Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

A while back, I was doing social media for the accounting firm I work for part-time and I came across the following tweet:

Leadershipfreak Dan Rockwell - A no string attached book giveaway on today's post: 9 Questions that enhance engagement" http://bit.ly/rtNRQO

Hmmm…I’m a writer. I’m interested in "engagement"...particularly as it relates to my characters and potential readers. So I forwarded the blog to my personal email to share with all of you.

Here’s the full article, if you wish to read it – Dan Rockwell writes really  good posts. In this particular article, Rockwell examines the principle of open listening from the book, "Coaching for Engagement: Achieving Results through Powerful Conversations," by Hancox, Hunter, and Boudreau.

According to Dan, "open listening is rigorous work not passive silence. Fools can be quiet but they can’t listen." Below is the line that made me decide to write about this post:

Listen and you’ll know what to ask.

I’ll confess that I’m not half the listener I’d like to be. I come from a family of boisterous people that love to tell stories, finish each others’ sentences and talk all over each other. Two-way communication can get a little daunting in a family like mine. (I'm sure those of you that know me well find that shocking.)

Plus, I’m impatient. Far too often, I think I’ve got the gist of something my husband says only to have him stop and tilt his head (looking very aggrieved) and say, "I wasn’t finished yet."

Oh. Whoops. Um, go ahead…Sorry!

Yeah, it's embarrassing. Especially because I want to be a great listener all the time.

Our group of founding writers meets every Thursday night to go over chapters or plot out books. Over the time that we've been doing this, I've learned to watch my fellow writers' faces as we go over their book. If they get that deer-in-headlights look when I start throwing out suggestions, I've learned to back off and start asking them questions.

My favorite brainstorming technique is an "oldie but goodie" called The List of 20 that requires you to list twenty things (no matter how crazy) that could happen in your book. Doing this as a group is particularly awesome because the ideas fly in from multiple points of craziness.

While brainstorming and plotting are fun and enormously important, I believe the real magic happens when you take a moment to STOP and listen to what your characters have to say. When I shut my pie-hole and get out of the way, my characters tell me the damnedest things!

 

Listen and you’ll know what to ask.

This is what all the meditation, writing practice, walks, and showers are about for creative people.

They’re about shutting off the faucet of continual life-chatter long enough to listen to your characters.

When you listen hard enough, your characters will let you climb right down into the heart of them and discover what makes them tick.

In his blog, Mr. Rockwell shared the "9 questions open listeners ask that create engagement." He was focusing on business and leadership.

Today, I'm going to use his 9 questions to focus on character development. What would you find out if you stepped into your fictional world and asked your characters the following questions?

1. What are they focused on?
2. What does this mean to them?
3. How are they measuring success?
4. What values are they expressing?
5. What emotions do you hear in their voice?
6. What values or beliefs are behind their words?
7. How is this impacting them?
8. What strengths have they articulated that could be acknowledged?
9. What are they really asking for?

I’ve never had this particular list of questions before, and I like it. My characters really like it. When I pondered the Big 9 above, my fictional peeps started shouting out their answers. (I know all you writers know what I'm talking about! Don't try to act like this schizo-sounding stuff doesn't happen to you...)

Rockwell also discusses some pitfalls to open listening, which nicely enough also apply to writing:

• Jumping for quick solutions – you’ll solve the wrong problem.
  
  This ties back to the List of 20. ALWAYS list all twenty!
• Discomfort with other’s frustration while they find their own answers. Let others struggle.
  
  Writer translation: Quit saving your characters from the crap pile. They’ve got lessons to learn, you helicopter creator, you.
• Assumptions, beliefs, and judgments.
  
  Writer translation: Don’t start thinking this is your book. It’s only partly yours. The rest belongs to your fictional people and they don’t need you butting in with things that don’t apply to them.
• Getting caught up in the details of the story. Keep the big picture in mind.
  
  Writer translation: "Whoa, Sparky. Watch that backstory!"
• Discomfort with silence. Shhhh!
  
  Writer translation: There are pages for fast-paced riveting action and there are pages where some introspection would not be out of line. If you convey those quiet moments well, they’re far from boring.

So, what techniques do you use to get those characters to open up and tell you their secrets? Do you have questions of your own you like to ask? What are they?

Jenny

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her wildly teething Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing. In addition to being a founding member here at WITS, Jenny also hangs out on Twitter at jhansenwrites and at her other blog, More Cowbell.

By Laura Drake

From the title, you probably guessed my big news – I SOLD!!!

After 13 short years at this, I’ve sold a 3 book deal to Grand Central!  My first, Total Bull, a PBR world romance, is due out early 2013. For the uninitiated, "PBR" stands for Pro Bull Riding. (Who doesn't like a cowboy?)

The deadlines will show up in my inbox soon, but over the weekend I had some time for reflection (at my age, you’ll hurt yourself if you dance for more than a half hour at a time.)

I thought over what I’ve learned in the last thirteen years that I sure wish I'd known earlier.

