a writer | chatting at the sky

on why I’ve been a bit quiet

June 23, 2011

My fingers are dyed pink-red and I pause to put my wedding rings on again. The watermelon sugar cookies are nearly done in the oven and I send them outside with a promise to call them when the icing is ready. The cookies are easy — just a bit of food coloring, store made icing and slice-and-bake dough. It’s the being present and engaged that takes all the work.

I want to write. But the words come syrup slow, like trying to play tag in the heat of the day – you want to and it’s fun, but it’s just too hot. And so you find the shade and sit against the bark and let your knee-pits air out a little. And you pull the wet curls from the nape of your neck and dream about lemonade that isn’t too sweet. The gnats begin to hover but it’s too hot to move. That’s where my blog writing life is this week – sitting under my front yard tree, airing out her knee pits.

In other news, the book writing is in a full springtime swing. The words pour out like petals from a mason jar. Fresh. Colorful. New. But I can’t share those words with you yet, and that’s why it’s brown-grass summer over here on the blog. Slow. A little weary. Thankful. Reflective. Quiet. I have a Man who has been gone for a while and some children who haven’t been. So we’ve been eating like kids and staying up too late and trying not to get sunburned. And any words I come up with go directly into my next book, tucked away for you later. And so this is just a little note to let you know the quiet and slow may remain around here for a week or so. Pit-airing in progress.

Filed Under a mother, a writer 37 Comments

on editing

May 4, 2011

Page proofs for Grace for the Good Girl are due a week from today. And once I turn those in, I won’t see the book again until it’s a book, with a cover and everything. The heavy editing is over, and now we’re in the combing stage. It’s like looking for lice after the lice scare is over – you know they’re all gone, but any minute you might find one. That’s gross. I’m sorry. Go ahead, throw out your breakfast. You can eat tomorrow.

The Nester wrote a post yesterday called How to Edit a Room. Basically, she clears out everything smaller than a football and leaves only the big stuff. Then she sits in her newly quieted room and takes note of how it feels. She only adds back the stuff that has purpose, is loved, and is beautiful. She says it much better and Nester-ish than me so you’ll have to read the post.

Some of her advice on editing a room you can obviously apply to editing your writing, namely to take out all the stuff you don’t love. As I’m working on my second book, I’m trying to leave out all the parts someone would skip. It’s forcing me to be brave and trust the reader. If I put it in there, it has to be important and worth it. Such is the way of editing – we add, delete, correct, condense, re-shape, clean up, and make better. And I can’t help but let editing float over to so many other areas.

Schedule. I’m in a busy season right now. There are lots of things to be done and I simply can’t say no to some of them. If I sit in front of my calendar too long, my breathing gets shallow and my heart speeds up because I realize that I’ve already said no to the non-essentials and my schedule is still so full. And so editing my schedule looks like shifting my eyes from the burden of my calendar to the easy, light-load living of Jesus.

Fears. When I turn off phones and TVs and machines at the end of the day, that’s when the fears I’ve been living with seem to show themselves. I want to be relentless with these. Skip them. Be brave. Take them out.

Thoughts. We can control what we think about, and this is our first line of defense when it comes to editing our fears. Thoughts come fast and furious, but they only come one at a time. I can filter my thoughts through the screen of true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy. If it doesn’t fit in one of those categories, I’m free to get rid of it.

Inhibitions. As our thoughts are edited down to the true and the pure and the excellent, our inhibitions will edit themselves. Let your unnatural and uncomfortable self fall away to the cutting room floor, and allow yourself to move freely and create liberally with an eye for beauty and a heart bent brave toward adventure.

Thanks Nester for encouraging me to think about the big umbrella of editing. Are there any other areas significant in your life right now that could use some red pen action?

Tagged art Filed Under a writer, inspired 43 Comments

five minute friday

April 15, 2011

Ever since Lisa-Jo started this little series, I’ve been daring myself to take part in it. She invites us to set the clock for 5 minutes and “just write and not worry if it’s just right.” This weeks prompt is On Distance.

go

A tree fell in our neighbors yard last week. The storm came unexpectedly, at least to me. It was 3 am when the kids woke us up, and even The Man whispered to me Let’s go downstairs. He sleeps through storms, never takes cover.

So the next morning when the sun came out and we walked outside to see what damage had been done, we saw the tree lay long across the cul-de-sac. And I remembered my thing for trees. They have seen so much, so many families living here, so many stories lived out beneath them. They hold within them secrets of community life, people who live so close to one another, yet so far from connection.

I love to see names carved in a tree. It’s probably bad for the tree, but it’s good for my soul: these people were here, so many years ago. Far away in time, but right here where my hand touches.

