Inspiration #25

08 May 2013 2 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Inspiration, Marketing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every now and then, I choose a passage of wisdom from someone who knows better and much more than I do about writing, life, the universe and/or everything.

Share and enjoy!

“We've been raised with a false belief: We mistakenly believe that criticism leads to failure. From the time we get to school, we're taught that being noticed is almost always bad. It gets us sent to the principal's office, not to Harvard.

Nobody says 'Yeah, I'd like to set myself up for some serious criticism!' And yet… The only way to be remarkable is to do just that.”

~from Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Meditations on Change and Hair Dye

05 May 2013 6 Comments

by PartlyPixie in unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

About an hour from my house, there is a place called the Salt Flats; an expanse of desert in a long flat valley, sparkling white with a thick layer of crystal salt, the ghost of a lake that once covered this valley.

If you go there at night, you can see all the stars above, and the wind is cold and dry in your throat, like the ash of prehistoric sea life. In the distance are mountains, purple and eerie. And if you get up and run as fast a you can toward them, they never seem to get closer; it is only when you turn and look back at the blanket and flashlight and thermos you left behind, that you realize how far you ran, that you are now just a spec in the great glittering expanse of nothing, hung between two places like a star.

And you run back, faster than you want to admit, as fast as if all the bogey men of your childhood were coming down out of those distant mountains and calling your name.

Change is like that.

I've done so much, run so far, but sometimes I feel like nothing is different until I look back at who and where I was last year, the year before. Back when I was in the comfort of denial and I'll-do-it-someday. Back in the time when I wasn't stumbling through writing Something I Want People to Read for People Who Want to Read It, back when I was just a wanna be writer, one working too hard at life and being normal to actually do it.

I look behind at the comfort of that blanket on the ground, the comfort of nothing yet ventured–it's so far away–and I want to run back. The mountains ahead are so far away and so cold looking, and I swear the desert is howling for me, calling my soul to Hell. I'm sure all the demons I have ever imagined are waiting in the shadows, hungry, salivating.

But unlike running in the desert, I can't turn back. Those mountains are where I want to be, even if they are still impossibly distant, even if those monsters live and breathe and I have to slay them with my trembling ink-stained hands.

Even if no one likes what I write.

I can't go back. As much as I sometimes wish to, I'm not that person anymore. I need a change, something to remind me every day that I am different, that its ok to move on.

I read once that people who wanted to make major changes in their lives were able to do so easily after merely changing their route to work each day. Change one thing, anything, and life makes room for more alterations.

Enter a box of hair dye, a bottle of wine, and irowboat's help.

Today, I stare at the world from beneath magenta bangs instead of my natural brown laced with early white.

It seems like such a small thing, changing hair color. Reversible, insignificant, superficial.

But that's the point. Life is a series of small shifts, small steps in one direction or another, each step a reminder of the way we want to go, and shuffling that direction.

Novels aren't written in 30,000-word chunks; they are done 5, 500, 1,342 words at a time, each word and sentence and hour set aside for just the purpose another step through the salty netherworld between.

Those moutnains aren't going to get up and walk their demon-infested paths to us. We have to go to them and fight the good fight all the way to the top. And remember not to go back.

Every time I look in the mirror, I'll remember to not look back, to go forward, to be brave, and bold, and loud.

Let the rest of life follow.

 

 

 

 

Focusing on the Outcome

26 Feb 2013 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I want to be a writer.

Specifically, I want to write and publish books. Books about vampires and fairies and an organization I created called the Wish Granter's Union.

I want people to read what I write, to be inspired by my characters as I have been by other characters. I want to share what I know about life, about history, about people and love and all the other questions I may have an answer to, or at least a new way of asking the question.

And I suspect that you want something similar if you are here. We all want to touch the world in some way, in our own way be it selling things we want to share with the world, making art or music, or of course, writing.

And we need to remember that.

Which is why I have decided not to apply for Clarion West.

This last Saturday I spent eight hours in a martial arts seminar with one if the most incredible teachers alive.

