That Counts as Writing, Right?

I bought new stationery today (a set of three wine-colored Moleskine squared journals, 7 1/2 x 10 inches). That counts as writing, right?

Saturday I jotted down two new story ideas that came to me while working out. That counts as writing, right?

Last week I submitted a new flash fiction piece that I'd polished up the week before to two journals (one of which has already rejected it, with a very nice form letter that said "we invite you to submit again," a sentiment that I plan on making them regret). That counts as writing, right?

I started planning a trip to Las Vegas for next year, listing the things I haven't done there before (visit the Liberace Museum, fire an automatic weapon, buy an Elvis impersonator a drink, etc.), things that I want to do, as research, so I can write my next set of Vegas stories. That counts as writing, right?

Not to mention that surfing the internet last night, I bookmarked half a dozen good-looking writer's advice pages, including TheReviewReview's links to journals that publish flash fiction, a list of ten types of writer's blocks with advice on how to avoid them, and the best gifts for writers that you could ever imagine. That counts as writing, right?

And after I did all that, I put it all into this blog post. Surely THAT counts as writing, right?

No? What's that you say? WRITING counts as writing?

Oh. Right. Time to get back in the chair.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

In the Chair, With Flames

As Ann Patchett said in her Muse and the Marketplace 2009 keynote address, creativity isn't something you wait for. It's something you earn by sitting your butt in the chair and writing.

What she didn't say, though, was that the chair will frequently be on fire.

I've been sitting. Not everyday, not every hour available to me, but I've definitely been down in that chair this week.

And let me tell you something. It burns.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18

Well, now I've gone and done it.

Done what, you may ask? Put my writing pride on the line in a friendly wager with Cathy Elcik (you can read more about it here) that's all about being the first person to create / revise 30 pages of finished, submission-worthy prose before the end of the year. Pretty much the antithesis of my attempts to become more productive by freeing myself of the sin of perfectionism.

But there's a wager involved. Drinks on the line. What's a little backsliding going to hurt, compared to the joy of shouting "Boo-yah!" in the face of a writer you respect while drinking a Boston Cream martini on their dime?

Of course, that's assuming I'm going to win.

Cathy's working on a novel - I'm writing short stories. Really, really short stories. That's means I'm going to need something like five or six complete, thoroughly revised stories (including one brand new piece) to win this race. While attempting to write during the Christmas holiday season (Holiday parties! Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu commitments! Football games!).

Progress so far? Two stories revised and almost ready, although both still needing one final brush-up before going out into the world. One is five pages long, the other is... two. (It's a work of flash fiction, under 500 words. Two pages is actually generous.)

I did get three pages into the new piece tonight, and it looks like it might become a reasonable story, at a reasonable length story. But it's a three-page start that's still very much in the shitty first draft category. So basically I'm at 23 pages to go.

I wonder if Cathy does the fist-pump "Boo-yah!" while doing her Snoopy dance.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

Thanks, and Giving

“When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” - Tecumseh


Here's the Thanks. Without getting maudlin, let's just say that the above quote has particular meaning for me this year, and I give thanks today, and every day, to my wonderful wife Penny for keeping me in the light.


And now, the Giving. I give you my writing tip of the day (which came to me, once again, from Hillary Rettig's time management and productivity seminar): timed free writes. Start with ten minutes a day, where you must keep typing or scribbling until the bell rings. Need a bell? I use the online countdown clock at http://www.online-stopwatch.com/. I'm averaging 350 words a day of... well, mostly dross, and that is not only okay, that is to be expected. We're not panning for gold here (although a few shiny flakes can already be seen in the whirls and eddies of words), we're building mind/body habits.


And while I'm giving out gifts that others have given me (I hear regifting is big in the last couple of months of the year), here's a writer's lament in the form of a limerick from Cathy Elcik:

Metered Angst

by Catherine Elcik

When tracking my writing it's hard to ignore

when my hours shrink back to less than half four.

I say that I'm fighting

To prioritize writing

But then dole out my time like I can simply make more.

You are not alone, Cathy. You are not alone.


