Writers in the Storm

NaNoWriMo is here, which means my birthday is coming and our American Thanksgiving is at the end of the month. In other words, the holidays are upon us, which often leads to stress for writers.

I reserved my organic grass-fed turkey yesterday. (Yes, I know. I'm from California, okay?) As always, the minute I reserve that glistening gobbler, my stress-meter cranks to high.

My holiday confession: I am deathly afraid to take responsibility for the bird. Really, really afraid. Like heart-pounding-faster-than-a-caffeinated-writer-on-deadline afraid.

Obviously, I have a whopping case of the dreaded "Turkey Block."

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this malady, it's like writer's block...only instead of a fear of the page, it's a fear of the bird.

My big brother (we call him the Bag Whore), talks about his Thanksgiving Bird like it's his holiday love muffin: rubbing it with butter, seasoning it...BRINING it, for Pete's sake. I can't listen to him. And right now, at William's Sonoma, there's a whole freaking wall dedicated to the bird. An. Entire. Wall.

It's wigging me out.

I can't take the responsibility of being in charge of the main event. I just can't. So I pawned it off on Hubby. I even got him a "brining kit," although I'm not exactly sure what it is.

Hubby is tasked with The Bird and I have everything else. I'd rather make sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry fluff, mashed potatoes, stuffing and three pies than do ONE turkey.

[See? Turkey Block.]

I saw a post with the five main symptoms of writer's block and I have ALL FIVE when it comes to The Turkey. I'll put them below so you can see what I mean, and heap sympathy upon me in my time of need.

Symptom #1: No Ideas

If you are stuck and have no ideas, it is probably because you started in writing, prepping your bird, without doing the ground work of brainstorming and planning.

Remedy: Give the job to your spouse. If you're single, invite someone like The Bag Whore to your feast.

Symptom #2: Boredom

Either you have chosen a topic turkey you are not particularly interested in, or you've been assigned a topic bird you just don't care much about. Either way, you are stuck because you are bored with your topic turkey.

Remedy: Give the job to your spouse. Or run to the internet. Pray if you need to.

Symptom #3: Lack of Confidence

If you feel you aren't qualified to do the writing turkey, you will be stuck from the onset. You may worry that your grammar gobbler technique isn't good enough or you have poor spelling basting skills. You may be hearing criticisms in your head from previous attempts at writing turkey-making.

Remedy: Give the job to your spouse. Or open wine. Lots and lots of wine.

Symptom #4: Anxiety

When you are full of anxiety about something, you feel agitated, fidgety, jittery. Your mind goes in every possible direction except to the task at hand.

[Yesssss.]

Remedy: Sit or lie comfortably in a quiet, dimly lit space. Close your eyes and settle your breathing. Then picture yourself doing the required writing turkey. Don't think about the content bird that needs to be written conquered, only see yourself writing conquering said gobbler. Notice details surrounding you and the turkey...Then notice how you feel about the image and how the person you see feels. Sit with this image for as long as you can.

[I'm pretty much calling crapola on that "remedy."]

Symptom #5: Stress

When stress has its grip, you can't think straight. You can't even begin to sit still and do some writing turkey-wrestling.

Remedy: Have a pre-writing pre-bird ritual that helps you to slow down and relax. Know in advance where you plan to write cook and prepare your space. Make it free of clutter and get out your supplies and materials. Then do some physical activity to relax your muscles and clear your mind. Take several deep breaths and do some long, slow stretches.

[So really, they're saying: "Have some sex instead of worrying about your turkey."]

Addendum: Nope. Not working. I'm still thinking about having to look my guests in the eye and apologize for a dry pitiful turkey.

Remedy: Give the job to your spouse. Make TONS of gravy. Drink more wine.

 *  *  *  *  *  *

So there you have it...the five symptoms of Turkey Block and my remedies. Whether you're thinking about your bird or your manuscript, I promise you will break through to the other side.

Have you conquered the Turkey Frontier? What are your secrets? Enquiring minds (and my husband) would love to hear them!

About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes news articles, humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18+ years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm.

 

What is Cadence?

To me, it’s Like Porn, in that it’s not easy to define, but I know it when I see it.

Webster did manage to define it though (which makes me want to look up ‘porn’):

• The beat, rate, or measure of any rhythmic movement
• A slight falling in pitch of the voice in speaking or reading, as at the end of a declarative sentence

Though Webster wasn’t talking about writing in the above definition, he came close. To me,

Cadence = rhythm

This is a writer’s tool that is often overlooked, which is sad, because it’s a powerful one. It’s not just the words, but how they’re put together that can convey a mood. To the reader, it’s subliminal – they feel it subconsciously. It’s a way of layering your message – and it can work like glue to stick readers to your pages.

Examples:

“I was also a shrimper’s son in love with the shape of boats.” Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides

Yes, there’s alliteration there (repeating ‘s’ words), but there’s also cadence. Read it out loud. To me, it rises and falls with those ‘s’ words, making the sentence wave-like. Which is brilliant, because it ties to the subject – water. Have I mentioned that Conroy is my hero? ;)

“A nimbus of black curls overwhelmed her deathly pale, sharp-boned foxy face.” Laura Drake, The Sweet Spot

See how the stops of ‘sharp’, ‘foxy’ and ‘face’ help convey the hard planes of her face?

