Writers in the Storm

by Mary Burton

Remember the moment when you sat down to write your first novel?  Do you remember?  I remember mine.  It’s hard for me to believe but that moment was over twenty years and 26 books and four novellas ago.  Along the way, I’ve learned many valuable lessons and I thought I’d take a moment to share some with you today.

Surround yourself with like-minded people.  Early on in my career I joined a writer’s critique group.  We met at my house on Fridays and while my children napped we exchanged chapters and critiqued each others work.  It was exciting and encouraging to have time with folks like me who wanted the same dream.  These gals not only taught me a lot about writing and the business of publishing but also a great deal about friendship.

Writing is hard work.  Thomas Edison once said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.”  He could just as easily have been describing writers instead of inventors.  Inspiration or that initial spark of ideas is very exciting.  It is what gets us through that first blank page and dares us to step outside the box.  But in the end, it takes hard work and lots of time at the computer to bring a story to life.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers refers to the 10,000-hour rule.  What makes some of us good and some of us great?  What makes some of us hobbyists verses people with careers?  Basically he said:  practice makes perfect.  He reported it takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach proficiency.

I tried to estimate when I hit that 10,000-hour mark.  I started writing in 1994 and I’m thinking I didn’t hit my 10,000 hours until about 2004 or 2005.  I’d written 5 books by then and I was also beginning to feel really comfortable with my writing.  My point is that becoming a good writer takes time but becoming a published or great writer takes a lot more time.

Challenge Yourself.  Part of growing as a writer is to reach for the edge and push yourself creatively.  When I started writing I wrote historical romance novels set in the American West.  I loved writing these novels and wrote ten novels and two novellas for Harlequin Historical.  But I started to grow restless and wanted to try something different.  So I wrote my historicals in the morning and tinkered with a short romantic suspense in the afternoon.

It took over 18 months and a few rejections but I came up with a proposal for IN DARK WATERS, which sold to Harlequin Romantic Suspense.  I ended up writing four romantic suspense novels for Harlequin before I got the itch to try single title.  Again, another year or two would pass while I wrote the contracted work in the morning and the new ideas in the afternoon.  I sold my first single title romantic suspense, I’M WATCHING YOU, to Kensington in 2006 and now I am working on my eleventh novel for them. I love the genre and can’t imagine not writing it. However, along the way I got the idea to try women’s fiction.  It was one of those stories that just wouldn’t let me go.  It would take a couple of years, lots of rejections and rewrites to get the book just right, but I sold my first women’s fiction, THE UNION STREET BAKERY, under the name Mary Ellen Taylor to Berkley Trade.

Why do I keep reaching for something new?  It’s hard to explain but I know each time I reach for the edge I learn so much about myself as a writer.  Challenging myself not only keeps me sharp creatively but also hones my writing.  For me keeping it all fresh means challenging myself whenever I can.

Stick to a routine.  I learned early on that if I didn’t write every day my skills quickly became rusty.  If I took a week or two break in between books I found it tough to sit down and get the creative muse talking again.  So I decided I’d write every day.  During the week, I set regular office hours from about 9 to 5.  At the beginning of each month I pencil in daily page goals on my calendar because those daily deadlines keep me on task.  And on the weekends if I’m not at a conference, I touch base with my story.  Even if I only have a few minutes I sit down and devote my mind to the book.

Take care of yourself.  There have been times when I burned the candle at both ends. I realized it got harder and harder to be creative when I was tired, not eating well or missing my daily gym workouts. For me, creative energy is akin to the dove in the mine.  You know that story about the dove?  Hundreds of years ago before ventilation systems in mines, the miners would put a caged dove in the mine.  If the dove wobbled, they knew the air was bad.  If it died, the air they breathed was killing them.  These days, I still work hard but I’m at the gym six days a week and I eat very clean.  Taking care of yourself physically nurtures your creativity and keeps the words flowing.

Rejection is part of the business.  It’s easy for me to look back at the 26 novels and four novellas that I’ve written and forget that the road was bumpy at times.  Though I never liked rejection I appreciated that just the thought of it kept me on my toes.  It still not only keeps me alert but forces me to always dig deep and put all I have into the current book.

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great analyzes what makes some companies good and others great.  He speaks over and over again about hard work and constancy. “Greatness,” he said, “is not a matter of circumstance.  Greatness is a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”

We’ve got to choose every day to find our way to the computer and work at the trade we all love so much.  We’ve chosen a tough business.  We are trying to pull value from our imaginations and that is difficult.

