Sam's Writing Space

I am honestly a strange cat that loves to write. On many occasions I have had a reader, friend, or editor ask me, "Where in the world did you come up with this idea?" 

There is no real secret. Ideas are everywhere. It's just taking the time to recognize them and then answer the Muse's favorite question: 'What if..." Fortunately I have a lot of places to look for ideas. They come to me on a consistent basis. It's up to me to grasp each opportunity and own the moment (I'll talk about that in a sec).

Opportunities come in a couple different ways;

1. Undeniable Opportunities:

I was sitting in a cafe shop one day leading a coffee tasting with four friends. As we sat there I noticed a man, with seventy clothes (velvet shirt, bell bottom pants, and a Beatles looking hair cut - you know the straight look that they had in their young albums) he walked quickly up to the barista and said, "Are you from London?" To which the barista laughed and said, "Nope, not all all." The man then asked him if he was sure. The barista, then confirmed it with a hearty (Yep, born and raised in Wichita Kansas. I would know if I were from Europe." To which the other man said, "Really? That is so strange because you look like a rock star!" To which the barista started laughing and responded with, "If is were a rock star I surely wouldn't be wasting my time serving coffee for $7.25 and hour."

As the guy walked away, looking back at the barista every few steps I thought, This is funny, I have to turn this into a short story - and I did, in fact I wrote three different stories all bases off of the short interaction that had taken place. I did a short fiction, a short comedy horror, and a short mystery. And two of the three have sold.

Point is that we all get these great moments that just throw themselves at us. In those moments, as a writer you have to be ready to react - as a writer. Don't let the moment and the feelings pass you by. Instead stop, think about what happened, look around at others, get a feel for the moment, and then take some notes so that later, when you are ready to produce some creative word count, you can write about that.

2. Reflective Opportunities: 

These opportunities seem to come by themselves too, but they are soft moment, quiet moments, and they are very easily passed up. It could be a moment in your car - it's hot outside, your stuck in traffic, creepy along at a snails pace, the radio is on, and you suddenly realize that everything is moving in slow motion, and you just kind of slowly flow with it. You look out at other drivers - a man yells on his cell phone at someone, but his voice is lost in the background of reality, a group of teens walk along the side walk laughing, the woman in the car ahead of you uses the rear view mirror to fix her makeup. The issues of life, and humanity come into your mind. You experience a sense of oneness with the planet, and then, as quickly as you were caught up into it, a horn blares, and your realize that your holding up traffic. Your back to the present travailing at a quick speed of one second by one second into the future. 

These moments can very easily pass you by, you not even realizing that you had a great experience that was full of thought, feelings, concern, and realization. This is a great writing opportunity. I write these moments out as a short story or prose, and then I put them in a file and go back over them later to see if there's anything there to work with.

Most diaries and online journals or blogs are basically inspired by these moments: what happened to me today, what I'm feeling right now and why, how I reacted to something I heard or seen. These are all reflections, and many inspirational stories, novels, and screen plays come from these moments. You just write down the moment as clearly and precisely as you can, and then ask questions like; "How can I get this point across to more people? What can I change in this story so that it becomes something that everyone can really relate to and understand.

Practical Application (example, all fictitious):

• Thomas Kline finds himself sitting at a bus stop waiting for his bus. to his left is a mother and her six year old son, who has a mental disability. To his right is a lawyer who makes a rude comment about people with disabilities and their weight on society. Thomas is offended for the boy and later on that day he stews and stews over it. He thinks about how he'd love to see that lawyer come face to face with a disabled person who is better at everything than he is. 'That would be awesome. Put him in his place. Just because a person does not talk or interact in a socially acceptable way does not mean that they can not do many many great things' He thought. Rekindling all those emotions he grabs a pen and paper and begins writing about a man named Forest Gump. (Again, this was a fictitious example)

Reflective opportunities come to you when something moves you, or gets you to momentarily question life. Many times questions you ask yourself about religion, spirituality, life after death, will give birth to these moments, but also those things that move you towards happy experiences, or angry feelings will bring these moments. Ask yourself, what do I love, and what to I hate? then write.

3. Created Opportunities:

These are moments you can create yourself. For me, I've created several play lists on my computer. I have; happy, dark, melodic, joyful, strange and interesting, angry, misery, triumphant, and depressing - lists. To create an experience for the piece I'm writing, I think about what it is the moment is calling for, what the character is feeling, and then I try and create the moment and feelings for myself, by turning on that play list and relaxing, allowing the feelings the music creates to craft images and stir imagination and then I grab my pen, or put my fingers to the key board and take off. 

