Organically Speaking: Writing that Makes a Difference

Some of you may want to know how the book signing in my hometown went.

It came. It went. A few people braved the torrential rain to come out and support me. The microphone echoed and the people in the back row couldn’t hear me. There were multitudes of cell phones, pagers, and random college study group conversations peppering the reading session. We had to start the signing late because at about ten after four, no one had showed up, except for the family members I’d brought with me.

We sold a few copies of the book, but the bookstore will return a good number of the copies it ordered. We expected a crowd; we got a handful.

An objective analysis tells me the reading went well. Hey, at least I wasn’t mute or blind this time…. Still, it makes me wonder why I had an underlying expectation that, simply because I was in my hometown, more people would show up. Book signings aren’t exactly the hottest ticket in town on a Saturday afternoon.

I suppose my point here is that we have to be careful of developing expectations about how an event should unfold because we think we know the situation. I’m certainly guilty of that. I thought I could coast easy on this one—it was my hometown, after all. I expected to be reading to my third-grade Sunday school teachers and other folks who remembered me in pigtails and braces and whose sons used to jump up and down on my bed and pull my hair and hide my shoes and… well, you get the idea. I felt secure in knowing that people would come simply because they’ve known me since I was six years old.

This business is tough. People’s tastes and affinities are fickle. People say things to be polite. People have great intentions, but when they see the sky turn black and it starts raining buckets, they balk. They become faint of heart and they understand that I’ll understand why they didn’t come. And you know what? I do.

I understand that doing this book tour was not about the number of books I could sell in one day. It was about the experience of sharing something I created with people I’ve never met, and of giving back to those who have supported me and believed in me all these long years. A decade of writing, summed up in the few random shoppers in the store who put their day on hold for almost an entire hour to listen to me read something that I wrote. If that isn’t awe-inspiring and humbling, I’ve completely lost my perspective.

So, how did the book signing go? It was a home run.

I went through stacks and stacks of old photos and microfiche newspaper indices today. My mission is to return tomorrow so I can commandeer the only microfilm reader available at the archives library. When doing historical research, you should try to do it at the location where the story is set if at all possible. There are things you can’t possibly learn from surfing the Internet. Experienced research staff can help you find what you’re looking for much more quickly, and most of them even take joy in digging up obscure treasures for you.

It’s been a whirlwind of activity from dawn ‘til dusk here in sunny San Diego. My recent excursions to the Hotel Del have yielded some interesting photos of the hotel and surrounding grounds. Many of the hotel staff seem like career professionals. One spectacularly tanned valet parking manager in Oakley shades wielded an intimidating traffic cop “talk to the hand” move when he firmly commanded me to stop to allow a taxi to pull out in front of me in the gridlock of the main circular drive on Sunday morning. Since then, the traffic has thinned out a bit, but it is fun to watch him being the alpha male of the pack. You gotta love what you do, I suppose. My waiter at the restaurant said he’d been with the hotel for thirteen years. Wow. Most people don’t stay at executive-level jobs that long these days.

I met a woman in the gift shop who’d just moved to San Diego three weeks ago from Fort Worth. While we were talking, the man next to me commented that he was from San Antonio. What is it about Texans? We always seem to find each other, wherever we are.

It was quite lovely dipping my toes into the Pacific and sitting on the beach with my journal, being writerly though looking pretty darn dorky. Good news? The self-portrait function on my new camera seems to work swimmingly, so I’ll have all kinds of photos of me in tourist-geek getup. In this photo, I’m not smiling because there was sand blowing in my face at the time.

Today I prowled the campus of San Diego State University in college coed disguise, hopefully incognito, looking for the Special Collections section of the library. Did I mention that I didn’t have a campus map and was counting on my oh-so-infallible sense of direction to guide me to the right place?  Yes, indeed, I called the library office and asked how to get to the Dome. The answer: by walking around to the other side of the building I was sitting in front of. The end result, however, of this excursion was a treasure trove of old photos of places I needed to see in my mind. Funny little historical details that make me marvel at the way art imitates life and vice versa. And how much this story has found me and taken hold of me, how it begs to be written, and how I am forever entwined with it.

