Writers in the Storm

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.

This week on WITS we're looking at how the changing times in publishing are affecting the publishing dream. On Monday, aspiring author Orly Konig-Lopez shared her dream, today you'll hear from debut author Laura Drake and on Friday, multi-published Marilyn Brant will close out the series.

Part 2: A Debut Author’s Perspective

By Laura Drake

This is the hardest blog I’ve ever written. I’ve put it off to the last second – not because I don’t want to write it, but because I don’t know what I think!

Many of you know my story: I had my heart set on New York, and I stuck with it for 15 years until I stormed the walls, and sold 7 books within a year.

I made it! I basked in my debut like a cat in the sun, and I’m just now coming back down to earth, and waking up to the fact that deadlines are hovering on the horizon, getting ever closer.

But.

What is it about human nature?  Do you know the song, ‘Constant Craving?’ (I love kd Lang.) It seems that it’s impossible for a person just to achieve a long time goal, and be happy. I’m like a toddler who gets the candy bar that they’ve been screaming for, then immediately wants the next thing. I’m reading about indie superstars (one of them is a friend of mine) and thinking, Ooooh that would be nice!

No, don’t get me wrong. I’m not second-guessing myself, or wishing I had chosen something different.  I love where I am.

Here’s a blog by agent Rachel Gardner, that pretty well sums up why I held out (and why I’m glad I did):

http://www.booksandsuch.biz/blog/reasons-authors-still-want-publishers/#.UXKc3HsqDuE.twitter

But.

What if the soothsayers are right and the last large bookstore chain goes belly-up? What if other stores don’t pick up the shelf space? What if . . .

I think all writers worry these things. As business people, we’d be crazy not to. We have to do our research, create SWOT analysis, constantly stay on top of the trends, poised for change.

My original goal, all those years ago, was to stand in a bookstore, holding a book in my hand with my name on it. New York was the only way to achieve my dream. That picture, firmly planted in my brain, helped me to soldier past the rejections and discouragement. And it worked.

But I’ve realized something else, while writing this blog. My goal is morphing – growing larger, less physical.  I want my stories to touch readers…to make them think, “Oh, that’s just how it feels.”

I want to build a career, doing that.

Thinking of it that way, how the story is conveyed to the reader doesn’t really matter, does it? With a shift of focus, it’s removed the angst and worry.

I know from past experience that keeping my eye on this new goal will see me through all the mud, blood, and drama as the publishing industry changes.

And when I forget and fall back in the mud, someone remind me, will you?

Your turn: what is your heart set on? Do you have a picture in your head representing what you want?

What is the deeper goal?

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. The Sweet Spot, the first novel in her, 'Sweet on a Cowboy' Series, was released by Grand Central in May, Nothing Sweeter, in December. Her 'biker-chick' novel, Her Road Home, will be released by Harlequin's Superromance in August, 2013.

Laura resides in Southern California, though she aspires to retirement in Texas. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write, full time. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

http://LauraDrakeBooks.com
Twitter: @PBRWriter
FB:  https://www.facebook.com/LauraDrakeBooks