Good Advice About Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Sometimes when we don’t manage to write on any given day its because something came up. This happens to Konnie more than with me, but it does happen. None of us live on this planet alone. Life happens.

But sometimes we make the mistake of letting life happen, of letting life in the get the way. There could be lots of reasons, and I’m no expert on them since my biggest issue on not getting any writing done is my ADD, but I’ve witnessed a few things from my friends.

1.   They can’t seem to say no. They always have somewhere else to be or something else to do. They are constantly busy doing that something else.

This is a huge mistake. If you want to be a writer commit to it. Don’t let other activities get in your way. Learn how to prioritize. And yes, I know that isn’t easy, but if you want to make something of your writing you have to do it.

2.   They haven’t trained their family and friends to understand that this is important. Of course, that goes back to number one, you need to set aside time to write and make sure your family and friends know when that is.

So, if this is your problem, learn to say no. Learn to say, “I’m busy. Can that wait?” I once knew an author who spent her childrearing years writing non-fiction for hire and she had a passel full of kids while she worked from home but her list of published works is quite long.

How did she manage that?

Easy. She set a writing time and ENFORCED that time. She told me that she kept a damp cloth by her desk and if any member of her family came near her and interrupted her while she was writing, she grabbed the cloth and washed their face. Her kids learned quickly not to disturb her while she was writing.

The trick to this isn’t that cloth, but the fact that she didn’t back down, she didn’t relent. She told me they had to be bleeding or dying for it to be okay for them to interrupt her during her set writing time.

And that brings me to the third reason people have trouble writing.

3.   They don’t set a time to write.

You need to set a time when you are supposed to be writing. Let all your family and friend know this is your writing time, and don’t let them draw you away unless it’s a life or death situation.

(This also aids in the allowing the Muse to find you at an opportune time.) 😊

It doesn’t matter when or where you write, as long as you have a routine to write.

Now to solve that staring at the blank screen moment. That one’s harder, but there are some things that can help, and have helped me.

1.   If you are stuck on a project, move to another one, sooner or later the answer to your problem will come to you when you least expect it. It has for me.

2.   Try to relax. Fear and anxiety can be powerful roadblocks to the muse. Setting up a routine for writing will help with this, if you are used to writing at a certain time and a certain place, you will be comfortable and able to write when you are in that time and place. (And, of course, the muse will have an easier time finding you.)

3.   Remember that writing everyday isn’t limited to your WIP. Writing in journal is still writing. Writing to a friend or family member is still writing. Count those and put your mind at ease.

4.   When all else fails, pull out a kitchen timer and set it for ten minutes then stare at that screen or that blank sheet of paper telling yourself to write something. I have one such “stream of thought” where I started out writing that I didn’t know what to write and I was drawing a blank on any story, repeatedly, but by the time the ten minutes were up I’d started a scene to whole new a story!

I don’t know of a more powerful way to get someone writing again then by starting something new, because let’s face it, that blank screen moment could be the result fear, or the story isn’t working (been there done that), or you are just tired of that story right now. Sometimes you just need a break, not necessarily from writing, but from writing that story. And it’s okay to put something on the back burner for a while, start something new.

And Happy Writing Everyone! 😊

Meditation and Writing by Konnie Enos

In a recent conversation with my oldest son brought up the subject of meditating because one of his teachers made them do yoga as a means of de-stressing them.

He said he didn’t understand why mostly because part of the time she had them listening to a recording of a lady talking them through a meditation, noting that he didn’t even listen to it. Then he said, “I can never empty my mind completely because when I try story ideas start popping in.” He blamed this on ADHD.

I’m sure, from what Bonnie has told me, she’d concur with him. Based solely on the number of partially finished stories she has I’d say she is constantly bouncing from one story to the next. I’ve seen her work on at least two different stories at once to the point of putting the wrong heroines name in one manuscript because she’d been thinking about the other one.

She blames this on ADD.

I blame it on being a writer.

Why?

Because I don’t have ADHD or ADD.

My mind is always going and if it doesn’t have to concentrate on the task at hand it will be either creating new stories or working out the details in the one I’m currently writing. Even in my sleep I’m working on stories. Ask any writer and they’ll tell you of a story they got from a really good dream.

Unlike my sister, I don’t generally work on more than one story at a time. Although I do have several right now that I need to finish and or edit. I’m not usually writing in one and thinking of what happens in another. Unless of course, like a couple of my books, they have the same characters in both books.

My point is writers think differently.

A writer’s mind is always full of ideas and more come all the time.

