I already blogged about the delightful Wired for Story. Recently, I read some other articles about what neuropsychology tells us about writing. I thought I’d share the links to 3 of them with my audience members today.
From Psychology Today: We’ve all heard the jokes about writers hanging out in cafes. (For the comic representation of this trope, see Bo’s Cafe Life.) Does lingering in coffee shops really promote creativity? Continue reading
So, I’ve got a couple kids home with me this week, and two more will be home starting next week. I’ve been spending a lot of time with them doing all sorts of fun stuff — hiking, museum-hopping, long walks — and it’s nice to be doing things other than gazing into my computer screen.
Just when I’d cut back on my writing, the war in Israel started, and my brain’s been feeling a little overloaded by all the bad news. I kept feeling horrified by all the reports, and yet unable to pull myself away from a screen.
Everything in my head feels jumbled up at the moment. Writing has gotten hard for me lately in a way I’m not used to. I’m having problems getting the words to flow. It’s like my brain needs to detox.
This week, I’ve had to leave the computer behind for long stretches, and it will remain that way until September. The only work I will be doing is the most essential, mainly writing episodes of my serial and preparing rewrites requested by editors for already accepted pieces. I’m hoping the little break will help me snap back to normal.
When school resumes in the fall, I’m expecting to work almost full-time, writing. It will be the first time I work full-time at anything other than being a wife and mom since my first child was born. I feel like I need to rest in the coming weeks before this new phase of my life starts.
I’m hoping to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors, getting exercise, absorbing smells and scenery and sounds. I’m hoping to enjoy my family, just enjoy them, their company and special-ness. It’s like my creativity needs fuel, and the tank needs to be topped off.
I wish I could stop writing altogether for the rest of the summer, but with the serial looming over me, that’s going to be impossible. So, this vacation isn’t really a vacation. But at least it’s something.
Neuropsychology might be a writer’s best friend.
I recently read two relatively new books about writing that I found very useful, and thought I’d share them with you.
My best friend since college is, like me, a professional writer, although she specializes in a totally difference field. When she raved about the book Wired for Story, I immediately added it to my Goodreads list. It just took me a while to actually buckle down and read it. I’m glad I finally did. Continue reading
So, I’m back to cranking out chapters of my serial this week, and this time, I hope to do it a little faster. The quicker I finish the serial, the easier it will be for me to focus on other projects, I think. Anyway, something is happening as I write that I think is worth mentioning, because I sincerely doubt that I’m the only writer to experience it.
In order to secure my gig to write my current serial for Binah BeTween (“Glixman in a Fix”), I had to prepare an outline. Once that was approved (along with character profiles, the summary, and so on), I started writing. Generally, I write the serial episodes — I might have mentioned this before — in blocks of three, basing them on the outline. Because I’m working from an outline, with characters who are now well known to me, the writing goes relatively quickly. Then I revise the rough drafts once or twice and send them together in a batch to the editor.
We’re now more than a third of the way in, and more and more often, I find that I’m diverging from the outline. Continue reading
Yesterday, which started with the announcement that the bodies of the three kidnapped Israeli teens had been recovered and ended for me with a shiva call, kept me in such a state of horror and confusion, I didn’t get much writing done. After several failed attempts at work, I finally gave up and decided to develop a community action project I’d dreamed up instead.
Late at night, I awoke, exhausted but still reeling from the emotional turmoil of my day. So many words seemed to bubble out of me, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Eventually, I got out of bed and wrote the first draft of an essay about the special lady whose shiva I’d attended earlier in the day. When I was done, I felt emptied out, much calmer and more ready to sleep.
While writing material at the moment I am wrapped up in heartache, delirious joy, or nervousness can help me work through my feelings, I find that the outcome usually isn’t my best writing, or even my most passionate writing to read. Word choice suffers, and is often redundant. Logic wavers. Sometimes the resulting text is downright incoherent. You might even call it Writing Under the Influence…of Emotions. It can be that circuitous, drawling, and dribbling.
I’ve developed a process that works for me in these moments.
Whew!
At this point last week, I had three looming deadlines ahead: a short story each for Binyan and for Binah BeTween, and my next batch of episodes for Glixman in a Fix, the serial currently running in Binah BeTween. I was feeling stressed out not just because these items needed to be in by this week, but by a whole string of deadlines, pretty much constant ones for months on end.
I had first drafts for both stories already written, and an outline to base the serial chapters on, but it was a lot of writing to complete in a single week. The previous few stand-alone pieces I did for the tween/teen magazines had not come as smoothly as usual, so I was feeling anxious. Trying to think of multiple fictional plots, spoken in the voices of multiple narrators, overlapping one another for months on end was wearing my creativity a little thin. The quality of my work had dropped, and it weighed on my mind.
In fact, Continue reading
Rebecca Klempner 