Meditation And The Art of Writing

-->A guest post by Marcela De Vivo

Being a writer is one of the most difficult things to do because it’s not just a career path--it’s also a state of mind. Unlike many other hobbies, passions, and career paths, when you are in the wrong frame of mind for writing, everything gets blocked. You are unable to come up with ideas, find your style, or write with any sort of flow. Being blocked from writing can be incredibly frustrating. Luckily, people who meditate have found a lot of success in fighting writer’s block and becoming a stronger writer.

Put Yourself In The Right State of Mind

If your mind isn’t completely focused on your writing, it will be much tougher to get any words to paper. If you are nervous about deadlines or thinking about fights you had with your best friend, your focus won’t solely be on your words. It will impede your writing abilities completely. With the use of meditation, you can control your thoughts and put yourself in the writing mindset that you so sorely need.

Clear Out All Negative Thoughts

Critics are often a huge impediment to a writer’s abilities. If you are sitting down to write and keep thinking that you aren’t good enough, you can’t do it, and other negative thoughts, getting past that block will be impossible. By learning meditation, you can teach yourself to put a wall around those inner critics, thereby allowing yourself to write and not think of the negativity.

Gain Inspiration

There’s nothing more frustrating for a writer than sitting down to write and drawing a blank. Just because you’re in the mood to write doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get the words to flow. One of the many perks of meditation is gaining inspiration that will allow you to write to your heart’s content.

One Minute Meditations

If you’re in the middle of a sentence and all of a sudden writer’s block hit’s you like a ton of bricks, one minute meditation is the trick that you need. You’ll be able to close your eyes and do breathing exercises in just a few seconds to get yourself back on track.

Calms Your Nerves

Writing can be a nerve-wracking experience. You put so much of yourself into your prose that it can be terrifying. With meditation, you can keep yourself from letting those nerves get to you when you need to get to writing. By practicing basic breathing exercises during meditation you can get better control of your nerves.

Create a Meditation Room

Your home and writing space may be cluttered with furniture, papers, and all those other life essentials. Creating your own meditation room can help prevent these distractions during your writing process. Keep the decor in this room minimal and relaxing such as a wall fountain or small bonsai tree to bring in small elements of nature.

Steps To Meditate

Meditating is actually quite easy, so don’t worry about not being an expert. At the most basic level, you can clear your mind, repeat a positive mantra, and use breathing exercises in your meditation room or small space. Take as long as you need because getting on track with your writing is what’s most important.

Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer from Southern California. As a full-time writer, she understands how difficult it can be to get your thoughts down on paper and finds meditation a great tool to avoid writers block. Follow her on Twitter today!

You can also find Marcela on Facebook, Pinterest and her website.

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~In the book world, word of mouth is king~

Coming soon....

the second book from The Never Chronicles

Available now from J.R. Wagner...

A tale of perseverance, strength and redemption.

www.TheNeverChronicles.com

In bookstores

 

The Importance of Writing Exercises

a guest post by Carlie M. A . Cullen




You sit down at your computer for the first time of the day, open up the document ready to dive into your latest work of art and what happens? You struggle to get started. Once you get into the flow, you’re fine, but it’s those first few painful minutes where you suddenly doubt yourself. So why is this? Why does it happen?

Your brain and creativity, like any other muscle in your body needs warming up before you start to really exercise it. Put it this way – would you run a marathon without stretching your leg muscles first? Would you try bench pressing a huge weight without easing into it with lesser weights first? Not if you’ve got any sense you wouldn’t! 

You would end up with painful pulled muscles and ligaments which would seriously inhibit your ability to do everything you’d normally achieve without thinking about it.

So why strain your creativity in the same way?


A five or ten minute writing exercise completely unconnected to your current ‘Work In Progress’ will warm up those muscles in your brain and get the creative juices flowing.

Here are some examples of what you can do:
· Free Writing – pick any word at random and write whatever comes into your head about that word. Don’t stop to correct spelling mistakes or grammar, just keep writing.

· Pictorials – pick any picture from a newspaper or magazine and write about what you see. Describe the environment, describe any people in it, describe any feelings the picture invokes.

· Photographs – choose one of your own photographs and write about the day it was taken. Where was it? Why were you there? Who were you there with? Describe the scenery or buildings. Talk about any people in the photograph; who they are, what they mean to you.