We were practicing evading our opponent in slow motion, and looking for openings between their movements for our attack. We were to move aside or counter their motion, then find which tartet we wanted to hit for the desired effect, in this case putting the opponent on the ground.

I could evade well enough, but every time I started to hone in on my next move, I would get caught up in the method of it (exactly how do I need to grab his knee to make him fall backward again?) and I'd get hit. Start over, I get hit again.

My teacher had to remind me of somehting we've learned before.

“Focus on the desired outcome, not the method.”

We started again. My opponent hit the ground. I don't know what I did exactly, but it doesn't matter. I got what I wanted.

We must focus on the outcome.

It is so easy as writers to get distracted with the waving arms or our opponents. We spend time reading about craft, researching markets, trying to get into classes or magazines, fighting writers block, spending time arguing over the best method for characterization, whether or not to outline before writing (please stop it).

But we can do something different. We can focus on the outcome and trust ourselves to take the necessary actions to get there.

Because when fighting an opponent, we can hit their arm as hard as we want and it won't knock them out. If we want to knock them out, we must brush aside the arm and find a more viable target.

We must find our desired outcome.

Focusing on the outcome is how I wrote fifty thousand words every month for a year, regardless of the time constraints and the moping and internal struggle I went through, I always knew that all I needed to do was move toward 50,000 words. And I had to knock aside a lot of punches aimed my way, believe me.

But I knew what had to be done, and I did it.

And all of this is why I'm not applying for Clarion.

It is an outcome; a goal I could shoot for and a wonderful opportunity for someone who has the desire and need for close instruction, needing the encouragement and environment to learn to write every day.

But it isn't my desired outcome. It is a sideways step, a side mission tacked onto the path I walk. And unnecessary.

I want to write books. I want to publish. That was what last year was about too, about getting the habit of writing and the practice in of writing, continuing, finishing, repeat.

I'm ready, I think, to fly on my own. I'm ready to aim for the ultimate goal, the big one I've been dreaming of since I was very young. I have put in my time learning to write, now it's time to learn to make that writing readable and publishable.

It all comes done to trust. Trust in myself to know what needs to be done to get where I want to go, no matter what obstacles need to be knocked out of the way.

Which brings me to another maxim from Saturday's seminar.

“There is no success in giving up.”

 

Silence, Resistance, and Arguing with Myself

17 Feb 2013 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I know I've been gone for some time. So long that irowboat took pity on me and wrote a lovely little post just to let everyone know I still alive, if not exactly prolific. Or able to spread butter on bread.

I have drafts and half written posts here on my iPad. More of the in my head. But they and other things I want to write remain as they are, either in the limbo of half-written or left as little thought bubbles in the odd hours of the night.

Before I get those posts that are ready up, I wanted to share this dilemma I'm facing in all it's neurotic glory. I tend to keep these kinds of struggles to myself because they are generally temporary and because we have other things to talk about here. But I need to get this part off my chest.

Because I'm not writing – not the way I need to be.

I don't believe in writers block, and even if I did this isn't it. I'm overflowing with ideas.

And yet, I've gone silent.

Silence in writers can be a good thing. It can be a period of reflection, growth, a respite, or just a small glitch that will work itself out.

But like depression, silence that goes on for too long means it's not just a glitch in the program, and it's time to take a good long look at what needs to change.

So now, let's all imagine the little squiggly lines and Vaseline-smeared lens effect of a television flashback, and go back to nearly one month ago. I'd just written my previous post, and was ready to decide what comes next for me.

And I decided to apply for Clarion West.

If you're not familiar with the Clarion workshops, they are intensive 6-weekly ordeals in which only 18 people are chosen per year, and the process seems to go something like: write a short story and have it torn apart, take a break and tear another person's story apart, listen to the instructors, rinse, repeat. All while staying in college dorms and networking and all that kind of stuff.

The instructors are all accomplished writers. This year, my idol and one do my favorite writers Neil Gaiman will be teaching. The workshop is also in Seattle, and if I get in I would have to get there and back, plus miss 6 weeks of work and pony up the $3,600 tuition cost.

