Writers in the Storm

Christina Delay

How many of you meditate?

It’s a practice we’ve started building into our family evenings each night, and something I hope to one day be good at. Meditation is good for managing anxiety, depression, stress. It’s also good for learning to be open to new ideas and people who may be threatening to our own ideals.

And really, that’s what being a creative is all about. Being open.

I recently did a virtual creativity retreat with Creative Wellness Retreats, and our creativity coach, Kerry Schafer, led us through a guided meditation, but at the end, she did something I wasn’t used to.

She geared the meditation toward our creative projects.

I started the meditation not feeling excited about my project because I’d hit a bit of a wall, and by the end of the meditation I’d not only found renewed energy for the story, but for the entire creative process.

That particular meditation was two days ago, as of this writing, and I’m still feeling the positive effects. And it took less than 5 minutes.

What is meditation?

I feel like a lot of people think meditation is some new-age, woo-woo thing that only hippies and hipsters do.

Not so.

Meditation is an ancient practice to transform the mind. That sounds woo-woo. Let me try again.

Meditation is a thing that’s been around since forever and is a way to train your brain to be aware of your own thoughts and emotions.

Not zone out or go to your nothing box. But to learn how to observe your thoughts, reactions, and emotions, and begin to understand them and yourself better.

See? Not woo-woo.

Writing is a form of meditation.

I think that’s why so many of us first turned to writing. We had a need to understand some deep emotion or reaction or thought we didn’t have the words for. And our stories were a way to help us dig down into that feeling or reaction or thought until we found the center of truth.

When you meditate, you turn off your worry, anxiety, negativity, and when you’re on the other side of it, you have a new perspective. It’s a little like sunlight pouring through a window. After meditation, the light reaches that angle where the window turns it into a rainbow.

Could meditating speed up your writing process?

Think of how much deeper you could go with your writing if you started your writing session by first meditating for five minutes. Even better? Present yourself with the next scene or story problem at the start of your meditation, then, through the practice of meditation, let it go. Let it flow. Then let it come back and present itself to you in a new light.

Other forms of meditation...

Meditation isn’t a rigid practice. Sometimes, meditation can be a simple as listening to the wind blow through the trees, or breathing while watching the ocean. Even reading can be a form of meditation, when it takes you away from your worry and allows you to reflect on your own reactions and thoughts to the story, and your life.

Before your next writing session, try five minutes of meditation and invite your creative project to join you. I think you’ll be surprised at the renewed energy you’ll find.

About Christina Delay

Christina Delay is the hostess of Cruising Writers and the brand new Creative Wellness Retreats as well as an award-winning author represented by Deidre Knight of The Knight Agency. She may also have a new series out with Jules Lynn under a pen name. When she's not cruising the Caribbean, she's dreaming up new writing retreats to take talented authors on or giving into the demands of imaginary people to tell their stories.

About Cruising Writers

Cruising Writers brings writers together with bestselling authors, an agent, and a world-renowned writing craft instructor writing retreats around the world. Cruise with us to the Bahamas this November with Alexandra Sokoloff of the internationally-renowned Screenwriting Tricks for Fiction Authors, Kerry Anne King - Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author, and Michelle Grajkowski of 3 Seas Literary.

Julie Glover

For those of us who want to make a living writing, we often get bogged down by all we need to learn about craft, all we need to know about publishing, and all we need to do about marketing.

While I'm completely in favor of doing All The Things to create wonderful stories and send them out to readers, we can find ourselves missing out on the joy that used to fuel our storytelling. After all, it's now our business, and one definition of business is "serious activity requiring time and effort and usually the avoidance of distractions" (Merriam-Webster).

In 2017 and 2018, I really struggled with the seriousness of it all. I'd been writing in some form or fashion for 10 years, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I started running toward it like a marathon competitor with laser focus on the finish line ribbon. But somehow, while I made progress, I didn't hit that ribbon and mostly ended up feeling sweaty and exhausted.

And then, I had a conversation with my critique partner. We talked about losing some of the excitement we'd originally had in writing stories. And somehow, by the end of the discussion (which may have included wine), we'd decided to co-write a series.

But not just any series. A fun series that let our imaginations run wild!

So we did it. We've written three books for our supernatural fantasy/mystery series, the first one of which we recently released. And while still treating it all as a serious endeavor, we've had a ball!

But while I love co-writing, I don't think it's for everyone. Rather, here are some ideas we've learned along the way that can help you rediscover the fun of writing.

1. Create a setting you want to visit.

We imagined a fictional island with mythological beings. And not just Greek or Roman mythology, but the whole kit-and-caboodle. This played on my writing partner's love of mythology, my enjoyment of research, and our mutual fondness of the beach.

But think about other worlds in fiction that have stuck with us. Narnia. Avonlea. Wonderland. Hogwarts. Things aren't always perfect there, but they are intriguing places we'd love to see. Even places that involve threats we wouldn't want to encounter—like Jurassic Park or the Hunger Games arena—are places we might want to go as a neutral reporter or a fly-on-the-wall.

It doesn't have to be a fantasy world. It could be a city you with interesting sites, a neighborhood you want to know more about, an industry you find fascinating. Our blog hostesses run the gamut—with Fae Rowen setting a story in space, Laura Drake setting stories at rodeos, and Jenny Hansen setting a story at a healthcare clinic for the adult entertainment industry—but all interesting places. Just come up with a place you're excited to visit for a couple hundred pages.

