A WRITER'S YEAR: Daily Insights, Challenges, and Inspirations for the Devout Writer

By Sally J. Walker

A WRITER’S YEAR presents 365 mini-essays—one for each day of the year--intended to inform, motivate, and inspire any creative writer to rethink their own creative process and, perhaps, find a new direction. Topics covered include idea development, turning the mundane into story detail, evolving story events and fictional characters f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Academy Elite
• Release date: Aug 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781640858022

Book preview

January

January 1

How to Have a Fulfilling Year as a Writer

Just like loving, writing is its own reward so . . . consider the power of D-P-E: Dreaming . . . as in brainstorming, running with an idea thought-association-after-thought-association. Let your imagination run rampant. Glory in the experience of images, emotion, character, story.

Planning . . . as in set a goal for a specific date. Check your calendar for demands between now and that date. Now, break your project into do-able increments between now and your target date.

Executing . . . as in apply your rear to the chair and do the work. Commit to it. Make it a priority. Wallow in the joy of creation. Write your material that no one else can! Give that piece of yourself to the world!

Believe me, Writer, your heart will sing and your soul will be lifted. Just like loving, writing is its own reward.

January 2

The Art of Day Dreaming

Savor the relaxing yet writer-friendly joy of Day Dreaming. I mean letting your waking mind take off on a What If journey. Envision possibilities. Imagine the sensations. Focus on the images washing across your mind. Don’t worry about putting it down in words. Merely close your eyes and enjoy.

If you get in the habit of doing this at a regular time and place, you will find your imagination primed and ready to work when you return to the reality of your moment. You don’t need a comfy chair, couch or bed. You don’t need absolute quiet and isolation. All you need is awareness of your own imagination. The human mind is a wondrous tool. Use it to optimize your creativity.

WARNING: Do not take these Flights of Fancy when driving or talking to an important person like boss or significant other. You will regret rather than enjoy the results.

January 3

Writing as Mental Therapy

Is writing a form of mental therapy? I have written material that I think definitely relieved mental stress. I’ve had characters say and do things I couldn’t or wouldn’t. They had the courage or opportunity I lacked in the real world. I have written material where real circumstances were changed so things turned out the way I wanted . . . instead of how it really happened when I felt impotent, ill-prepared, embarrassed, lonely or inadequate.

Sometimes I felt better for the writing and sometimes I laughed at myself. Ultimately, I do think I have unloaded a lot of baggage and been able to appreciate possibilities. Yep, my imaginings and my interpretations of life and people have given my life a joyful jolt every once in a while.

January 4

Collecting Characters from Around You

Some Creatives are haunted and mentally chased by characters wanting attention and others moan and groan because they simply cannot envision a character. Play the I see you as . . . Game and you will never lack for interesting people.

This game is based on the concept of Write what you know. You know family members, your peers, the people you do business with routinely, the people you went to school with or were taught by . . . and the list goes on. Remember those writers who make up stories about the pilot and the flight attendant getting on the plane they are waiting and waiting and waiting to board? Yep, that’s how it works, only this time you take the lump of clay that is a personality you know and you begin to shape someone thrown into the story (or experiencing a poem) you are creating.

You take the known factors of personality you have encountered in real life, tweak the appearance to better fit your imagining then begin to discover this new character based on someone well-seated already in your mind. Give this character challenges and envision how the person you know would react. Your archive of characters is suddenly limitless.

NOTE: Meticulously change things the real person would readily recognize or you might find yourself pinned in a corner someday sputtering an explanation of how you thought it would be funny or complimentary or a contrast. You supply the complaint and your feeble reason.

January 5

An Exercise in Unexpected Characterization

Break the mold of expectation. Go crazy. Try writing a page of mental ranting by a person who is your total opposite. You are a control-freak, calm and hard working . . . so write the meanderings of a ditzy teenager thrown into a crisis of some sort and unable to cope. OR you are a person who grows calmer the more everyone else freaks out, so write about someone thinking about physical retaliation. You are a young, depressed male so write about a bubbly, accomplished octogenarian who anticipates her first demonstration to save the trees!

In other words, put yourself into the skin and mind of someone you could never be and see what happens!

January 6

Using Change and Jeopardy in Storytelling

Change and jeopardy. There are two vital words for every single writer in any genre. Or rather for any writer who truly wants to appeal to the imagination of readers of any genre, any format. Static life is boring and predictable. Change challenges any animal to cope, thus to survive. Any animal, but especially the human variety who must apply brain cell energy to figure out how to survive.