• Despair doesn’t last

I’ve been stymied at a zillion points in three books, not knowing what to do next. The plot was ka-ka, and I was stuck -- there was no way to get from where I was to where I needed to be.  Optimism seemed VERY far from where I was, floating at the bottom of the tank, trying to stay belly-side down.

But amazing things happened when I sat my butt in the chair (or rode my bicycle.) An idea would break, brilliant and perfect, and I’d scramble to get it down before I forgot it.  I went from loser to genius in less than a minute!

Unfortunately, delusions don’t last either.

• Positive reinforcement can become crack

I placed in a contest. Then I won a contest. I got an agent. I got to acquisitions at a publisher. My days were spent in a happy blur, waiting for the next hit of good news. When it didn’t come, my clammy hands shook and I got snippy with people.

Then I got rejected. The crash was legendary. I realized I’d gotten addicted to the winning and lost the love of just doing the writing. 

• Buzz is one of the great powers of the Universe

You’re shopping a sale at your favorite department store.  A woman beside you picks up a blouse. It’s gorgeous: perfect color, the right size, and OMG the price!  You just passed that blouse by a minute ago, but now that she has it, you want it. Bad.

Buzz is like that. The problem is, no one knows how to harness that power. But there are a couple of things you can do to put yourself in the shadow of The Force. Which brings me to my next point.

• Put yourself "Out There"

Submitting is only a small part of what helped me sell. I got my agent indirectly through volunteering at my local chapter. If you network, give of yourself, and reach a hand back to help others, it can pay off ways you can’t even foresee. And you get the added bonus of feeling good about yourself at the same time. Win-win!

• I’m never done worrying

I just move from angsting over one problem to the next in line. Repeat.

For those of you who have already sold your first book, what do you wish you'd known in advance? For those of you still writing your way toward that goal, what do you worry about the most?

By Harry and Susan Squires

Harry and I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard from writers frustrated and “stuck” on their current work in progress.

Often they say something like, “Why am I such a crummy writer?” “Why is this book so hard to write?” Or sometimes you hear people express goals like, “This year I’m going to write a novel that hits the USA Today list.”  The truth is, we’ve engaged in some of those practices ourselves.

But those expressions are a disaster for writers, primarily because of how the human brain actually works. However, once you know how to engage your brain properly, it can work for you and not against you, not only in your writing life but your private life as well.

Harry took several seminars from a psychologist named Bob Maurer, who lectured to creative people around the country about how to use your brain to help your creativity, avoid writer’s block, and generally improve your life. He has a wonderful book called ONE SMALL STEP CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE, which is the basis for the ideas we’ll share.

First, a quick tour through the brain. It has three parts.

• The brain stem that sits on top of your spinal column developed about 500 million years ago. It’s the reptile brain that keeps your body functioning on a physical level--breathing, circulation, etc.
• About 300 million years ago the mid-brain or mammal brain evolved. That’s the one that controls emotions (including fear.)
• And finally the cortex evolved about 50 thousand years ago. It’s the crinkly outer covering we know as the human brain. It controls language, creativity--all the higher functions of being human.

One thing the cortex was designed for is to answer questions. The first sorts of questions it answered were about basic survival. (“Is that a leopard in that shadow?”). It can’t help but answer any question you ask. And it has done a really good job of keeping our species alive.

That characteristic of the cortex can be an immense advantage to you or a horrible disadvantage, depending on the type of questions you ask yourself.

If you could get the cortex to answer questions that would help you further your goals, it would be great, wouldn’t it? But be careful what you wish for. Say you’re thinking about your love life (instead of your book) and you ask, “Why am I such a loser with the opposite sex?” Get ready for your cortex to provide a list of answers--possibly a long list. You might decide to go back to bed and hide under the covers for the day.

If you frame the question in a positive light, for instance, “What could I do to be more attractive to the opposite sex?”, you might come up with some productive answers. (Our brains are answering even as we write--Well, you could listen more instead of talking. There’s the extra weight--you could lose that, etc. etc.) However, since it’s a big question, there might be a LOT of answers.

And that’s a problem. When the list starts to get long, we’re back to being so depressed or fearful that we can’t address the issue. We’re unlikely to take any action at all. The question is so big it freezes us up with fear.

That little journey in improving your love life we just took is an excellent example of another brain fact. The cortex thinks it’s in charge because it has all those higher functions. But you know what? The Mid-brain that runs our emotions is the real boss. If we are frightened or depressed it’s very hard to focus on anything else.

When you ask yourself why you are such a horrible writer, and the list starts coming back from your cortex, you may be invoking one of the writer’s biggest fears--that we won’t finish the book, won’t sell, won’t be taken seriously--we won’t reach our secret goal. And when we’re afraid, we just shut down. When negative emotions take over, it’s NOT conducive to creativity.

So the trick is to get the brain to answer your questions without invoking fear or depression. How do you do that?

Think small.

It’s the big, huge things we can’t control that frighten or depress us. The Japanese have a concept called Kaizen. It’s all about improvement through small, incremental changes. Americans tend to like big, transformational changes (think, “I’ll lose 50 pounds in three months by only eating wheatgrass and ice cream.”)

