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Daily writing practice is great, but what happens when you don’t have an idea? Or there are too many ideas competing to get on the page and your brain locks up? A lot of writers turn to prompts: a word, a phrase, sometimes an entire scenario that can help you get started. This makes it easy to jump on that early momentum and keep going.
I like cards. I don’t know where the obsession started, but the ritual of mixing and drawing and turning over cards is powerful for me. I have several tarot decks, a set of moon cards, and round archetype cards; each provides a set of images, stories in their own right, that can be used for inspiration.
One card can be sufficient for a writing prompt, but on days where I have a little more time and energy it can be fun to take several cards and weave their meanings together into a larger story. The images are rich enough that we can leave the guidebooks aside and focus instead on what is happening in each picture. If you can’t see anything coherent, try moving cards around. Be as simple or complex as you like. As soon as you feel any sort of idea moving in your mind, start writing and see where it takes you.
If you are a seasoned card reader, use the meanings you have learned to your advantage. Lean into any personal connections you have with individual cards, let associations carry you away, and get as much of it onto the page as you can. Practice is allowed to be messy! I have to fight my overwhelming urge to scratch neat lines of cursive into my notebook, but my scratches and misspellings tell me where I had the most energy, where my ideas outpaced my pen.
No cards? No problem! There are endless prompts available online, and communities on social media that offer regular writing challenges, so you can practice while fostering connections and friendships. I’ve also found another great bit of advice in Writing Down the Bones: Goldberg suggests taking down any interesting ideas you have for prompts and keeping them in your writing notebook, to give yourself a jumping-off point if you find yourself blanking down the road.
Another good idea is to commit to a specific time limit. It doesn’t have to be much, you can start with a few minutes to put yourself at ease. This encourages you to put a bit of effort into it; without a time limit, we might get out a few sentences, decide it’s too hard, and go make a cup of tea. Better yet, bring the cup of tea to your writing space, set a timer (on your phone, web browser, or get a cheap one to keep on your desk), and don’t stop until it goes off. When it does, you can stop to consider the writing, or you can take a short break and set another timer for yourself. Repeat as long as you have time and energy, find out what time limit you can commit to and how frequently.
The important thing is to write and see what comes out. A lot of my notebook lately has musings on the past (I am working on autobiographical fiction), complaints of boredom, and one interesting daydream about a plum. That might become something later. If you write nothing but FUCKFUCKFUCK or I don’t know what I’m doing, there is still value in it! You have conquered the blank page and transferred words from your mind to the physical world, and there is magic in that.
cards inspiration prompts tarot writing practice
Leave a comment Posted on May 7, 2020May 7, 2020 Coronavirus 2020, Novels, QWF Mentorship, Short Stories, Writing
Is anyone else feeling very Lady of Shalott these days? Locked in a tower, cursed to see the real world only through a magic mirror? I appreciate that it’s for our collective safety, and I feel fortunate to be in a position where I can stay home. Still, it’s fair to be half sick of shadows.
Luckily, it has never been easier to reach out to people I care about. That is, when I have the energy to spare. A lot of my efforts go into keeping myself clean and fed, quieting the onslaught of information and shifting opinions based on new evidence, and responding to messages I receive. I have had moments of total shutdown, I have experienced the curious phenomenon of March lasting a hundred days and April only three, and I have come to the month of May with a stronger sense of purpose.
Let’s call it a mourning period for the Old Normal.
In the New Normal, at least the one we have created so far, many things are still carrying on. I have been continuing meetings with my mentor, April Ford. Her first novel Carousel is out May 14 and available for preorder where books are found! (Please consider purchasing directly from the publisher or your local bookseller.)
Work on Project Claire continues! For the first half of the mentorship, we focused on getting the first three chapters presentation-ready for a pitch. The book is pitched. I am waiting for good news or my very first rejection letter, and either one is an important milestone in the life of an author. Either way, I’m happy about where the beginning of the novel stands.
It also has a title, but I’m choosing to be superstitious about it.