But difficult doesn’t mean impossible.  It means hard work.  Dedication.  And a willingness to stick with the job even when the words aren’t flowing.

About Mary

After a career in marketing MARY BURTON shifted gears and became a full time writer.  Her latest suspense novels include THE SEVENTH VICTIM (January 2013) and NO ESCAPE (November 2013).  Under the name MARY ELLEN TAYLOR she also writes women’s fiction including THE UNION STREET BAKERY (February 2013) and SWEET EXPECTATIONS (November 2013).   Mary is a member of Romance Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America.

Today Fae Rowen wraps up her series on attachment models and the science of falling in love. If you missed Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 where she describes the early childhood adaptations and the "repairs" for each of the four attachments styles, you can link to any one by clicking on the part you missed.

by Fae Rowen

I just returned from repeating the workshop that inspired this series. By the end of the first day of classes four months ago, I knew I'd found a treasure trove of help to make my characters–and their backstories–real and believable.

I'm embarrassed to admit that this time, at the end of the first day, I leaned over to a friend who also repeated the class and whispered, "That's a new Powerpoint isn't it?" To my dismay, my friend shook her head. "They're all the same slides as before." No wonder I needed to take the class twice!

Just a brief re-cap, in case you're like me and need some reminders:

• As infants, our attachment styles developed based on the actions of our caregivers.
• We adapted our natural tendency for a secure attachment style to survive our  situations.
• All attachment style adaptations can be repaired to the secure style.
• When you find someone who helps you with the "repairs" it's quite natural to fall in love with that person because you finally feel safe.
• Our attachment style influences how we interact with people as adults.

Scientific brain research has shown that we are biologically hard-wired to bond and belong, even though we have a separate biologically-driven instinct to survive.  The brain is a social organ. Mirror neuron provide a system for humans to connect, allowing us to be in another's shoes.

Take, for instance, the "couple bubble." The hormones stimulated--opiate-like endorphins or cortisol for stress--are released whenever two people interact.

When you are in a secure relationship, you "co-regulate" with your partner. When my husband has told me, "Relax. It's not that bad," he's co-regulated with me by diffusing the ramping-up of my anger or anxiety. Your partner--or friends--co-regulate by helping you work through difficult situations either just by listening or by offering advice. You can even co-regulate with your pets. (You've heard how holding a pet  can lower blood pressure, right?) When you are "regulated," feelings come and go like the weather. They don't get stuck.

We can learn to self-regulate, a by-product of the secure attachment style, but  co-regulation with a partner creates more resiliency--physically, medically, and emotionally. Resiliency creates a buffer to stress and trauma later in life. No wonder studies show that married couples tend to live longer!

Try this little experiment. Look at something around you right now that you need "to do."  Now close your eyes and feel that in your body. Open your eyes and look at a beloved pet or just gaze at an image--real or imagined--of someone you love. Did you feel your gaze soften? That's a physical manifestation of secure attachment.

Did you know that Darwin mentioned love ninety-five times in The Descent of Man? He said that what is important in humans is adaptability,  the ability to cope with change

How does this research help you develop characters?

• The capacity to shift  back and forth between emotional states and not get stuck is the key to resiliency, health and well-being. As your characters fall in love, you can show this in their behavior as they are quicker to come to a solution or action and not spiral into the depths of their painful pasts.
• Unresolved traumatic stress characteristics stuck in "off": flaccid tone, depression, mask-like face, cognitive dulling, lethargy, weakness, exhaustion, chronic fatigue, disorientation, disconnection, dissociation, collapse, low blood pressure, constipation
• Unresolved traumatic stress characteristics stuck in "on:: constriction, bracing, anxiety, panic, rage, hypersensitivity, body pain, hyperactivity, easily startled, hyper-vigilance, digestive problems, emotional flooding, tightness, sleeplessness
• When you really connect with another person, you feel their pain. We are attuned to the micro-movements in the  face and eyes of  our  beloved. Your characters can recognize that "something in the way she held her jaw differently" and bond  when one attempts to lessen the pain of the other.
• When showing co-regulation, your reader will identify with the  relationship through their own co-regulation memories
• Rapid movements are more  alarming that slow movements
• Use the fovea, the part of the eye that reflects light we when feel secure, as in "When she saw me approach, all the candles in the ballroom reflected at me."
• Tone of voice, tempo/rhythm of speech, inflection, facial expressions, movement and gesture, intensity, vitality all brighten when we are engaged in secure attachment. Your reader will "get" this when you specifically show this in your body language.
• Secure attachment encourages playing. Remember when you've seen a somber character loosen up and become playful?
• "Can't think" is part of the stress response. This is how we end up in flight-fight-freeze mode.
• Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye and turned but  it was gone? Peripheral vision creates threat responses. Body language to show threat response: dry mouth, brace, arrested movement (freeze), along with bold feelings.  Caution-Survival/threat responses take precedence over love responses.
• Emotional "arc" for a threat response: irritation, worry, anger/fear, rage/terror, overwhelm, fight/flight/freeze, defenses restored, completion & discharge (crying, shaking, sweating)
• The Avoidant style is more apt for dissociative behavior and stuffs their feelings because they don't want to feel
• The Anxious/Ambivalent style is most likely to have panic attacks
• The Disorganized/Disoriented style deeply wants to feel protected by another and is hyper-vigilant and hyper-sensitive in relationships