The way of Kaizen asks, “What small, insignificant change could I make to improve?” That concept has proved invaluable in business for the Japanese. One small change built on another until they had created significantly better cars.That thinking was how they got quality into their cars when Americans couldn’t back in the eighties and nineties. (We’ve since imported their technique to great effect.) So, the key to getting productive answers from your brain is to take many very small steps to your goal.

 

Let’s focus now on the specific work you’re doing as a writer. You can get real help on your work in progress by asking yourself small questions about how to make it a better book.

We’re talking REALLY small at first, so you don’t invoke that fear or depression. Some examples from recent classes we’ve given where students learned to ask productive questions are:

*  What one small thing can I do to make my heroine more likable in this scene?
*  What does my hero want to happen in this scene?
*  Why would my hero act this way?
*  How can I put more tension in this scene?
*  How can I weave the exposition into dialogue in this scene?

Notice we’re not asking questions like: How can I make this a better book? Too big, too vague, and way too scary.

We’re not asking negative questions such as, “Why isn’t my heroine likable? A really long list of answers will just be depressing.

Keep it small (one scene, even one paragraph, one character, one action, etc.). Then let your brain work.

Sometimes, especially at first, when the brain isn’t used to answering small questions calmly and promptly, it can take a few days to come back with an answer. A great example of delayed response is when you rack your brain about where you left your keys.

You’re frantic, you’re scared, you just can’t think about anything except how you don’t have the money to replace that expensive automated car key or that if anyone found the keys they could get into your house and murder you, so should you really just have all the locks changed, but who can afford that? And by the way, why do you ALWAYS lose things, and hasn’t this been a problem all your life which makes you just incompetent?

You’re totally shut down. And then two days later, you just realize out of nowhere that they must be down behind the garbage can where you sorted the mail and threw away the circulars that afternoon three days ago. You had to get beyond fear and depression in order to quiet the mid-brain and let the cortex do its job.

If the cortex doesn’t come back with an answer at all, then think about reframing your question, and maybe making it even smaller.

A really good strategy is to ask yourself the questions you’ve carefully formulated right before you go to sleep at night. The cortex will work on them overnight, and then you get the morning “a-ha” moment. For Susan, it’s in the shower. Einstein used to say he got all his best ideas while shaving.

This technique is great for advancing your story, improving your writing, and getting yourself out of writer’s block. You can use it to create discipline about your writing life as well.

Try asking yourself how you can take a very small step toward becoming a productive writer. Think really small. Can you think about your WIP for fifteen minutes and write down your thoughts? Set a timer to keep it small. Can you write a paragraph about what your main character wants? Don’t make promises like “every day without fail.” That pretty much guarantees failure. Just gradually build up and let your brain do its work.  You’ll find that one small success will lead to another and another.

This method is also useful in everyday life:

• “What one small thing could I do to improve my relationship with my husband?”
• “What one small thing could I do this week to eat healthier?”
• “How can I put 20 minutes of exercise into my day today?”

We can just hear the answers coming back. When you get a viable answer, stop asking. You might get several choices but one will seem right. If you’re so frantic about it that you keep asking and get 50 answers, you make choosing among the answers a task too big, too fearful, and you end up doing nothing anyway. When the answer that feels right occurs, smile, be grateful, and move on to the next small question.

An interesting side fact about the brain is that mammals can’t be fearful while they’re eating. Now doesn’t THAT explain a lot about why we just show up at the refrigerator during stressful times?

We’d like to reiterate that what you are doing is retraining the way your brain functions and the way you ask it questions.

This takes practice. So sometimes the miracle doesn’t happen for you all at once. Keep at it. The brain will learn to work in more positive ways, and as you learn to catch yourself using negative or fear-inducing questions, you’ll get better at it.

We still both get stuck and have to realize we’ve started asking questions that paralyze our creative cortex. Then it’s back to the beginning--consciously thinking about small questions our brain can answer.Let us know if this starts working for you. We really believe in this technique.

Do you have other tried and true ways to help you solve problems and deal with fear?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry Squires was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Journalism school at the University of Missouri and UCLA’s school of screenwriting. He’s worked in news writing, film production, educational television, and as a corporate trainer in the insurance industry.

His paranormal mystery What Rough Beast was a critically acclaimed first book. Currently he is working on a non-fiction project and an historical mystery.

Susan Squires is known for pushing the envelope in her writing. The only thing her fourteen novels have in common—whether about vampires, wicces, computers, or time travel—is that they are all paranormal.

She has been on the New York Times Bestseller list, won the Golden Heart, the Holt Medallion, three Prisms, two Reviewer’s International Organization Awards, A Reviewer’s Choice award from RT, and has been a Rita finalist. Publisher’s Weekly called her book Body Electric one of the most influential paperbacks of 2002 and One with the Shadows a Best Book of 2007. Her time travel novel Time for Eternity earned a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly in 2010.

Harry and Susan live by the beach in Southern California with too many dogs.