Thanks for Reading,


Stephen.

Time Enough for Blog

It's been a week of ups and downs. The big up was yesterday, spent in Hillary Rettig's "The Time of Your Life" seminar at Grub Street. If you get the opportunity to attend one of Hillary's presentations, either at Grub Street or anywhere else, I recommend it highly. In the morning she taught us that procrastination to avoid writing is typically a response, a suboptimal response, to ingrained perfectionism (the inner oppressor that says 'you suck - why even bother with this?'), and how you can be aware of that inner voice and silence it. The afternoon was all about time management -- about how, when you become aware of where you're spending your time, you can empower yourself to spend more time on the high-value activities where you want to be investing your life, and less time to no time at all on the low-value things.

Now to put her advice into practice.

The big down, was a big Fall Down and Go Boom on Monday night, when I took a tumble onto the track bed when running full out after a Green Line train at the Newton Highlands stop.

Bad idea.

No broken bones, but bruises and contusions along my right side bad enough to keep me out of work for a day, and leaving my right arm looking like I commissioned Jackson Pollack to provide me with a tattoo sleeve depiction of Hell. It's 63 degrees in Boston right now, but I'm wearing a long-sleeved shirt in recognition of Penny's delicate sensibilities.

Better time management should alleviate the need and desire to run for trains. We can only hope.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

Size Matters

"Every writer I know has trouble writing." - Joseph Heller


I have a writer friend who has already produced 7,137 words this month (I'm talking about you, KL) towards their NaNoWriMo goal. Another friend is workshopping one of their novels in one writer's group, and a second, written in a completely different genre, in another group. Yet another friend has made a contract with herself to write as an (unpaid) part-time job, for fifteen hours each week, in order to finish her novel within a year.


Me, I squeeze out short stories. And we're not talking 16-20 page short stories, but rather flash fiction (under 1,000 words), or 1,500 - 2,500 word tidbits of stories. One first draft of such a miniature every three to four weeks, if I'm lucky. It's not because I write slowly. It's because I don't write that often. And this month, I'm starting to get a bit of a complex about it.


I'm a guy, after all. Size matters.


Having a heart attack brought home to me on an intellectual level how limited our time on this earth can be. To turn that understanding into a change in the habits of a master procrastinator, however, may require some professional help.


So, this coming Saturday I'll be back at Grub Street for a Time Management / Stop Procrastinating seminar, "The Time of Your Life," taught by productivity coach Hillary Rettig. I've heard good things about her seminars, and hope to be able to internalize her approach to get more writing down. I'm not talking writing a novel in a month, but even a 3,000 word story, or two or three new 1,500 word masterpieces, would be nice.


I'm also going to attempt to revive this somnolent blog, shooting for weekly updates every Sunday night. 


Short updates, of course. It's what I do.


Thanks for reading,


Stephen

Creeping Back... Watch This Space.

For those of you who didn't know, I happened to have a heart attack the morning of May 23. I'm doing much better now, back to work, back to writing (now in two writing groups), and back on Facebook and Twitter. Can blogging be far behind?

Watch This Space.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

The Time to Hesitate is Through

Well, three weeks ago I promised you I'd blog again when I hit 100 followers on Twitter, and with 101 people, bots, and dogs following @sdorneman as of this evening, it's time to hold up my end of the bargain.

It's not that my Tweets are particularly retweetable or anything. I credit my recent surge in minions (hey, if they are my followers, I get to command them to do my bidding, right?) to my attendance at Grub Street's most excellent Muse and the Marketplace conference. Apparently Twitter handles are the new business card. I recommend the Muse to writers of all types, whether you're looking to improve your craft (moi), connect with agents and editors, or simply want to know that even though you work in solitude, you are not alone. Highlights of the conference for me were Ron Carlson's keynote address, Lynne Barrett's two seminars on Understanding Plot and Mapping Your Structure, and reading my flash fiction story about a foot fetishist under, shall we say, challenging acoustic conditions at an open mic party hosted by Beyond the Margins and The Review Review.