I doubt it is possible to empty a writer’s mind completely because their characters will see the empty stage and come out to play. If you have multiple stories they might even contend for time. If none of your current characters want to talk to you a new one will rush out and ask for attention.

It’s almost funny how often new ideas come.

That’s why one of the best gifts to give a writer is notebooks and writing implements so they can always have something to jot a quick idea down on. The quickest ways to lose a story idea is to not get any part of it written down.

Though once you get even a few bones down you have to figure out if there is any meat to the story. Because without that meat, it isn’t worth writing.

I’ve lost story ideas because I didn’t get them written down.

I’ve discarded story ideas because some aspect of it didn’t seem plausible or it just wasn’t going to work.

I’ve stopped working on other stories because there wasn’t anything there to make a good story (the meat).

I’ve also left stories because I couldn’t figure out what happened next. This was because the characters weren’t talking to me. Without their input I couldn’t figure out what happened next or where I went off the rails. Those stories stalled.

Other stories I’ve got I’ve only been given a scene or two and I still can’t figure out how to make those into a full story. Of course, those characters aren’t talking to me yet, so no help at all.

I have one story idea that I dropped after trying to write one scene because I figured out I’d have to do a ton of research to do a proper job on it.

The stories that get somewhere, the ones I get to “the end”, are the ones were the characters start talking to me. They tell me who they really are and what their hopes are. Even what they are doing.

The best writing I’ve ever done was when I was typing out a scene I’d outlined for my story and one of my characters surprised me with something they said.

I went to delete it. I not only had not planned on putting that line in, I had intended not having that outcome in the story at all. However, before I removed it, I looked over what I had and thought about the character and the scene. It stayed. It worked. Sometimes your characters surprise you.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

The Worst Writing Advice by Bonnie Le Hamitlon

I think the worst writing advice I’ve ever been given is to write every day. I know some people who are yelling heresy right now but hear me out. I have several very good reasons why this is bad advice.

1.  Not everyone in the world has time to write every day. Some people have to earn their living by some other means and or have a busy family life. Or like me, can’t always concentrate enough to write. Not everyone has the ability to sit at home every day and just write. Period.

2.  Sometimes life gets in the way. Accidents happen, loved ones (or you) can get sick and require a trip the doctor or hospital. Stuff happens. Accept that.

3.  Finally, it isn’t the end of the world if you don’t write every day.

I view this whole “write every day” thing in the same vein as the adage about having a bowel movement every day. Until you’re feeling the urge but are unable to produce anything, you don’t have a problem.

That said, there is a reason people say you should write every day. And the reason is PRACTICE. That's right, practice. Writing is a talent, but it is also a skill, and skill takes work just like playing an instrument does. You can have all the talent in the world, but its worth diddlysquat if you don’t perfect it.

The hard part is to recognize first that it isn’t always possible to “practice” every day, and that sometimes just “playing the scales” is all you can manage.

To put that in a writing prospective, well, sometimes life happens. Even I have days where I don’t write a single word and I live alone. I’ve written about some of those times (think ADD). But I know other people have other things that come up. Konnie can relate a mountain “something came up” stories.

So, you didn’t write today. Its not the end of the world, or your writing career. You only have a problem if the non-writing goes on for weeks, months, or even worse years. In weeks or months, you are unlikely to forget the skills you already learned. While in years of non-writing, I promise, you could forget some of those skills.

I know this from experience.

I started writing in grade school and wrote consistently until I graduated from high school, then life took over and I didn’t write much of anything for 14 years.

After so many years of not writing, I’d forgotten a ton of grammar rules, and let’s face it, I was never very good at spelling – ever! (Thank God for Spellcheck!) When I started writing again I had to relearn the very basics. And once I got that down, I learned there were things about writing I’d never learned before; I’m still learning the craft of writing today.

But absolutely do not fret if it is just a day or two that you don’t manage to write. Don’t fret it if you skip one or two days of writing a week. You’re fine.

You do need start worrying when it goes on for month or longer but there are ways to combat that.

First you need to recognize what the issue is.

Some issues I’ve had with writing are:

1. The story isn’t working out in some way, needs work, and I’m not sure how to fix it.

a.  Set it aside, give it time, work on some other story, eventually (and yes it can take years) the answer will come to you for the one you’re blocked on, promise.

2.   You have let fear or anxiety get in your way.

a.   I know I’ve been there, it's hard and scary to put your work out there. We’ve all been there. You are not alone. Relax, take a breath, and start writing. If it helps, write about your fears.

