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  1. When the Muse is Missing, Try These Tips to Woo Her Back

    November 30, 2014 by Diane

    hand opening red curtain on white.

    To paraphrase Truman Capote: there’s writing, and there’s typing. Sometimes, as we labor behind the writer’s curtain, the story, the essay, the poem, flows. Other times, it looks less like writing and more like typing. You struggle to tap into your story again, to find the bone, the marrow, the soul. You want to find the Muse in all that meandering, and the secret is: you’ve got to court the Muse.

    You’ve got to woo her.

    Here then, are five tips to lure the Muse back.

    1. Show your delight in all she provides

    Start by showing interest, by saying “yes” to everything, beaming delight and agreement in all she provides. Don’t fear the worst; expect that whatever juice you get is going to be good. It’s all good during the creation process. Let the editor find the flaws. Leave it to him to separate the wheat from the chaff.

    So first thing, shower the Muse with attention. Flatter her. Lift her up onto that pedestal where she belongs, draped in the robes of all those creative geniuses from years past.

    2. Don’t force anything

    And then, back away. Be less invested. Show your indifference. Let her court you.

    How?

    Tell yourself, I won’t think about my story, blog, poem tonight. And then turn off the light and drift peacefully into sleep instead of huddling under the blankets, jaw and fists clenched, trying to squeeze one workable idea out of your brain. The best you’ll get from all that effort is a poor night’s sleep and bags under your eyes. Trust me: when you’ve dragged yourself from bed in the morning, and you’re stumbling around in the half-light brushing your teeth, that great idea will pop into your mind and the Muse will whisper, “remember me?”

    Eric Maisel, who wrote Fearless Creating (among a slew of other books for artists), says that when we sleep, we dream, and when we’re not in REM dreaming our dreams, we’re thinking. Mathematicians are solving math problems. Scientists are thinking scientific thoughts. And writers? You guessed it. We’re working on plot problems.

    So let go of the writing at night, and let sleep overcome you. The Muse will be eager to supply the goods between dreams, or first thing in the morning when you sit down to make your art.

    3. Show up consistently to establish trust

    Courting also involves showing up. You’ve got to show up with the flowers and the chocolate. You’ve got to open your heart. Let spill all of the gooey secrets inside.

    But you’ve got to show up more than once. You’ve got to show up every day, because when you show up every day the juice keeps flowing; it doesn’t stagnate like a swampy pond. It’s alive with little fishy critters flipping and vibrating in the brew of your creation. It’s all in there.

    4. Set the mood

    Use music to get the Muse into the right mood. In those seduction scenes in classic movies, as the bachelor dims the lights, you hear From Here to Eternity playing on the stereo. In the same way, you want to pick the right music for the result you want to achieve. The right music fires up the Muse; she’ll pour herself into you.

    5. Go with the flow

    When you get stuck: instead of pleading, or forcing, or demanding something from the Muse, take a break. Go about your business. When the energy is spent, it’s not gone. It’s merely changed form. It’s fattened up and solidified and petrified and you want those light, energetic molecules bouncing around inside your brain again. So get up. Move. Bring some air into those lungs, some blood into those tight muscles. Do jumping jacks. Widen your perspective. Go outside. Run around the neighborhood. Power-walk to the nearest coffeehouse and eavesdrop on conversations. Sometimes the Muse speaks through other people. Or through the remembered scent of vanilla and caramel. Or through the leafy maple tree in its blaze of orange and red.

    These are her love notes.

    Be mindful of them.

    Takeaways this week

    Creativity Coach Eric Maisel’s books for artists include Mastering Creative Anxiety, Fearless Creating, Making Your Creative Mark, Coaching the Artist Within, and Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions. Along with Natalya Masiel, he co-wrote Sleep Thinking: the Revolutionary Program that Helps You Solve Problems, Reduce Stress, and Increase Creativity While You Sleep.

    Category Behind the Writer's Curtain | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments

  2. Rewriting: My non-advice

    August 13, 2017 by Diane

    Remember way back when, before the dinosaurs, I told you I was rewriting my novel? I scattered bread crumbs so you’d know which direction I was heading, secretly hoping you’d join me on the journey.

    I got as far as step 4.

    Then I stopped posting updates.

    The truth is, I got lost. I tried following the expert’s maps, but managed to wind up in a thick, dark forest, bumping from tree to tree, unable to find my way.

