Tag Archives: Flash Fiction

Confuse Your Writing Muscles

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I’ve been attending Kaia F.I.T., a women’s exercise program three mornings a week and am now on my fifth week. The philosophy is to confuse the muscles for improved strength and tone. You won’t find giant exercise machines jammed into the room. Sometimes we work with jump ropes or resistance bands or kettlebells or even huge tires. We run, do lunges, sit ups, squats, pushups and all variations of body work, sometimes individually, or with partners, and we often move from station to station, constantly changing from one type of exercise to another. The sessions work our brains as well, keeping track of variations in sequences and repetitions. Afterward, my body aches and yet I feel great because I’ve done something I didn’t know I could do. And I’m getting stronger every day.

What does a woman’s exercise program have to do with a blog about writing? I wondered what would happen if I applied the same philosophy to confuse my writing muscles.

Writers are advised to stick to a writing routine and never let anything deter us. But what if we mix it up and create a writing schedule that changes direction at intervals? I’m going to try it for one week and see what happens.

For example:

  • If you always journal in longhand at 7 am, head to the laptop and do a prompt or write a nonfiction piece
  • If you’re working on memoir, mystery, romance, literary, sci fi, historical, or poetry, do something entirely different like postcard fiction or flash fiction for twenty minutes
  • If you always write alone, call a friend to write with you
  • If you don’t have any writing friends, join a group
  • If you’re in a group, go on hiatus
  • If you write at a desk, take your laptop to the sofa or stand at a counter
  • If you’ve never done NaNoWriMo before, do it. You can start anytime

After a week, check in with yourself. Have you stretched your writing muscles? Are they a little rusty from disuse? Does it feel good to surprise yourself?

In the effort of full disclosure, I can’t take credit for jumping into a rigorous exercise routine all on my own. My daughter talked about how much fun it was and how all ages of women were involved. She encouraged me and invited me to a couple of tryout sessions, and when I was discouraged, she told me everyone had a hard time at first and that I was doing great and she was proud of me.

And that brings me to my last suggestion for today’s blog. If you don’t have someone in your life who pushes you a little, encourages you and believes in you, find someone like that or be that person for yourself.  Now get out there and get confused!

Anniversary

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One year ago this month I stepped into a room to begin my first writing group experience. I’m taking a moment to reflect on some of the positive changes that have taken place in my writing and in my life since that first Friday evening.

More Confidence

As an introvert, my weekly Amherst Writers & Artists writing group has given me more confidence in my writing, and more confidence in speaking in front of a group. We read our work aloud and offer feedback and our group can be as small as six or twice that. Learning to be comfortable in a changing setting has been another benefit. Writers from other AWA groups frequently drop in and interested writers are encouraged to join.

More Curiosity

It renewed my interest in poetry, both reading and writing it and learning about new poets. My writing group has generated a willingness to experiment and put myself out there with new and different writing forms.

More Writing

I’d gotten into a rut with my writing after working solely on a mystery novel for an extended period of time. Now, my mind has opened to new writing experiences and my writing group work enhances all my efforts: short stories, mystery novel, postcard fiction, poetic fiction, flash fiction and this blog.

More Publishing

It’s opened my mind to submitting my short pieces even while working on a long project. I’d thought I needed to pay attention to one thing at a time until completion, when in fact, working on many projects has made me more prolific. I’ve recently submitted seven short pieces to an online fiction contest and received an honorable mention and one story was a finalist. I didn’t win but I felt like a winner every time I submitted.

More Giving

Best of all, through my writing group, I’ve been introduced to a wonderful group of writers who are giving back to the community in so many ways and that’s encouraged me to want to do the same. One example is 916 Ink. It helps Sacramento youth improve their literacy skills by providing free creative workshops that end in a beautiful publication. Check it out!

Even a small step like joining a group can feel like a big challenge to an introvert. I’m hoping my enthusiasm will encourage others, particularly introverts like me to take one small risk and find out how much more your life can hold.

Spirit First

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I meet once a week with an Amherst Writers & Artists writing group. Our group leader plans a theme for the evening’s writing using poetry and prompts (pictures, phrases, props, etc.) to jump start our creativity. Of course, we always have the option to write about whatever we choose. The piece below was inspired by the poem, “The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts” by Mary Oliver. I was drawn to the lines, “the answer was simply to rise in joyfulness, all their days.”

I believe in spirit first every day, and the ideas below are like daily prompts that help to restore spiritual balance to my life. 

Never get out of bed until you manage your motivation

Yes, count those blessings. Don’t stop until you have a hundred if that’s how many it takes.Bad dream, anxiety, illness, mean people? It doesn’t matter. Figure out how to transform it before starting your day. Your life depends on it. And remember, emotional pain is also a blessing. If something hurts that much, it means it’s time to change—yourself.

Make yourself a toolbox

Keep a poem in there. Read the poem. Write down everything and everyone you love. Put that in it. Add something new to your toolbox every day.

