Category: writing craft

Beautiful Imagery and our best work

images

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog.

Imagination and Imagery are intimately connected. It’s the power of combining images, transforming them into our particular reality, and even going beyond that.

Writing is constructing images in our heads and in our readers minds.

While building a story we recur to different strategies to visualise how characters, locations, and objects, will appear to our readers.

I do believe that, all that we can see in our minds will translate into a page in the most effective way we can imagine, if we just put the work behind it.

I also believe that usually this happens in ways we can’t perceive objectively. It’s kind of a shadow work that occurs inside our minds, fuelled by all the collected inspirations.

The act of describing what we are envisioning, letting what we absorb come through, will make reading a lively experience.

This means building ideas about how the elements will be, and master its materialisation on the page. Whatever the story, in whichever genre we fancy.

How we find imaginative inspiration?

Some of us, writers and imagery builders of sorts, have a fondness for reading and imagine things in our own way.

Sometimes, this ability gets us to have a book turned into a movie just because the imagery used was totally wrong from what we had envisioned.

Others, find it useful to look at correlated art works and give our imagination a hand at picturing worlds, creatures and even human faces.

There are a few theories about this brain ability of ours, categorising people into types of learners, just by figuring out our abilities to retain information and, therefore, use it in creative ways, accordingly to our main senses of vision, hearing and touching.

I found that, for me a mix and match of all of these, work in different projects and situations. So I learned to use visual aids, and well as hearing and touching.

In some projects I use music. In others, drawings and pictures. With more, or less, emphasis on each aid, according to what I feel is most needed for me to capture the full experience I need.

Because to learn about these characters, and this world, and these objects and locations, I need to attune myself to their particularities. And this is only possible if I keep my sources of inspiration in an expanded mode. Always looking, always alert, always integrating fun little snippets of information that might seem to be just there for the taking. Just so I have some places from which to draw inspiration from.

Where do I find some inspirational imagery?

Just looking at other people’s rendition of something, a picture, a drawing, a digital art work, a description, a capture of some sort of inspirational material, allows me to let me own imagination guide me into my own world building, with all it entails. Browsing through Pinterest, DeviantArt, a Google search on Images tab, can get me some much needed help on figuring out some writerly things.

How do I use it in my writing process?

I use it for inspiration, to build up my mental muscles on the much needed imagery.

Exposing myself to beautifully composed images, to gruesome battle outcomes, to twirls of abstract imagination, will get me content enough to start thinking about my own creative processes in my stories.

Also, I use it for writing exercises.

To have a prompt, and to build upon that little morsel of imagery is a pleasure, and alleviates me from having to start with the dreaded blank page feeling.

Just like painting uses references, the  writing practice also can, and should, do it. Imagery serves us as guides in this unthreaded wordy land.

Is it beneficial to my writings?

Yes. It is indeed. My imagination needs all the aid she can get. My writing efforts benefit from everything I throw at them. All the little unsuspected efforts we can make to help us write more and better are welcome.

If we find a notebook full of clippings is the way to go, we should try it out; or a mood board hanging on the wall; a Pinterest album full of scary pictures; a reference book on imagery; a subscription to a travel magazine; or any other way of collect those images we will be recurring to intentionally, in order to make our writing process smoother and more inspired.

Standing in the shoulders of giants has its downside?

Do not copy. Do not steal. Do not use without permission. Do not go into that unimaginative, hurtful, dishonourable lane.

Reconnect the dots of all you have learned and add to the work already done. Be inventive, resourceful, creative in your own right. You can do the most beautiful, your own, work. And it will feel good to do so.

Be careful of the difference between gathering inspiration, to work out added value, and the already mentioned problem above.

Gather from all types of different sources and think: I am the sieve through which all comes in, and only a small combined part of it mesh and comes out.

Allow myself to be the changing factor, the added value, the combinatory and creative force behind whatever I create.

Will it be easy?

Is anything worthwhile easy? I don’t think so.

