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  Pen on Fire

  A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within

  Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  Introduction

  Before You Begin

  Writing Like There's No Tomorrow

  Late Bloomers

  Hang a Partition

  Getting Started

  Stolen Moments

  Freewriting Shall Set You Free

  Load the Basket, Fill the Jug

  Harvesting Words

  First Lines

  Create a Written Snapshot

  Through a Child's Eyes and Ears

  Making Lists

  Start Small

  Regarding Research

  Tools & Rituals

  Leave Your Shoes at the Door

  Writers' Utensils

  Where Writers Work

  Walk! Refresh! Have Fun!

  Motel Motivation

  Napkins, Notebooks, and Journals

  Teaching Your Pen to Listen

  Writers Groups

  Mining Your Life

  Expose Yourself

  Celebrate Your Otherness

  Using the Ones You Love

  Breaking the Chains

  Words Can Be So Powerful

  Life Imitating Art

  Beads of Sweat ... or Pleasure

  Craft

  Form

  Plot or Not

  Creating Tension

  Voice and Style

  Play to Your Strength

  Point of View

  Titles: The Port of Entry

  Character Building

  Compassion 101

  Say What? Writing Dialogue

  Set the Stage

  Poetry: The Beautiful Stepchild

  Obsessed with Detail

  Revision

  You Are What You Read

  Overcoming the Obstacles

  That Black Hole: TV

  Housework

  Eddiction.com

  Fickle Minds

  Rejection

  Green with Envy

  Trusting Fear

  Mentors

  Keep Your Lips Sealed

  Significant Others

  Living the Life

  Marketplace Madness

  Sacrifice

  Literary Agents

  Set Your Pen on Fire

  Acknowledgments

  Suggested Reading

  A HARVEST ORIGINAL • HARCOURT, INC.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

  Copyright © 2004 by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

  should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,

  Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  DeMarco-Barrett, Barbara.

  Pen on fire: a busy woman's guide to igniting the writer within/Barbara

  DeMarco-Barrett.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  "A Harvest original."

  ISBN 0-15-602978-2

  1. Authorship—Vocational guidance. 2. Authorship.

  3. Women and literature. I. Title.

  PN151.D36 2004

  808'.02—dc22 2004006316

  Text set in Electra

  Designed by Suzanne Fridley

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition

  G I K J H

  For Brian and Travis ... without you both,

  there would be no book.

  Contents

  Introduction [>]

  before you begin

  Writing Like There's No Tomorrow [>]

  Late Bloomers [>]

  Hang a Partition [>]

  getting started

  Stolen Moments [>]

  Freewriting Shall Set You Free [>]

  Load the Basket, Fill the Jug [>]

  Harvesting Words [>]

  First Lines [>]

  Create a Written Snapshot [>]

  Through a Child's Eyes and Ears [>]

  Making Lists [>]

  Start Small [>]

  Regarding Research [>]

  tools & rituals

  Leave Your Shoes at the Door [>]

  Writers' Utensils [>]

  Where Writers Work [>]

  Walk! Refresh! Have Fun! [>]

  Motel Motivation [>]

  Napkins, Notebooks, and Journals [>]

  Teaching Your Pen to Listen [>]

  Writers Groups [>]

  mining your life

  Expose Yourself [>]

  Celebrate Your Otherness [>]

  Using the Ones You Love [>]

  Breaking the Chains [>]

  Words Can Be So Powerful [>]

  Life Imitating Art [>]

  Beads of Sweat ... or Pleasure [>]

  craft

  Form [>]

  Plot or Not [>]

  Creating Tension [>]

  Voice and Style [>]

  Play to Your Strength [>]

  Point of View [>]

  Titles: The Port of Entry [>]

  Character Building [>]

  Compassion 101 [>]

  Say What? Writing Dialogue [>]

  Set the Stage [>]

  Poetry: The Beautiful Stepchild [>]

  Obsessed with Detail [>]

  Revision [>]

  You Are What You Read [>]

  overcoming the obstacles

  That Black Hole: TV [>]

  Housework [>]

  Eddiction.com [>]

  Fickle Minds [>]

  Rejection [>]

  Green with Envy [>]

  Trusting Fear [>]

  Mentors [>]

  Keep Your Lips Sealed [>]

  Significant Others [>]

  living the life

  Marketplace Madness [>]

  Sacrifice [>]

  Literary Agents [>]

  Set Your Pen on Fire [>]

  Acknowledgments [>]

  Suggested Reading [>]

  Introduction

  We are always afraid to start something that

  we want to make very good, true, and serious.

  —Brenda Ueland, IF YOU WANT TO WRITE

  It is Saturday, the fifteenth of July, early evening. Today has been nonstop. Between making phone calls, watering our parched garden, running to the library to return videos and check out more, going to the farmers market, doing laundry, and making a tray of lasagna, I doubt I remembered to breathe, much less write.