3.  You have stupidly been reading something by a favorite author and have decided you will be NEVER be able to write like that.

a.  First, you can’t write like someone else. You have to write from the heart, ergo you have to write like you, so you will never write like your favorite author. You may be able to learn some tips from their writing style, but you still have to write like you.

b.  Second, comparing your writing to something already published is like comparing your everyday life to someone else’s highlights reel on Facebook. You have no idea how many stories she discarded or how many edits she went through before she got published. You are seeing her highlights and comparing that to your daily grunge. I'm telling you, no one looks good in that comparison. Stop doing it.

Happy writing everyone! 😊

The Handiness of being Unique by Konnie Enos

I reached my destination and grabbed my purse, placing the straps on my shoulder. Then I got my water bottle and my keys. All these things were on my right side so that is where they were when I got out of my car.

I walked into the building and up to a table where we were to sign in and receive a raffle ticket. Most people would empty their right hand to sign in.

Me?

My left side and conveniently empty hand was nearest the table. “Oh I’ll just use my left.”

The lady passing out raffle tickets said, “Well it’s legible anyway.”

“Of course. I’m ambi.”

And that’s not the first time in my life I’ve had to sign left-handed. Once I was in the ER and they had just stuck an IV in my right hand when one of the staff members asked me for a signature.

“Can my husband do it?”

“No.”

“Oh well, okay.” I sighed the paper left handed.

“This is perfectly legible.”

“I know. I’m ambi.”

I’ve heard of people who were ambidextrous, including one president, but I’ve never met any others.

Okay, technically, I’m the mirror of right handed Bonnie.

To this day I can remember our first grade teacher telling us to pick up whatever we were to be writing or drawing with and then getting on my case because I hadn’t picked up my implement up in the right hand.

I couldn’t understand how my hand wasn’t the correct hand to use. Was I supposed to use someone else’s hand?

That right and left business confused me for years.

Just try getting directions from me.

I’m actually pretty good at figuring my way around while my husband can get lost just turning a corner. I’d give my husband directions, as in turn right, or left, which ever direction I was thinking was the correct way, at the corner so he’d go to turn the way I said.

“That’s the wrong direction!”

“That’s the way you said to turn!”

“Well I said the wrong way, turn the other direction.”

Just pointing didn’t work because he had to keep his eyes on the road so we developed our own code. This-a-way means right (front passengers are on the right side in the car). That-a-way means left. Our kids grew up with this so they will give directions using these terms.

Our teacher did get my writing with my right hand but it wasn’t neat or very legible until I put a lot of practice into filling reams notebooks, over several years, just to get it neat enough to read.

Then out of curiosity I tried my left hand.

No practice at all and you could barely tell the difference.

Since then I’ve had people tell me a number of interesting things like I handle scissors backwards.

Uh? Oh, I guess I do. But handling them the correct way is awkward for me. I suppose if I’d ever been handed left handed scissors and been allowed to use them with my left hand I wouldn’t use them upside down.

I’ve also been told I use handheld can openers backwards, and in fact this is the reason I could never successfully use those tiny military openers. They relied on you turning one way to twist it around the can and the opposite way to get it off the can. I can only twist the way to get it off the can, not to open the can.

I’m a lefty in a right handed world.

I even had a doctor tell my I’m naturally left handed. He was a specialist in carpal tunnel syndrome and was doing nerve conductivity tests on both my wrists. He asked me three times if I was right or left handed.

Since I generally use my right hand I told him right, but when he kept asking I finally said that I was ambi.

Then he said, “Generally speaking the hand with most nerve damage is your dominate hand. For you it’s your left, that’s why I kept asking which hand was dominate.”

It was after this declaration that Bonnie and I even learned such a thing as mirror twins existed and what they were.

Funny learning about something and realizing you fit in that category. Then I found out my primary care physician is also a mirror twin. She’s the right handed twin.

But I think the most unusual thing of all is two of my five children are also ambidextrous. My youngest daughter and my youngest son.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Mirror Twin Distractions by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Living with ADD isn’t easy and being a writer and living with ADD can be the pits. I think my life would be a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to deal with ADD.

More than once this last week I caught myself getting distracted from what I was doing each time I took a break to use the facilities or get more water. At some point or other I would notice something that needed done, or remember something I was going to do, and, instead of a couple minutes away from my computer I’d be more like twenty or longer, i.e. long enough the thing went to sleep.

But if that weren’t bad enough, I couldn’t concentrate on one manuscript! I’d get thinking about changes I needed to make on my science fiction series and open it up only to have my brain switch gears to one of two other incomplete novels I have and some changes or additions I need to make to them. Except if I opened either of those, my brain would switch back to the sci-fi.

