One Thing at a Time

I often read two books at a time: one on my kindle, one in hard copy—their different tones competing for space in my head. I almost always work on more than one freelance project in a given week, and really, most of the time, I’m gnawing on multiple pieces of my own fiction. To be really honest, I often have my phone, my kindle and my laptop all spread out on the couch before me in the wee hours before my son wakes.  And  how many times do I find myself toting a child who is really too old to be carried anymore, a shopping bag, my purse, and a sweaty brow?

Imagine what our lives would be like if we did only one thing at a time?

For 2 weeks my three year old is home from his usual routine of 4 days of pre-school. I thought that I would be harried, overwhelmed, annoyed. And there is, I cannot lie, a definite sense of not having enough “me time.” But honestly? When all there is to do is focus on being his mom, and there’s not enough time to worry about work or writing, then I simply don’t worry about them. Strangely,  just being his mom actually is a lot easier when I let go of my attempt to also work and write.

And in those wee hours before he wakes, I do write or work, and relish in the peace of being able to focus.

What would it be like to focus on one thing, one aspect, one goal for your writing this year? Maybe even just an intention for it: like learning to write crisp, tense dialogue; or committing to writing every day. Or something more nebulous: to write only work that makes YOU happy. And what about every time you sat down to work on it, you did not try to hold the whole thing in mind, but focused on only one aspect: one scene, one conversation, one powerful description of a setting, one free flowing moment of words streaming on the page?

Though I suppose it is unrealistic for us to do only one thing at a time in most aspects of our lives, I encourage you, exhort you even, to try it when and where you can. In your material world, and in the world of your words.

Let’s make 2012 be the year we do things slowly, carefully, patiently. Play with our children wholeheartedly. Feel our feet on the earth. Read every word in a book. Write as though there is absolutely nothing else pulling on you.

Happy almost New Year

Look for my new classes in 2012: Plot Intensive, and Novel Intensive

Deepen Your Characters

When we write fictional characters, they begin as relative strangers. Sure, he may dictate a tale to you in a “voice” so vivid you would swear you had met him before; or you may know what she looks like and where she comes from, but for most writers, the characters only become real to you over time, the deeper you write your way into them.

All of our characters begin as shards of ourselves-even the villains and the magicians. In order to mold these paper golems into people of their own, to fledge them away from our own likeness, we have to dig very deeply, which takes time.

Yet what if you could drop sooner into the emotional world of your characters, so that by the time you finish your novel or story, you feel as though you are saying goodbye to someone so dear to you it hurts? Someone you know intimately, whose experiences, though you may not personally share them, you have felt. And whom the reader will also feel connected to?

You can.

Today and tomorrow are the last days to register for Method Writing, this 1-week intensive journey into the depths of your characters, a fantastic way to hide out from holiday gloom, or celebrate holiday cheer!

You’ll learn over 10 different strategies for direct access to intense emotions–without need for back-story.

Join us!

 

Writing that Transforms

My altar is a sprawl of papers and books stacked precariously, pens that have lost their caps and odd flotsam that got put here in some moment while, busy chewing on story ideas, my fingers simply dropped an item.

There’s no incense or holy water here, and my priest is not one, but many voices, most of them speaking to me from the pages of dog-eared books on subjects ranging from plot structure to the journeys of heroes.

 I meet myself here every day, and some days there is a productive outpouring of words. Other days I revisit creative “failures,” try to re-imagine my way through muddled story, muddied characters who are still in the process of becoming.

 There was a time I believed this process was all about the end goal of being published. And now I realize that this daily, quiet, personal act is about transformation. Just like a character must undergo a noticeable, dramatic transformation of the self at the end of the journey we call plot, I am here, every day, little by little, to experience higher degrees of myself. Sameness, stagnancy, kills in real life and in fiction—it stifles the soul, and suffocates a good story. Writing cracks everything open.

 The act of seeing writing fiction as a vehicle for personal transformation as well as for telling stories that speak to universal truths has changed the way I write, and the way I live.

 Thus, when I teach writing, I am not meeting my students as instructor-on-high, but as a fellow traveler on a uniquely personal  but parallel road.

 If you’re interested in facilitating this process of transformation in your own writing, join me in February for an intensive 8-week online course on Plot that is like none I’ve ever taught before.  www.jordanrosenfeld.net/online-classes/  

Jordan

 

 

 

About Jordan


Author of FORGED IN GRACE, Jordan E. Rosenfeld learned early on that people prefer a storyteller to a know-it-all. She channeled any Hermione-esque tendencies into a career as a writing coach, editor and freelance journalist and saves the Tall Tales for her novels. She lives in Northern California with her superhero-obsessed son, Psychologist husband and their tuxedo cat, Elvert.

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