  I fall into a wicker chair at the kitchen table, kick off my sandals, and take a breath, savoring a moment's respite before the next round of busyness. Any second now my son, Travis; stepson, Denney; and husband, Brian, will walk through the door, along with Brian's sister Sue and her three kids. Perhaps they'll stay for dinner, or we may all go to the fair, or at least down to the beach to watch the sunset. So why even sit down to write when I'll soon have to stop, perhaps even before I get started?

  The answer swoops in: Because I have time, precious time, of which there is too little. I could do a million other things with these few minutes—sort through the stacks of my magazines and newspapers, which grow higher with each passing
day; polish the tarnished silver-plated pitcher that sits atop the fridge; catch up on e-mail—but I haven't yet written. So I force myself to sit at the kitchen table with a notebook and jot down a few words, which soon become paragraphs. By the time the crowd arrives and I have to stop, I have the beginning of something I just may want to work with.

  The blank page can be the scariest aspect of writing, especially when you are beginning. All that emptiness glaring back at you—it can unnerve the hardiest of writers. Yet, in all my years of teaching, I've found that students overcome that fear fairly easily; as you realize you have stories inside that are yours alone, deserving to be released, you will have no problem filling pages. But the real creativity-killer—the obstacle so severe that I've seen it stop promising writers before they even have a chance to begin—is time. With jobs, children, partners, and running their households to juggle, women in particular are busier than ever, with no space to nurture our creative selves.

  I'm like every other woman I know: I have too much to do and too little time to do it in. I have a nine-year-old son, article deadlines, an hour-long weekly radio show interviewing writers. I edit a writers publication, teach creative writing at the UC Irvine Extension, hold private writing workshops in my home, volunteer at my son's school and at church. Did I mention I also have a husband, friends, one cat, two tanks of fish, and I like to spend time reading, cooking, baking, hunting for collectibles, making beaded jewelry, and walking? Finding a few hours straight, let alone an entire day, to write? Ha!

  But in my experience—with my own writing as well as that of my students—the problem isn't just a lack of time. The problem is that we tell ourselves we need more time to write than we do. We're sure we need an hour to write anything coherent. So when we can't find that perfect hour when the phone promises to remain silent, when our loved ones are contentedly busy, and when nothing will be demanded of us, we don't write at all.

  Faced by a writing project and the sprawl of free time, many of us while away the hours talking on the phone or reading magazines and newspapers, staring at the TV, going shopping or to the movies. We sit in cafés, talking, taking it all in—research, we call it. Pretty soon it's impossible to get the pen moving anymore; as time runs out and the deadline looms, paralysis sets in.

  When you are starting out, or even considering becoming a writer, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. In the writing world, myths abound: Real writers, aspiring writers are told, write for an hour a day or produce a thousand words or three pages or more daily. Such prescriptions for time or page count are daunting, to say the least. Who has that much time or that much to say!

  The truth is, you can get a lot done in just fifteen minutes a day. We all have at least fifteen minutes somewhere—while the pasta boils, while a child bathes, while we're on hold with the phone company or on a coffee break or at lunch. It's amazing how much you can get done when you just chip-chip-chip away at something. In fifteen minutes, you can write a page and in a year you will have the first draft of a novel. Working in fifteen-minute segments also forces you to focus, which can help you to, at the very least, get started on something.

  I know this from personal experience, because my writing life changed when I started taking advantage of those extra minutes in my day. Over the years I've started (and finished) articles, stories, and poems, and even a couple of unpublished novels in those snatches of time. Recently, as I waited in the car at my son's soccer practice, I wrote a draft of a magazine column. I couldn't find writing paper anywhere in the car, but in the trunk, under the folded-up cart I use at flea markets, I found a brown shopping bag and covered its sides and bottom with a first draft.

  Using fifteen-minute segments truly can start you on the road to becoming a writer. I have seen this over and over with my students: When they give even small chunks of time to writing, incredible things begin to happen. Resistance to writing evaporates and is replaced with a feeling of fun and discovery. Ideas and creativity pour out. You even begin to appreciate your writing voice and your own unique style. This was why I wrote this book: to share that transformation with even more busy women and to say, yes, it is possible to write, no matter how maxed out your life seems.

  Unsure where to begin? Don't worry, I'll hold your hand every step of the way. My approach in this book is all about having fun and enjoying writing. Yes, writing is hard work, but as you work your way through these pages, you'll find that writing is fun hard work. There is a thrill to filling blank pages with words. When the words are flowing, few things could be better. Even professional writers I know turn to the sorts of exercises in this book because they tap into our deepest sources of creativity and make writing fun once again.