· A lyric from a song – it may be an unfamiliar song you hear on the radio or a new CD, or one that you know particularly well. What feelings does that lyric invoke in you? Does it fill you with joy or happiness? If so, why? Does it make you sad and if so, why? Does it make you remember events from your past? If so, what, and how does that affect you now?

· Look out of the window and choose an object or person/couple you see. Describe it/them. If it’s a person, wonder about what sort of life you think they lead, where they’re going. Look at how they’re dressed. If it’s a building, what sort of people do you think live there, what are their lives like? Describe what you imagine.

· Everyday objects – choose a random object from your house and build a mini story around it. It could be something as basic as a ball of string, a rolling pin, a candle, a pack of playing cards, a box of matches. The list is endless.

As you can see, there are so many possibilities of things you can write about to exercise that muscle before you attempt to begin on your latest project. And because the creative juices are already flowing, you will find it much easier to pick up where you left off with your project.

If you can discipline yourself to spend those few minutes doing your warm up exercises, I’m sure you’ll find those moments of doubt and struggle disappear, and your writing will be all the richer for it.

Research: Writing with an authentic voice

by J.R. Wagner

Trinity Library, Dublin Ireland (been there, such a cool place!)

I've been asked on numerous occasions how much research goes into writing.  Many people believe because I write fiction, I can simply make it up as I go.  This couldn't be further from the truth.

Just because the story isn't true, the characters aren't real or the setting is a place from my imagination doesn't mean I can simply wing the entire writing process.

I'll give you my most recent example:

I just completed a novella set in the mid 1800's. The first thing I researched was the geography of the setting at that time.  Where there any towns in that area?  What was the landscape like? What was the population of the town?  How did they get around? (horseback, cars, bicycles)

The story took place in a country estate. What were the buildings like in that time period? What were the grounds like? What were the indigenous species of plant-life in the gardens? What was the layout of the house?  Where was each room located and what was it called? (we don't have sculleries and larders in our homes today) What about the furniture? How did they dress? What type of money did they use? What books were popular?

Why is any of this important?  It gives the narrative authenticity. If you want to immerse your readers into a particular time period, they have to believe, down to the last detail that they are in that time period.

Be careful not to detract from what drives all great stories -the characters and the plot.  Allow the characters and plot to move the story forward through this authentic world you've created.  Do not allow your overly authentic world to slow the progression of the story just to show off the fact that you've done your research. Plot and character progression always come first.

Some writers will research before they ever put pen to paper.  I am the opposite. I'll write my first draft and include notes to myself to go back and look something up. I let the plot and characters take charge and follow with a second pass to do the research.

For example: Billy made his way to his bedroom (check)  fussing with his jacket (check)  (type of chair?)before slumping in the fireside chair and picking up a copy of Harry Potter. (check)

Turns into: Billy made his way to his bedchamber fussing with his waistcoat before slumping in the the Regency Giltwood armchair and picking up his copy of Emma.

Bedrooms were called bedchambers during that time period.

English manor house bedchamber

 The attire of the day for a man
included a waistcoat.

Waistcoat

The Regency Giltwood armchair was a popular piece of furniture in both time and place

Regency Giltwood Armchairs

Emma, the popular novel by Jane Austen was first published in 1815 in the United Kingdom

Where did I find all this information?  Did I google it?  Wikipedia?

I typically use google and Wikipedia to help narrow my search for better information.  Through those searches I discovered a treasure trove of books on the topics I required.

Here are a few:

Subtleties of Showing, a guest post

By C. M. A. Cullen

The Importance of Writing Exercises

A Guest Post by Carlie M. A. Cullen

You sit down at your computer for the first time of the day, open up the document ready to dive into your latest work of art and what happens? You struggle to get started. Once you get into the flow, you’re fine, but it’s those first few painful minutes where you suddenly doubt yourself. So why is this? Why does it happen?

Your brain and creativity, like any other muscle in your body needs warming up before you start to really exercise it. Put it this way – would you run a marathon without stretching your leg muscles first? Would you try bench pressing a huge weight without easing into it with lesser weights first? Not if you’ve got any sense you wouldn’t!

You would end up with painful pulled muscles and ligaments which would seriously inhibit your ability to do everything you’d normally achieve without thinking about it.

So why strain your creativity in the same way?

A five or ten minute writing exercise completely unconnected to your current ‘Work In Progress’ will warm up those muscles in your brain and get the creative juices flowing.