Despite the long grueling research sessions and the musty smells and uncomfortable chairs, I wouldn’t have traded the past two days for anything. I have learned so much and come so far already. I just hope I can store it all in my mind for future use. Oh, and the weather: absolute perfection. Thank you, San Diego, for not disappointing….  

My synopsis is finally coming together. My re-vamped characters are starting to form in my mind, and their voices come to me in possible first lines, “tag lines,” if you will, that capture the essence of their souls.

Deciding on the physical and emotional histories of my characters requires a lot of experimentation. It’s almost like going shopping with my characters and trying on a lot of different costumes. Sometimes I have an idea of a look or feel of what I want; other times I simply have to try a lot of different hats before the perfect outfit jumps out at me.

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a short way around this “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” approach for me. When I try to pull something out of the air that makes “sense” in my general idea, it’s almost never the one I ultimately use. I think the act of “thinking” of something draws from the left brain, and these ideas aren’t products of my creative nexus. Really good ideas don’t result from a carefully organized flowchart or list–they waft in on sheer wisps of dreamclouds. They sing to me while I’m asleep, or whisper their intent when my eyes are closed but my mind’s eye sees clearly.  

The mystery of how I write is almost a sacred process. I know when it’s not going well. There are no guarantees when it will start going well. But when it is going well, it’s a feeling like nothing else in the world.

People often ask authors and creative people how they get their ideas. How do we become inspired, and can we train ourselves to be inspired on cue? Hmm. I don’t know if I have an answer to that one, because creative endeavors are so personal and individual, I think it’s a bit unfair to “cookbook” the idea to apply to a general population of artists.

As I’ve grown into my creative “skin,” so to speak, I’ve learned more and more to trust my instincts. The gut is a powerful organ, in my opinion, and though society tends to pooh-pooh what it terms emotional decision-making, I believe there are paths of knowing that cannot be rationally explained. The intellect cannot always process what the heart instantly knows or senses. Same thing with creative inspiration, the muse. What part of our mind works on creative problems while we toil away at our day jobs? What part of our mind reveals the solutions to us in our dreams? And what part of our mind tells us instantly when we’ve found our North Star?

Creativity breeds creativity. I think artists have an affinity for each other. Every soul desires community, but perhaps the artistic soul craves it more because of the very personal nature of the creative act. Creative professions are also very competitive and subjective. It’s hard to feel anchored when your success can sometimes depend on what a decision-making person had for breakfast that day and what mood they’re in when they judge your work. So when we come across a person that anchors us and creates a lightness or calmness in our soul, we immediately recognize it.

These are our North Stars. For me, this is the foundation of inspiration. I work in creative “fevers,” and most often, these fevers are inspired by a North Star. Someone I know or meet who has that certain grounding quality, an energy that hums in sync with mine, and brings back a lightness and joy to my writing. Seek out these kindred spirits to inspire you, and you’ll find yourself being a North Star to someone else.

Writing organically is a lot like living a life of faith. It requires incredible strength of will and an unshakable belief that somehow, everything will come together and the way home will become clear. As I sit here, re-writing a novel that has been with me for a few years now, the path appears familiar, but with every word, every gesture and thought my characters show me, I realize it’s a new path, a new journey that I’m taking. I know the final destination—but I have no idea how I’m going to get there. It’s a scary feeling, not being in control of my timelines and character charts. You see, I wrote the first draft of this novel back when I thought I was an outliner. And it didn’t turn out very well because my characters were pretty wooden and the storytelling was very “telling” instead of “showing.” 

