Time to Write

If It Hasn't Happened for You Yet

It can be frustrating to keep on writing while waiting for your break. Sometimes we wonder whether we're just wasting our time. All those days, weeks, months, years with nothing happening.

Of course, it's not really that nothing is happening. You're constantly learning, improving, and bringing new stories to life. The part that hasn't happened yet is the recognition from others, like editors or producers, of the value of what you're creating. And that hurts.

I have experienced this myself, and at times it has put me off even submitting material. I love the process of creating. The process of marketing? Not so much. But, of course, we have to do both. Both call for patience. Here's what the poet Rilke wrote about that:

"Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!"

That's the lesson I have to learn and re-learn. Maybe it'll help you, too.

 

Feel better and write better with joy triggers

It's easy to feel overcome with anxieties these days, and often that leads to writers block or just a lack of motivation.

Arianna Huffington has a method that's worth trying. She called them joy triggers. Those are pictures, words, or memories that give you joy. They remind you of the positive things in your life, or those you were privileged to have in your life previously. 

For ease of use, you can make up a little joy triggers scrapbook in which you paste photos (print them out from your digital files) and key words or phrases. They can represent things that gave you joy in the past, give you joy now, or things you're looking forward to.

It's easy to forget to use them, so it may be helpful to get in the habit of starting and ending your day with them, and also to set a timer to remind you to do it a couple of times a day. Or, if you find yourself feeling low, that can be the trigger.

Below is one of my joy triggers, the lovely Great Dane named Audrey who we have had the pleasure of dog-sitting over the past three years. She's now ten, which is quite old for that breed--I think of her as the Maggie Smith of Great Danes.

Give your own joy triggers a try and feel free to let me know how you get on, either in the comments are at [email protected]

 

How to use writing to get through this tough time

Various types of writing can help us get through these tough times. Here are some things you can do:

1. Write a short story or some flash fiction to turn your frustration into a creative act. The process of doing it is more important than whether or not you share it, but you can also do the latter. For instance, if you're on social media, why share some of your flash fiction (very short stories) via your site?
   
   
2. While you're taking your daily walks or doing your exercises, use that time to brainstorm story ideas or think about the characters in your novel, short story, or screenplay. 
   
   
3. Write notes of support to your friends and family. Even just a brief "thinking of you" postcard or email can help us stay connected. You might be surprised at how much this brightens somebody's day.
   
   
4. Write a list of things you're grateful for. It's easy to focus on all the things we're missing at the moment, so take the time to balance that with the things you do have.
   
   
5. Write a list of the things that are bugging you. Divide them into two categories: the things you can't do anything about and the ones you can address with some kind of action. For instance, the national death rate isn't in your control (although of course doing the mask and social distancing thing does help); feeling stir-crazy is something you can act on by exercising, sharing your ideas via Zoom, meditating, etc.

If there's somebody in your life who might benefit from these ideas, why not share them (along with that note of support)?

 

 

A time to rethink?

Most of us can identify one or more turning points when we redefined who we are or at least who we want to be.

I think we get one free shot at this in our early 20's.

After that, it usually happens when we are confronted with some kind of crisis. 

One of mine was when my house in LA burned to the ground and shortly thereafter I ended up in the hospital with a blood clot in my leg that could have traveled and killed me. I decided to leave behind a reasonably successful career in LA and move to London.

More recently, it was when I had open-heart surgery. That rethink wasn't as dramatic, it was more of a mindset switch to being less hard on myself. 

What these have in common is that the usual situation stopped and the future was uncertain. That pretty well describes where we all are right now. Maybe that makes it a good time to take another look at where we are and where we want to be, and what we can do to bring ourselves closer to the latter.

I'm not clear yet what that means for me.  Maybe for you it means you'll finally write that book or screenplay you've been intending to write or take a course to gain a new skill, or find another creative outlet. 

It does seem that this is another time when a crisis also is an opportunity.

As Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote in Love in the Time of Cholera, "He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” 

 

Is this the time to (finally) be you?

There's a Zen saying, "Out of the mud grows a lotus."

As I write this, we're in the mud. The coronavirus is still spreading and millions (including me) have been instructed not to leave our homes for at least twelve weeks (eleven to go). Loved ones are dying, the future is uncertain, and some of the people in charge are cretins.

