Writers in the Storm

Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine Into Gold

Today I am a brand-new, improved model of “Kathryn Craft, Author” thanks to the Women’s Fiction Writers Association retreat in Albuquerque this past weekend. I am no stranger to the benefits of retreating. Each spring and fall for the past eight years I’ve hosted writing retreats for women at my lakeside summer home in northern New York State. Here is what retreat means to me.

Retreat: A period of group withdrawal for meditation, study, or instruction under a director.

“Silence creates room for breakthroughs,” said a recent Facebook meme. Nothing is more seductive to a creative person than enough solitude to hear her own thoughts. Of course sudden silence can also freeze you solid, which is why many retreats offer creative exercises to get the juices flowing.

But the chance to really focus once you find your groove? Ahhh. I’ll let one of my first-time retreaters summarize: “I parked my car on Thursday and didn’t have reason to move it until Sunday.”

We women get that. But we also like to be alone…together.

I have found that a few days of nutritious food you didn’t have to prepare, a gorgeous setting provided by the Great Creator, a little fun you didn’t have to orchestrate, meditation or stretching you never take the time to do, wine around a campfire, and camaraderie among like-minded women goes a long way toward shedding the everyday stress that can keep a muse at bay.

Retreat: A place of privacy or safety; a refuge.

To create the kind of emotional experience our readers want, we authors must draw again and again from our own painful memories in a way that can leave us feeling exposed, vulnerable, and drained. Nature offers constant inspiration for renewal.

When my writing seems to ask too much of me, I know all is well when I see a loon bob to the lake surface with a fish in its mouth or a great blue heron soar over the water with its crooked neck and six-foot wingspan.

Retreat: The process of receding from a position or state attained.

All publication seekers want is to find that hidden trapdoor and sneak through. But once “safely” on the other side we find an industry that encourages us to take bigger and bigger risks. Which means that we might fail big. In public. Even as bad reviews stick like darts in our skin and rejected proposals cramp our composure we’ll slap promotional smiles on our faces because we earned our way through that door, and dagnabbit, we don’t want to slip back through. White-knuckling it takes a lot of energy and does nothing to improve our writing.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the much-anticipated book on creativity that came out last week, Big Magic, once said to Oprah Winfrey, “If you are going to step up and answer the call, get ready, because this is not a day at the beach. Expect to be challenged. Expect to be hurt. Expect to feel lost. Expect to feel despair. Expect to be double-guessing yourself at every turn.” Retreat allows new strength to well within us so that we are ready—in fact, eager—to re-enter the fray.

Retreat: The usually forced withdrawal of soldiers from an enemy because the enemy is winning or has won a battle.

Retreat is not surrender, nor is it cowardice. It is a wise reallocation and renewal of resources in an attempt to win the war. It is that moment in every epic story where ammunition is spent and our hero hides to regroup before the final climactic push. Now I don’t know about you, but if I’m going down, I’m going with a rebel yell and guns a-blazing like Butch Cassidy because we storytellers don’t just want to write good stories, we want to live them.

Writers who make it do so because they never give up. We know this. But when our supplies run low and our defenses weaken we can’t stay on the front lines taking bullets, no matter how good a soldier we want to be. We need to look at the big picture, like good generals. Adopt a strategy that allows backing off, tending wounds, regrouping.

Re-treat.

We don’t need Maui or Paris to treat ourselves once again to the riches of self-care, gentle exercise, creative stimulus, and schedule surrender. Or do we? In what ways, lavish or frugal, have re-centered within the sacred creative act? If you go on writing retreats, what has been your greatest benefit?

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA.

Twitter: @kcraftwriter
FB: KathrynCraftAuthor

It's b-a-a-a-ack!

During our first event on April 20th, we wrote a whole book! The final word count for our first Write Up a Storm was 79,591 words.

We promised a follow-up event, and it's coming up just in time to jump start your engines for NaNoWriMo. Writers in the Storm is holding another "Write Up a Storm" event on Monday, October 12. It happens to be Columbus Day, so perhaps you'll even have the day off!

Held on our Facebook page, Write Up A Storm is a one-day sprint-writing bash, designed to motivate and sustain your writing throughout the day. Even if that day job impinges on your time, you can participate before work, during lunch and after hours.

To register: https://www.facebook.com/events/1679032802316238/

Every one of us will be there with you - here at the blog and over at the Facebook event page. Writing. Piling up word count. Supporting each other.

We'll be writing all day and keeping track of word count totals. You can post your word count in a comments for that Monday post, or at the end of every hour if you want to encourage others--or challenge them.

Here's a short list of simple things you can do to prepare for Write Up A Storm:

1. If you're a plotter, work on that outline for your new idea. You don't have to finish the outline, but have enough to get you through three (or six) chapters.
2. If you're a pantser, work your process so you've got the beginning of your story solidly ready to put words on the page.
3. Know your characters–their motivation, their character arcs, what they want more than anything else in the world.
4. Know what keeps your characters from getting what they want, whether it's another person, lack of something, like education, or maybe something from their past.
5. Mark the date on your calendar. Set an alarm on your phone.
6. Commit to a definite number of minutes–even if it's only ten–of solid writing time.
7. Complete any research necessary to write the section you plan to work on.
8. Contact other writer friends to participate for support. They will thank you on Tuesday, October 13, when they look at what they've accomplished.
9. Finish routine chores like the laundry and grocery shopping during the week-end.
10. Pre-cook meals for the day.