Was any of those drawings easy to make? Any of those books we read? Any of those creative breakthroughs?

Easy and Worthwhile are opposites, aren’t they? 

Having these processes available to tap into, allowing new inspiring imagery and information to come through, working out the effective ways they can serve my writing efforts, trying to be receptive to all inspiring tendrils is part of the fun.

All we can do is allow our minds to translate into our work the images we had envisioned. All we must do is ensure that the reading experience will be the best we can make it. And that all these inspirational processes work out for the best in each page we write.

So that our reader truly gets what we were aiming for: the best story possible. 

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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References:

Considerations about Building Worlds

building worlds

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog.

World Building is hard, fun, messy and an inspiring cluster of moments to be had, while writing a story.

To create a full, well developed, verisimilar picture of a new society, in whichever form and size, means we have to be ready to explore.

And we explore by imagining some complex interactions, rules and possibilities of functions and purposes. We explore by asking ourselves ‘What if?‘

World Building is also very fun, and we can have a great time imagining and developing some physical, personal and social landscapes in order to make a certain story work.

Building a new world usually means that we want it to be special and unique.

But sometimes, we have all of these ideas, already seen in other books, series and movies, that makes us doubt if we are indeed writing something new or even good enough. Making us doubt of what we intended to create, and getting us not to put enough time in working out the particulars of that special world.

How to come up with remarkable ideas for our World Building?

Learning about other people’s creative processes might give us a glimpse on how their new ideas came to be. It might help us discovering our own process to invent our own strategies to uncover our imaginative process.

I suggest that you watch the documentary ‘Abstract, the Art of Design’ for a great glimpse of other people’s creative processes.

But, more frequently than not, we see their processes as a confluence of different factors, including their own unique reality and life experiences. And, let’s face it, we can’t replicate that. All we can do is live our own life experiences and use them the best we can.

So, looking to other people’s creative processes teach us an invaluable lesson: Use your beliefs, inner thoughts and fears to create our Story Worlds.

There’s a constant need to look around and analyse how we see the world, how we react in certain situations, what we believe in and how those beliefs have changed over time.

There is great potential here. Not just for the things we would like to advocate in behalf of, while writing our stories, but also looking frankly at our hidden agendas, those thoughts we find uneasy and some of them even shameful.

And then, there is fear.

Fear can be our ultimate telltale sign that we need to work on that through a story. Not as a way to deal with it, even if it could be that, but as a spark of inspiration from which to build upon.

When we are writing Fantasy, being in a dystopian novel for example, we may construct a more believable story if we tap into our own experiences and thoughts.

I guess we all have came into contact some pretty messed up world views, peer pressure, or non-sensical beliefs. We might as well put them under a new light and scrutinise if any of those would fit our story just right.

Building a brand new world is, and cannot be in other way, connected to how we experience the reality we live in.

We may set the action in a far away galaxy, in a totally different body, or even in a totally different existential and corporeal plane, but we all start from the same reality in which we live in.

My father used to say that “all the things that exist are from this world. We cannot invent anything that we hadn’t already seen or experienced in this world.”

I agree with that. We can only reimagine what we have seen or experienced in some way. And all of it came from this world we live in.

We cannot think outside-the-box, if we have no ideia of what exists beyond it’s confinements. For example in sci-fi stories, assuming there could be something existing outside what we know, and having clear notions that there are rules to the functioning of this world in which we live in, we can only extrapolate into how things could be in other worlds.

Initially, we draw inspiration from the knowable in order to build a new world, somehow inventive, by reapplying the old and conveying things in a new format. And then we go deeper into the rabbit whole, if we can. We conjugate different ideas, crisscrossing from distant experiences and knowledges.

It’s not just having some knowledge but learning to recognise it’s potential and integrate it.

We use what we’ve got, specially if it’s a cross between a chihuahua and a fountain pen, or an ugly feeling and an online game, or chicken legs and a house foundations. Any one of these fortuitous connections may give us that idea that will make our story special.