That's the mud.

What will bring out the lotus?

For some people, it's suddenly finding they have more free time (if that's not you, keep reading anyway, we'll get to you). 

How will you spend this time?

The internet is full of suggestions for how to spend your extra time, many of which strike me as time killers.

If anything, the current state of affairs is telling us we never know how much time we have, so killing more of it seems foolish.

As Shakespeare said--or warned--in Richard II, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me."

Why not make your goal creating something only you can create?

Not because you're a genius but because you're you.

The obvious channels of expression, like books, scripts, stories, poems, drawings, paintings, sculptures, etc. are fine if they excite you.

It could just as easily be making a piece of furniture, creating an indoor garden, coming up with original recipes, or using Zoom or Skype to give solace to isolated friends or strangers.

It could be something I've never heard of and can't even imagine.

Finding it is your job.

How to find it

It's possible you've already found it, but you never followed through because you didn't have time.  Maybe you started and you meant to go on, but life and obligations interfered and you stopped. It may be represented by a half-finished novel or a piece of pottery gathering dust, or the intention to connect with friends from years ago.

If you don't know what it is, or you do and you want to recapture the magic feeling it once gave you, use some of your new free time to daydream.

Yes, this was easier when we had the option of strolling through a park or walking along a beach, but you can also do it after everybody else has gone to bed, or before they wake up.

Go to the free site, calmsound.com and listen to gentle rain, or a country garden, or the ocean. If you're inspired by seeing nature as well as hearing it, they also feature videos of the Maldives, a country glen, an enchanted forest, and an Australian beach.

Close your eyes, remember what you dreamed of doing when you were a kid, or what made you happy before you had to stop doing it because responsibilities intervened. 

You'll know it when you see it--or rather, when you feel it. It'll feel like how artist Milton Glaser felt about illustrating Dante's Purgatory: "I can't tell you how much I looked forward to working on it--it is still thrilling to me to be able to sit down in front of a piece of paper and invent the world."

How to do it

You've found it. Now what?

Is there a secret? Something they don't want you to know but that I will reveal to you if you send me lots of money?

No, nobody's trying to keep it from you and there's no charge. It's simple. Not always easy, but simple: 

1. Start
2. Continue
3. Fail (because we can imagine perfection but not attain it)
4. Learn from the failure
5. Continue
6. repeat 3 through 5

Number one is the hardest but the other steps have their drawbacks, too.

So why do it?

Because it means something to you.

Because in some way large or small, you'll be contributing something to the world that is part of you.

It could bring you world-wide fame and fortune, or you may invent something that will benefit millions--but probably not. 

Maybe it'll be a memoir you self-publish that's discovered by a curious great-grandchild years after you're gone, and suddenly a little bit of you will live again.

Maybe it'll be a window garden that someone walking by sees and is reminded that life will blossom again. 

Maybe it'll be a poem nobody ever reads, but having written it makes you feel more complete and that, in turn, makes you a less distracted or frustrated parent.

But what if you don't have more time?

Some people actually have less time these days. They may be working from home and homeschooling their kids. They may have more responsibility for their parents or grandparents. What should you do if that's you?

Exactly the same thing. 

Homeschooling your kids? What greater lesson can you teach them (by example) than to express themselves? Don't expect them to appreciate it now, of course, but the time will come.

Working from home and too busy with work? An article in the Guardian about a palliative nurse who counsels the dying revealed the top regrets her patients expressed :

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

I wish I hadn't worked so hard. (This from every male patient she dealt with.)

I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

I wish I had let myself be happier.

Every one of those, in one way or another, is about being yourself, expressing yourself.

You do have the time.

Cut out 30 minutes of TV or browsing the internet.

Get your kids involved in your creative activity.

Declare a lunch hour and lock yourself in a room, put in earplugs or crank up the white noise machine and do whatever you're meant to do. 

It's not too late

Whether life gives us another week, another year, another decade or more, it's not too late to take that first step.

As Oscar Wilde said (or should have, in case he didn't): "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken."

I hope that when you look back on these dark days you'll remember it was also the time you decided or renewed your decision to be--and share--yourself.