To apply, I need to submit either 2 short stories totaling less than 30 pages (this is the recommended method), or a novel excerpt with a three page synopsis. This shoud not be difficult to come up with.

And ever since I decided to apply, I have been able to write a damn thing. Not even a blog post.

I come up with plenty of story ideas, none of which will fit into a 30-page limit. So I give up and turn to my old rough drafts and search for a excerpt and find one I think I can make work.

But it seems like if I really want to get in, I should write a short story. Two.

So I go back to that, and come up with another few thousand words. It seems to be going well.

And then Resistance sets in. Magically, I have suddenly gone out to do grocery shopping, or decided to clean my house, or have lapsed into a 4-hour coma and wake up on my desk with my forehead all wrinkly like a Klingon from my sweater-covered arms.

Resistance is as common as silence, and generally is something to ignore and push past. But once again, if it goes on too long, I think it comes time to reevaluate my situation.

What if I'm reisisting because I don't want to go?

It's a stupid dilemma to have. The chances that I may be one of the fortunate 18 is small, even if I do my best work. Nothing bad can come of writing and polishing 2 short stories or fixing up 30 pages of a novel. Why not just apply and see where the chips fall? Why not just go for it, and trust in the fates to do what is best for me?

First, the Fates have a fucked up sense of humor, and are not to be trusted. The end.

But the advice is sound, why not just do the best I can do, writing the things that I write (the temptation to write what I suspect they are looking for is high – but that's another post), and get on with things.

It all comes down to goals. Specific goals. If I want to merely apply to Clarion, just to see if what I usually write has a shot, I could have done that yesterday, or even last year. I can easily find 30 pages of pretty damn good writing to clean up and send, but that would only fulfill the goal of applying.

If the goal is to get in to Clarion, then nothing but my best will do. I'll have cheated myself otherwise if I don't do the recommended 2 short stories of my best writing to date, polishing and shining them until they are the pinnacle if what I have to offer. And then if/when I don't get in, at least I know that I did myself justice.

My ultimate goal, though, is to be a writer, to publish and write books people like enough to buy and come back for more, maybe even enough that I could quit my day job.

I suspect I don't need Clarion for that. It might help, sure – help with craft and networking and unknown other things. It seems like a side-step, though. The next step to publishing a book is editing and submitting, looking for an agent, getting rejected and trying again. That seems to be how every writer I love and respect has done it.

I don't know exactly what Clarion would do for me. In the accounts of those I have read, they say the most valuable lesson was just sitting down and writing.

I think I've got that one down. After writing 650,000 words in a year, it's now an ingrained habit to at least get out a few hundred words each day, or even to make a few notes. Writing on demand is not a problem.

But no matter what may or may not happen for me at Clarion, one thing is for sure.

Ever since I decided to apply, I have barely written.

That moment a month ago when I put it down as what I wanted was the dawn of stress and struggle and daily arguments with myself over what to do and how to do it. The only relief I can find is when I can for five or ten minutes convince myself I don't actually have to go, or even apply. Then, I feel better.

And because I feel better, I start to write again.

Until I realize maybe what I'm writing Something Promising. Maybe for Clarion…

Aaaaaand I stop writing.

I'm a believe in listening to one's own heart. And I think my Resistance and my heart are on the same page with this.

I don't want to go to Clarion. Even though I haven't even applied yet, even though I probably won't have to worry about whether or not to go because I won't get in, even though the workshop is a dream chance, the kind of thing people risk everything to do and if I do get in I'd be stupid to give up.

I don't want it.

So I'll apply. Because I can; I'll send in an except even though they recommend I don't. I'll pay the application fee and email in my words and move on.

And when I don't make it, I'll breathe a sigh of relief and plan what I'd rather do with $3,600.

Thanks, friends. I'm glad we had this talk.