In other words, I never got much of anything done even though my brain was actively working on my various stories – I doubt anyone could write about A and B when their brain was thinking about X and Y. I personally found it disconcerting when I had the story about A and B open, and suddenly my brain had the story about X and Y running through my thoughts and I very nearly inserted the new details for X and Y’s story into A and B’s story, which would have been more than a little weird since one is sci-fi and the other a contemporary romance. 

  

And adding to my problems with concentrating on just one story was my problems with sticking to just one task until I was done. More than once I caught myself stopping in the middle of the room, on my way back from the bathroom, trying to remember what I was going to do next, and when I did remember something to do, I’d start doing it and suddenly remember what I’d been doing before I got up, either that or I’d go back to what I’d been doing and I'd suddenly remember that I had something else I was going to do before I got back to it.

More than once it was my empty stomach or water bottle which finally reminded what I was going to do before returning to my computer.

None of which helped me because while I realized all sorts of tweaks that needed done to three different manuscripts this past week, I didn’t get a whole lot done toward actually executing any of those changes.

On the other hand, Konnie actually managed to get some writing done this last week either, more than I did anyway, which for her is an improvement, but let’s face it, her life is so much busier than mine, which is why she’s usually the one who doesn’t get a lot of writing done in a week.

Time zone wise I’m an hour earlier than Konnie is, but she beats me up every morning, because she’s up before the crack of dawn, whereas I sleep in. Typically, when most people are heading out the door for the day, I’m just crawling out of bed, while Konnie was heading out the door around the time most people are getting up in the morning, and she’s constantly busy from the moment she gets up in the morning until she finally shuts off her computer and goes to sleep each night.

I spend the majority of my time around the house, with the only noise being when I turn on the TV or the stereo. At Konnie’s house, noise erupts anytime someone so much as walks past the house. With, I think the current count is five, dogs I have a tendency to cut phone calls with my sister short because that pack started barking again.

Konnie on the other hand lives in that racket, and lives with her family, so there is always something going on, and always people talking or doing something, and it only gets quiet around there after like eleven o’clock at night, but their mornings start around four-thirty or five. And she not only works in all that chaos, she’s in charge of it!

So, while I don’t get a lot of writing done because my brain won’t focus on one project she doesn’t get a lot of writing done because her family requires so much of her attention.

As kids, living together, our lives were very similar, but things changed because we now live such different lives as adults.

Happy writing everyone. 😊

Momma Bear Got to Roar by Konnie Enos

I’m sure any good mother would be protective of their children when the need arises. When you have children who are disabled in any way that protectiveness goes into overdrive. I should know. I’m the mother of five wonderful children and they all have their individual trials, including one on the Autism spectrum (high functioning) and two with health challenges, one of those major ones.

With her long list of diseases and conditions she has faulty collagen, loose joints, and issues with her heart, and her digestive track not functioning as it should. All thanks to EDS, Mast cell disease, Lupus and Gastroparesis. And those are just the major highlights of her list.

Over the last eight months she’s been in and out of hospitals and going from one doctor to another. Sometimes as much as four in one week.

This last month has been more of a nightmare. She’s been to the ER every single week, as much as a couple of times. Then the week before Spring Break she went back to the ER and they admitted her.

Things went well the first couple of days. They seemed to listen to her about her reactions to medicines and then they determined her issues seemed to require surgery.

Things went downhill from there.

The surgery was on Sunday. By Wednesday they had not given her any nourishment of any kind and were concerned that her blood sugar was so low.

NO DUH! You aren’t feeding her!

Then four, yes FOUR doctors invaded her room and made every effort to brow beat her into submitting to their treatment plan and when that wasn’t working one of them took me out of the room and suggested she needed a psychiatric evaluation.

I not only told him in no uncertain terms my daughter was of sound mind, but I also told him he was NOT paying any attention to the fact she had Mast cell disease. She AMA’d (she signed out of the hospital Against Medical Advise) shortly after that.

As she left one of the doctor’s, expressing that he thought she was making the wrong choice said, “I hope we don’t see you back here anytime soon.”

By Friday it became clear, from the pain she would have to return to a hospital, but she refused to go back to the one she’d just left. So we found another one. (Thankfully this is big city and it was easy to do.)

I can say this much for the staff at this hospital. They were very thorough in running tests to figure out what the problem was and seemed to listen to her about her reactions. One of those tests required her to go under anesthesia again. Thankfully it also helped them find and fix the problem.

The problems arose after that.

As they were preparing her for that test, she said she was feeling nauseous. After the procedure she started throwing up.

Every doctor and nurse we came into contact with the rest of that day insisted it was because she’d been under anesthesia totally ignoring the fact the nausea started BEFORE they took her in to do the procedure.