I'm an info addict. Are you?

Science proved what we probably suspected all along: you can get addicted to information in the same way you can get addicted to junk food.

ScienceDaily reports: 

"A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain's dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food.

'To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it's useful,' said Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, 'And just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful -- what some may call idle curiosity.'

''The way our brains respond to the anticipation of a pleasurable reward is an important reason why people are susceptible to clickbait,' he said. 'Just like junk food, this might be a situation where previously adaptive mechanisms get exploited now that we have unprecedented access to novel curiosities.'

I've read articles about people going on a digital diet and recently I was forced to go on a digital semi-diet for a couple of weeks. The place I was staying didn't have wi-fi, you had to go to a clubhouse to access the internet. It wasn't a far walk, but a lot more effort than picking up a close-at-hand iPhone or iPad. 

Now it made more sense to actually finish the task I was doing before going to the clubhouse to check email and headlines.

I didn't have withdrawal symptoms, but I did notice one big effect: I got more writing done.

Lots more. 

When I was able to get back on the internet there was a definite "Ahhh!" once I was able to snack on all the unimportant information featured on my favorite sites.

Yep, it's time for me to consider one of those apps that lets you shut down your access to the internet for a length of time you set. 

What about you?

 

 

 

The Writing Payoff You May Not Be Expecting

We tend to think the payoff for writing a book is getting it into the hands of readers, and the payoff for writing screenplays is seeing your work on a screen, small or large. That's not wrong, especially if you're hoping for a financial payoff. 

But novelist Anne Lamott has another angle to consider, one that I feel more connected to these days:

“I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do — the actual act of writing — turns out to be the best part.” 

I know exactly the reaction I would have had to this quote before I had anything published or produced: "Easy for you to say, Anne Lamott! You've had books published and you're famous(ish)! Don't worry, I'll deal with the disappointments if they happen, just let somebody produce one of my scripts--or at least buy one!"

I'm not suggesting that you should lose any of that drive or ambition--it's necessary for a writing career. I only want to say there's more than that, and the joy of writing can get lost if you're putting all of your focus on worrying about what happens to it afterward.

The reason I feel more connected to the rewards of writing for its own sake is that over the course of a difficult 18 months, health-wise (much better, now, thanks), I still had the drive to write, even if only short films and scenes that I wrote without thinking about whether they would ever be submitted anywhere, much less produced or published.

Now I'm getting back to writing scripts for which I have commercial ambitions, but with a greater appreciation of what a friendly, healing presence writing can be.

 

 

 

The Very Real Danger of Stories

We love stories. Even false ones. Sometimes especially false ones.

As great as that is for writers of fiction, it can be dangerous in real life.

THE STORY

Case in point: a video spread via Twitter in which a man stands in front of a housing project under construction.

He says this development is going up in West Virginia and it will displace White and Black Americans in order to accommodate 321 Syrian Muslims.

They'll be living on American taxpayers' money.

The community will be run under Sharia law. No Christians will be allowed to enter the area.  

It's costing $87 million and will be done in two months.

A funeral home next door is going to be torn down and a mosque will be built in its place.

Note how specific he is: 321 people, two months, $87 million. Specificity tends to make things more believable.

What he doesn't specify is the town or city, or who authorized it.

Hard to believe? That's because it's not true.

THE FACTS

Snopes.com investigated and found that "this video shows the Littlepage Terrace housing project, a low-income, housing tax-credit property allocated through the West Virginia Housing Development Fund, which houses zero Syrian refugees and many “regular” Americans."

The "funeral home" referred to in the video actually is a Rite-Aid store (and it's not being demolished).

You can see the video and the facts here: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sharia-zone-housing-project-wva/

THE COMMENTS

The vast majority of the people commenting on the video bought it hook, line, and fake funeral home. 

Here are some of the comments:

"Where to move to? M13 and Isam infecting the U.S. everywhere."

"This is my state and he is speaking the absolute truth."

"This is frightening. It is a subliminal take over of the world and everyone is silent!!!"

"It's time for the Lord to come."

"Been going on for years."

"Is this how the Govt expects to integrate these invaders into our culture?"

"Thanks for speaking up, that's a lot of bullshit going on glad you brought it up."