World Building doesn’t mean just physical location. It envolves people, traditions, cultures, belief systems, interactions, associations, objects, daily tasks… all of the things that we experience in our own existences adapted into this new world that we are creating.

Because a martian would never walk like an earthling, would he? Or an addict would never rationalise some random thought in the same way that someone without that particular addiction would.

There are different knowledges to be pursued and other connections to be made between the simplest thing in that particular world. And our job as storytellers is to make those connections if we can.

So on we go into other worlds in order to discover our own.

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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References:

What are you writing next? Who cares?!

who cares

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!

Maybe we can take all of this (world, life, work) as something dense, difficult, hard to accomplish. Or maybe we can declare fu** ** and say to ourselves ‘Who cares?’

To accept the pressure of having to write the next story is daunting. And not just if you are a known author. If you are a newbie, or a somewhat published author, it’s hard to accept the responsibility of having to write a new work.

To keep it in perspective, and for our mental health well-being, maybe we have to put ourselves in a ‘Who cares?’ mindset.

Instead of writing the next plausible and expected story, how about saying fu** ** and start working in a new genre, or an unsuspected book, or a poetry collection, or a biography.

Because, who cares?

Who is going to come to our home and demand us to write this or that? No one. Who is going to wait impatiently for our second book on a series? If we are lucky, maybe a few. Who cares about which work is out first, as long as we keep making them?

What I know for sure is that, if we pressure ourselves into the point of breaking, we will not write another story ever.

So, who cares?

It’s just me. I care about what I write. I give a fu** about what I’ll be writing next. I suffer the pressure I put on myself in an unimaginable way.

So, I must not care about who cares because I care too much and shouldn’t take it as hard on myself.

Having true fun in creating a story (life or body of work) is the only thing that should matter. To keep myself light and calm so that my imagination can do it’s thing, without added pressure.

Problems? They will always be there and I have a choice. Let them swamp me or tell them ‘Who cares?’

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These are some words inspired by Neil Gaiman’s interview in the Tim Ferriss Show. Have you seen it? Did it inspire you to do something? Tell us everything.

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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References: 

Writing a shitty first draft

first draft

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!

Today, I want to talk about shitty first drafts and what it means to cope with first-draft situations.

Yes, because I’m 15 000 words into one of these myself and I’m fretting about it. And, yes. Because I need to find a way to cope with uncertainty so I figured that, maybe so do you.

Or a zero draft, as I heard Kate Cavanaugh from You Tube channel Kate Cavanaugh Writes call it. [Check it out, it’s a good channel to get me inspired for writing and think about writing themes.]

I keep repeating to myself, almost chanting if I’m being honest, that it’s okay to write a shitty first draft.

That I need to put something on the page.

That it doesn’t matter what I write on that first draft because it will be worked on, improved and thoroughly revised.

That without something on the page I have no chance to improve nothing… because there is nothing to improve upon.

[See? I’m almost making a song lyrics out of this. Just need the right tune]

I keep reminding myself of that chapter of ‘Bird by Bird’ by Anne Lamott…

anne lamott shitty first drafts

At least, I know I keep repeating all of that to myself every time I’m in that phase of the process where I need to produce a first draft. And it’s truly alright to write a shitty first draft.

It’s not my first roundabout on first-draft-land. But it’s always tricky to drive in such a bumpy, too large, full of holes road… and it’s a roundabout, so I am to expect some curves and bad angles and some drivers out of their lanes.

I have done this first draft thing in the long format form for six times now.

I’m counting all of my finished novels, including a published one. But I’m not counting any other form of my writings, which all of them took a first-draft phase, including this article I’m currently writing, and that you are currently reading.

Maybe I should consider these also… and, suddenly, my life is made of first-drafts.

This is my seventh first draft and here I am, in overwhelm-land.

It still gets me every time. Six books in and I don’t feel prepared for this part of the process.