 

 

 

 

 

The Daunting Rebeginning

20 Jan 2013 9 Comments

by PartlyPixie in 12 Month Reflections, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Time to start again.

http://onedrawingaday.com/category/studio-1482-japan-fundraiser/

I believe it is a rule that we are always lost when we begin.

I have taken the last twenty days more or less off, a rest from the turbulence of the end of last year and the writing of the last twelve months. Time to recover and to remember how to just lay on the couch and watch television or to just read an email or a book. Time to get sick with a cold and shop for a new car to replace the one that died last year, and to realize just how much I enjoy driving fast. Time for new stories to bubble from my imagination, waiting to be told.

And now, now I remember that I am A Writer. And writers write.

How do I write? How do we ever write, how do we take this beast called plot and character, how do we describe the actions of life in black and white markings?

Beginnings are full of awkward abstractions. It is not like the business of my day job, making sandwiches for hungry professionals. With a sandwich, there are limited factors, a set rhythm – choose the bread and cut it apart, spread sauces and cheeses and meat in piles with vegetables and then wrap it in foil and start again.

Writing is like that, if you had to bake the bread for each sandwich, making it with no recipe, and imagine what kind of animal the meat came from before you set it down, if the person eating the sandwich could only taste what we describe in words about the food. And as we hand it over, desperately trying to remember if we described accurately the way the tomato seeds are small and yellow in the gelatin of the fruit pulp and how the addition of cheddar cheese should add some bite to the turkey. Or if that would detract from the point of the multi grain bread.

The beginning is always impossible. We reinvent not only the wheel, but the pen, the word, the practice of hands on keyboard. We must choose what invented mind to tell the story from, we must manufacture emotions and hope that what we think we feel is the same feelings others have. We choose one person to tell from, or several, if we are in the future or the past, and even in the present we must find the color of the drapes that the light filters through in the morning.

It is even worse if we have a clear picture, the half-formed Polaroid, because it all must add up to that feeling we had when the photo developed in our quaking minds. We find a good first line, and want the rest of the melody we write to match that cadence, and when we hit a sour note it jolts us down to our tailbone that we have gone astray. And we are so tempted to quit and let the unwritten story stay perfect in our imagination.

It all feels so impossible, to begin. Especially when we have begun before, and we cannot remember the way back. Because no two beginnings are ever the same.

You see, most mythology has it all wrong. In the beginning, there was not darkness, nor was there the void.

In the beginning, there is always chaos.

And we are the reluctant masters of that chaos. We peer into that squiggling mass of possibility and have the courage to plunge into the uncertainty and the despair and wonder and the feeling of too many worlds all crowding about us wanting to be born from the unknown.

Endless possibility can often look like nothing, and we call the frozen feeling of Too Much “writers block” and we give it power, we write books about writers block (irony), we believe that it is a demon but really it is just a shape in the din of everything possible in the universe waiting to be breathed full of life.

We must remember that the difference between nothing and everything is merely a tilt of the head, a grasp of a new beginning, the willingness to wander lost into a forest with nothing but a small stub of pencil behind our ear as protection and to know that we will be okay, because the hero always lives. Not only do they live, but they are stronger for it.

We must trust the chaos to have more than we will ever need, even when it only looks like blackness, the kind of blackness with sharp teeth hiding inside. But we are not afraid, even if we think we are. We invent the fear too, and so can we invent bravery. Bravery to be bold, to be terrible, to be brilliant, to write that first paragraph and continue on to the last.

And so must we begin. Again.

 

A Request for Assistance, with perhaps provocative incentive

24 Oct 2012 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in I might not be in my right mind here, October Tags: , , ,

Hello all. I really suck at this kind of thing, so bear with me.

After a good deal of thinking, I've decided that I would really really love to attend the Office of Letters and Light's A Night of Writing Dangerously.

And I need your help.

To attend, I need to raise at least $250 and fast, it goes to a good cause, which rules. But I also hate just asking people to give money with nothing to offer in return.

So here's my thinking: by the end of this year, I will have written thirteen novels, some of which have actual potential. I hope to have one of them edited into a coherent novella by the end of next February.