But then you create change that truly jeopardizes that survival and you have a story about a character a reader can worry about. Yep, you need to analyze the eventful changes you create in your storytelling which will jeopardize the survival of some aspect of the character encountering that challenge. Some aspect could be a cherished memory or self image or family placement or the usual seat at the company meeting or another’s respect or damage to a valued object. Change and jeopardy.

January 7

Don’t Ask Yourself Stupid Questions

Age-old question: Does a tree make a sound when it falls if there is no person or animal to hear it?

I consider this a silly question because of the laws of physics, etc. but, am I a writer if no one wants to read the words I’ve strung together? Am I a storyteller if no one listens, a poet if no one connects with my images, a romance writer if the alpha males scoff, a problem solver who cannot resolve the problem? See how ridiculous doubts can run amuck?

You are whatever you believe you are in your soul. So just get on with it and get the blasted thing written!

January 8

Time as a Creative Tool

The March of Time makes me shiver. The seconds tick by. My heart beats. My mind spews words. My body does its own thing. People expect this or that of me. I set up expectations of this and that of me. Exactly what can I realistically do that will mean or change anything?

Cleaning the ever present messy house, laundering then orderly hiding away of clothes, eating (or not eating) certain foods, sleeping comfortably . . . carefully figuring out where to spend money so there is enough. Those things occupy the March of Time but just aren’t enough.

Nope, I gotta imagine and create something that didn’t exist before. Yep, I have to giggle and skip around the March of Time with an imagination run amuck. My God! I’m shivering for the sheer joy of that, not because I’m worried about it! Amazing!

January 9

Researching a New Skill

Ever envied the work or skills demonstrated by another person? What are you waiting for?

Do an Internet search for job or skill and spend fifteen minutes finding out something about that occupation or skill you didn’t know! Curiosity is what makes our complex world so fascinating. Don’t just wonder. Find out! You just might learn something you could incorporate into your next story!

When I do Kid Talks I tell them Being a writer is like being a student the rest of your life . . . but it’s not work. Nobody is going to test you. I have seen more than one set of bright eyes widen with comprehension.

When you discover something you didn’t know before, only you have expectations of satisfying your curiosity. And from that knowledge you can make the mental leap to creating around whatever you just discovered! You are indeed feeding your imagination!

January 10

Awestruck by Faceless People

I am surrounded by a crushing number of things made by a mind-boggling number of faceless people. (One has to watch How It’s Made on cable or Connections to truly appreciate this.) Electrical equipment produced on an assembly line somewhere, paper that started as a tree cut down by lumbermen, trucked by grumbling drivers to a plant where workers perform their routine jobs for a paycheck . . . and not a one ever knew (or cared) their handiwork would end up in my printer. The wire rim of my glasses. The artwork on a book cover. The file cabinets. The artificial flowers (with a tag reading Made in China).

Geesh, look at all the people who haunt my office . . . and never imagined they would touch my life. I’m in awe.

January 11

"How Photos and Paintings can

Impact a Writer’s Heart"

It hurt to look at that picture in a photo-journalist’s book on display at the book store. The longer I looked and frowned and tried to figure out why I felt so stricken, the greater my discomfort.

And it wasn’t the first time a visual image captured or created by someone else had sucked me in to live that moment, too. Photos of the 9/11 Twin Tower disaster workers, of numb Native American children long ago in a proper school far from their land and family, of an orphaned foal nuzzling a dead mare’s body, of a deteriorating ghost town under Nature’s assault. Paintings of a battered body just . . . hanging there, of a pastoral scene reflecting a moment of sheer perfection, of an amphitheater surgery with avid students leaning forward hungry to understand how the human body works, of a disconsolate Confederate soldier weeping beside a gory battlefield . . . and the list goes on and on.

Why do these frozen images reach into my chest and twist my heart until I can hardly breathe? I think it is because I am a Creative, one of those too few people whose imaginations can see and ask What if . . . .

January 12

Animals are Essentially Lazy!

Watching the video feed of the camera on a watering hole in Africa I came to a startling realization. Animals are inherently lazy! They want to exist expending the least amount of energy. "Well, duh!" Instinct demands they look for food, water, protection from threatening environment, that willing mate.