Hmm, I wonder if Grub Street has some kind of Best Customer Award or loyalty program I can get in on? In addition to my Muse attendance, I'm currently taking Mike Marano's Revenge of the Smart Page Turner class (he kicks our arses with work, and that's a good thing), and in the summer I'll be taking a one-day time management for writer's seminar with Hillary Rettig and a longer class, 10 Weeks, 10 Stories Level 2, a flash fiction workshop with Sue Williams. 

Not to mention I'm the Mayor of Grub Street on Foursquare (nyahh, nyahh, Kim Windyka).

Lots of writing, some for class, some going out to world, some only for me, but no new publications to report. I do, however, have a lovely rejection from a journal (a journal that I happen to, still, have a very high opinion of) to share. It reads as follows:

"As per [our] guidelines, here are one to two sentences outlining why we didn't choose your piece:

This is a good story. We just can't take them all."

I'm going to assume that means I could a been a contender.

See you at 200 Followers, if not sooner. Hopefully much sooner, as 200 could take a while...

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

P.S. I almost forgot! May is National Short Story Month, so in an effort to relieve pressure on our bookshelves, I'm giving away three short fiction collections to the first three people who comment on this post (and let me know who they are, so I can deliver them their books). I'm choosing various past year's editions of Best New American Voices, Best American Short Stories, or Best of the West - I love all of the above collections, and want to spread the love. I'm sort of participating in the Collection Giveaway Project. Enjoy!

Twitter Is Fun

... and a tremendous time sink. So is Facebook. And work.

BLOG FAIL!


Follow sdorneman on twitter. When I get to 100 followers, I'll blog again. AND Tweet.

Promise.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

(Hmm, 159 Characters. I'll have to cut something.)

A Tale of Two Boxes

I have two boxes (we're talking non-virtual, plastic 8-gallon, file-totes-purchased-at-Staples boxes) in my writing "office" where paper manuscripts live.

One box is nicely organized, full of hanging folders that hold multiple manilla tab file folders, each tab labeled with the title of the manuscript within. This is the box for stories that have already seen the light of day, stories that members of Grub street classes or my writing group have seen and commented on. Manuscripts that have been seen, and rejected, by various and sundry editors live there, too.

I call this the Good box.

Stories in the Good box look like, well, stories. They have beginnings, and middles, and ends. They have flaws that need work, but those flaws have been (mostly) identified, duly noted, the spindly trees in a well-managed forest daubed with florescent paint and ready to be culled.

The other box is a chaotic slough of torn notebook pages, in-class exercises, false starts and lecture notes. You might find a few finished-looking pieces in there, but they are few and far between, or else the ones that received kind, compassionate, but resoundingly negative criticism. Pieces that aren't yet stories, or stories that are fatally flawed.

I call this file tote (I'm sure you've already guessed it), the Bad box.

The Bad box is a jungle.

Stories almost never move from the Good box to the Bad box, but there is substantial traffic the other way. Then again, there's also substantial traffic from the Bad box to the trash.

I don't organize the Bad box. I only dip into it now and then. After all, you don't live in the jungle.

I need both Boxes. In fact, I've been working out of the Good box a lot lately, trying to produce some truly finished goods.

Guess which Box I like to visit more often?

Welcome to the jungle.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen.

Computers Suck My Brain

"The internet provides arbitrarily many ways to waste your time. The problem is picking your poison." 

That was my Facebook status today.

My first Tweet of the day today (from @sdorneman) was "Considering Twittering about how I'm spending too much time on Twitter, but that would be a waste of time."

Anyone starting to see a pattern here?

Perhaps I should go offline for a while. I might not get any more writing done, Lord knows I can come up with enough distractions in the physical world to stop that, but I won't know unless I try. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, they say. (They also talk about recognizing a higher power, but I don't think I'd recognize either Mark Zuckerberg or Biz Stone if I saw them on the street.)

I might just try it. Really.

Someday soon.