I feel a sense of panic when I look out onto the horizon of my narrative thread and all I see is fog. Darkness. Then, a ray of light, the inkling of an idea, another breadcrumb along the trail. So I pick it up, follow it, and then I stop, listen, and wait for the next breath of the Muse to draw me onward, slowly but steadily toward the end.

How do I keep being inspired? By surrounding myself with interesting, creative people. If I can’t do this in person, I like to listen to music. Something about the abstract nature of music reconnects me to my soul, opens up the channels of creativity and releases me from the bonds of day-to-day living that truss me up like a chicken on roasting day.

Atmosphere of place is incredibly inspiring as well–getting away from all the familiar surroundings that remind me of all my fiscal and domestic responsibilities. I guess this would be the greatest argument for traveling. However, my pocketbook is already hemorrhaging, so I must find inspiration in the security of home as well.

Sometimes, when the house is still early in the morning, and the sun peeks through the window, I am transported to that place where dreams live, and the Muse comes out to dance with me. As an organic writer, I don’t know when inspiration will arrive, but every day I must have the faith to carry on, even though I can’t see the road ahead.

I’m experiencing a little writerly constipation today. I’m under a new deadline to write a synopsis for a novel-in-progress, and suddenly, I’m feeling a bit of performance anxiety. A lot could be riding on this synopsis. Who knows, it might lead to my big break, the big kahuna. The thing I’ve been dreaming about for a long time.

Part of the problem is because writing a synopsis of a project that isn’t completed goes against my entire philosophy of organic writing—no outlines, please! I’m afraid of killing my characters by speaking about them too soon, before they’ve had a chance to show me who they are and how they want to move through my story. I’m afraid of putting them in a box and smothering them. I want them to be who they want to be, not what I want them to be. Make sense? This, I’ve found, is pretty common among organic writers. So what do I do?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what people have said to me about my writing. One of my friends said my blog makes her want to be a better person. A Hollywood video producer and screenwriter said my writing and outlook is a breath of fresh air to him. Another friend saw my blog post “Even When I Don’t See” (January 8, 2008) and saw a resemblance in it to an inscription on the wall of a World War II German concentration camp. A few weeks ago, I found a purple Post-it note in my mailbox from the eight-year-old girl across the street that reads, “you or nise,” with a drawing of something that looks like a heart with its arms outstretched, wearing a grass skirt. This really touched me (after I wondered for a while if all eight-year-olds in public schools have similar spelling deficiencies). I keep it by my cell phone charger and look at it every day with a smile.

I have a very clear memory of a day several years ago when I told myself that my mission was to touch just one life with my writing. I believe I’ve done that already, and so I can, in actuality, die a happy woman without ever accomplishing anything further. Everything else that comes to me is icing on the cake. I’m sitting in the palm of God’s hand, smack dab in the middle of His calling for my life. I can rest, knowing that whatever I do, even if I fail miserably at this task, He will redeem it.

Spring’s just around the corner, and with it comes a slew of conferences where you can pitch your project to editors and agents. For those of you ready to step up and try this, I recommend reading Making the Perfect Pitch. It was one of my first pitching reference titles, and I liked it so much it became my favorite.

Some writers say they’d never have enough courage to pitch face-to-face to an agent or editor, and prefer to send masses of query letters instead. But in my opinion, there’s so much to be learned about an individual as a writer and a business person that you just can’t communicate on the page. Your sense of confidence, self-presentation, personality and energy come across when you meet a person face-to-face. My first pitching experience turned out really well, and I think it’s because I took the time to read a few books on the techniques and what to expect when pitching.

Pitching for the first time is a writerly milestone, much like my first book signing was. To have enough confidence in yourself and your skills as a writer to look someone in the eye and give them the power to say yea or nay to your precious project requires some cojones, but it’s something every writer should be able to do.

So if you’re still looking for a New Year’s resolution, learning to pitch is a great place to start. As for me, I have my hands full excavating my desk from the rubble of summer travel/fall travel/Christmas excess/closet-cleaning casualties…