Are you willing to commit to writing on Monday, October 12? Are you willing to share your word count? How about sharing a tip to help all of us get ready?

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We look forward to seeing you at the event! Click here to register.

~ Fae, Jenny, Laura and Orly

Photo credit: Sierra Godfrey Fong

Fae Rowen

Three weeks ago I wrote about writing lessons I'd received from the kittens I'm fostering.

Well, tomorrow I "surrender" them back to the shelter. Now that everyone, including their stellar mom, is larger and more active, I'd like to share some "larger" lessons.

• Change is scary. The day my little family upsized from a bathroom to a bedroom, instead of running
  

around with joy and curiosity, they huddled together in a corner. Right now the kittens are tearing apart the bags and boxes that serve as large toys and running down the hall to attack more bags and boxes. But that transition in behavior, and confidence, has taken four weeks.

As writers, we put our characters into scary situations. We throw changes into our stories to motivate character arcs, plot twists, or belly laughs. How boring would our writing be without change? As humans, without change our lives would stagnate. (No good visuals of that!) Usually when we are in the midst of change, we aren't happy. Heck, sometimes we're not even functional. Have you translated the depths of those feelings to your characters? Have you juiced every drop from the tart lemon of personal anguish (even with "small" changes) to share with your characters?

You can't climb the ladder of writing success without some discomfort, whether it's with your words or your experiences with the business side of writing. Every rung of that ladder is ripe with change.

• You will survive, Take Two. Now that the kittens are climbing (on everything!), they also occasionally fall. From high places or onto hard, pointy surfaces. Every time, the little cat stands, shakes its head, then runs right back to play.

As adults, we tend to dwell on those falls because, well, we aren't used to falling. A critique partner didn't like your log line? A contest judge thought your dialogue was irrelevant? An agent can't connect with your voice? Okay. Pick yourself up, shake your head and run right back to your keyboard and get back into the game.

• Be ready for opportunity. At night I do a head count in the kitty room before closing the door. (I have this
  

irrational fear of losing one of the kittens. How could I explain that to the shelter?) In the morning, I talk to the cats while I approach their door with food bowls. When I open the door, they are arrayed just inside, poised to take advantage of whatever opportunity I bring. Breakfast bowls? The barricade in the hall is down? Will I kneel to pet them? They are standing there, ready to capitalize on the moment.

As a writer, are you prepared for opportunities? Do you have that elevator pitch memorized for a chance meeting with a friend's agent? Do you have a query letter ready to go when you hear about an agent or editor looking for exactly what you write? Do your characters use opportunities in a fashion that endears them to us, or do they miss chances to improve their circumstances? That's okay at the beginning of your book, but growth is necessary for that satisfying character arc.

• Tomorrow is another day. As a science fiction writer, I can remind you that you're human. As such, you are allowed--no, expected--to make mistakes. Making mistakes is a scientifically-proved method of learning. If your writing sucks today, tomorrow is another day. If you get a rejection today, tomorrow is another day. If you didn't have time to write today because the twins have the flu and the toilet clogged, tomorrow is another day. Talk about the perfect chance for a do-over!

This could be classified as an optimistic view of the world (okay, the next day you could find out you're pregnant and all the plumbing needs to be replaced), but, as humans, we know how to make lemonade. So grab some ice and a tall glass, and relax. You will have a chance to put things right tomorrow.

• Everything you have learned and experienced gives you the tools to be successful. Mama cat was a feral cat with little human interaction when she came to me. She has learned trust. She has learned that she wants to be loved. She's even learned to play with toys. And she purrs. A lot.

Think of experiences that have shaped your life. The experience doesn't have to be fun or happy. What you take from every experience builds your character and your skill set. Oh, did I mention that if you're a writer, you can use carefully chosen experiences from your character's backstory to show why she thinks and acts like she does?

So, my time as a kitty foster mom is over in twelve hours. My job was to keep them all safe and socialize them. Turns out, they had many more jobs than I did. Tomorrow they begin the next part of their journeys--to their forever homes with loving families. Yes, they will miss each other. But they will have the opportunity to be lavished with love by someone who has just one or two cats to care for. They will get to be the sole focus of someone's love and attention.

Though I'll probably cry on the way home from the shelter (Heck, I'm crying now, and I haven't replaced the box of Kleenex on my desk they shredded last night.) I know that I've given them my all and that they will change other people's lives for the better. Isn't that what we hope for with our books?

Have you learned a writing lessons from an animal? What about a life experience that impacted your writing?

ABOUT FAE

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes  that she can live anywhere but the present.  As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.

Punished, oh-no, that’s published as a co-author of a math textbook, she yearns to hear personal stories about finding love from those who read her books, rather than the horrors of calculus lessons gone wrong.  She is grateful for good friends who remind her to do the practical things in life like grocery shop, show up at the airport for a flight and pay bills.

A “hard” scientist who avoided writing classes like the plague, she now shares her brain with characters who demand their stories be told.  Amazing, gifted critique partners keep her on the straight and narrow. Feedback from readers keeps her fingers on the keyboard.

When she’s not hanging out at Writers in the Storm, you can visit Fae at http://faerowen.com  or www.facebook.com/fae.rowen.