Revisiting erotic scenes in the novel has me thinking about physical contact, and those thoughts are finding their home in a new zine. I feel very good about the story and essay so far. The goal is to have it available for free here as a PDF, with physical copies available for $5 PWYC (an internet search says coronavirus can live on paper for up to five days, please handle mail with caution). I will also carry them around with me once it’s safe to be out among the people.
Speaking of smut, if you’ve been curious about “pumpkin smut latte,” I’ve posted the story “welcome to parc ex” and it is not safe for work. I read it Monday evening at my mentor’s sex and intimacy workshop, then we had a nice conversation about writing process and inspiration and other sexy stories.
What’s the word for the feeling of reading erotic material in your bedroom for an audience?
I’ve signed up for a distance version of Shut Up & Write taking place Saturday, same day as the Violet Hour Book Club. (I had really better be further along in the book by the time this goes live; at the moment, I’ve read the introduction.)
Having something in my agenda not only gives me events to look forward to, it sort of grounds me in time. I’ve printed out a calendar so I can tick off the days, I’m turning the pages of my day calendar with calming quotes, I am trying to prevent that feeling of drifting though the hours with no real sense of which direction I want to go in. It’s okay if I can’t be productive right now, I’ve given myself that permission.
But if I can be, that’s where I’d like to put my energy. There is work I want to do.
novel qwf short stories violet hour Zines
4 Comments Posted on May 3, 2020May 9, 2020 Advice, Exercises, Practice, Writing
Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve struggled so much with my identity as a writer is I don’t practice. I write to complete a project, a blog post, or a story. When Inspiration bubbles up, I’ll often do a freewrite, but that’s about it. No consistent practice.
I was talking with my dear friend Kat (who has started a tarot blog, please have a look!), who asked if I had ever read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I am a thousand percent sure someone has quoted her or this book before, but I haven’t read it myself, so I bought a copy and eagerly awaited its arrival.
(We hear a lot about thanking people in healthcare, grocery and pharmacy employees, and cleaners and sanitation workers; let’s please not forget our mail carriers who are working harder than ever during this unprecedented time of staying at home.)
In her introduction, Goldberg invites readers to pick up anywhere, read the book start to finish, whatever works for them. The book is a collection of essays on writing, not only the putting of words on paper but the entire mental process in which we reflect on ideas. I’ve known for a while that a lot of my “writing” takes place in my head, and I need to sleep on major edits; now I’m working my way through this book putting language to concepts I am only beginning to touch.
She also insists on practice, which is a thing I knew writers did, but I never understood how I might do the same. Goldberg provides a variety of ideas for a writer seeking to practice, and though I’m still making my way through her book, I have made time (almost) every day to sit down and put my thoughts down.
In doing so, I quickly ran into a barrier.
I like to write at a desk, because otherwise I’m pretzeled in my bed or on a sofa and cricks begin to develop and I groan and crack and feel like I’m falling apart. However, my desk is the tiny thing I bought for my studio apartment in Parc Ex and can barely fit my laptop, monitor, and a notebook to scribble in. I felt entirely too cramped.
I spent a good three hours assembling and arranging most of what you see here: a larger desk surface, actual organizational space, and the printer out of the way. Right now, I’m enjoying birdsong and natural light (on both sides, I got mirrors!) and a home office space that is really pleasant to be in. My writing practice has never been so smooth, and I have some interesting phrases to look at later.
I will continue to practice, which will help me to work, which will give me something to come here and write about. I say that as if I don’t have news to catch up on, but that has to be another post. I’ll be back Thursday at 5:00pm EDT.
amwriting natalie goldberg Practice writing down the bones writing practice
2 Comments Posted on February 11, 2020 Confabulation, Project Claire, QWF Mentorship, Storytelling, Writing
Is it always transitions?
I had such good momentum, but autumn turned to winter and a lot of shifting took place.
