Life-Hack for the Writer

In life, there are few things I like better than knowing that some of the people I love best sometimes take the short-cuts I love. There's a trend going around on Pinterest - how repetitive that feels! - of people posting these things called "life hacks". I don't exactly want my life hacked, but I think what it means is Ways To Do Things That Make Life Easier. Today, I'm here to give you a Writer's Life Hack from P.G. Wodehouse himself:

Ask for Help

We, as writers, value our independence. Some of us have self-published and are therefore terribly conscious of our space, our needs, our turf, and our lack of marketing reach. How short is the reach of an arm that lauds itself! (That sounds like some ancient proverb. It isn't. It's a new one I just made up but it thoroughly represents the trouble of marketing your novel on your word alone.) But I'm not here to talk about the difficulties of marketing your work. Independence. 

I am going to assume that each of you gets stuck in your writing process sometimes. Not writer's block, exactly (I heard someone say once that Writer's Block is a disease that affects amateurs), but the sticky mires of What The Heck Comes Next? For some of you it might be character creation, or the research that must go into your setting. For me, it's plot and structure. I can have all the bright baubles of humor, wit, sass, great characters, promising setting, and nothing for all these fine-feathered blokes to do. When you get to such a spot, it is quite easy to panic and figure that successful writers (or, on a bad day, "'Real Writers") never experience the same. I surely never assumed that someone like P.G. Wodehouse would ever have found himself short up on plot or, if he did, he drank some Jeeves-esque cocktail that jolted him out of it and into a success like Something Fresh.

Recently, I read P.G. Wodehouse: a Life in Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe. I found many interesting things among this prolific writer's correspondence, but the most surprising and, hence, most gratifying, was the number of times he begged plotting help from his colleagues and gave it to them in return:

"If you have a moment of leisure, here is a bit of a story that is bothering me. I want a tough burglar to break into a country-house and there to have such a series of mishaps that his nerve breaks and he retires from the profession. The conditions can be anything you like, - e.g. Pekingese on the floor who bite his ankle, etc. It ought to be one of my big comic scenes like the flower-pot scene in Leave it to Psmith. Don't bother about it if you are busy, but if anything occurs to you send it along."

and later:

"Listen, laddie. Have you read 'Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey'? I have a sort of idea you once wrote a story constructed on those lines - i.e. some perfectly trivial thing which is important to a man and the story is apparently about how he gets it. But in the process of getting it he gets entangled in somebody else's love story and all sorts of things happen but he pays no attention to them, being wholly concentrated on his small thing. If you never did a yarn on these lines, try one with Cap Crupper. It's an awfully good formula."

There are so many instances of advice begged and advice given that I'm holding this book rather close and taking notes. Is there anything like correspondence between writers to give one a peek into what made them successful? With so many occasions of P.G. Wodehouse begging help, I had to acknowledge that there might be something to the idea. What then? Why would it be a good idea to beg someone to help you out of your rut? The answer is obvious:

Other writers are gifted in other areas.

It amazes me how many spiritual parallels one can draw from writing. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised - Dorothy Sayers did much the same thing (though in reverse) with The Mind of The Maker. We are told that within the body of Christ, we are given various gifts and talents:

"For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?"

- 1 Corinthians 12: 14-19

Continuing this mental exercise, each of us is gifted in a certain realm of writing talent. There are very few - indeed, show me one - who are good at all of it all of the time. We must choose someone, one person if you cannot bear the idea of more, and ask for help at some point in time. The trick is that we have to be humble enough to take their suggestions and adapt them to fit our idea. That is probably the toughest part of the whole thing. I feel so independent that it can be a struggle for me to not reject ideas based on the fact that I did not think of them first. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is true. I suppose it comes from some shadowy fear of plagiarism, or not being able to say, 'I wrote this book' because one aspect of it - heck, even a phrase - was not my own but was brought to mind by someone else. However, there is a difference between plagiarism and between, as Austin Kleon says, "Stealing like an artist". There is a way to accept ideas and even pay homage to other authors' work without copying just as there is a way to take fashion advice and inspiration without having to buy the $1253 dress from Michael Kors.