Here are some examples of what you can do:

• ·      Free Writing – pick any word at random and write whatever comes into your head about that word. Don’t stop to correct spelling mistakes or grammar, just keep writing.
• ·      Pictorials – pick any picture from a newspaper or magazine and write about what you see. Describe the environment, describe any people in it, describe any feelings the picture invokes.
• ·      Photographs – choose one of your own photographs and write about the day it was taken. Where was it? Why were you there? Who were you there with? Describe the scenery or buildings. Talk about any people in the photograph; who they are, what they mean to you.
• ·      A lyric from a song – it may be an unfamiliar song you hear on the radio or a new CD, or one that you know particularly well. What feelings does that lyric invoke in you? Does it fill you with joy or happiness? If so, why? Does it make you sad and if so, why? Does it make you remember events from your past? If so, what, and how does that affect you now?
• ·      Look out of the window and choose an object or person/couple you see. Describe it/them. If it’s a person, wonder about what sort of life you think they lead, where they’re going. Look at how they’re dressed. If it’s a building, what sort of people do you think live there, what are their lives like? Describe what you imagine.
• ·      Everyday objects – choose a random object from your house and build a mini story around it. It could be something as basic as a ball of string, a rolling pin, a candle, a pack of playing cards, a box of matches. The list is endless.

As you can see, there are so many possibilities of things you can write about to exercise that muscle before you attempt to begin on your latest project. And because the creative juices are already flowing, you will find it much easier to pick up where you left off with your project.

If you can discipline yourself to spend those few minutes doing your warm up exercises, I’m sure you’ll find those moments of doubt and struggle disappear, and your writing will be all the richer for it.

Learning From Your Mistakes

Another wonderful Guest post by Carlie M. A. Cullen

I recently had this quirky idea for my blog for my followers to ask me anything they wanted so they could get to know me better. The post, “Interview the Writer. Who Me? Yes You!”, brought out some great questions. One of them was: “What are some grammatical errors you still find yourself using/doing even though you know you shouldn’t?” and this really got me thinking.
As writers, we all have our little weak spots and I’ve identified some of my worst ones from first drafts:
- Exclamation marks – I use way too many when trying to emphasize a point and don’t realize until my wonderful editor raps my knuckles. What I’m actually doing is slowing down the dialogue instead of keeping it flowing.

- The word ‘that’ – this is probably my biggest sin of all. Put it this way, if I had a pound or dollar for each ‘that’ removed from my first draft, I’d probably have enough money for some retail therapy!

- Using too many similes beginning with ‘like’ – I’ve learnt the hard way about this. On the up side, I’ve found ways of expressing these in terms that make the story much stronger, and I’m still experimenting with it. Some similes work extremely well, especially if you can be really inventive, but too many weakens the writing.

- Starting a new paragraph for dialogue when it should be a continuation of the previous line – this is another sin my editor nags me about.

- Using hard line returns to start a new page at the end of a chapter – it doesn’t always work and using page breaks is a much cleaner way of doing it. This I learned from my beta reader. On my copy of the manuscript it all looked fine, but when I sent it to her she pointed out that several chapters ran into each other (oops). I’m glad I found out before an agent or publisher requested my full manuscript!

I know there are others, but they are minor compared with those listed above. The important thing is that I know what to look for and as I write the second book in my trilogy (I’m now well into chapter 4), I’m correcting myself as I write. I do try to switch off my inner editor particularly when the writing is flowing well, but I’m finding I’m automatically correcting myself.
This, I think, is a good thing. It means I’m learning from my mistakes which, I hope, will make me a better writer in the long run. It also means less nagging from my editor (a real plus) and a stronger base for the finished product.
I will continue to learn from my mistakes; I want my writing to be the very best it can be for my readers, they deserve nothing less!

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To visit Carlie's AMAZING blog, click HERE







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As always, find interviews, writing samples, videos, contests and more on my re-vamped website.

www.TheNeverChronicles.com

In bookstores 6-5-2012

Humanising the Heinous-Guest post by Carlie Cullen

Humanising The Heinous by Carlie Cullen

Nearly every Fantasy book I’ve ever read has at least one villain intent on causing as much harm or mischief as possible and while this makes for an exciting story, not every author treads the path to explore why the villain is the way he/she is. I have to wonder why this is; maybe it’s because the writer is wrapped up in the emotions and back story of the protagonists, maybe they are so busy making their villain evil and plotting the next dastardly trick that they forget to look at the true character behind the evil, and maybe they just didn’t think about it.