First of all, I will remind myself to never underestimate the effect of darkness suddenly coming an hour earlier. I feel more pressure to use the daylight to best effect, I get mopey when I haven’t seen a blue sky in too long, and the cold can be a huge deterrent when it comes to enjoying being outside.
There has not been a lack of news.
I have been asked to curate and host an evening of queer storytelling! Chris DiRaddo, who I know as president of the QWF, producer of the Violet Hour, and host of the Violet Hour Book Club; proposed it to me, and I had no choice but to reply, “I’d love to! How do I do that?” I ended up asking several people this question, and their answers led me to ask people I know if they had stories to tell. Everyone’s got a story, but how many of us want to get up on stage and tell it to a room full of strangers?
Then I told a particularly personal story at Confabulation: Games at the Centaur Theatre, revisiting how it felt to actively lie to the partner I was cheating on. The story felt impossible to write, but a conversation with Nisha Coleman gave me the confidence to confront what I was doing (trying to avoid telling the difficult truth) as well as a page and a half of notes to incorporate into a new draft. I got it out, I practiced, and I felt all of the emotions as I told it onstage.
I always remember, but sometimes forget to feel, that whatever scares me the most in my art is what I must absolutely pursue. Like this horrifying memoir idea, but that’s on the back burner because I have a mentorship to focus on!
As of last Sunday, I am dedicating the vast majority of my creative time to working with April Ford, my QWF fiction mentor, on my novel. We already have such plans! I am making lists and trying out different synopses and we will be meeting biweekly for the next few months. There will be a reading! I will shake off this rust and make some progress with this book!
amwriting Confabulation mentorship Project Claire qwf
Leave a comment Posted on November 30, 2019 Novels, Project Claire, Writing
That was a truckload of emotions.
I finished the rough draft of my novel Wednesday. I am proud, I am relieved, I am sad, I am trying not to think how much more work there is to do because I have FINISHED this first and most difficult part! The novel exists! All 65,000 words, 35 chapters, they are real and I can begin the process of editing them!
In three to six months, that is.
I have been workshopping chapters with a couple of writing groups, collecting comments and questions and scribbling notes on my hard copy. However, except for the occasional submission, I haven’t gone back and reworked the text. I feel that if I don’t have this rule for myself, I will fall into a loop of endlessly editing the same parts and never progressing with the rest of the novel.
I am even going to put the manuscript into the file cabinet. It’s an important symbol, and perhaps I can trick my subconscious (unconscious?) mind into forgetting the novel and focusing on other things. I want to create emotional distance and come back to my book with fresh eyes, ready to start being ruthless with my comments. If it’s anything like seven years ago, I’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much of it I like.
Of course, toward the end of the entire process, I started asking myself if the story might not work better if told from the first person. My brain screamed, and I told myself to think about anything else, because most of the book was already done in third person and I wanted to have a consistent finish. It’s the sort of thought that could set me down a path of endless revision, so it was better set aside for later. Something to consider when I read the draft a few months from now.
The sadness comes in saying goodbye, of course, though it’s only for a little while. The goal is to work toward a greater goodbye at a later date, when I let go of revision and put the novel out into the world.
Better not to think on that for now, though.
amwriting Project Claire queer fiction rough draft writing milestones
Leave a comment Posted on November 27, 2019 Confabulation, Storytelling, Writing
There’s a curious thing I’ve noticed that happens to me after a performance, and the better the high, the harder I crash. I had the opportunity to speak about it with my therapist the first time it happened, and her reaction surprised me. To her, it was obvious that I might feel like absolute garbage the day after a huge rush of positive emotion.
Now, I can’t fully blame this phenomenon for my silence. Unemployment has stretched on a bit longer than usual, and I’ve been slow to find a job. I just received my first pay from Starbucks and it was like a breath of oxygen into a cold and dusty chamber. I also really enjoy making coffee and chatting with people? Who’da thunk!