    I came to the painful realization: I need to take off the blinders. I need to forge my own path. I need to rewrite my novel the only way I know how: through draft after draft. It’s what I do well, drafting. Hopefully I’ll need fewer drafts to see the story take shape. But with each draft, I’ll get closer to discovering my unique craft as a writer.

    I can’t write about rewriting, because it’s a path that may lead me to places that aren’t on your agenda. It may lead us both astray, at a dead end gazing at each other, saying, “What now?” My map might not be your map. Where I take the scenic route, you might want to zip down the highway. Where I meander like a snail, you might want to soar like an eagle.

    So my advice is to give no advice.

    Instead, I’ll rewrite my novel.

    I thought I’d send you postcards of my  journey as I go, not with the purpose of getting you to join me, but more like, “Hey, this is where I am. What’s the view where you are?”

    But then I wouldn’t be rewriting my novel.

    I could distract myself by posting squirrelly escapades for your amusement.

    But then I wouldn’t be rewriting my novel.

    I could make up questions for Dear Digby since NO ONE is submitting any, and then post my squirrelly answers.

    But then I wouldn’t be rewriting my novel.

    What I’m saying, in a roundabout way, is that I’m going fishing (again). This time, to catch the big one.

    The novel.

    I’ve got a writing buddy to keep me accountable. I’ve got two short stories in the pipeline to submit to journals, to start building a writer’s platform and attract an agent’s attention.

    I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.

    But you’ll know when I’m back.

    Until next time,

    Happy Trails!

    Category Behind the Writer's Curtain | Tags: , , , | 17 Comments

  3. Speak now or forever hold your head in your hands

    April 23, 2017 by Diane

    It seemed like a good idea at the time.

    After all, I’ve survived haircuts in the past. It goes like this: I show the stylist a photo, say, “I want this cut,” and my stylist says, “Your hair won’t do that. You’ll look like a man.” We dicker, I give in, and she gives me a cut that makes me look like a conservative middle-aged woman.

    Which I am.

    Minus the conservative part.

    My hair has been earlobe-length for twelve weeks. Well, not the entire twelve weeks. It took twelve weeks to mosey to my earlobes, and I would have let it mosey to my shoulders, but it was starting to straggle, not mosey, so I decided to go for pert and fun instead.

    I decided to get a pixie cut.

    I scoured the internet for photos of pixie cuts and printed them out, including one of an older woman with a severe style that was the perfect example of what I didn’t want, and showed them to my BFF, Dave.

    He liked the manly one.

    “You’re taking beauty advice from a man, because…?” My old stylist said. I trusted her opinion, so popped in to get her feedback. By the time I’d popped out, I’d committed to an appointment with her, three weeks in the future, at a price I couldn’t afford.

    Why didn’t I tell her the truth? You’re worth every penny, but I don’t have that many pennies to part with!

    After squirming for days, I sent her a text message. I need to get my hair cut sooner rather than later, and since you’re totally booked, I’m going to have to cancel our appointment. It was the truth. I was attending a networking event and wanted to look professional, not scraggly.

    My new stylist, the one I can afford, doesn’t know how to be brutally honest. When I showed her the photos, saying, “I want it short at the sides like this, with longish bangs, full in the back, and cropped close to the neck at the bottom like this,” she said,

    “We can try that.”

    I looked up. “But can you do it?”

    “It will be very short in the back, but we can try.”

    There was that word again. Try. I looked at her long Asian hair, with a wide strip dyed a sort of orangish-blonde, and put my head in her hands.

    It seemed like a good idea at the time.

    Until she brought out the clippers.

    I’m not talking about toenail clippers. I’m talking about those electronic razory things that teenage boys use to buzz-cut their hair. The gizmo barbers use for a manly cut.

    She brought out the clippers and started buzzing the back of my neck. Waves of hair plopped into my lap. I squirmed. What have I done? The more she buzzed, the more I squirmed, until finally, she put the clippers away and finished up with scissors.

    The front looked great. Pert, the way I wanted. Maybe I was overreacting. I felt cautiously optimistic.

    Then she brought out the hand mirror. She held it up so I could see the back.

    I was speechless.

    Stunned.

    I thought I might be sick.

    That’s not me. That’s…a BOY!

    “Let me take a picture,” she said. She took several shots of the back of my head with her smartphone and showed them to me.

    I batted it away.

    “I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t worry, it will grow.” And then, “It’s cool!”

    I managed to write a check and drive home.