Music is a great tool for my creative process. You may have something else you like to do that does it for you. I also find that mowing the lawn, taking hot showers late at night, a walk in the park, taking the kids to a playground and sitting back and watching them play, and working out at the gym cause my creative juices to start marinating my brain with great ideas.

Lastly - Own The Moment:

If there is anything that I can say in all of this that you are actually going to commit to memory, and take away with you I really hope that it is this: No matter what you experience. No matter what kind of circumstances you find around you. No matter how good or bad things seem to be, remember that the circumstances and issues do not own you, you own you and if you look at every single thing that comes your way as an opportunity to better your self, you can own every circumstance.  If you have a really stressful day - write about it, turn it into money. If you are in a bad relationship, don't let it own you, as a writer, write about it - own it, and make it work out for you.

EXAMPLES:

a. I was irritated with my wife for something. Later we both found that it was a big miscommunication issue. Instead of stewing over it, I changed the people and places, and events, and wrote a short story about it. I also took what I learned from the situation and sold an article to a couples magazine.

b. My wife called me one night about a month ago and told me that a man had cut her off and actually ran her off the road. Luckily she was able to run off into a gas station. I was furious about it and wished that I could jump in my car and go find him, but that was impossible, so to release my feelings of vengeance, I wrote a short horror story about a man whose wife was killed by a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel. In the story, the protagonist was able to track down the man and hand deliver some extreme justice - I sure felt better after getting it out of my system.

c. I was closing a job down one night. I was sitting at my desk and my co-worker, (a beautiful women about my age and the only other person in the building) came over to my desk and sat down in my lap. I quickly let her know that that was really inappropriate. She text my cell phone later asking me if I wanted to come over while both of our spouses were at work. I declined and shared a few strong words with her. That night, however, I was really bothered about how much sexual tension can be created in the work place, and even more so, how many couples cheat on each other with co-workers. I decided to do a study on the matter and produced a great article called "A Time to Work... it?", which I sold to an online magazine.

These are ways to take Ownership of the issues and circumstances that you face day in and day out.  Life is really just a progression of circumstances after circumstances. You are thrown into a never ending flow of issues, all calling for your reaction. It is the science: For every action there is a reaction. How you react to every action that comes to you will determine the level of ownership you obtain.

I write, I am a writer, and the more I write the better I get, it's evolution - the process of personal growth - the mechanics of life. As I writer, I have decided that I must view every moment as an opportunity to take ownership of my writing future. I will Own the Moment - the moments will not own me. I will write.

Hope you found something good here today...I did.

SamTheWriter,

Signing off

So right now, as I am taking the time to pour over the first draft of my CWIP (Current Work In Progress), I am finding that anytime I take a break - go pick up my kids from school, go to one of their games, lay in bed at night, or just get a few minutes to sit on my couch in the quiet of night - I am pulled into creative thoughts about some of the other stories and articles I have worked on in the past. It's like the different masks of creativity the muse has given me to wear while in character for different writings, are all trying to wear me at the same time.

I know that the most important thing for me right now is to finish this novel so I can send it off and start working on another one, but images and scenes for other works start playing out so clear in my mind that I have to grab a note pad and start writing.

 Is this wrong? Is it some mind trap, keeping me from completing my CWIP and a paycheck? Well to be honest, I don't know. What I do know is that some of these little creative ideas have opened doors for me and led to other publishing opportunities.

I Guess that my dilemma here is more an issue of when I will finish this project. After all it is this project that is most important for me.  Because of this I have to look at it as just as much a job as it is a work of passion. As it is with all my writings, they start as a work of passion; something that I seem to give birth to. I can't just push these stories out pre-maturely, and I have a problem sometimes pushing them out at all. Sometimes the are so over due that they finally just force themselves at, no matter where I'm at:

• The Switch: Pushed it self out at 4am on a Sunday morning and kept me up till 8am, and I had to be at Church at 10 am - leaving me about an hour of sleep, with a very full day ahead of me.
• Arbor Day: Forced its way out as quickly as I sat down at work to place a coffee order. I sat down and opened up my Outlook e-mail and WHAMMO, it hit me and I had to grab a close note pad and write.
• SHE: (a poem about my wife) came to me as I was driving down the high way from Doge City, to Wichita. My wife was in the car ahead of me with her cousin Traci, and I had the kids with me following behind. They had not seen each other for a while and I thought it would be nice for them to ride together. As I listened to Maroon 5, the kids slept, and I could see my wife in the car ahead, this poem just started to pour out like a broken fountain, and I reached into the glove compartment for my recorder, but the batteries were dead. So I grabbed a pen, and started writing - where else; my arm.

