Writers in the Storm

by Kris Maze

I don’t know about you, dear writer, but coming to terms with quarantine has been a challenge for me.  Yes, I had extra time at home for the crucible of creativity, but not without a steep learning curve. Writing inspiration has been hard to come by.

During quarantine, my family pushed pause on activities and the daily grind.  We found some comfort in the slower pace of life, dealing with the negative impact as best as we could. As many parts of the world begin reopening, let’s not forget the writing we have accomplished so far.

As always, I am inspired by history. There have been other pandemics, and great works have come from them.

Historical figures can inspire us with their great pandemic creations.

Sir Isaac Newton left Cambridge college when an outbreak of the Plague closed all schools.  His year of uninterrupted self-study and exploration led him to write his theories on early calculus, on optics as he played with prisms at home, and of course, on gravity.

William Shakespeare wrote some of his best poems and plays when the plague forced a closure of London’s theatres. According to Scientific American, "plague was a near-constant presence in the England of Elizabeth I and her successor, James I. When the death toll exceeded 30 per week, London’s theatres were ordered to close, forcing theatrical troupes to take a break or perform in the country. When a particularly nasty outbreak struck in 1606, Shakespeare used his time well, penning King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra."

Edvard Munch, famous expressionist painter of The Scream, painted during the time of the Spanish Flu. Having contracted the disease himself, he recovered to create many more works.

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897, inspiring over a century of gothic writing. That same year, “The 1897 Epidemic Diseases Act” was put into place and Stoker’s native Ireland suffered high numbers of typhoid fever and the lingering Bubonic Plague.

Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein during a failed vacation with writer friends. It was 1817, and a volcanic explosion of Mt. Tambora had caused an endless winter throughout the world.  The atmosphere was choked with ash and dust, keeping essential sunlight from crops and leading to famine, epidemics, and a cholera pandemic. Mary’s personal life suffered as well when her poet husband, Percy, drowned in an accident five years later. Her friend, Lord Byron, died of a fever two years after that.

The earth in 1817 was literally dark, cold and uninviting, but was fertile for writing the first science fiction novel.  One thing is for sure: centuries later, Frankenstein lives on, evoking philosophical debate.

Final Thoughts

The hurdles of 2020 are undeniable but perhaps framing your ideas in literature can provide solutions. As society adjusts to the coronavirus outbreak, our stories, our insights, our projects can help bring hope and healing. Even if it isn't Dracula or Frankenstein, every story matters. Yours might just be the one that helps a reader hang on while they wait for the world to right itself.

How has the pandemic of 2020 affected your writing so far? Do you know of other historical figures who took solace in creativity during a world emergency? Please share their story down in the comments!

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About Kris

Kris Maze has worked in education for 25  years and writes for various publications including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and Writers in the Storm. Her first YA Science fiction book, IMPACT, arrives in June 2020 and is published through Aurelia Leo.

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors with her family. She also ponders the wisdom of Bob Ross.  

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To find out more about IMPACT, click here.

by Ellen Buikema

More than half of human communication consists of body language, which we use to communicate feelings, thought, and ideas without speech. Body language impacts other people’s perception and conveys our emotions far more than we think it does. Physical descriptions of what our characters are doing allows us to show-not-tell what is happening to them internally. It is one of the simplest ways to give the reader a feel for characters’ depth of mood and attitude.

Can you communicate well with others if you sit on your hands? I tried to and discovered that I don’t express myself as well.  I’m a hand-gesturer. Plus, with COVID-19 upon us, I’ve realized how often I touch my face!

I also move around a lot, especially if I’m nervous. The first time I taught a classroom full of adults, I paced the entire time. Thinking back, I wonder if I made anyone dizzy.

Simple tasks require a surprising amount of movement.

Here’s a quick exercise that will give you a feel for how many movements you actually make. It will help you determine the balance needed between dialogue and description in your writing.

Choose an activity you commonly do at home or at work. It can be as small a task as sitting in a chair, working on the laptop, or other computer keyboard. Here are a few possible questions to get you started.

• Where are your hands when not on the
  keyboard?
• Are you leaning in, or away?
• Do you cross your legs?
• Crane your neck?
• Arch your back?
• Tap your finger on the mouse?
• Use the dog as a footrest?
• Lift the cat off the keyboard?
• Roll your eyes?

Write out what you are physically doing, making a conscious effort to write all the steps you take. The first time I tried this I was shocked at how many little steps are involved in doing even simple tasks. Weave these descriptions into your manuscripts to help your characters come alive.

Other Body Language Recommendations

Showing Emotion

Make a list of the emotions your main characters exhibit along with the accompanying body language. Think about how your main characters move and react. How does your antagonist look when she is amused? What body language does your protagonist use when angered?

Avoid repetitive gestures.

Repeating gestures can be annoying. Certainly, it feels forced. Not every character should clench their fists or waggle their eyebrows. One character can habitually use the same gesture now and then, but not everyone. (Although thinking about a town full of people waggling their eyebrows makes me chuckle.)

Use vivid action verbs.

Choosing the right verb helps express the emotion you want to convey. For example, there are many ways to walk and each alternative verb implies an emotion. We can:

• stride into a room
• sashay down the boardwalk
• lumber across the floor.

Each of the three verbs is a form of walking, all with different nuances. Each paints a distinct picture.

For dialogue tags, said is never wrong. Unfortunately, I find myself using smile, laugh, and nod. My current Work In Progress had a whole lot of nodding going on. After someone brought this to my attention, I did a "nod search" on my Word document and was appalled by the many cheerful yellow highlights.