“Judy was a big sturdy woman, without much softness. Hers was the handsome, hard-chiseled face of a Western woman: strong cheekbones, wide mouth, hooded eyes.” Barbara O’Neal, The Secret of Everything

The sentences above convey hardness in the words, but in the cadence, as well. Read it aloud, and see how the beats are stops. Jerks. The ‘h’ words make a tiny pause.

You can also use cadence to speed up the action and convey fear or panic:

"My hand was on the door handle when for a split second out of nowhere I was terrified, blue-blazing terrified, fear dropping straight through me like a jagged black stone, falling fast. I’d felt this before, in the limbo instants before I moved out of my aunt’s house, lost my virginity, took my oath as a police officer: those instants when the irrevocable thing you wanted so much suddenly turns real and solid, inches away and speeding at you, a bottomless river rising and no way back once it’s crossed. I had to catch myself back from crying out like a little kid drowning in terror, I don’t want to do this anymore." Tanya French, The Likeness

See how the run-on sentence emulates your thoughts when you’re afraid? The hardness of “jagged black stone, falling fast.” Almost batter you.

“The bean bag chair had been slashed -- tiny styrofoam peas shifted in a line across the floor, dancing in the breeze from the broken windows.” Laura Drake, work in progress

The cadence and word choice in the above is at odds – ‘shifted in a line’ and ‘dancing in the breeze’ is lyrical, but ‘slashed’ and ‘broken windows’ foreshadows that something bad is about to happen.

“This is how it feels when you realize your child is missing: The pit of your stomach freezes fast, while your legs go to jelly. “

“There’s one single, blue-bass thud of your heart. The shape of her name, sharp as metal filings, gets caught between your teeth even as you try to force it out in a shout. Fear breathes like a monster into your ear: Where did I see her last? Would she have wandered away? Who could have taken her? And then, finally, your throat seals shut, as you swallow the fact that you’ve made a mistake you will never be able to fix.” Jodi Picoult, The Tenth Circle

Wow. “Blue bass thud. Sharp as metal filings. Breathes like a monster into your ear.”

All very well and good, but how do you do that?

• Word choice. I use the Thesaurus. A lot. Say you’re trying to convey softness. ‘S’ words do that. Words like: silky, sultry, soft, spongy, smooth, supple, serene. I’ve been known to spend ten minutes looking for a word beginning with an ‘G’ to convey abruptness.
• Read aloud. You may not catch the cadence reading silently, but I promise you will when you read it aloud. My final edits for any book I turn in involves reading it aloud to my cat (who is a tough critic; she sleeps through most of it)
• Be aware. Don’t expect that this stuff will just flow out of your fingers. I get the scene down first, then go back and layer this in. it takes rewriting to get it perfect. And you need that quality to hold your reader. This will seem hard at first, but the more you work with it, the more it becomes ingrained.

Tom Robbins says, “Challenge every single sentence for lucidity, accuracy, originality, and cadence. If it doesn’t meet the challenge, work on it until it does.” Seems a daunting task, I know. But if you want to grab readers, and sell well, that’s what it takes.

Tom Robbins, has been known to rewrite a single sentence 40 times. Yikes, right?

But cadence is worth the work, because this is the sentence he ended up with as the last line of Jitterbug Perfume.

The lesson of the beet, then, is this: hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you’re brown, you’ll find that you’re blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means: Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.

So what do you think? have I convinced you to work on cadence? We'd love to see some of your 'before' and 'after' samples in the comments!

About Laura:

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women's Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central. The Sweet Spot (May 2013), Nothing Sweeter (Jan 2014) and Sweet on You (August 2014). The Sweet Spot won the 2014 Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® award in the Best First Book category.

Her 'biker-chick' novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin's Superomance line (August, 2013) and has expanded to three more stories set in the same small town. The Reasons to Stay released August, 2014.

In 2014, Laura realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

Twitter  Facebook

Sierra Godfrey

Most authors have a day job, and sometimes we’re lucky enough for that be writing-related. They say that the creative brain has the ability to be creative in multiple ways, and you’ll often find those who write also paint, act, sing, compose. In my case, I’m both a writer and graphic designer –and I do a lot of different types of writing.

But the audiences for those things are not the same.

In the design world, one of the most important ways to ensure a successful brand or identity campaign is protect your brand. That means making sure nothing competes with or dilutes your image or message. Examples of this might be using another logo alongside yours, or talking about another service or business while promoting your primary business.

It’s the same thing if you write technical material for a living while promoting your fiction. The audiences are different, and so is your conversation and message.

Of course, there are situations where combining your online presence (website, Twitter, Facebook) for all types of writing makes sense—or at least, isn’t detrimental to either business. And let’s face it – maintaining separate accounts for your different businesses could get exhausting.

But would it serve you better?