My sister and I spent years of our childhood on a tree beside our grandmothers house in southern Indiana. We loved that tree, that house. We loved to hang and sit from it’s branches and make soup from it’s berries. But that was a long time ago.

stop

Are you a writer in need of a jump start? Join us a Lisa-Jo’s place this morning. Dare yourself to write in freedom without worry about the outcome. It might do your heart a world of good.

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how to make the art

April 13, 2011

It’s 7:45 at night and I eat Raisin Bran out of an over-sized bowl. Dinner for one. The house is quiet except for the rain, and I tap out the rest of chapter 7 just as the cloud cover begins to lift. The trees are black against a barely lit sky, and I consider how fast time flies when you’re making art. Ideas are showing up like bouquets out of baskets; colorful, happy, surprising ideas. And they tip their hats and curtsy their skirts and greet me like kind, new friends waiting to come alive in my company. They are delighted by my attention.

It’s time to stop, finished or not. This time, I meet my personal deadline for the day. I gather up the laundry, fold it in front of Pride & Prejudice (the Keira Knightly version, but still good company). I settle in to the warm couch, content to be alone with my pillows and my thoughts. I think about my word count today: I am now up to 31,000 words on my second manuscript. That feels like a milestone, more so than 10 or 20. I am pleased with the direction. I eat ice cream and grin.

***

I chase three Advil down with cold coffee. It’s a writing day, but the Muse doesn’t know it. She packed up her sparkly bags last Thursday and headed off to Tuscany, stuffing all of my passion and heart into those zipped up bags, tucking away my good ideas deep into her purse. But I’m a professional, and I no longer wait for a Muse to return from her long vacation. Instead, I sit in my chair, face the day, fight the pull of the internet and the dust on the baseboards. And I work. I type out 57 words and they are all ridiculous. For a moment I fear death, because I have written these words and someone may find them when I’m gone and think I was serious. Erase them, and fast! But I don’t, because then I will have nothing to show for the work. And today, the work is more important than my pride.

The phone rings. I get an email from my publisher. I remember my seven year old has no clean underwear. The dog barks incessantly. I have until 1 pm to work, time cut out and planned for writing. I look at the clock, I will write for the next 30 minutes no matter what. And I do, and it’s terrible. Laughable. Embarrassing. I begin to type I have nothing more to say just to see the word count go up. I know I’ll have to start over. I feel discouraged. Cry a little. Keep on writing. Check my email. Wash the dishes. Look at the oven. Think about dinner. Cry again. I fail to meet my personal deadline for the day. But it’s time to stop, finished or not. I pray for the Lord to redeem the time. I believe that he can, I have doubts that he will. But then I remember that he’s done it before. No day of writing is wasted, even a bad one.

***

And that is how it goes, from one writing day to the next. The only predictable thing about a day of writing is that work always has to get done. That is the constant. Everything else will change. And so you have to make your own constants. Show up. Stay there. Work hard. Believe truth. Resist criticism. Embrace today. Surrender yourself to a relentless pursuit of the art.

Repeat.

Tagged art Filed Under a writer, inspired 59 Comments

for those of you with a message in your pocket

March 30, 2011

You have a dream in your back pocket, don’t you? Over the years, that dream has taken on many different names in your mind: Silly. Ridiculous. Hobby. Foolish. Impossible. Waste of time. You have called it that for so long, that you have never actually taken the time to consider how it got there in your pocket in the first place.

We throw trash away; we don’t put trash in our pockets. That dream is there because at one time, you saw that it had value. And so you tucked it away for safe-keeping. But doubt and fear have convinced you to keep it hidden, convinced you to rename that dream Wrong. What would it take for you to pull that dream out again, to stop taunting it with cruel names and to simply listen to what it has to say? No filters. No back talk. No eye rolls.

Dare to handle it, to hold it in your hands and consider it with kindness, with compassion, with (dare I say it?) goals. Are there tiny, itty-bitty baby steps you can take toward pursuing it? Can you at least pull it out of your pocket and hold it in your hand? Place it on the desk, maybe? Offer it up to the Dream Giver?

Three years ago, I pulled out a crumpled dream. And I put it in my suitcase and took it with me to a writing conference. At the time, I had zero ideas for a book, zero publications to my name, and zero idea what would come out of it. But the one thing I did have was the smallest shred of courage. I went to She Speaks during the summer of 2008 knowing no one and nothing. Except I had that small bean of an idea that maybe there was a possibility that I might perhaps be a writer a little bit. Maybe.