And your readers will fall in love with your characters while your hero and heroine fall in love--because they're hard-wired to recognize the develop of a secure attachment, even without knowing the science behind it. Here's a review of the character traits that show a secure  attachment is developing:

1. Unflappable trust
2. Presence in the relationship
3. Safe and protective
4. Affirming, positive
5. Consistency, reliability
6. Playfulness
7. Attuned and resonant with the feelings of the other
8. Reciprocity in communication
9. Welcoming, affectionate
10. Ease in coming and going
11. Predictability

Try a couple of "love bombs" in your dialogue: "I'm thinking about you" and, of course, "I love you."

I must thank Patti Elledge, the facilitator of the DARe 1 training, for presenting the  material in an easy-to-understand format with "a drop of compassion." This mathematician had no glitches with psychological terms or language. You can visit Diane Poole Heller's website if you are interested in the training or if you'd just like to take the Attachment Styles Quiz.

I thought  I could share this information in one post. But even five didn't allow me to work in everything  I've learned, like the language of the "felt sense" and the five languages of love. Please bear with me if I am compelled to share more body language and character writing tips based on Attachment Theory in the future.

In November I'll be attending the next workshop–Adult Attachment Styles. I'm sure I'll learn even more about how to show the love bonds forming between my characters. Who knew that a workshop for professional therapists would provide such richness for a writer!

References you might  be interested in:

Wired for Love by Stan Tatkin

Six-minute You Tube on Emotion by Dr. Alan Schore

Nine-minute You Tube on Joy by Dr Alan Schore

This week we've been focusing on how the changing times in publishing are affecting the publishing dream. On Monday, aspiring author Orly Konig-Lopez shared her dream, Wednesday debut author Laura Drake talked about her evolving dream, and today, multi-published Marilyn Brant will close out the series.

A Multi-published Author’s Perspective

by Marilyn Brant

First of all, many thanks to Orly and Laura for inviting me to visit WITS! It's a pleasure to be here with you all today to talk about the evolution of a writing dream/career. I'll confess, the vision I've had for my own fiction career has been an ever-shifting one, and I'm not sure what turn it's going to take next...

One of my favorite women's fiction authors, Elizabeth Berg, said something profound in her book on writing—Escaping into the Open. Something that wedged itself into my memory well over a decade ago and never left. As inexperienced as I was in the fiction world back then, I understood what she meant, and I still think about her wise words all the time.

Berg had been talking about “what she wanted” in regards to writing. Early on in her career, back when she was hoping to just get a magazine byline, she told herself that all she wanted was to get published once. Then, she’d have it made. Then she’d be satisfied. Well, she did get published and it was memorable and wonderful, but it turned out that it wasn’t exactly ALL she wanted.

I get that...really and truly.

When I first started, the thing I thought I wanted was just to know for sure that I could write, as determined by some semi-objective measure. I longed for proof of it, and I figured that this proof would best come in the form of a national publication of some kind with a byline and a check. The size of the byline and amount of the check were immaterial, although I daydreamed about both being fairly large, LOL. I'd read the life stories of a number of famous authors and creative types, though, and we weren't called "starving artists" for no reason. I knew there would be dues to pay, and I was willing to be patient and pay them with my time and my energy because I needed the clips and the exposure. The opportunity to forge a pure connection with readers. And the networking and introductions to people who might want more of the articles or essays that I could write.