In my case, I had a situation that required some choices to be made. I’m a big soccer fan (or football as it’s called outside the U.S.) and this year I began writing articles for football sites. I also followed a lot of football supporters on Twitter, and they followed me back. When my favorite teams played matches and I happened to be on Twitter (and really, when am I not on Twitter?), I was a bit….well, exuberant. A completely un-scientific poll of some of my followers on Twitter said that no one cared about me tweeting with a million exclamation points about teams my fellow writers didn’t know or probably care about. But as time went on, I felt increasingly uncomfortable.

I was having two separate conversations with two separate audiences.

I thought about it for a few days. Setting up another twitter account would be easy enough to do, but how much time and energy would it require? Would it really matter that much?

Eventually, I decided it would matter. Twitter, of course, is for having conversations and engaging with others. That’s why it’s such a terrific way for anyone with a business to reach out to people. Building my profile as someone who can write reasonably well about European football is a different goal than being an author of women’s fiction. I wanted to have different conversations with the two audiences.

It sounds sort of crazy to separate out parts of yourself, but as it turns out, it wasn’t that hard. If you have multiple sides to your career, give some consideration to this idea. Here are some pointers:

Twitter

I created a new Twitter account for the football. It is only semi-annoying to switch back and forth between accounts on my mobile devices—but the Twitter mobile client makes this fairly easy with just a click. It was even easier on the laptop through Tweetdeck, which allows you to view a bunch of accounts all at once. Is it a lot of noise? Yes. But in a way it was also much quieter, because each stream is devoted to its topic. I also found I was able to really focus my message because now my tweets were consistent for each account.

Make sure that if you operate a tandem twitter account that you are willing to switch between them and tweet in each when required – I also found it good practice to include my twitter handle for each account in my profile. So for writing/publishing, I’m @sierragodfrey and my profile includes, “football writing is @sierragfootball.” Likewise for the football account.

Yes, people look at this. Yes, it matters because you’ll catch the cross-over people this way—those interested in both sides of you.

Facebook

For years, you couldn’t have multiple Facebook accounts, yet Facebook didn’t have a way for people to segment out their interests. This was especially problematic if you had a business or interest that you wanted to keep separate from all the pictures of your kids rocking out to music in their pajamas.

Now, Facebook lets you have fan pages for just about anything and you can switch between them with a single click—all on one screen. I have one for graphic design and one for me being a writer for posting all my published items. Those are in addition to my main (private) Facebook account where I put all the pictures of my kids.

Again, this is extra work, but setting up a separate page for your pig-farming business is going to ensure you can focus your marketing to bacon buyers, none of whom care that you write steamy erotic romance.

Websites

This is trickier, but I’ve seen this issue with a lot of authors: they have day jobs or other careers that they want to promote through their site, and yet want to promote their books. I also see that people probably wonder who in their right mind would have more than one website when it’s hard enough having one?

Again, it all comes down to focus and opportunity.

Whereas you can get away with diluting who you are on Twitter or Facebook, websites really must focus on one thing only in order to be effective and that’s because websites largely function as a billboard – visitors pass by and glean the purpose of the site in one go. If it captures their attention, they stay. Having one focus means a better chance of capturing attention.

Because my website is set up to house my published writing, I simply added a page that listed all my football articles to date. But…the site as a whole isn’t set up for that audience, and what would happen when I have a book to promote? What would happen when I want to interact with readers? My web traffic statistics showed that I was getting traction for the football writing. People wanted to see who I was. What would they make of my fiction writing? Would that be relevant to them? I decided it wouldn’t and that I needed a second site. Especially if I wanted to showcase my football journalism later in order to query other blogs.

This was easily done. Most web hosts allow you to have a free subdomain – so I added one: football.sierragodfrey.com. Simple, focused, and separate.

Now, if you’re not a graphic designer and can’t throw up a site in a day, then you’d have to pay for another site or at the least set up another template. There are a bunch of inexpensive options for this—Blogger or Wordpress.com. But again, if you have two businesses, you really, truly, have to stop and think about marketing for yourself. The purpose of splitting out your sites serve is to better serve your audience. And what does that get you? Future opportunities.

I hope this discussion opens up possibilities for you that you might not have considered before. No solution is easy or simple – but then, neither are we with our varied talents.

Have you split out your interests or businesses? Or have you chosen to consolidate everything? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

About Sierra:

Sierra Godfrey writes fiction with international settings and most likely a mention of football (soccer) or two. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and a quarterly contributor to the Writers in the Storm. Her non-fiction essays have been featured on Maria Shriver’s Shriver Report and Architects of Change website, and in the anthology, Nothing But The Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women on Life’s Transitions (Nothing But the Truth Press, 2014). She writes for the football blogs Back Page Football and Retain Possession, and is also a freelance graphic designer. She lives in the foggy wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Laura here - Sierra wouldn't dilute her brand by talking about her graphic design expertise here - but I can! We at WITS can vouch for that expertise; she designed our beautiful new website!

Come visit her at www.sierragodfrey.com (or, you know, football.sierragodfrey.com) or talk with her on Twitter @sierragodfrey (or, you know, @sierragfootball).