When I left the conference, I still wasn’t sure what would come of the dream. But I stopped taunting it with names. And I developed a small but respectable amount of reverence for the way God speaks to us through our desires. And I didn’t know it at the time, but She Speaks that summer was my first giant leap toward discovering my message. And the next summer at that same conference, I pitched Grace for the Good Girl to an editor, and that is why I have a book coming out in September.

And it started with a crumpled dream in my back pocket.

This summer, during the weekend of July 22 – 24, I will be back in Concord, NC at this conference I have grown to love. And I will lead a breakout session with my friend and editor, Andrea Doering. There will be opportunities for speakers and writers to develop their craft. Lysa will head the whole thing up with grace and encouragement. Mary DeMuth will talk about fiction and memoir writing and Marybeth Whalen will too, and Renee Swope will be debuting her new book, A Confident Heart. Literary agent Rachelle Gardner will talk about writing book proposals that sell, and our dear Ann Voskamp will be presenting the closing keynote. And there are so many more.

Today through April 2nd, Ann has been given the opportunity to offer a scholarship for one of you to attend She Speaks. I’ll let you visit her place for the details, but might I be a voice of courage for you today? What have you to lose by applying? The simple act of raising your hand could be the very baby step you need to take today, whether you win the scholarship or not. And while you are at it, go ahead and visit Amy Carroll at Next Step Speaker Services, as she is also offering a scholarship through April 3.

Are you feeling a little nudge? A little hope? A little excitement? I hope so. Pull that dream out of your pocket and listen to it sing.

Filed Under a friend, a writer, inspired 41 Comments

when your art has a life of its own

March 23, 2011

A struggling screenwriter finally had an idea for a story. He was excited about it, but there was only one problem: his story came as a book, not a movie. So he called up his agent to tell him the bad news, as they both “knew that first novels take forever and sell for nothing.” Even worse than that, his novel was about golf, so it had even less of a chance of being picked up by a publisher, not to mention small hope of success.

“To my amazement, the book succeeded critically and commercially better than a anything I’d ever done, and others since have been lucky too. Why? My best guess is this: I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work.”

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

But first novels take forever and sell for nothing! And he was a screenwriter, not a novelist. He was supposed to be writing movies, not books. If Steven Pressfield had listened to his inner critic, The Legend of Bagger Vance would never have been written. And it definitely should never have been a success.

I’ve not read the book but that’s not really the point. The point is, he wrote it anyway. He wrote it because he couldn’t not write it. He wrote it because he did what artists do and believed in the creative process. He says “the idea came as a book, not a movie.” The idea had a life of its own. An artist respects that, and trusts his instincts.

One of the most difficult struggles for an artist (besides a crippling fear of failure) is to trust her instincts, to believe in her idea even though it looks different, seems illogical, feels terrifying. Great art has a life of its own, and great artists have the instinct and the courage and the heart to allow the art to finally breathe.

And sometimes? The book becomes a movie anyway.

Filed Under a writer, inspired 29 Comments

one secret to honest art

March 18, 2011

I have a lot of ideas of what it means to be a serious writer, and silence is a big one. When I write specifically about something in the Bible, I need quiet for that, space to listen and consider truth. But my writing isn’t always that type of writing, and when I need to get in touch with my most honest center, the silence does me no favors.

For too many hours to count, I have sat blank in front of my laptop, squeezing out a ridiculous sentence only to delete it for a more ridiculous sentence. And I sit and I labor and I cry and I wonder why it has to be so hard to find the honest underneath all the ridiculous. And nearly every time, music is the thing God uses to unlock me. I say it that way on purpose, because for a long time I had a weird sense of guilt. Why can’t I sit in silence like a grown up and write? Why must I have this music on? Discovering my best writing comes with music in the background was difficult for me to accept. Slowly, the Lord is freeing me up to embrace the way he has uniquely created me to work.

So I listen to Ingrid and The Weepies and Iron & Wine and Sara Bareilles and Regina Spektor and Peter Gabriel and Ella. And their lyrics about love, loss, and searching all reach down deep, pulling up the honest and the true. We all share a common frailty, no matter where we believe it comes from. All artists wrestle with this frailty, attempting to reconcile need and desire, love and hate, and always looking for new perspectives, unique ways of expressing that which has already been said a thousand times. So for me, listening to musicians do this wrestling as they express their art? There is no greater inspiration.

Do you have certain ideas about what it means to do your art the “right way”? Maybe you’re a writer or a musician or a painter, but you are stuck in a pattern of defeat. Maybe you homeschool your babies or you teach in a public school classroom and your ideas of what it means to be a good teacher are keeping you from actually teaching. Allow yourself to figure out those tricks and quirks that bring the you out of you, even if they don’t look right. Are you allowing your own expectations to hinder you from freely expressing yourself? Is your idea of the right way keeping you from your best way?

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