But, even once I'd earned a medium-sized byline and a modest-sized check for the coveted back-page essay in a major U.S./Canada glossy magazine, this turned out to be...well, not exactly ALL I wanted. I'd no sooner become a regular contributor to two parenting magazines when I began writing my first novel. After all, I'd now done the magazine thing and checked it off my bucket list. Wasn't it time to finally tackle fiction?

This habit of attacking a challenge until I’d achieved it and then moving on to something new and more difficult is hardly an unusual trait. Having talked to many authors, I suspect most writers (and artists and musicians) are this way. We’re driven. And we need to be to bring our stories to an audience. We need to be in order to persevere long enough to write our stories down in the first place. But whatever my goal du jour was—winning a contest or getting agent requests or having a poem accepted for publication—I quickly learned it was NOT going to be all I wanted. I had a sense of ambition that seemed insatiable. For years I deluded myself into thinking that a multi-book contract from a New York publisher might actually satisfy me. THAT was the big kahuna, after all! THAT was what I really, truly wanted when it came to writing...wasn't it?

I did finally get that traditional contract in contemporary women's fiction after hundreds of agent/editor rejections (that's not an exaggeration) and almost eight years of focusing obsessively on the craft of writing...but once I had that, I, of course, almost immediately I started to daydream about other things: a bestseller list or two, a better contract, book-club deals, foreign rights sales, honors and awards. Even though I was supposedly “living the dream” that I'd fantasized about for ages, I couldn't stop myself from reaching toward these new, even more ambitious goals. I suspected it would be impossible for me to break this pattern.

Which wouldn’t have been a problem except...except that I found myself caught up in a lot of inessential details that were draining me. This profession is packed full of exciting challenges—the high can be as addictive as creamy European milk chocolate—but it can also swamp you. Run you completely ragged. I learned it’s dangerous, health-wise, when a very driven person is her own boss. I’d started to lose track of the last time I had a day off...it’d been years. Couldn’t remember when I’d actually fixed a well-balanced dinner vs. something in the soup/sandwich/pizza genre. Hadn’t gone to bed before 2 a.m. in months. Stuff like that.

So, a couple of years ago, I took stock of what I'd accomplished, what was still left on my fantasy to-do list, i.e., that phone call from Spielberg himself, inquiring about movie rights (“Still waiting for ya, Steven” :-)) and, quite often, caught myself mentally returning to the very beginning. To my earliest writing desires, and the origins of whatever sparked this passion for fiction in the first place—the opportunity to forge a pure connection with readers. The need to challenge myself with something new—both inside the narrative itself and within the writing world.

That was what led me to explore some of the multiple publishing options available today, particularly within the realm of indie publishing. The industry had been changing rapidly while I was busy checking off items on my career to-do list, and I glanced up from a frenzy of deadlines to find that I didn't want to just keep repeating myself. I needed a new adventure, a new focus, a new chance to share with readers something they'd requested of me—more stories with humor—but those books couldn't be published traditionally in today's market. The print lines that used to feature short romantic comedies no longer existed. And, if I was going to delve into the world of digital publishing, I was enough of a control freak to want to be the one in charge... This path turned out to be more intellectually stimulating than I could have ever imagined, and it's a process that's kept me busier than I’d expected in the past two years. I know this next year will be even more so.

That said, writing and publishing are unpredictable professions (understatement alert!), and I don't know where the road I’m on will lead next. I have a couple of projects that I think lend themselves best to indie publishing, but I also have others that might find an audience more readily through a traditional house. We’ll see. I love having choices, though, and I’ve appreciated that writers just starting out have them, too. I’ve seen more creativity, enthusiasm and passion for storytelling in recent years than ever before, and I believe this spirit of innovation will lead to even more excitement about books and a greater connection between authors and readers. In my experience, that’s already proven true. So, in spite of all the change—and, in many ways, becaus
e of it—I think it’s an exhilarating time to be a writer. And I wish each of you the thrill of adventure on your journey, no matter what twists it takes.

About Marilyn

Marilyn Brant is a national bestselling author of contemporary women's fiction and romantic comedy. She's published several novels with Kensington Books, including her latest, A Summer in Europe, as well as self published a few light romances, such as Pride, Prejudice and the Perfect Match (on sale at Amazon/B&N this week for 99 cents!). She enjoys being a hybrid author, loves music and travel, and can't live without ice cream. Her website is www.marilynbrant.com.