So, as human animals are we so different from those creatures in the wild? Don’t we seek to provide comfortable surroundings and savor those times when we can simply exist? Example: We enjoy going out to eat because we don’t have to cook then clean up after the meal. We enjoy a tidy environment (and this is totally up to each person’s interpretation of the concept tidy) because we know our things are available and ready for use when needed. In disorder and chaos, we have to expend energy searching. Think about tax time if you need a concrete example to slot in there.

So, as a writer, what disrupts your fictional character’s comfort level?

January 13

A Philosophy on Reading Other Writers

Does reading someone else’s writing corrupt your own efforts? I think this is a concept that niggles at some Creatives. I’m not one of them. Nope, reading fuels my imagination with what I want to do, feel, see, be. I don’t want to emulate, not in character, plot, image or even word order. When I read (poetry, novel or screenplay) I give myself over to experiencing what that writer created. My mind lives the experience that other writer created. Yes, it is a form of escaping my real world, a letting go of my real world. And, because I let go of my reality, I cannot possibly steal that other Creative’s imaginings. I cannot incorporate their work into my reality.

That’s what imaginings are to me: each writer’s version of reality. So what I read is . . . their rendition and what I write is mine.

January 14

Wishing Can Create

When was the last time you did something so childishly simple as wish upon a star? The innocence of childhood is not knowing the reality of consequences, but finding joy in the imagining of wonderful possibilities. Think about the short-short story of The Little Match Girl. She was freezing to death and all she had were the matches she’d been trying to sell. So, she lit each one and in the flames saw what she wanted most: a cozy family gathering, people well fed, well-loved and warm. In the morning the tiny girl was found frozen to death with a lovely smile on her face. But is that a truly sad story . . . or is it one of wondrous hope that our human imaginations can create happiness?

January 15

How to Counter Negative Frustration

When does frustration shut you down mentally, emotionally, spiritually? I have found that persistent negative bombardment creates that state within me. Negative, perpetually needy people who just cannot grasp that they can change how they respond to the world . . . thus change their perceptions, their reactions and ultimately their day-to-day problems. Negative, perpetually self-serving, socially destructive ways of life such as gang warfare or drunk driving. Negative, perpetually oppressive news of human failure to work with Nature instead of defying Nature, such as building a home on a known flood plain routinely flooded causing horrified reactions.

The pattern I have identified is that these are negative situations I cannot personally change. My sense of helplessness creates frustration. When I take in more and more negative information, my awareness, my empathy screams What are you doing, people? Can’t you see how you are corrupting your own life powers?

That realization is my turning point toward my own positive powers. As a Creative I can create characters and situations to counter all those negatives. I can imagine and tell a story where the experiences are forced into a positive reaction within the character and in that social situation. I can offer answers and solutions thus crawl out of frustration and helplessness. Some may say that is escapist reasoning. I call it creative empowerment.

January 16

The Power of Words and Language

Language and the ability to communicate with those words are truly our tools of power in this time we live in. As writers we have to be focused on honing our skills will grammar, vocabulary, and vivid nuance . . . every time we use language to express our thoughts.

I speak limited Spanish yet am humbled when I communicate in simple polite terms with a hotel worker who glows with joy that I have learned his language. I would love to learn French, German, Japanese, a touch of Russian . . . but know that is unrealistic for I have other language obligations. I am committed to translating my imaginings, my characters, my stories, my poetic thought associations into words. I want those words to be absorbed into my reader’s mind then into the soul. I want immortality . . . not of my creation but of the spirit of my creation. Thus I am hard at work every single day trying to hone my skill with words.

I read.

I research.

I contemplate.

I compare.

I imagine.

I live what I write through carefully chosen words.

January 17

Managing Time

Time management in our world is a big issue. Busy-ness overwhelms us in our society.

High achievers and winning are lauded as well as the intensity, the focus of those people willing to do the work to accomplish their goals, be they athletes, students or worker bees in industry.

How do you perceive your approach to day-to-day living? Do you enjoy the pressure of many demands, setting priorities, pushing yourself to the limits of your ability then beyond? Or do you yearn for relief from all that stress? Do you want to do one thing but give in to someone else’s demands instead? Or do you seek quiet down time to just think and feel, scoffing at those who call that laziness?

The first step to gaining control of time is recognizing the realities of what you want, what you can do, what will feed your self-worth, and acting on the willingness to change how you gather your life forces and how you expend your energy.

Change how you think, how you choose to feel, and how you drive yourself to be happy. No one else is going to care about your internal awareness and external results. The one person who values your life the most is you. How do you want to occupy your moments in this life?