"Fight back or lose it all!"

"Time to bulldoze that house. No questions asked. It's war, pure and simple."

"What was the name of that movie? Oh yeah, There will be blood!"

"Get them! I DO NOT WANT A SINGLE ONE IN MY COUNTRY"

"Because George Soros is behind everything. Do some deep research. They claim he isn't a communist. But the organization says this is one he funds."

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

The comments go on and on, absolutely certain this is just another bit of proof of what they already believe. Some add other "facts" about this development.

Some seem ready to take up arms to drive out the non-existent invaders. 

What if you showed them this story is false? My hunch is either they'd say, "Snopes is part of the conspiracy, for sure it's true!" or "OK, this one is false, but it's happening for real all over the country!"

If you asked for proof, they'd say, "It's all being covered up by (George Soros/liberals/the Jews/the Deep State/Democrats), but I know it's happening!"

It's confirmation bias and let's be fair--it affects us all to some degree, regardless of our political outlook.

We're happy when we find a story that confirms we're right, but we owe it to ourselves to find out whether it is fact or fiction.

How many videos like this did the mass murderer in New Zealand see and believe?

A photo a day improves wellbeing; how about a paragraph a day?

Two UK researchers have reported that taking a photo each day and posting it online improves wellbeing in the form of "self-care, community interaction, and the potential for reminiscence."

Basically, looking for something different or interesting to photograph and post gets people to be more mindful and focus on positive aspects of their lives (since most of the posts are about positive things). 

In some cases, it motivated people to get out and about so they could find something to photograph, which helped their fitness and increased the chances they'd interact with others. 

If you're not into photography, posting a paragraph a day on social media or a blog might have the same effect. Of course, you could combine the two and write something personal about the photo and why it appeals to you or what it means to you.

Seems like something worth trying especially for writers; we tend to be introspective so maybe this is a safe little step outside our comfort zone!

And, just to practice what I'm preaching, here's a photo of the lovely not-so-young lady Sheridan and I were dog sitting today (we've both fallen for her):

Back home!

I just wanted to let you know that I made it past the open heart surgery on March 8 and one complication (atrial flutter) and got home yesterday, March 29.

Full recovery will take a while, but it's great to be home.

Thanks for sending prayers and good wishes my way via my blog or Facebook (or silently), they meant a lot to me. 

UPDATE MAY 9, 2018: Just had a bunch of follow-up tests and everything was fine. Also, the incision no longer looks like I was Viktor Frankenstein's second experiment! Again, thanks for all the good wishes. 

You Gotta Have Heart (and a functioning mitral valve, apparently)

I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be away from Facebook and my TimeToWrite.blogs.com site for a while, as I'm going to have open-heart surgery on March 8. It turns out that I have a misbehaving mitral valve so an excellent surgeon will have to go in there and tell it a thing or two.

I can't say I'm looking forward to it, but I'm going in with an optimistic attitude and eager to get it over with so I can get on with the job of healing. I'll post an update when I'm in good enough shape to be reunited with my keyboard.

Thanks in advance for any positive thoughts you send my way through the ether!

 

Happy New Year (and brace yourself)

London Stands Strong

Some of the readers of my blog and social media pages are aware that I live in London and they have been kind enough to send messages of concern and support in response to the recent terrorist attacks.

Thank you.

I'm fine, and without minimizing the sadness that goes with such events, London and Londoners (native and adopted) will not let this change their daily life nor, I hope, will they blame the actions of a few on a religious or ethnic group in general. 

From my flat, I heard the explosion that blew up a bus on July 7, 2005.

When I first came to London, it was in the middle of an IRA campaign and I saw a car bomb go off on the street opposite the flat I lived in then --I was on the fifth floor and the flames shot up that far.

They also blew up a mailbox down the street, and they placed a bomb in a pub I went to occasionally, killing a man. 

Many Londoners have similar stories.

We must take reasonable action to try to prevent these attacks but without sacrificing the freedoms that define our way of life.

It's a major challenge and I'm not confident that our current leaders in the US or the UK are up to it. 

It's up to each of us to do that as individuals and I think the first step is to follow that over-exposed mantra, keep calm and carry on.

If you want your 2017 to be different...

A gift for anytime of the year