It’s like I keep looking for things that aren’t quite worked out yet to keep myself in the overwhelm state. I look at this first draft and wish I could make it perfect… as it is, and knowing very well that there is no such thing as perfect, I’m sustaining the eyes wide open, rapid breathing pattern and in a constant arrhythmia state, ready to flee or pass out (still haven’t decided which one yet).

But I’m not here to complain. Truly, I am not. I’m here to share that this is hard but that I can, and I will persist. And so will you.

After all, I have done it six times already for my novels and a few hundred times for all of my other writing works, like short-stories, poems, blog posts and any sort of creative texts.

I also know that, this too will pass.

I know I’ll end up moving forward, plowing ahead, or tiptoeing around obstacles. Or finding some mental assurances and some strategies to make myself cope with the first-draft situation.

Sometimes coping means:

  • writing my book plans in really big paper sheets. 
  • constructing cards for my characters.
  • writing every scene in a A5 card and have a visual of the story entirety.
  • even writing one version of it by hand in some lame notebook. 
  • enrol in any challenge that makes me forget the thing in itself and make me show up to the work (I am so doing #the100daychallenge that starts in Feb.22).

I’m even considering using the foolscap method, a Steven Pressfield’s suggestion (watch a quick introduction in his Instagram Reels).

Or any other strategy that I feel can help me cope, in this moment, with the uncertainty of it all.

Something like, remind myself why I’m writing this story. Why I’m involved in it. Why my creative path lead me here. And how I felt with a finished book in my hands (not literally).

And maybe get back to the drawing board. To plan my scenes in some way that helps me do this first-draft.

So, I have options. The only option I don’t have is to quit. And neither do you.

I’ll leave you with another inspirational quote:

writing a novel

Just keep driving!

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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References: 

Edit the White Room Syndrome in your writing

white room syndrome

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!

Let’s talk about writing! Let’s talk about the White Room Syndrome.

The White Room Syndrome happens when we are writing a scene and fail to give the details to help the reader imagine what the surroundings of the characters look like.

We start telling the story without giving it a recognisable physical space to live in.

The physical details helps us ground a story. Instead of having the action happening in a nondescript, empty scenery around them, we have the opportunity to bring it to life by sharing a bit of what’s going on outside our characters experience, and how those surroundings may or may not affect them in that scene.

In further analysis, the details we infuse our stories with, may be of specific relevance and representations of themes and points we wish to make with our stories.

We should never neglect the chance to make our narrative more meaningful and choosing some specific details to intertwine in our narrative will achieve this.

Theme and the White Room

It’s not just describing someone’s space, making it speak about the character in itself, or decorating the set so we can feel a more vivid imagery and immersion in the story. It’s using those references to allude to the bigger theme and propelling our story in the way we want it to go.

Not everything has to have a double meaning, or be on theme, but if it’s possible to have double meaning and if it serves a function in the telling of our story, know that she gets better for it.

Describing in the White Room

Description has its objectives and it serves the story, helping to construct a narrative that feels more real. The surroundings can be working with, or against, our characters and thus elevating the story to other levels of artful complexity.

But to capture the scene we have in our head and commit it to paper requires attention to detail. Even if we want our readers to fill in some blanks, and trust me a reader is quite eager to do some of that, we must be careful of leaving too many blanks to fill.

If a reader has difficulty in envision the setting, or if he’s seeing something else entirely from what we thought we had created, then we have incurred in the White Room Syndrome.

But this is only contemplated when we have other people giving feedback or if we can distance ourselves enough from our work to catch these inconsistencies.

Fixing the White Room Syndrome

Answering some simple questions like:

  • What so we want our readers to see in this scene?
  • What are our characters feeling and how can their surroundings reflect that?
  • Which objects or surroundings may enlighten the reader toward the characters inner struggle?
  • Which senses are we using when in that space? (smell, hearing, taste, sight…)

The dangers of Filling the White Room

Be mindful not to over-share information. Those long, boring, uneventful pages of description may be a pain to read and make our readers drop our work as if it burned them. I know I have dropped a few myself.

