Last month, I wrote a blog post on the writer and rejection (If You Get Rejected, Should You Quit Writing?).
Here are some further thoughts on rejection by several oft-published writers, including the likes of Margaret Atwood: Falling Short: Seven Writers Reflect on Failure.
You can now register for Write Your Life. Go to my Workshops page for registration details. First class: Wednesday, October 2, 7:30 pm, in Los Angeles.
My second office
For as long as I can remember I have craved deep greens and muddy browns. I’ve often escaped to natural environments to write, or to read over my writing. I am soothed by trees, bolstered by the earth, and draw inspiration from breathing clean, fresh, mulchy air.
I have favorite spots I escape to, places where the phone won’t ring (sometimes there’s not even cell reception) and where piles of papers won’t grab at my attention.
I once fled to Palomar Mountain in San Diego County, pitched my tent, and promised myself I wouldn’t leave until I’d gotten the upper hand on the chapter I was struggling with. (I stayed a week, but I descended the mountain triumphant, the completed chapter tucked under my arm.) Yes . . . I wrote longhand for a week in that campground void of electricity.
Now I sometimes escape to nature to take a break from writing. But, still, it raises the water table of my creative juices, keeps the well from running dry.
I’ve come to call these spots my “Second Office.” They’re free of rent, and they free my mind.
(Also check out these earlier posts: Go on a Writing Retreat to Kick Your Writing into High Gear and Recipe for a Non-Writing Retreat.)
I invite you to share some stories or images of your own writing (or creative-well replenishing) escapes.
My other second office
If you have a question about writing, and you think the answer might benefit others as well, please send me an email at Nomi.theWriteCoach(at)gmail.com, and I’ll set to work on a blog post that answers your question. (It’ll be kind of like you’re giving me a writing prompt and benefiting from what I come up with!) If I don’t know the answer, I’ll do my best to find you some resources where you can find the answer.
Then, keep your eyes open for my response (in the form of a blog entry)!
It gives me great joy to share what I’ve learned about the craft of writing over my 20 + years as a book editor, writer, and writing coach.
I look forward to hearing from you.
I’m all ears.
If you like something you’ve read here, please paste a link to that particular post (or to my blog, in general) on your Facebook page so your friends can read it too!
(I couldn’t find the widget to install so you could just click on a button to do that. If anyone knows how to install such a widget, please let me know.)
I’ve finally finished the manuscript I’ve been working on and handed it in to our editor at Random House (ah, that’s why there haven’t been any posts in a while). It’s a book on which I’m the collaborative writer. It has been an amazing project! More on that as it nears publication (spring 2014).
Now that I finally have a breather, I’ve decided to spruce up my site. Made changes here and there, including the addition of a page of writing samples. I’ve started with just one sample, a personal essay I wrote a few years ago and read aloud at the Tasty Words essay show in Santa Monica.
I’ll add more samples soon, when I figure out what I’m allowed to post (copyright issues, etc.); I do a lot of writing for other people.
To see the new page, click here.
I now have a follow-up to my “An Editor Tries to Text” post. Yes, it’s true, I’ve bought myself a Smart Phone. I no longer hate texting. And I don’t even hear that sound effect in my head of water (or rather time) being sucked down a drain when I think of texting. (I also used to “hear” that sound effect when I thought of blogging . . . but that’s long gone now. I blog as I please and not more. No time-suck effect. Just pure joy.)
So . . . it looks like I’m slowly being pulled along with the tide of technology. And to tell you the truth . . . I am tickled purple by it. Sure, technology can do evil in the hands of the evil. But it can equally do good in the hands of the good. As far as I’m concerned, we have the president we have today because the internet has finally filled shoes as large as corporate money. It was a long time comin’ but the People have found their power (on the internet). . . . . . (Well, there goes my resolve to keep my blog and my Writing Coach persona free of politics. I promise I love my Republican students with equal huge-heartedness as my Democrat students.) I just think I need to start letting my blog-hair down a little more. (Thus the stream-of-consciousness blog post!)
I’d better quit while I’m ahead and end simply with this:
Happy, fruitful, creative, and thriving New Year, everybody. Big love to you all, Nomi
I am a slow reader. Yes, it’s true. (I like to think it’s because I’m reading deeply . . . but I also have a theory, so read on.)
I took a speed-reading class in college to try and help myself get through the enormous reading load at U.C. Santa Cruz. All that class taught me was how to be tense . . . while I read slowly.
Most people who know me probably think I was one of those kids who holed up and read in my room for hours on end. But I wasn’t. As soon as I got home from school, I changed into my play clothes and ran outside to practice cartwheels on the front lawn or find a tree to climb. I didn’t become an avid reader until I was about 12. And even then, I spent just as much time building things and playing and exploring outdoors.
So, here’s my theory on how people become fast readers (based on a very limited sampling of people): Those who read fast as adults were, as children, the type of people who devoured books for hours on end . . . before the age of 12.
Please help me test out my theory by answering these questions in a comment:
1) Are you a fast reader or a slow reader?
2) Did you hole up and read for hours on end before the age of 12?
I know you all are stopping by and reading my blog . . . Please don’t be shy. Share your thoughts!
Related post: Learning to Read.
When I was growing up, sitting under my mom’s desk to play, comforted by the resounding tap, tap, tap of her manual typewriter, and then later shut out of her writing den so she could concentrate, I thought it was normal for a writer to write for hours and hours on end. My mom woke up and got to work by 5 or 6 in the morning and she didn’t leave her typewriter, and then later her computer, until 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
That’s eight hours of writing!
When I began to write (after years of resisting being a writer, since I figured one was enough for one family), I found that my normal rhythm was about three or four hours a day. And when I tried to write more, I was utterly exhausted after five hours. What’s up with that? Although I didn’t fall far from the tree, I did seem to be a completely different kind of apple.
We were in many ways two very different writers. My mom wrote stage plays and television screenplays; I write fiction and memoir. My mom’s work was plot and dialogue driven. My work is very visual (though I do write good dialogue too; thanks, Mom). My mom wrote from the outside in—getting the concept and perhaps the structure in place first, and often not getting to the emotional content until later drafts. I tend to write from the inside out, spilling my guts onto the page and then muddling my way to finding some sort of plot.
Is our difference in style what made it harder for me to write longer than 3 or 4 hours? Or was it just that my mom was a bit of a powerhouse-superwoman-wordsmith? I mean, the woman only needed to 3 to 5 hours of sleep.
Well, when I recently began writing a book on a deadline, I found that suddenly I was writing five, six, seven hours a day! One day, I even wrote for eight. And I didn’t even feel exhausted . . . well, maybe a little. But I also felt exhilarated.
The mighty deadline has pushed me through the glass ceiling. Perhaps that was the difference all along. My mom wrote on deadline for years. Or . . . maybe my mom’s lovely spirit has been hanging around helping me out.
In any case, with that triumph in my back pocket, I still cherish the lovely writer’s day that goes like this: write in the morning; nap and then exercise in the afternoon; socialize in the evening. Perhaps one day I’ll get to write that way again.
In the end, there is no right number of hours for everyone. Virginia Woolf, I have heard, wrote for one hour a day. Stephen King supposedly writes ten pages each and every day (a lot of writing! Anyone know how long that takes him?). Many, many writers claim the 3–5 hour a day rule.
How much do you write a day? Do you shoot for hours or word count? Please tell us how you write n’ roll.
Nomi Isak, Writing Coach 