All this to say that taking my boyfriend’s tips for bus fare and not wanting to socialize because there aren’t enough coins for that is FUCKING EXHAUSTING. It’s hard to squeeze out any creativity when I have no idea if I’m about to get another NSF fee (can you believe I used to DEFEND those when I worked for the bank? Ridiculous!). I’m not out of the woods yet, but now that steady income is restored, I miraculously find myself with energy to write!
So, THIS show. I’d been playing with this story idea since the summer, when I decided to tell it at the last minute at an open mic. I got some applause, I felt some validation, but the story felt largely incomplete and I set it aside without knowing how I wanted to improve upon it. Plus I rushed so fast that five minutes somehow became three.
Then I found out that one of the upcoming themes for Confabulation was hair. Perrrfect! I agonized over what to pitch now that I don’t write out my stories fully before performing them, but the submission form says a summary is fine, so I provided that and moved on with my life. Then I got the confirmation e-mail, wrote out a bullet sheet, and recorded a draft to send to the producer.
A large part of writing anything is turning ideas over in my head as I go about normal life, seeing how they fit together and if they’re good enough to stick around. I will write down moments of inspiration in case I can’t remember them later, but I’ve found the best elements of my stories accumulate slowly and persist over time.
The shirt coming off was a later addition, and I almost dismissed it because I didn’t think I would be able to do it. I have worn my shirt at pools, it took me years to get comfortable going out in a TANK TOP, how in the hell could I ever whip off my shirt in front of an audience of STRANGERS?
As I built the story in my head, the idea persisted and I grew more attached to it. Why shouldn’t I be able to match the emotion of my story’s end and show that I am actually fine with all this fur?
Of course, I got to the Phi Centre and was informed that the evening’s show was going to be video recorded. I felt a stab of doubt before I shook it off and resolved to end my story as rehearsed. (I wanted it to come off it one swift, smooth motion. No catching on my ears, thank you.)
There is something particularly wonderful about the stress of walking to the stage, approaching the mic, and feeling each step as a spike of anxiety. Then I breathe, and ease into my story, and I dive so far into it that stress is a quiet voice in the back of my mind.
As I told the story, beginning as an awkward adolescent and moving into my so-called adulthood, I could feel my confidence building. There was no worry as I reached my conclusion, pulled my shirt over my head, and ended my story. I was grinning like a fool afterward, proud that I had done it, satisfied with the ending.
Storytelling is magical, and I needed to come here and write that.
body positivity Confabulation confidence hair Storytelling
Leave a comment Posted on November 24, 2019 Project Claire, Writing
Honey, you got a big storm comin’
I have an immense desire to come here and write all the things that have happened since I last posted; there are several items worth mentioning. However, I feel a wave of motivation building up and I am going to ride it to the end of my rough draft. If I have any momentum left, I will return here and tell you all about it. If not, I am committing to updating at my regular time this Thursday.
momentum motivation Project Claire rough drafts writing
Leave a comment Posted on October 24, 2019October 31, 2019 seasons of lust, Storytelling, Writing, Zines
I’ve made the joke often enough on hook-up apps: I’ve got fur for days. Look at this chest and shoulders, what else am I supposed to say?
Fortunately, Confabulation has given me the chance to get up on stage and talk about my journey with my body hair. It has been a long and winding road to acceptance and I’m proud to share my experiences tonight at the Phi Centre!
To get ready, I’ve been walking around my empty apartment telling the story to myself while my cats judge me. Absurd! They’re far furrier than I am.
I have printed a second run of “pumpkin smut latte” and opened an Etsy shop since people exist in places other than Montreal. The virtual storefront looks a little lonely with only one zine available for the moment, but I am working to get “hairy slutsmas” ready as early as possible. Slowing the process somewhat is my waffling on whether a second story is necessary—I think I need to play with layout before I can make that decision.
It’s very interesting to have complete control over the product from start to finish, to be the one who gets to decide whether one more sheet (four more pages) will make a better zine, or will it be too crowded? I have an idea for a cute and intimate story centred on a feeling, which I would totally share here but I prefer to keep a few secrets on platforms like these.