I'm not normally the kind to self publish, but I will promise a copy of my first edited book to anyone who donates more than $2.00 to the Office of Letters and Light through my fundraising page. I don't know if this offer is an incentive or not, but I want to give something back to all those who help support the OLL and get me a seat at the most coveted of events, at least coveted by me.

Thank you all for your support, monetary or no. This has been one of the best years of my life, and I am grateful for every moment.

If you want to take me up on my offer, email me at michelle.tuckett@gmail.com after donating.

 

Leaning into Fear

19 Aug 2012 11 Comments

by PartlyPixie in August, I might not be in my right mind here, Slightly off Kilter Tags: , , , , ,

I will have the promised post on getting and pushing past being stuck soon. But today, I want to talk about something else.

Leaning into the fear.

This year, I have unearthed more about myself than I knew was there to discover. As I have expressed before, writing this hard and fast doesn't leave any room for me to hide from myself. The more I write, even when my stories are superficial, who I am shows up in the characters, the plots, the obstacles. It's like navigating a mine field made of all the lies I've told myself about who I am.

Except in this mine field, the one made of myself and my hidden pieces, the more things I blow up, the better.

To write well, to write myself real, to get past the things that stop me from writing, to become the person I want to be, I have to step on as many mines as I can. I have to lean into the fear, to walk where I dare not, and to find the places I do not want to go.

I keep thinking: I didn't read this in my books about writing. Am I insane? Am I the only one? Natalie Goldberg touches on the idea a little in her ideas of writing practice. She warned me a little. But it is easy to disregard her meditative writing practice in the face of so many others, who only discuss how to plot and create story and get published and above all avoid passive voice.

It's easy to feel betrayed, because they never warn you about this when you say you want to write fiction. They never tell you that you may meet yourself, and that it probably will be less than pretty. They don't tell you how to stick with it and move through the terror of discovery.

Yet, every month, I face the same thing. I find the place my story is headed and I feel that sick, cold terror. My writing slows down, I feel lost, abandoned, deserted. I don't want to blog, in fact, I don't want to exist. I'm too messed up to write, let alone to live — or so the frightened parts of me believe. I cry a lot, I spend too much of irowboat's time making him listen to my artistic angst before he tells me to shut up and write.

And every month, I find a way to push through. I give in and lean toward the places I most fear and find that it wasn't as frightening inside the terrible secrets as it was standing on the precipice. The words come, I forget to care if they suck or not, I just want to be done.

Each month, it is the same. Each month I know for certain that I cannot go on, that I am too frightened, too insecure. As soon as I realize that my job is to blow myself up over and over on the parts of me I have burried, I can move on.

It can even be fun, once the screaming stops.

And yet, I still feel unprepared for just how difficult it is. I have to re-learn every time that fear is my friend. The places I am frightened of writing into are the very places that can set me free. If I will only go there.

This month, it has been very, very hard to go there.

So I am writing this as a reminder to myself: lean into the fear. Lean in and find that one thing I don't want to know, the one thing I just can't handle. Write it; write it tired and fast and frightened. Cry, freak out, have a drink, laugh, do whatever it takes to hold on and keep with it. Whatever it takes to keep writing.

Because nothing, no amount of fear or truth or discomfort or sleepless nights, nothing is worse than not writing.

 

A Burning Metaphor

08 Aug 2012 11 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

Ash rained from the sky today. It stuck to my windshield wipers and my hair, and collected on the blacktop like sinister snow.

The air smells of smoke, a friendly kind of smoke that reminds me of hot dogs and blackened marshmellows melting squares of Hershey's. But this isn't campfire smoke. It is the smell of lightning kissing drout-dry grass, the smell of summer and heat and pure, elemental destruction.

My state is on fire.

The Pinyon Fire, viewed from Sandy, Ut

 

And we burn together.

Writing is so much like wildfire. Unconfined, at the will of the winds and the dry. Sometimes the flames in us look so small, tiny sparks landing on brittle ground.