Over-sharing is a very common mistake and it hurts our story. Nobody wants to sit there and read all about every tiny bric-a-brac in a room… or of a story. Too much detail is as hurtful and no detail at all.

Don’t use random things just because you want to paint a picture so bad that anything would serve this purpose. There are meanings behind most objects, color, ambiences, weather… Don’t use them idly. References will work only if they are respectfully and diligently chosen for some effect.

Avoid the clichés. This is something that is cross-cut in all of it. Avoid a cliché like you would avoid the plague (LOL).

Filling the room with a few well beaten references to some idilic little town, or a creepy old mansion, or using other types of “It was a dark and stormy night” type of descriptions, it’s not very imaginative or advisable… Unless you’re doing an all cliché type of story.

When we need the White Room to do it’s thing

There are certain moments in a narrative that may require a White Room. Like when we want to convey more attention to some character’s internal landscape. To focus on the important is better than to distract our reader with the casual and just there for the word count.

In these moments we might want to shed more light into dialogue, or inner monologue, or sensations, and not so much in what is outside our characters. Describing feelings and thoughts gain the front stage to better tell some part of the story, while their surroundings may fall back.

In conclusion…

The White Room Syndrome is something to tackle on a second draft, when we are on the editing phase of our manuscript. It shouldn’t be considered in the initial stages of creating a writing piece.

Being too worried with this in an earlier stage may damage our writing flow and the ideas we have for the initial draft… which can always be worked on and improved upon, but later in the process.

And it’s one of those things that is here to remind us that art is made of meaningful details added in specific moments, when we are focused on making our writing better and more meaningful.

In our composing efforts we should pay attention to it in order to improve our manuscript. But we shouldn’t let it define us while we are creating a piece.

We have been suffering from the “show don’t tell” and “the cut all the fluff out”, at least I know I have, so it’s normal that we have difficulties in discerning what details to put into our stories. Good editing will solve that.

I’ll leave some outside articles for further reading and reference below.  

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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References: 

Why writing a blog matters?

writing a blog

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!

Let’s talk about writing!… blog writing.

Why should a writer maintain a blog? Why should they deviate from their fiction writing? Why should they waste time in other project than his books?

Having a blog requires us to learn new skills and put them to use. Not just gaining writing skills more adequate to the blog format, but also research skills on our favorite blogging themes, technical skills on a miriade os subjects connected to this format, and other creative mind paths that help us write consistently.

From my personal experience, I stand by every reason I’ll mention bellow, in this article. I have been a witness to them all.

It has been a fun trip – sometimes not so fun but exasperating one – devoting part of my attention to a blog. My Portuguese blog is celebrating its fifteen birthday next month, of regular two/three weekly publications. And my English one has just started and is already teaching me tons about this new blogging world.

It requires a lot of constant work, I give you that. But it gives me such pleasure to have these writing projects always on the move, and feeling that I can share something that might make a difference in other peoples creative lives. There’s no feeling like the one of receiving feedback from one of my articles.

I will leave you some well-known writer’s blogs so you can see for yourself what I am talking about, and what we can do with it: Neil Gaiman; Ursula K. Le Guin; Joanna Penn;

So… why should a writer maintain a blog?

Writing practice…

Practice makes perfect, at least that’s what’s how the saying goes. Blogging requires a constant flux of writing and this is good practice per se, isn’t it?

Nurture Creative Writings

Writing in a different format from the usual fiction, non-fiction or journal practice, nurtures other types of publications. It pushes us to be creative outside our normal writing formats.

Develop our Researching Skills

We learn a lot while we research for blog writing and we can become real experts on our subjects. Also we keep research as a constant practice which allow us to hone our researching skills.

Broadens our Knowledge and Themes

We have a constant incentive to look for writing subjects, making us more attentive to what goes around in our fields. Writing themes get expanded and thoroughly investigated. And it gives us other themes to talk about besides marketing our published works.