  As your attitude toward time and writing changes, so will your writing habits. Seeing the pages mounting—because you've been giving your writing just a little bit of attention—you'll be inspired to write more and more often. Sometimes fifteen minutes will snowball into something grand—a half hour, an hour, or more—causing you to completely overlook the grout you meant to clean, the hydrangeas you meant to fertilize, and the pantry that desperately needs reorganizing. Tend to your writing daily, and soon finding the time to write will become second nature; when this happens you'll know you are living a writer's life.

  Jodi Picoult is the author of eleven novels written in eleven years. She also has three children, a husband, and a full life. She says if she hadn't used those spare bits of time that everyone has, she never could have accomplished as much.

  "Eleven years ago when I started writing professionally, I had just had a baby and was living under this gross misconception that he would sit at my feet and watch me work," says Picoult. "That was not happening! By the time I had three children, I learned I had to write in the ten minutes they were napping or when Barney was on TV or when they weren't hitting each other over the head with a sippy cup. At any spare moment I could, I was in front of my computer cranking something out. Because of that, I didn't have the luxury of writer's block. I actually don't buy into it. Very little of writing, in my opinion, is waiting for the muse to hit you. Quite a lot of it is sitting there and hammering it out. Some days you write beautifully and other days you just know you're cranking out garbage. But it's always easier to edit garbage than to edit a blank page. That level of discipline has stayed with me, and now, years later, when I have far more time to write, I still work on that schedule. It's being able to pick up the thread quickly and get back into where you left off."

  While my son was a baby, I also learned to use minutes here and there. I longed for entire days as I once had. Yet, I found that in a few minutes I could get something done. This book, for instance, began by using nuggets of time. Certain days I was lucky to get down ten words. But using minutes when I had them kept me plugged in and kept the work fresh in my mind. It's easy to lose the momentum with your writing and so very difficult to get it back, which is why everything changes when you embrace the idea of finding fifteen minutes for your writing every day. Doing so will help you do the most important thing: Visit your work daily and keep it fresh. Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, put it best when she said, "You have to keep your writing on life support, and give it oxygen."

  One of the biggest challenges I've encountered since beginning teaching in 1989 is getting my students to understand that they need to spend less time discussing writing, worrying about not being good enough or not having the time, and more time actually putting words down on paper. There's a special relationship between a writer and her work, and as with any relationship, it takes daily tending to thrive. Even on the busiest of days, you still find time to walk your dog, cuddle your cat, play with your child, talk with your significant other, e-mail your best friend, feed your goldfish, call your mother.

  So, start using those snatches of time buried in your daily routine. While the water's boiling, the coffee's dripping, during TV commercials, write. While your child bathes, sit in the bathroom with him and write about the bubbles, hi
s babbling, his skin shiny like a seal's. As the broccoli steams, as the lasagna bakes, write about how your kitchen smells, or use that time to work on a project already under way. If you have a job outside the home, use your coffee breaks and lunchtime, or a portion of them, to write. Write while you commute. Write while waiting to see the doctor or dentist. You may not have enough time or concentration to do much of substance, but you can always make notes, record ideas, recall on paper what someone said or did that you want to remember. You have so much to say—more than you know. It's time to start getting it all down on paper.

  By sharing with you how I, along with other authors, stay on the writing track, I've aimed to create a book that's both moving and practical, one that offers information and inspiration that reach far beyond my classes and radio signal, and into the hearts and minds—and fingertips—of writers everywhere. I hope that by using this book, you set your pen on fire and grow confidence in yourself as a writer. Nothing would please me more.

  Before You Begin

  Writing Like There's No Tomorrow

  For me, writing something down was the only road out.

  —Anne Tyler, in Janet Sternburg, ed.,

  THE WRITER ON HER WORK

  It took a while for me to get going as a writer. It wasn't until the beginning of my junior year at a private Vermont college that I knew I wanted to write, that I was desperate, actually, to be a writer. Once that knowledge took hold, there was no reconsidering my choice. I blazed along the writing path, writing hard, reading hard, making up for lost time. My advisers encouraged me. It was all good, all promising—no matter that writing was the biggest intellectual challenge of my life.

  But when I graduated, the fact that I still had not transformed into Virginia Woolf or become a New Yorker writer sent me into a writer's block as big as Grand Central Station. It lasted a year. Finally the truth sank in: Not writing wasn't bringing me any closer to being like the writers I admired or to being published, and I so missed writing. I dove back in. There was no choice. I was a writer: I was miserable when I didn't write, and I wanted to write more than I wanted to do anything else. I had to write, come what may.

  The deep desire to write is all you need to begin. Its power over you is bigger than the fear of rejection. Once you accept that you are a writer, you can overcome fear. I had to.