I want to #1 show my love and appreciation for the people I am blessed to encounter and #2 I want to write. Today I will manage my time to accomplish both goals.

January 18

Harnessing the Human Brain

Physicians once reasoned blood carried all the disease-causing elements of life so they bled sick patients. The world was believed to be flat and the sun rotated around the earth . . . on and on. Archeologists dig into the past seeking the why’s of ancient civilizations, geologists investigate how the earth physically evolved . . . on and on. We’ve discovered head colds are caused by not one but many viruses and we’ve discovered that viruses (and bacteria) can mutate rendering certain antibiotics and medicines worthless against particular strains. Reasoning and research are the foundations of our hope to solve the world’s problems . . . yet will we ever understand everything?

I don’t see any knowledge as wasted, even if some has no practical purpose in one’s life. Knowledge is power because it is the springboard toward new, logical discoveries. We recognize a concept as flawed then accept another one as fact and begin the problem-solving journey of cause-effect.

School children in our society learn the Scientific Method as a means of problem-solving and discovery. As intelligent people we are trained to not merely accept information but to question how conclusions were achieved. What evidence do you have to prove your point? And then each of us is empowered with the mental capacity to think about that evidence and that conclusion. Do we accept or reject it? The mental race is on! Maturity is the awareness of consequences and the appreciation of that old adage The more you know, the more you discover you don’t know. How exciting!

January 19

Learning to Think for One’s Self

Eons ago I took a required Ethics class and spent weeks listening to lectures and reading material about What do the terms ‘good’ and ‘right’ and ‘truth’ mean in this life? Students were challenged to consider many points of view. Ultimately, I came out of the philosophy course understanding just how relative those concepts are. There is no one absolute, though lots of people will try their hardest to convince you otherwise. Every human is challenged to think about goodness, rightness and even truth in every circumstance. Why? Because we constantly encounter exceptions, times and circumstances when acting in good faith resulted in evil consequences, when holding fast to one ideal of right may do more harm than help, when a believed truth can be proven later to be false.

So how does one decide? When is this person good and that one evil, this action right and that one wrong, this statement truth and that one false? The thought-provoking conclusion of the course was that one must think and consider all available data before coming to a decision for one’s self . . . then have the courage to act upon that conclusion and accept the consequences of the outcome. Each person is responsible for themselves.

Pretty weighty, huh? But what a sense of freedom that awareness gives a writer when creating characters in fictional circumstances! The antagonists do not consider themselves evil, merely right . . . just as the good guy can make a flawed decision, suffer for it and come out stronger in the end. What incredible diversity and opportunity each writer has available in their own storytelling arsenal to demonstrate life lessons.

January 20

Characterizing through Colors

Have you ever assigned colors to people or moods? Visuals artists are taught how colors can influence the beholder’s concept. We are told that blues and greens are cool colors, while earth tones are warm. Do you associate red with anger? In one of my psychology courses I read that violent behavior in a high-security prison had a documented decrease when the gray walls were painted a salmon pink.

What is your favorite color? How do you feel when you wear clothing in your favorite color . . . or see someone else in your favorite color? Are there certain colors that prick your temper or tolerance? Do you USE color in your descriptions merely as filler or are you meticulous about shades and variations? Do you use color as a metaphor, a hint to the reader to formulate a mood? Some people truly enjoy the changing of the seasons and revel in the variations of rampant color peculiar to each. Others mentally associate certain colors with certain holidays. Even foods have color associations.

So what color is your mood today?

January 21

Writing for Content and Intent

Writers hope to appear intelligent, thoughtful and careful in their writing, even those who do not plan but merely let their words flow. I’m a planner and do not understand the flow of consciousness writer. Why? Because of two words that I consider important to the essence of any of my writing: content and intent.

To me, content is the obvious meaning, the surface image of the description, action, dialogue.

Intent is then message, aura, innuendo the reader thought associates. Staccato, rapid-fire images or exchange of words may have the content of the character quickly noting surroundings or argumentative points being made by the speakers. However, the intent is to make the reader feel tense. At the other content extreme is the lush, descriptive paragraph or a character speaking in long sentences of reasoning or explanation. The intent is to soothe the reader, perhaps to make them comfortable in the scene or to allow time to consider information.

When I complete a scene (or a poem), I read it aloud to assess that my content is absolutely clear. Then I read it in silence to assess if my intent was effective. Content plays to the mind, but more often than not, intent plays to emotions. At least, that’s how it works for me.