Yesterday, I asked Jenny for plotting advice. Last week, I got a whole email full of advice for Anon, Sir, Anon from Elisabeth Foley and what's more, I intend to examine and apply some of it. I didn't come to this point easily. It still isn't comfortable to go to a friend and say, "Look, I haven't the foggiest what I ought to do with this, but if you can figure it out and tell me, I'll work with it." But sometimes that is what you need and that could possibly be the only place you'll find that perfect idea.

If anyone ever criticizes you for this method, send them here. You know what I'll tell them?

"P.G. Wodehouse did it."

That'll probably shut them up.

The Rain-People

In Romania, we spent a happy hour in the top floor of Betel Biserica Baptista, watching people in the rain ...

   Sitting up there, it seemed we were demigods. The people below--the old woman with a black kerchief tied under her chin, the Orthodox priest, the teenagers--were unaware of the onlookers as the rain began.
   We opened the screenless windows and stretched our hands into the play of the rain. Rain, we knew. Rain was neither American, nor Romanian, nor Russian nor Chinese. Rain was home, whomever you were. The rich scent of it pressed into our faces as we leaned out the fifth-story window and laughed at the bits of humanity, small and significant under our outstretched palms.
   Most of the crowd shifted from one foot to the next and seemed to ignore the rain; one or two people looked up and shrugged. Looked up,but not up enough to notice us and we were glad. Anonymity suited our mood because we were not ready to meet more people whom we would have to bid goodbye. No one thought that clearly, however; we all just wanted a show and a silent seat in an opera box.

   A tram scooped half the crowd into its shovel-mouth and shuttled off to another street, another stop, another priest hearing thunder and crossing himself for safekeeping.
   A boy opened a green tin gate and a pair of breedless terrier-things pelted after an old man with a white beard who had passed that way. The boy gave chase. His mother pursued.
    The rain, by now, was tremendous.

   Another tram: hiss, scoop, shuttle-shiver and the street was empty. An incoming deposit of tram-riders was received to the drumming of a million raindrops. A million was not too many. Two, three million, and still there were drops uncounted.
    Shirtless, a muscular young man darted from the tram into a doorstep crowded with damp humans. He laughed, shook rain from his bare shoulders, and pulled a dry shirt over his head. We laughed high above the street.
   This group dispersed in pairs and singles like damp ads peeling from a wet cement wall and the bare-chested man jogged down the street beside a stranger or a friend--it little mattered; a thorough soaking is as good a bond as any for forming quick attachments.

   By and by, hail mixed in with the rain and the thunder grew ravenous as a blood-hungry lioness. We leaned further into the glory and caught the hail. Some of us ate it and were happy to have known what sky-ice tastes of beyond the Atlantic. Ferocious now, wind thrashed our street with a whip of braided rain. Lightning and thunder kept precarious time and we marveled at the unconcern of the little old lady with her great big purse and a drenched trio crossing over our way.
   Gleefully, we watched as they missed a shallow crossing and plunged ankle depth into a rushing run-off. It was funny to us and stayed so because the trio laughed among themselves and did not seem to mind.

   If ever a wild rain had rained, this was the occasion, for it seemed the drops were contesting in girth and speed to see who might claim superiority.

  The soaked, cloth-plastered woman on our corner crossed to the other and took refuge in a window-ledge where she stayed with a cur-dog for company. Unmoved by their mutual plight, the dog slunk away to play road-kill in the afternoon traffic. A moment, and the woman made a dash for the green tin gate, only to meet water to her calves. She dragged out of the river one shoe at a time and adopted a soggy course town-ward, defeated in the art of staying remotely dry.
   From below us, an old man with a sock fitted over one hand walked away and we wondered why he obscured his fist from everyone's sight.

   Traffic dwindled, rain slackened, and another old gentleman--patient, slow--toddled down the cobbles. His umbrella had played games with the wind and bent like a cup, filling itself from the downpour. Nothing is more frustrating than an umbrella that does the opposite of keeping one dry, but this old man took a philosophical view of the misfortune: one spine at a time, he turned his umbrella right-side out and a gentle, satisfied smile sat on his face.
 
 Then off he went--patient, slow--and we watched him behind our curtain of rain.