Well, maybe I can still check Twitter and FB from the iPhone. Just during the commute, I mean that wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

Retreat to Advance

The last couple of weeks have been rough on my health (only a winter cold, but a nasty one that's lingered on for nine days, a cold that my wife is now deep in the throes of while I'm finally starting to recover from), rough at my 'real' job (busier than usual with 2011 planning), and rough in Boston's January weather (the foot and a half of snow from a few days ago, first preserved in single digit wind chill temperatures, now becoming six inches of slush following an afternoon and evening of not-quite-freezing rain).

Which means (you know where I'm going, you've heard the excuses before) my writing has suffered.

Or at least it did, up until yesterday.

Yesterday, during the Martin Luther King holiday, the writing group that I belong to, the Bay State Scribblers, got together far enough away from everyone's homes, jobs, and family, to spend five hours writing. Writing physically together in one room but otherwise separately. That was pretty much it, writing. (Coffee and doughnuts and cheese consumption notwithstanding.)

Everyone produced writing. We wrote. That was the goal, and the goal was achieved.

I myself ended up with the first draft of one complete flash fiction story, a half-dozen page beginning of a longer short story (one that's probably going nowhere as it is, but has some great characters and good descriptions to be mined for other stories), and a killer first page of a new story that I'm excited to return to. Not a ton of words, but a lot more than I've produced any other day this month.

Certainly the day was a success for me, and it sounded like it was for the rest of the group as well.

What made it work?

1. No distractions. No reaching for that novel you like to read 'for inspiration,' no random surfing the internet, no children or spouses jousting for your attention, no pets to play with (cute as they are).

2. Peer pressure. Just sitting there staring at the screen while Andi or Mike is pounding away at the keyboard isn't going to cut it.

3. One big block of time. Yes, you (and by you, of course I mean I) need to be putting in your half hour stretches as many nights a week as possible, but working through one false start alone often takes longer than thirty minutes. Given literally hours to work with, you find you are able to push past the usual start-up, flailing about, phase and get into the meat of a project, whether new or old.

4. And finally, I would have to say, the novelty of it all, particularly of the camaraderie. Some members of our group write more or less full time, but they don't write in the presence of other writers. It's cool -- you're working independently, but you can look up anytime and see you're not alone.

Get a group, get a room, and try it some time.

Retreat to advance.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

2009-2010 Redux

The following is, in its entirety, the first entry in this blog from December of 2009. Through the clanging bells of another new year, it still rings true and clear.


My resolutions for the incipient new year are depressingly familiar, and I suspect not just for myself. Exercise more, eat less. Read more, work less -- or at least work smarter, rather than just harder. Spend more quality time with Penny (the wife) and Ellie (the dog).

And write more. Write more, and rewrite more, and edit more, and submit more for publication. Really. This time I mean it.

As you might have guessed from the above, I've been going through a spot of writer's drought lately. I can spout all the usual excuses (tough day at the office, suffering with a bad cold, a month's worth of Heroes episodes to catch up on, my Facebook status is, like, two days old ... ), but realistically?

Realistically, I simply haven't been putting my butt in the chair and banging away. I haven't been writing. And I could have been.

Hence, this Blog. I'm thinking blogging counts. I'm banging away at the keyboard, aren't I? It may not be fiction, or particularly enlightening, but it is word count. (One hundred and seventy seven words, to be precise, before this parenthetical sentence. Woo hoo!)

For the New Year, the promise / threat to myself is, I either write fiction for at least 30 minutes (only half an hour! what a wimp) on any given day that I'm home with access to the office, or I update this blog. I might even update the blog on days that I actually do manage to get some writing done with thoughts on the work in progress, or more likely thoughts on the process of the work.

Other writers are welcome to chime in with their own hints, hacks, and tales of success or woe. Non-writers are likely to be bored to tears. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Why? The idea being, as with all New Year resolutions, to develop new and improved habits, and break the old cycles of bad behavior. To push the butt back down in the chair until some words come out.

Yeah, good luck with that. Sounds like I'm barking at my own shadow to me. But maybe it's worth a try.

Happy New Year's Resolutions, everybody. Stay tuned.

Hey, I'm working on it. Off to get in my half hour of writing for January 1st, 2011.


Thanks for reading,


Stephen