wrote poems because I had to show up, writing bad poetry just to fill in the blanks. Other times I had things to get out, whatever I had stored up in my poetic soul, awaiting inspiration. I had a spot for the words in waiting and was surprised at the layers of thoughts I have about things.

I wrote a few poems with similar titles—what’s going on in my head, really? And a few about the same subjects. I tried on new subjects. I started a few with “The poem goes here,” because that’s how I have my fill-in-the-blanks set up with the title in bold and the typing in normal font. I called one “Poem Date,” and another “My poem asked me on a date.”

I wrote a few haikus thinking poems with 5-7-5 syllables could be whipped out, and I could get to bed. I also wrote about writing about poetry. I called one of the poems, “Lazy Poet.”

 

Poem Examples

Here a few examples of my bad poems, or semi-okay poems—I’m not even sure. I wrote them sleepy.

Showing Up, written Sept. 7:

To be honest,

I didn’t show up today.

I wrote today’s poem tomorrow

When tomorrow became today.

I skipped.

Not rope,

Not class,

Not even hope.

I just didn’t write a poem.

I was too tired.

I didn’t feel poetic

Or soulful

Or helpful.

I went to bed.

 

Two Haikus

Missed Date, written Sept. 9

I missed my date with

Poems called Haiku and Lune, Can’t

Find my Cameo.

 

Too Hard, written Sept. 20

Writing a poem

day, too hard like counting syl-

lables: need short words.

What is it Like to be a Writer? (or random musings on the writing life)

I like writing both on paper and on the laptop or whatever is available when I feel inspired.

I sometimes get asked how I write as if it is a mysterious thing—it is and isn’t depending on if I’m forcing it or feeling inspired.

I’m also asked, “Can you write for me or tell me how?” I hear about ideas or plot summaries of long writing projects but also about the desire to not do the actual writing. “Could you take the project on?” I get asked.

Maybe, as a ghostwriter.

But then the research, writing and editing comes from someone else. It’s me writing as Other. The writing is not so mysterious, because it’s work, like writing a news article or a blog.

Writing as Mystery

It’s not that magical immersion into the process of writing where I lose the world and feel like I’m watching a movie, not feeling the keyboard under my fingers. For me, it’s writing as the Self and not the Other, but also a letting go of the self in the process.

To do this Self and Self-less Writing, I engage in multiple approaches to get toward poetry, short stories and novels. I look for inspiration, such as in books, poems, music, the natural and manmade worlds, and human nature, as I blogged about earlier this month in “Finding Writing Fascination (and Inspiration!).”

I rely on discipline, tracking when and how long I write and tallying my hours each week and month. I make myself write at least one to two times a week, though more often is more preferable for a regular routine. And I set up write-ins where I meet with other writers and chat and write, because that’s why we’re there providing even more discipline.

I calculate the number of words I write per hour, especially when I do speed writing, a form of freewriting where the aim is to write fast without worrying about grammar and content but keeping the focus on staying with and in the writing.

Getting Immersed in Writing

The Self and Self-less writing is an ultra-focused immersion in the process, keeping your hands on the laptop without thinking too hard or letting the editor take over. This kind of writing results in surprises as the characters seem to do their own thing and the plot unravels as if combining your unconscious mind with what needs to happen next. Connections occur from where you started to where you are at now in the storyline as the tension builds toward the final, satisfying ending.

For me, I get absorbed in the writing and love doing it, but then I hear a noise or I think a thought outside of my story, and I have to come back to the real world. In other words, I enter writing, and it’s fun; I come back to the real world, and it’s a struggle.

Upon my return, I blink a couple of times and look at the last few sentences I had written. It’s often difficult to go back into the story, as if I have to dive in. But if I do, I return to that mysterious, magical world of something beyond the writer where the creation happens.

Writing Nonfiction

When I write nonfiction, I don’t leave as such and get lost in another world, but I do get focused. I’ve done my research and have a rough outline in my head, or, in the case of an article, know how to structure it, so it’s writing out of routine. I weave together the pieces, making it tight with the overall structure and give it flow with the right transitions. I let one sentence lead to the next toward the final The End.

The magic, then, with fiction and nonfiction is to let go and let it happen with you as an ever present Self but also being and remaining Self-less, not letting the You get in the way of the Words that want to get created.