Wise words from my editor about empty words and gestures. (Those are pauses between lines of dialogue that don’t advance a scene or characterize.) She said, “If you point something out by putting it down on the page, it needs a reason to be there. Your job during your editing phase is to second guess every image you put down on the page and make sure it’s clearly what you mean.”

Don’t overdo.

Too many descriptors make readers focus on the details instead of the feelings you want them to experience. Or worse, it gives readers a chance to trip on the details and get pulled out of the story. Meaningless details interrupt the flow.

As with all else in writing, put just enough body language in your prose to get your point across.

Further reading:

• For a great list of body language phrases, see Sharla Rae's post.
• Margie Lawson also gave us tips on writing FRESH body language.

Do you struggle with writing effective body language? Do you have a gesture like nodding that you overuse? Share your body language tips and questions with us down in the comments!

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About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents and a series of chapter books for children with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Work In Progress, The Hobo Code, is YA historical fiction.

Find her at http://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Image by Ri Butov from Pixabay

by Kathy Meis

Much of my workday at Bublish is spent talking with authors about the intersection of creativity and commerce—how to be true to one’s artistic intentions while writing work that is commercially viable.

Early on in these conversations, I encourage authors to take some time to articulate both their artistic and commercial aspirations—no matter where they are in their writing career. To me, this is very important work for all writers to do as early as possible. It’s an exercise that should kick off every writing career and every new writing project.

A writer should ask themselves: Why do I write? Where do I hope this creative journey will take me? And they should be as honest and thorough as possible in answering these questions.

Often I learn that this is the first-time the writer on the other end of the phone has engaged in such self-reflection. Up to our call, they explain, the story has led. They may have a vague sense of what they hope to achieve, but they haven’t taken the time to fully explore their intentions, motivations or desires when it comes to balancing creative and commercial interests. They are simply swimming in story ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, creative immersion can be filled with growth and wonder. It’s a beautiful thing to behold and experience. But over time, it can also be exhausting. A writer can lose his or her moorings. There can be a sense of being adrift and alone.

Riding creative currents is fine for a time...but if an author feels disheartened when a colleague achieves commercial success, it’s probably because they haven’t been completely honest with themselves. They haven’t fairly considered their professional hopes and dreams and what it takes to achieve them. Now, they are drowning in story.

Great writing careers are driven by the author, not the story. By no means does this imply an author has abandoned creativity; they have simply learned to harness it. The creative is in charge, not the creation. There is a big difference. With intentional work, the author has mastered craft and commerce.

Authors who have taken the time to dig deep are often surprised to discover that creativity and commerce are not in conflict, as they might have once thought. Rather, their explorations show them that their creative intentions can be aligned with their commercial goals. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here, but there are answers. And having defined the terms of a unique, creative endeavor, an author can now confidently make decisions both inside and outside their manuscript.

Questions For Your Creative Journey

What do you really want out of your creative journey? Know your answer. It’s quite liberating.

If you’re comfortable taking the time to answer that question, I have another for you. This one is meant to help you dig a little deeper into your relationship with the commerce side of the equation, because that’s typically where the discomfort is most pronounced.

It might seem like a simple question, but your answer is pivotal to your commercial success, however you define that success. In a marketplace where more than 70,000 new titles are published each month, it’s crucial to be writing for someone. It might be ten readers in your hometown, or thousands of readers that purchase your books online or in bookstores and libraries across the globe. But are you writing for someone other than yourself?

Like you, each reader is an individual with different interests, likes and dislikes. But like all of us, they also yearn for connection through shared stories and ideas.

Do you think of them when you write?

Have you explored their commonalities?

Are you open to engaging with them, learning from them, and building community around your work?

After looking inward to define your relationship with creativity and commerce, try looking outward to learn about your readers. It’s yet another way to align your artistic intentions and professional goals, and will enrich your creative journey immensely. Much joy can be found in writing work that delights others.  

Once you know your readers, it is your promise to them that will become the foundation of your author brand—a much misunderstood term that makes many authors cringe. Authors are told they need a brand to break through the noise in today’s crowded book marketplace. People talk about brands like they are something an author has to put on—like clothes. It can feel forced and lacking in authenticity. But, if done well, nothing could be further from the truth.

Final Thoughts

A powerful author brand is the nexus of an author’s choices about creativity and commerce. An authentic author brand emerges from the work we discussed at the start of this post and continues to evolve through ongoing self-exploration and continuous feedback from an author’s community of readers. That doesn’t sound terrible, does it?

As someone who frequently sees authors struggle with the commercial side of publishing, I encourage you to step away from the writing for a moment and have a frank conversation with yourself.

Ask yourself the hard questions. Define what you want. Come to terms with your creative and commercial desires. Find meaning in the entire journey of publishing and define success in your own terms.

How do you define success in writing? Do you know your audience? Do you personally write with them in mind?

About Kathy

Kathy Meis is the founder of Bublish, the world's first complete publishing platform with built-in marketing. She is an entrepreneur, writer, editor and ghostwriter with more than twenty-five years of experience in the media and publishing industries. She has worked for such iconic editorial brands as CBS and Forbes and served as a founding partner of PubSmart, an author-centric publishing conference held in Charleston, South Carolina. As a frequent blogger and speaker on a wide variety of topics, Kathy has become a sought-after expert on the topic of independent publishing and disruption in the publishing industry. She has spoken at Book Expo America, Women in Media, San Francisco Writers Conference, GrubSteet, and IndieRecon, among others.