This has happened to me several times. But just as it has happened that quick, forceful, and fluid, I have also suffered from the CWIP's taking forever to come out. I was reading an article in The Writer's Digest, about working out your current projects, even though your creativity seems dry. The article gave great, but tough, advise. The truth is, you must finish your WIP if you intend to get paid. Sometimes creativity forces you to pick up your pen and flow with the raging rivers of the Muse's current. Other times you have to pull out your WIP and say, I am not leaving my seat until I have worked it out. WORKED it out.

WORK IT OUT! That is the key. I am a writer. You are a writer. A writer writes, he/she does not think about writing, consider writing, read all the books out there about writing, but WRITES. The truth is, most of the time a writer has to WORK at his craft. Sometimes I sit for long periods of time, some times I walk back and forth talking to myself, interviewing characters, write out my problem and then start several 'What if' questions and write out the possible outcomes. Sometimes I sweat, strain my brain. Many times, WRITING is WORK.

When creativity speaks, I listen, I write it down. But then I file it and keep plunging forward into my CWIP. Let the many faces and masks of creativity wear you. Let them give you ideas, take you on short trips, vacation on strange planets, but don't forget that to be a writer - full time, you have to complete that which is most important. To be full time, you have to get paid to be full time.

Sometimes the Muse will make you work, under an almost drunken state, and it is beautiful. Others times, you need to pound on her door when you she doesn't want to come out, and make her work for you.

That's it for today.

SamTheWriter,

Signing out.

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing, is...well, writing.

I love to write. I think one of my biggest problems as a writer is that I have too many things that I am usually working on at one time.

Currently, my work in progress (WIP) is my sci-fi novel, but I am also working on a horror book, a nonfiction book based on myself and some struggles I came through as I child and adolescent, a mystery thriller called 'Breaking In" (can't talk about) and several short stories, which I am working on intertwining them into two novels in shorts. 

But many writers out there that are like me, and love to write, and plan on it being their future careers, have some stumbling blocks to deal with. the biggest is TIME. For me, I could finish my WIP, and move on to finish other projects, if it were not for the restraints that time puts on me. For one, time only allows 24 hours to a day, and I am sleeping for 4 to 5 of those hours, at work 10 of those hours, eating, picking up the kids and taking the to basketball practice, bringing them home and getting homework done, baths, stories read, and them to bed for about another 4 to 5 hours, and occasionally my wife and I have the same nights off, and I have to make sure that I use that time wisely. My family comes first. Oh yeah, since I'm diabetic, I am supposed to be working out four to five times a week (which is working out great right now). But this leaves me with little time to write.

Working  a job that is not at all set on a normal schedule makes it hard to set a daily schedule that I can get use to. At times I want to forget about my passion to write, because it seems like writing has become, for me a daily ritual of hunting down any spare time and filling it with writing. But about the time that I decide I'm going to forget it two things happen:

1. I get so much stuff inside, that I almost bust. I have to write, it is what I was made for.

2. I look at all the things that I need most - time. Time to spend with my family, time with my wife, time to be at all the games, time to take my wife on dates, time to write, time to sleep, and also the money it brings. If I complete my manuscript, get an agent, and let him self my manuscript while I start working on the next, a couple book contracts would give me the money to stop my full time job and get writing full time.

With these things in mind, I have no choice but fight to write. Fight to find time. Fight the temptation to watch tv when I could be pounding out a few thousand words. Fight the desire to sleep all day on my day off because I'm pooped and I want it real bad, when I could brew some dark roast coffee, take a cool shower and hit the keyboard.

I have to fight discouragement when I submit a manuscript and it comes back rejected, and have to remind myself that just as I've had them rejected, I've have a few accepted; sooner or later with consistence and persistence I'll get the big manuscript sold instead of just shorts and articles here and there. When I read an editor's note that says "Sorry, but we are currently not looking for this kind of manuscript."Have have to follow it up and read through a few of the wonderful critiques that I've received on my writings from the writer's sites I am apart of.  (If you haven't joined a writer's site look them up there are some really good ones like critters, Author's Den, or Faith writer's)

I have had to look at my crazy schedule and and find time, by knocking out where ever I am using time in excess or using it for unimportant things, and put in writing blocks there. Example: I get an hour lunch every day, so I bring my lunch with me, and set up my laptop and write during lunch. If kids go to sleep, and my wife is at work and I do not have to get up too early, I will stay awake later -tv off- and write, or I'll go to bed when I put the kids down and set my alarm to get up real early and start writing.  I carry a pen and little pocket note pad with me all the time for ideas, new directions, character development, story change. And believe it or not, I carry around a little recorder, incase I am having a real busy day and no time to jot down ideas. This way if something good hits me at a bad time (which seems to be the Muse's way of having fun) I pull the recorder out, walk around the corner and record my idea quickly and then listen to it later.