Public Exposure

It gives us public exposure, gets new people to know and visit our website, and broadens our like-minded community of people.

Grow our Reading Community

It helps us reach more possible readers for our other works. We have a chance to show ourselves, and with that to captivate more people that might enjoy our fiction and non-fiction writings.

Gives us Access to Readers

It makes us contact with our readers in a more private way. We get to talk about our personal experiences and to connect with readers in a more direct way. If a person subscribe, it allows us to connect with them on a more regular base.

Unravels Opportunities

It gives us beneficial exposure and other opportunities related to our writing career. We show up and talk about our themes, and our books, and our creative work and, sometimes, work opportunities materialize themselves.

Allows for Other Creative Outlet

It serves as another creative outlet for those of us that like to create in different areas. We get to work on blog writing and on creating content that may be very different from our usual creative pursuits.

Serves as a Life Journal

Sometimes it serves as a journal for our own writing life, or other life experiences. Getting other ideas for what comes next, while sharing some experience with our readers is very common. We use it to work out some of the kinks of some creative projects. We use it as a tool to unwind some concepts about a theme. We use it to share our progress or digress from our plans and goals.

It’s an Outlet of sorts

It can be an outlet when things get tough in the big writing business. We get to talk about what’s bothering us, or about what options there are, or about how we are coping with something. And maybe we find someone that relates to our experience.

Eleven reasons why a writing a blog matters.

And these are just for us, writers. Because if I look at it from the readers perspective, I’m sure I’ll be finding many more.

We are writers because we write, and we may love to write in different formats. I know I do.

We have good examples of this by creatives that wrote on different formats that the usual book. We have letter writers, e-mail writers, list writers, bullet journal writers, song writers, poetry writers…

Having also worked on some blog writings, transforming them into book format, I tell you there are a lot of seeds dwindling in our blog writings that can be properly cared for in other formats.

So, blog writing also gives us seeds for growing new works… 

What do you feel about blogging? Or vlogging? Or other writing formats? What do you favor most?

Do you have a blog waiting to be put into a book format? Talk to me!

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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I have a gift for you: The Plan Your Creative Year Workbook for 2023

Plan Your Creative Year Workbook for 2023

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog.

I have been working on some creative projects, and trying to find a better way to plan this year’s writing efforts, as I’ve been sharing with you on the previous blog post…

One of the Creative Projects I have been working on is this Plan Your Creative Year Workbook for 2023, that you can download for free here…[No dropbox account is needed]

Usually, around this time of the year I do some planning of the year ahead. Gathering some creative projects to work on, in the first months of the new year, and trying to envision what the big picture for the year can be, while I expand on these projects throughout the year and for the following years as well.

All of these plans are flexible enough to allow changes.

And what does this mean? I plan some creative endeavours and I leave space to introduce new one’s during the year. Which I usually do anyway so I might as well leave space for them.

I keep checking in with my initial plans and its iterations, sometimes on a weekly basis. And this year I’ll be using this Workbook to do it.

I will be upfront with you: not all check in’s are productive. Sometimes, I keep analysing if I was on track only to find out that I wasn’t. Not really. Not if I want to make a significant improvement on my creative practices… but this is another subject altogether.

But these efforts are indeed repeated periodically, as I try to expand for longer spreads of time. Formulating SMART Goals is hard and sometimes fear set’s in and tries to overcome all my efforts.

So, this year I created something, a small Workbook with some work tools for planning my creative projects in 2023.

As I have written in the Creative Contents Page:

workbook

In accordance with my Annual Word for 2023 [EMPOWER] I figured I should share with you this workbook. To empower is also to promote better practices for others, not just myself, so I’ll be true to my annual choice of word.

This is my New Year’s gift to you: the Plan You Creative Year Workbook for 2023.

I hope you find the Plan Your Creative Year Workbook for 2023 useful and leave a comment if you do… or don’t, and what I can improve upon.

Again, this is the link for the free download… [No dropbox account is needed to download it] Enjoy!

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Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

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