I had gone home to get some sleep but my dear daughter called me back with a text. She was still throwing up.

I had to find the nurse and tell her to disconnect the medicines being pumped into her by IV.

She hasn’t thrown up since.

She spent the next day refusing all treatment.

The doctors and nurses repeatedly told her it was her choice while also stressing she would die if she didn’t continue treatment.

While my husband and I were visiting with her one of the doctors came in and tried to get her to submit to their treatment plan.  

According to my husband I was rather thorough in chewing him out when I told him the failings of his plan.

I know I told him she couldn’t move and was throwing up while they were pumping all that medicine into her and she only started getting better when she stopped all of it. I also again, reminded him, she has Mast cell disease.
All I could think was that when the patient it reduced to a nearly vegetative state and is lying there repeatedly throwing up when they have had zero nourishment in over twenty-four hours THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG! When all of that slowly subsides when the patient STOPS ALL medicines, THEN one can conclude continuing treatment IS NOT the best plan for the patient.

Yes, I went a little Mamma Bear on him.

And yes, I helped her AMA right out of there.

Yes, she has been improving daily since then.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Also Posted on my daughter's, May Enos' blog, Price of Genetics (it will be up at 9 a.m. April 18th).

Critiquing is Hardest by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Writing is hard. Editing is harder. Critiquing is hardest.

I once told a guy who asked me to critique his “chapter” that it read more like a synopsis of a novel then a chapter of book. He refused to talk to me again. And I thought I was being gentle. I did tell him he had a good concept, but that he needed more practice with showing the story.

Now I’m faced with the dilemma of an excellent novel with too much detail in the fight scenes. I’m talking literal blow by blows, but I have very few fight scenes in my stories, and certainly no battle scenes, I’m not exactly sure I’m the right person to tell this author to pare it down a little. There were spots so detailed it’s boring.

Yeah, I’ve done that (not in a fight scene), back before I learned better. I just never realized until reading this unpublished novel what all my friends, and Konnie, had been talking about. I’d never had to read someone else’s far too detailed scene, and there is an enormous difference between writing such a scene and reading it.

Back when I made this mistake, I thought the more detailed it was, the easier it would be for the reader to “see” the scene. I couldn’t be more wrong! The more a story is bogged down in details the harder it is for the reader to “see” the scene in their head. I found myself skimming over such sections in the novel I'm critiquing, I just couldn’t handle it, which also meant I wasn’t helping the author fix the issue.

It also made me eternally grateful to a friend who once helped me edit two pages of description down two paragraphs. Konnie knows the scene. I was trying to show the reader one hideous room, in detail. Konnie even said it was boring and that it took too long. In writing, general descriptions go a long way, but you also must have descriptions.

Anton Chekov has a famous quote about not telling the reader the moon was shining but rather show the glint of moonlight on broken glass. Or something like that. Description does take more words than simply telling, but it doesn’t have to take up a whole page or more. Limit it!

The trick is give the reader enough detail that they can fill in the rest on their own. The reader doesn’t need minute descriptions of a scene or the actions of the characters, just general descriptions. And the reader certainly doesn’t need a blow by blow of a fight scene.

I have one where the hero’s dogs come to the rescue of the heroine, and about all I have is them jumping on the bad guy and clamping their teeth into him, then the hero comes running and the bad guy gets slammed into the wall and the hero gets in his face and tells him he’s fired and to get out.

And I think that’s the longest fight scene I have in any of my stories. Earlier in that same story the hero was in altercation with his brother, and all the hero did was slug the idiot and walk away.

I do have a couple altercations in the novel I’ve been editing the last few months, but while in one I mention one of the secondary characters “throwing punches” I do not mention in detail every punch, and the only mention I have of who he is fighting is calling them “the miscreants.” We’re talking about one paragraph in a scene that starts with the victim screaming in terror and the good guys running into the fray and ends with the miscreants being carted off by the police.

I could have gotten a lot more detailed, but what more was needed? The heroine’s cousin was fighting hard and connecting only with the miscreants and not with the hero or his family, who also entered the fray. Enough said, beyond later mentioning the black eyes a few of the miscreants ended up with.

In the other fight scene, the fight itself is a couple small paragraphs, leading into it, and the aftermath takes longer. Its not that I don’t have details in the fight scenes, I just don’t have minute detail.

I didn’t need to give a blow by blow, because a blow by blow would have been too tedious to read. And tedious detracts from the story. None of us want that, especially the readers.

The problem is how do you tell a talented aspiring author they need to cut the detail without discouraging them from writing? Anyone?

Happy Writing everyone. 😊