Well I just put my daughter down for a nap with my wife, and I have to head off to work to meet with two district managers that have flown in to talk about cafe changes. Got to go, guess I'll be writing at lunch again.

SamTheWriter,

Signing Out

Last night I gabbed about Creativity Killers, and this morning after getting 4 hours and 15 minutes of sleep, I decided to go ahead and set my morning up for success.

In the book, 'The Writer's Idea Book' published by Writer's Digest Books,' the author, Jack Heffron, says something that really made me thing.

He says, "If you want to Write, you must begin by beginning, continue by continuing, (and) finish by finishing. This is the great secret to it all. Tell no one." (Chapter One pg 7) -A Must have book for writer's. Check it out on my favorite books and then buy it!

I read that last night just as I was heading off to sleepy town, and those very simple words, really hit me. And it true, and wise advise that some times (or many times I should say) many of us know that this is all it really takes, but it's extremely hard to take the first step. I would like to add to Jack's great words and say, that if you are every going to get started, you must start.

So this morning, the alarm (aka my wife calling me to make sure the alarm, that I never really set) woke me four hours and fifteen minutes after I had closed my eyes to sleep, I got my son up, dressed, fed, helped him with his 50 sight words, got him to school. Then got my daughter, up (who only wanted oatmeal - believe it or not) made oat meal, got her dressed, pack up myself some workout close, dropped her off at school, and then went to the YMCA and ran for about an hour, and then did my regular sets (by regular I mean seldom ever) keeping with my routine (by routine I mean starting to get back into my old work out schedule that I seldom kept in the first place), then took a nice hot shower, came home and started to write.

My point is, no matter what the goal is, you're success (completion) depends on your ability to keep going, and to keep going you have to begin, and to begin there must be that moment that you say "Ok, Let's start"

So I have decided to Start a Today.

Let's see what happens shall we.

Got to go pick my daughter up now,

SamTheWriter,

Signing Off

Writer's block really suck's (woops, I forgot I am not supposed to say 'sucks' kids keep telling me that) but every writer faces it.

For me there is something ever worse than writer's block, and I have to call it the Creativity Drought, it is when you have great ideas for your story, possibly even new fresh ideas, and a great direction, but when you sit down at the computer to write, nothing comes to mind.

Today I was talking to myself at work all day - talking to myself is one of the ways that I try and 'fondle the Muse' - trying to work through a big problem with my sci-fi novel. Finally, somewhere between making about 60 lattes and 25 cappuccinos, the answer I had been looking for, came to me. I was excited, ecstatic. 

I grabbed some paper and wrote my ideas down, and then when I had a moment, I hid in the back room and recorded my new breakthrough thoughts on my cell phone since my recorder was at home.

Later when I got home, I set up my laptop in a comfortable place, since my kids were on the home computer taking care of their webkinz. I decided that I would wait til after dinner and after I got the kids down before I sat down to write. It is very important for me that I get to spend all the time I can with my kids, besides, my office is not a closed room office, I share it with the family.

Finally the time came, the kids were asleep, and my wife was reading a book in a nice hot bath, and I thought I would work on my novel. the only problem was; I did not turn off the tv. Which is, in my opinion, the biggest Creativity Killer of all.

What happened next was that I got sucked into a stupid sci-fi movie. I decided to watch the rest of it and before I knew it, it was 2am. My wife was asleep in bed, another sci-fi movie was coming on that I actually had wanted to watch for a month, and I had to get up at 7 am.

Creativity Killers can be different for different writers, for me, especially when my wife is at work (Labor and Delivery Nurse working third shift 3 nights a week) I have the hardest time turning that stupid box off.

What I should have done was turned the tv off as soon as my kids had gone to bed and my wife got into the bath and turned my itunes 'sci-fi mood music' on to get me in the mood as I did a fresh read over and then got into it.

Creativity Killers are anything that takes you away from completing your writing goals. Tv, Movies, Music, Texting, Cell Phone, instant messaging, sleep. There are many things that can be a Creativity Killer. Some of these things are good and even stir up creativity, but once that Muse begins to speak, it is time to cut off everything else and put the pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard.

Any ways, solving the problem is really more about PREVENTION. It is easier to make yourself some rules and follow them into a good writing session, then to get sucked into something for too long and then try and go back to fix it. Most of the time (without following steps to prevention) you will end up losing a whole day and regretting it, because every moment you waist is gone for ever. Suddenly it is 3 am and you have no choice but say, "Crap I lost a whole night" and hope another one comes again soon.

Well, I wrote this tonight because I was ticked off about the fact that I finally have a time to write, it is 12:30am and I am about to watch Live Free Or Die Hard. I've been waiting for this forever. Guess writing will have to wait till my next day off. "Crap, that sucks"

SamTheWriter,

Signing off