Best option? I’ll do a freewrite and see how I feel afterward.
There are only three chapters remaining in the outline for my novel! I can sense feelings rising to the surface; I have only completed one rough draft of a novel before, and I definitely had to take some time to recover from the overwhelming rush of emotion. I already get emotional thinking about the nearly 60,000 words I’ve written so far! the corners of memory I’ve explored! and the fact that I may have to write several versions of the ending to strike the right balance!
Nothing to do but get in there and write it. I won’t know which way to end the novel is best until I try.
body positivity Confabulation Erotic Zines hair Storytelling
Leave a comment Posted on October 17, 2019October 18, 2019 Erotic Zines, seasons of lust, Writing
“pumpkin smut latte” is out, it’s printed, and it’s already time to order more?! I’m down to four copies and two of those are spoken for, so I definitely need to replenish my stock!
Special thanks to Christina la Catastrophe and Marie Cornellier! Christina got me into this whole medium (she is my zine mommy/daddy) and helped me with my numerous questions, while Marie convinced me to get up at an open mic and read this issue’s erotic story!
I had honestly forgotten how smutty the language got, and there I was in front of the microphone, saying “cock” and “dick-hungry” and “semen” with rising embarrassment! I did manage to lean into my performance, getting more and more breathless as I worked up to the climax, and leaving the room a bit hot and bothered as I returned to my seat.
In a last-minute decision, I announced that the series is titled “seasons of lust” and the next issue will be called “hairy slutsmas”. I’m currently working on the cover, questioning whether I need to get a tree or borrow someone’s as a prop.
If you are interested in a copy of “pumpkin smut latte” or any upcoming zines, you can find me floating around Montreal, especially next week! I will be telling a new story at Confabulation (October 24 at the Phi Centre, click to buy tickets) and the theme is HAIR! My tale is full of teenage awkwardness, discovering identity, and removal treatments I will never attempt again!
You can also join my Patreon! Patrons in the $5 tier and above receive mailed copies of zines as they are produced, in addition to one zine per month of sponsorship until they are caught up. I am preparing “hairy slutsmas” to be ready for the beginning of December, but I will print it earlier if I can get it to where I want it to be. The second issue, like the first, is set to contain an erotic story, a poem, and an essay on gay hook-up apps.
I’m planning a subversive take on Valentine’s Day with “exes” though 😏
Work on the novel has resumed with gusto! I have completed two chapters in the last week and change, bringing me a step closer to finishing the rough draft. I have lots of ideas to keep me busy once I set this novel down for a rest, but I need a few final sprints to get me there. Fortunately, I am still able to work on this without feeling a sense of fatigue. In general, I am ready to be done with this draft, but I have enough energy remaining to keep me from half-assing it.
Erotic Zines hairy smutsmas pumpkin smut latte seasons of lust Zines
Leave a comment Posted on October 10, 2019October 8, 2019 Writing
I sort of drifted there for a bit, but worry not! The obsession with the zine has endured and I am now confident(‽) that it is ready for print! I am going to get out there and make it happen and hold this thing in my hand, in colour.
I don’t think the zine was distracting me from the novel, though I suppose an outsider might disagree. I wasn’t ready to get back into it, the fact of it being so close to finished freaked me out! Then I became aware that I was stalling, and the zine provided a satisfying avenue to channel my creative energies while I procrastinated.
I have since had three chapters reviewed by two writing groups, one of which contained some very personal emotions and I was worried it wouldn’t work. I was very grateful to learn that the writing resonates, and of course I received valuable feedback on how to improve the text. Direction that I will note on my hard copy before putting it away.
I’d like to finish the novel by the end of the month (I’m sure I’ve said that before) and focus my efforts on my holiday-themed zine. I also have a good idea of the photographs I’ll need for it. I’ll be posting more details on my Patreon soon.
I am really embracing using my notebook more often. I’ve started experimenting with to-do lists, which are very satisfying but difficult to maintain. This is true of many useful habits, so I’ll give it another try.