June's Chatterbox

The beginning part of any month means, of course, Chatterbox! If any of you are still confused as to what Chatterbox is, may I direct your attention to the label on the bottom of this post? By clicking that, you will select every post related to Chatterbox that has ever found space on The Inkpen Authoress and you may browse submissions and instructions at will. Self-help; that's what we're all about these days, correct? Now, for June's topic:

"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

- Kenneth Grahame The Wind in The Willows

It is summertime, this June-thing. Summer in all her innocent glory before she's been fondled and smirched by roving August. June is still a blossom-eyed, lovely green thing and the weather in June makes me feel like doing lazy things like going to the beach or lying in the grass in my front yard with my face buried into the earth just sniffing the greenness. Star-gazing, ice cream, and wading in creeks and rivers go right up there on the list. June is a watery month - not watery as in rainy, but watery as in Having To Do With Wetness of All Sorts. And when I think of water - be it a river, creek, puddle, gutter, lake - I think of boats and boating.

That's your assignment.

Boats & Boating

What any of you will actually do with this topic is a thing that makes me eager to see. I can't wait for your entries and I'll probably try to write something myself on this topic. Remember, the main thrust of Chatterbox is a dialog exercise so don't get stuck on thinking, "My story does not deal in Boats. Whatever did she pick Boats for?"

Think hard, think splish-splash. Think Boats. I'll be waiting with my link-up and an anchor o'er my shoulder.

Dose up the Enchantment

Speculation has been running high ever since Anne Elisabeth Stengl announced that Rooglewood Press is hosting another fairy tale collection contest. With the advent of the Five Glass Slippers collection very soon to come out from the Press, speculation was still deep. What fairy tale would be chosen next? What will the cover look like? Well, I'm here today to spill all the beans.

Much to the delight of most everybody, it seems, Anne Elisabeth and the editors at Rooglewood have chosen ...

Beauty & The Beast. 

Rooglewood Press is delighted to introduce their second fairy tale novella contest—

Five Enchanted Roses

a collection of “Beauty and the Beast” stories

The challenge is to write a retelling of the beloved fairy tale in any genre or setting you like. Make certain your story is recognizably “Beauty and the Beast,” but have fun with it as well. Make it yours!

Rooglewood Press will be selecting five winners to be published in theFive Enchanted Roses collection, which will be packaged up with the gorgeous cover you see displayed here. Perhaps your name will be one of the five displayed on this cover?

All the contest rules and information (how to enter, story details, deadline etc.) may be found on the Rooglewood Press website. Just click HEREand you will go right to the page.

Rooglewood Press’s first collection, Five Glass Slippers, is available for pre-order now and will be released on June 14. Do grab yourself a copy and see what these talented writers have done with the timeless “Cinderella” tale!

  

Blog Button:

Please post the blog button on your sidebars so that others will learn about this contest! Invite your readers to share it as well. Here is the link to include: http://www.rooglewoodpress.com/fairy-tale-collections

This link will take readers directly to the contest information.

Cover Illustration Credit:

This cover illustration was rendered by Julia Popova, “ForestGirl.” You can find out more about this gifted artist on her website: www.forestgirl.ru

I (Rachel) was so thrilled to hear that this is the theme for the new collection from Rooglewood entitled, Five Enchanted Roses. I cannot wait to see the ways people twist my favorite fairy tale. I haven't decided if I will enter again this year--we'll wait and see! But one thing is certain: I'm even more excited about this book than I am about Five Glass Slippers ... and my own story is in the latter! Speaking of, it is only a very very short while until you may purchase Five Glass Slippers for your own collection and enjoy The Windy Side of Care and the other stories to your heart's delight. But good heavens. You want to see the cover for the new fairy tale collection, don't you? Ahhh, she's a beauty:

Well, have at it! I want to see Beauty & the Beast in every style before the new year. ;)

"Pit-Pat Waddle-Pat"

Ever written something in a fit of genius that lasts with you for ages and ages and will probably still run through your head at random till you are old and senile?

"In rubber boots you're free to wade

Through puddle and through creek;

In rubbers you're invincible,

Excepting when they leak."


That's this little quatrain for me. <3

The Dangers of a Traveling Writer

It really isn't safe to be a writer, to travel abroad and tell people about your work.