Fan them. Fuel them. The ground seems dry and infertile, the crops withered, the grasses dry.

Strike them with lightning. Do not try to govern the fire, burn with it. Let it flow through the juniper and the oak and the sage. Let it turn the sunset red with smoke and make the world orange and black and brilliant with the light of our words.

Leave nothing untouched. Be wild.

And when our fire jumps containment, when the houses are evacuated and black hawk helicopters hover with buckets of water, when we are frightened of our minds and our hearts and do not think we can find a way back from how huge it all is, that is when we throw gasoline on the flames.

We rain ash on the ground like summer snow.

Fires leave a mark. They are remembered. They hang in the air, linger on the tongue and the mind. They change everything they touch permanently. They inspire wonder and terror at once.

What more could we ask from our writing?

**Ahem, don't actually set fires, okay? Metaphorical fires are awesome. Real fires are bad.**

 

 

 

Inspiration #17

20 May 2012 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Inspiration, May, Writing Tools Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Every Sunday, I choose a passage of wisdom from someone who knows better and much more than I do about writing, life, the universe and/or everything.

Share and enjoy!

I normally really dislike videos in blogs, but this one is a must-see. Please watch it. You will be glad you did.

And as a note, this is vaguely NSFW, so put on headphones if you’re around people who can’t handle a smidge of mild language.

“And God let me enjoy this! Life isn’t just a sequence of waiting for things to be done.”

~Ze Frank

Deep Thoughts, Served Late

26 Mar 2012 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in March Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“Honey, I love you a lot, but when we go in there, try not to be so much yourself as usual, okay?”

We were standing outside of my boyfriend’s house, poised for of all things, a funeral. I was sixteen, two years before I met irowboat, and for some reason I don’t remember anything else about that night. In fact, I’m not even positive it was a funeral gathering.

But there it was – exactly what I had always been afraid people wanted from me, for me to be less me. Even they guy I thought would one day marry me felt the need to ask me to tone it down. What could that say about me?

I chose the inspiration for this week for a reason; I am scared of who I am inside of all these words I have to share and choose from, I’m frightened of the person I am uncovering within the stories I write.

It is often said that writers put some of themselves in their writing.

But I’m coming to understand that our writing can illuminate us – who we are, what questions we are begging the world to answer for us, what we love, and, most of all, what our wounds are.

When we write from those deep places (especially when we forget that we’re doing just that) then there is an unveiling, and the truer pieces of who we are can sparkle through.

I had a chance to see some parts of myself in every novel I’ve written this year so far – each one uncovers just a little more of my deeper self. Never more so than writing a novel in a week. I met some true part of myself in the mists of last fifteen thousand words written Friday night. I dove in, nose held, and stayed right there in the heat of creating and found myself in places I never dreamed I could dream.

I took my characters on a dark and twisted ride through the deepest recesses of my soul, and all of us came out changed. Particularly me.

Reading a good book can completely change our lives. It changes us because the writer was willing to stay on the dark edge of their consciousness, they were willing to dive within their depths and find their own truths to deliver to us in the form of story, in myth. They give us something that makes us know we’re lovable and human and so much greater than the sum of our parts.

This is part of our jobs as writers, to discover what lies true within ourselves, we must face what is too much of us, what we’ve let other people tell us is not okay to be or say in a funeral, at dinner, in the car on the way home from the airport. We have to be willing to write deep enough to find out that we are nothing of the person we thought we were.

This discovery of deep truths is not comfortable.

But it is wonderful. And scary. And strange.

And if reading a great story can change us, can illuminate our souls, even the smallest corner, then what must writing great stories be but this, this diving down into the unknown, do? For one thing, we can’t go on living as quite the same person as before.

It changes us.

Between the writing, up in the real world of society and social niceties, we run the risk of being so much more ourselves after finding out more about that wild thing we thought we controlled is running free.

As we write, we wake up.

And maybe, if you’re doing it right, someone will ask you be not so much yourself some day.

And when they do, smile and say, “No, thank you.”

Because you’ve earned everything you have become.

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