2. Craft characters you'd love to hang out with.

Well, duh, you say. And I get that, because of course you wouldn't write a main character you have no desire to write about. But I wonder if we consider this principle well enough when crafting secondary and tertiary characters. When you need an extra character to do something in a scene, do you create someone who fits the bill—or makes your stomach flutter?

I can honestly say that there isn't a single character in the books my co-author and I have written who isn't someone we'd like to hang out with. For a few of them, we'd want a Plexiglas barrier or a force field separating us, but we'd be curious enough to want to meet them in person.

Sadly, I can't say that about all the manuscripts I have written, but now that I've seen how much fun it is to make every single character count, you can bet I'll be editing some of those scenes to make each character compete to be the most compelling. Of course this makes it harder for your main character to shine, but what a great challenge to live up to!

3. Add some spunk.

Are you holding back on throwing in those fun lines? Making that larger-than-life character? Adding that chase scene on roller skates? Subtly including your ex in the story and then killing them off?

Hey, it's your story. Have fun. Add your personal brand of spunk.

My co-author excels at clever characters and settings, and she brought in some fabulous ones. Meanwhile, I adore writing banter and humorous dialogue. We leaned into our own brands of spunk on the page, and it was fun. (In our case, not only fun to write, but fun to read what our partner came up with.)

Some of the authors who stick with us are especially good at this. Whatever else you think of bestsellers like Stephen King, Dr. Seuss, and J.K. Rowling, they took what they did well and played it to the hilt. They showed spunk.

4. Toss in a few goodies.

Let's head back to Hogwarts. (Yes, I know some of you never read the Harry Potter series, but stick with me for a moment.) You know what people are still talking about oh-these-many years later? Places like Platform 9¾ where Harry boards the train to his new wizarding school and Diagon Alley where various magical merchants sell their wares. Items like the moving staircases at the school and the unique wands each student used. Even living things like the Whomping Willow that ate a car and the owls who ran a rather curious mail system between residents and the outside world. Are any of these specifics crucial to J.K. Rowling's story? Nope. They're just goodies!

Again, it needn't be a fantasy world where you throw in fun stuff. Let me switch to film and give you a few examples of goodies that weren't crucial to the story, but fun for both writer and audience:

• Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars: A New Hope
• Alligator boots in Romancing the Stone
• Boombox in Say Anything
• Twin Pines/Lone Pine mall in Back to the Future

And yes, I know those are older films, but even my Gen-Z (or whatever) sons have seen three of them. So hopefully, you recognize something there!

The point is to throw in something extra goodie, an Easter egg from another novel, a funny setting, an inside joke, a memorable scene. For instance, we've had fun with cocktails—yes, cocktails.

Writing a great story is hard. But it can also be really fun. And when you have fun with your story, your readers are more likely to enjoy it too. Look for ways to amp up the fun factor.

What ideas do you have for adding more fun when writing a book?

About Julie

Julie Glover usually writes cozy mysteries and young adult fiction. But she recently branched out to co-author the Muse Island Series with Kris Faryn, which begins with Mark of the Gods, under the pen name Jules Lynn. You can visit the series website here, follow the Facebook page here, or head to her Jules Lynn website to learn more.

I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I'm pretty sure that the perfect writer doesn't exist. It certainly isn't me.

When I began writing the second book in my published series, I wanted it to be perfect. That meant it had to be more exciting, more emotion-packed, a real page-turner. I wrote a little, then revised. And revised. And revised. Then tossed that opening and tried another. Eight months later I should have had a book. I had two-thirds of a wobbly, structurally inadequate novel that I knew had major problems.

I grew up demanding perfection of myself. My father had been a staff sergeant in the Army, then a tool-and-die maker who made dies with tolerances in the microns. His livelihood was based on perfect measurements and execution of detail. I tried to be just like him.

Years later, I discovered how freeing it was to let that need for being perfect go. I've succeeded in many areas, but sometimes I slip back into those old familiar patterns. PRISM: Book Two was birthed in a perfect storm of the search for perfection.

Last year I had to rehab from a couple of injuries. My physical activity took a big hit, which affected my mental confidence and my health in general. Who knew it would also affect my writing? But it did.

Even though I had read about deep POV and wrote in deep POV, I took a writing class on deep Point of View. It was filled with new information, exercises, and ideas. I tried them out with varying degrees of success. Practice was necessary to hone my new skills.

As soon as my editor pointed out that the story needed to focus on my original main character, who'd been left in a semi-cliff hanger situation, the book got back on track. Not surprising, this coincided with the resolution of my injuries and my ability to walk my beloved trails again.

Perfectionism is that critical writer's voice that you must sometimes set aside to put words on the page. Perfectionism becomes a problem when it stops you from doing something you want to do. That's what happened to me. My "real" life was far from perfect, so I tried to be perfect in my writer's world. Perfectionism can rob us of our dreams by keeping us from starting something that we know won't be perfect or by stopping us from completing an imperfect work.

For me, an increase in physical activity helped me push through the old patterns. It wasn't a huge change, but walking out in nature again gave me new ideas, an appreciation for the life around me, and the impetus to make the changes I needed to make in my writing and my life.

Write your best book now. Learn the skills you'll need to improve your prose, perfect your craft, and polish your book. Don't let perfectionism hold you back; let it catapult you into the career you deserve.

Has the need to be perfect affected your writing? How?