January 22

Using Time to Your Advantage

The essence of forced writing is setting a time limit for X-number of words. There are personalities who balk at the very idea and even shut down. That is like young people who are great learners but lousy test takers. The concept of demand performance frightens them to the point they can’t concentrate.

The solution is to focus on one component at a time in the writing or the test. Pick a generality to envision. Let your mind focus on that general concept then turn your thoughts to a specific part of the concept. Formulate a question and think about how to answer that question.

Make a list of possibilities, possible answers, possible solution methods. Pick the most likely factor to solve the story challenge or the test problem. Now, do the work!

Now look at how much time that whole process took. Next time focus a little harder. Force yourself to think about just this concept then just the applications pertinent to this concept. And so on. You give your mind the freedom to search for possible answers and ignore what won’t work. Irrelevant images, concepts, information are blocked.

So when I write, I first look at the clock then consider what I want to accomplish in the time I have allotted to write. Then I focus on how I will achieve that goal, pick what excites me, and I do it! This isn’t an obsessive or anal approach for me. This process of forcing myself to focus allows me to immerse my mind in the writing and block everything else.

January 23

The Memories of Scents

Have you ever absorbed a scent that settled into your memory banks and later when you inhaled that same scent, your mind vividly recalled that place, that person, that circumstance? If so, how would you describe that scent and the vivid memory to another person?

I believe scent to be the one sensation that is the most difficult for a writer to describe. A skunk smells like . . . a skunk. A wet dog smells like . . . a wet dog. Onion, garlic, sage, cinnamon, baby powder, roses. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

And taste and smell are closely linked. When you have a head cold with sinus congestion, how well can you taste? This is a mystery and an incredible challenge in precision for a writer.

I have no solution. I will just tell you I head for my Thesaurus and I use a lot of metaphors and similes. Sometimes a smell is just . . . what it is.

January 24

Cloud Imagery

After seeing video footage of the snowy Himalayas poking up through rolling clouds, I got to thinking . . .

I enjoy cloud-watching, especially in the spring and summer with the big thick clouds shifting and changing shapes and reflecting the sun at sunrise or sunset. They are like spirits or entities of their own, playing in the wind.

Two extremely vivid experiences I remember related to clouds are complete opposites: I was on a night flight from Minneapolis to Omaha in the full moon with the plane at altitude above the bubbly, lumps of cloud cover. It was a surreal wonderland and made me feel totally cut off from earth. The second experience was the image of the low clouds hitting up against the far side of the rugged Sandia peaks east of Albuquerque, then sliding, filtering over the tops and fingering down the mountainside, filling in the crevices and narrow valleys. My mind saw those clouds as something living that was spreading down to devour everything in its pathway. As chilling as that impression was, I also felt awestruck that something as thin and weightless as clouds could appear so determined to cover and conquer the land.

Can’t our imaginations do wonderful things with Nature’s images?

January 25

Getting Lost in the Written Word

Have you ever been so mentally and emotionally involved in a story (your own or something you are reading) that everything else around you is a rude intrusion? You have to stop to answer the phone or serve a meal or answer a question or go to some appointment . . . and all the while you can’t wait to get back to that story!

I have been that involved in both my own stories and something I’m reading. When the thing is finished that euphoric attachment lingered. I didn’t want the story to be over. I still wanted to experience life with those characters. And I always felt a sense of disappointment that the real world had returned.

That level of involvement has not happened with everything I’ve written and certainly not with everything I’ve read. I’m not sure if I would want it to. Wouldn’t that intensity become expected and taken for granted if it happened every time I wrote or read? Wouldn’t that special awe turn into common place acceptance if I felt it every time? The very fact that it is a rare phenomenon for me makes it a magic to be sought, don’t you think?

January 26

Word Usage: Lose & Loose, Affect & Effect

I believe whole-heartedly in precision of word usage. On the edge of the shelf above my computer I have a little note that reads: Loose change is easy to lose. Today I choose. Yesterday I chose.

A Lexicon is a reference for word usage. I just purchased a little book by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries, 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses & Misuses. Sounds like a good idea, right? But here is the essence of what is says about affect and effect:

Affect

Verb: 1) To put on a false show, 2) To influence

Noun: Emotion

Effect

Verb: To bring about or execute

Noun: A result.

Okay. That sounds definitive, but here’s the kicker: "Using effect in the sentence