First of all, it's harder than you'd think to pitch your novel in simplified English. If you've worked up a perfectly-worded pitch that takes you exactly twenty-five seconds to deliver, chances are that the wording will be too complex for most people you meet. (You know we exhaust every double-meaning of every word in those hellish pitches.) If you haven't worked up that perfectly-worded pitch, you're still awash. We're writers; our greatest weapon is our command of the English language ... but when your "foes" are impervious to glances from your English Weapon, you're sort of drifting in dangerous waters.

One evening early in the trip, I found myself sitting in the back of a little car as a young Romanian man drove. Two of my teammates, Matthew and Oliver, were with me and we had just finished an evening service at a church near Arad. As we puttered through a village and took a roundabout, I chatted merrily to our driver (who spoke excellent English) about wanting to learn Romanian as my second language. He smiled quietly at me through the rear-view mirror and told me that I had much better take Spanish; I would find it more useful, he said, for visiting Mexico.
"But I don't know anyone in Mexico," I said somewhat petulantly. "I have friends in Romania!"
"Don't you have Hispanics in Virginia?" he asked.
"Well, yes."
"Then you see. So tell me more about your writing."
(Here goes, I thought.) I managed to eek out something that sort of resembled a description of Fly Away Home but it was dashed hard. I mean, how am I to know what the 1950's were like in Romania and how much of what the 50's were like in NYC needs explaining to the person who has an idea of vintage Romania in his mind? Would our driver know what I meant by "glitz" and would he even be interested in the premise of my novel or was he simply being polite? There is nothing for making you weigh the value of your words like trying to cross a culture barrier, I tell you.
My American companions were rather silent during my conversation with our driver but I was not going to let my spirits be dampened by their lack of gregariousness. My Romanian acquaintance smiled at me again through the mirror and clicked his blinker on, slowing before making a turn.
"Are you going to write a book about Romania?"
"I would love to someday," I said, leaning into the topic willingly. "For now I'm keeping a journal and writing about everything that happens and everyone I meet. Someday I'll fit it in a book."
After my eager pronouncement, he smiled at me and I heard him say, "Well don't forget to."
"Forget to? I would never. I could never."

My American companions remained silent.

Flip a few pages in my travel journal to the next day when I was finishing up a surprisingly triumphant round of bowling. Oliver sauntered over to me with a silly smile on his face.
"Hey Rach," he said, "did you realize that when you were talking to Vlad last night, he said 'Don't forget me'?"
"No, he didn't!" My heart thudded to a halt and slowly jerked back into business as I realized the import of Oliver's words.

"Don't forget me."

"Forget to? I would never. I could never."

Speaking about your career as an authoress in a foreign country is dangerous. It can get you labeled a flirt and it can make you the laughing stock of your teammates. Thank heaven I soon saw the humor in the situation and helped Oliver make "I wouldn't. I couldn't," a catchphrase in our group that lasted to the final days. Nothing like laughing at yourself, right?

Oh golly. Only a Rachel, darlings. Onnnnnnnly a Rachel.

"You and I Remember Budapest Very Differently."

Hello everyone! I am home in America in one piece with another hundred pages of travel notes with which to bolster my inspiration in the days to come. After not having written terribly much, it felt good to sit down and write and draw every single day. I was able to meet quite a few people (and observe quite a few others) who will someday elbow their places into my writing. There is an especially embarrassing story connected with one of the men which has now probably given him the impression I'm the most determined flirt who every made her family ridiculous. The ordeal has certainly cemented in my mind the fact that I would never forget him ... I could never. ;)

A grand hello and welcome to my several new followers! I am always excited to have new blood on the blog and you are quite welcome here. I hope you find your stay enjoyable.

In the days to come, I will share a little more about my trip to Romania, the two real live castles I met, and the fact that Jennifer Freitag is self-publishing Plenilune. Good heavens, people. You are in a for a cattywampus. For now, I would only like to say cheers, thanks for the prayers and good wishes for my travel, and that watching pedestrians in the middle of a summer storm is a terrific way to get a laugh and heaps of character notes. Ceau!

Hanging out with a Roman head on the Danube.