Use your eyes

Look at what’s right in your world. Look at what’s beautiful. Are daredevil hummingbirds zooming outside your window like miniature pilots? Watch as they fly straight up into the sky, then drop into loop de loops, their mighty motors going a million heartbeats a second. Clap for them. They love to entertain you.

Dream with your feet

Is your arthritic dog racing through golden fields, legs galloping from his horizontal position on the floor? Pretend you’re with him. It feels wonderful to be so free.

Photo by Artistry by Adele

This checklist makes my day and I hope you find it useful as well.

By the way, if you want to participate in a fun flash fiction contest or read the stories, check out Writer Unboxed. My last week’s entry is a finalist!

Inspired at Squaw Valley Writers Event

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I attended a Squaw Valley Community of Writers Summer Literary Event this week. The hundred or so attendees at the Olympic Village Lodge sat at tables and chairs facing the raised stage and podium. Large windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling overlooked aspens and pines and beautiful sunny skies. With notebook open and pen ready, I eagerly anticipated the event.

The day-long panels and presentations left me with a full notebook and a drained brain. The first two presentations on memoir and short story were inspiring, but the last panels on West Coast literary magazines and epublishing felt like taking medicine. I knew it would help me, but it tasted bitter.

Hard to Swallow

The literary magazines represented in the panel receive hundreds of submissions for each issue. They always want to showcase name writers for added cache and in some cases publish short stories, essays, poetry, photography and art all in one issue. The editors want relevant subject matter that fits their taste and pieces they choose must complement the others, similar to the way an art gallery mounts a show. There’s usually a theme. And the online journals are great, but some publish only once a year. The key is to be very good and to have the good luck to be writing about a timely subject that also connects with the editor’s interest. Simple, right?

The epublishing panel was made up of publishers and agents who offered practical information to help writers make informed decisions about whether they want to let Amazon give away books for 99 cents that they’ve worked on, sometimes for years. They talked about the poor editing and low quality of books glutting the marketplace. The panelists suggested several must-read articles. For example, Letter from Scott Turow: Grim News. Also, The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr.

Hardly the stuff of inspiration, but when I penetrate that magic door of being published, I’ll be happy to have the knowledge shared at Squaw rather than popping my bewildered head out of the sand when it’s too late.

On the Page

Listening to writers talk about what happens on the page was much more interesting to me. The first speaker, John Daniel, talked about truth in writing memoir. His advice is something any writer would be wise to employ in nearly anything they produce.

  • “Write for yourself. Write because there is an area of your life you are not clear about. Write to see it in fuller light. You are at odds with yourself and you write your way to some understanding.”
  • “It’s not about what you’ve done but what you do with what you’ve done—on the page.”
  • “Honesty is the only policy in writing a memoir worth reading.”

I’d like to take that one step further and say that honesty in writing anything is key. The kind of honesty that comes from knowing what your own motivations are and if you don’t know, to keep searching.

Even if some of the sessions were reminders that the publishing world is shifting under our feet and no one really knows what to expect, I’m glad I attended. And I was inspired by the setting and the presentations.

By the way, if you want to read or write some fun Flash Fiction, check out the Writer Unboxed contest. I’ve posted my second one this week. If you like it, or any of the others, click Like!

Inspiration Comes in Three’s

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The first inspirational boost I received this week was a blog by Kristine Kathryn Rusch sent to me by a friend who knew I was struggling with making changes to my mystery after it was critiqued by an editor. If any of you are now or expect to go through the critique process, Rusch’s blog will set you free, especially if you are unpublished and vulnerable and hell-bent on perfection. By the time I finished reading Rusch’s blog, I was ready to let go of some of my anxiety. In fact, I immediately wrote a flash fiction story for Writer Unboxed. I wrote it, quickly edited and sent it—a big deal for a person who has been working on the same two short stories for several years trying to get them just right.

The second nudge

I read a piece by Andrew Porter in Glimmertrain, a literary magazine that’s been publishing short stories since 1990. Porter wrote about how writers have a tendency to discount their early work and then told about how a story he’d written years earlier, once unearthed, went on to win awards and became his most successful piece to date. His article reminded me that I have a box of old stories I haven’t looked at in years because I assumed they couldn’t possibly be relevant now. His article inspired me to take a look at those early efforts. I hope you’ll read Porter’s article and revisit any work you might have stuck away in a drawer. Who knows? Maybe a gem is hidden there.

Rooting through my memory archives 

After reading the Rusch and Porter articles, I recalled a Joan Didion interview discussing her famous book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, gathered from articles she’d published in a number of other places. She said they were never intended to be compiled into one piece and she did not consider it her best work. They were articles written for money usually on deadline and not labors of love.

The combination of those three articles reinforced my belief that as in most things in life, all we can do is our best and then let go of the outcome. Whether what you’ve written is different than the current trend in publishing, or because you wrote it years ago, or have never thought of compiling previously published freelance articles, I sincerely hope this blog post may help inspire you today.