    I stuffed a chocolate truffle in my mouth.

    I called my mother.

    “Just don’t turn your back on anyone,” she advised. I pictured myself backing out of every room.

    I jammed the movie Sabrina into my DVD player and watched Julia Ormond dazzle Greg Kinnear and Harrison Ford with her girly pixie cut, and tried to drown out that inner voice screaming, WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SOMETHING WHEN YOU SAW THE CLIPPERS?

    Why didn’t I?

    Why didn’t I speak my truth?

    Because I didn’t trust myself to know the difference between a clipper cut and a scissor cut, even though past experience had shown me that razoring fine hair is always a bad idea.

    The truth is, I sat on my truth.

    What other truths was I sitting on?

    Here’s one:

    Writing a humor blog seemed like a good idea. A way to amuse myself, and, hopefully, others, while pushing my work out into the world. A world of seventy people, but still, my corner of the internet universe. And it was a good idea. Fun. Until I latched onto the crazy idea that a humor blog would be a terrific platform for literary fiction. All I needed were, oh, 10,000 subscribers, and I’d attract the attention of an agent or publisher, followed by a big fat cash advance for my novel.

    Which meant attracting another 9,930 readers to my blog.

    Piece of cake.

    I hopped on Twitter, and tried to entice followers to my website by sharing my blog posts, a form of virtual arm-twisting of strangers. Which is just…icky. Aaaand, to get those 9,930 blog subscribers, I needed like a million Twitter followers, and I had about 1,600. So Twitter, which started as a platform for my platform, became a bad math equation and a popularity contest gone haywire. It brought up feelings from high school, when I was lousy at math and anything but popular.

    Yes, my amusing little blog had morphed into a full-blown Twitter addiction.

    Every time I wrote a post with the goal of getting more subscribers, every time I checked my stats on WordPress and my followers on Twitter, every time I considered setting up a Facebook page, and, oh, how about a page on Medium?—which I did—I squirmed inside.

    So I meditated on the question: to blog, or not to blog? I begged my higher self to give me a clear sign, first thing in the morning when I woke up.

    And I got a sign.

    An image.

    Of me in a straightjacket.

    It made perfect sense!

    I’m hampered by the blog’s name: Squirrels in the Doohickey. I’m boxed in by the theme: writing about the nutty stuff we do, say, and think when confronted with the stuff that drives us nutty. I tried sneaking non-humor pieces on: Before the Bulldozers Came, When Innocence Wore Your Brother’s Baseball Glove, even the early Only the Lonely. These were some of my favorite posts. But they weren’t keeping with the theme. An agent or publisher would raise an eyebrow and tell me, gently, that a humor blog is not a platform for literary fiction.

    I know that. Like I know clippers are razors in disguise.

    So, what is my truth?

    I remember why I enjoyed sharing humorous anecdotes in the first place: hearing my mother’s laugh. She has a great laugh. When I tell her my latest squirrelly encounter, she gives a sort of choking, squeaky laugh, then says, “Another one for the book.”

    But that’s not the book I want to publish.

    I was talking to a co-worker about Steve Martin. There’s Steve Martin the comedian. Steve Martin the film actor. Steve Martin the writer. And now, Steve Martin the banjo player touring with his band. Steve does it all, but not necessarily at the same time. He chunks his life into whatever pulls him, and I envy him that focus! At some point, when he was doing stand-up, he held up a mirror so to speak, and said, that’s not me, I’m an actor. And off he went.

    In the mirror, I see a humor writer. Fair enough. Part of me is a humorist. But lately it feels like that’s not me. I’m a fiction writer.

    So my truth, right now, is to blog for the joy of it, with no other outcome than this: if I make one person’s day, get one person to smile or chuckle or shoot coffee out their nostrils, it’s worth it. No pressure to attract more whatevers. No pressure to churn out a post every week on the dot. Just blog when something amusing strikes me, and leave it at that. So I can focus where my heart is leading: writing fiction.

    One thing is certain: whenever I feel uncomfortable, unsettled, and I start squirming, it’s a clear sign I’ll soon be holding my head in my hands, muttering, “That’s not me.”

    Although, truth be told, I am a bit of a tomboy. With this new pixie cut, jeans rolled at the cuffs, sneakers and a sweatshirt, I have the urge to shoot spit-balls at strangers, and make farting noises with my armpit.

    And I have an extra bounce in my stride.

     

     

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: , , , , , | 20 Comments

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