Monkeys, Jackasses and Wispy Mist

In her blog post, “Jackasses & Monkeys – Inner demons of writing,” Carol Bodensteiner reveals that her inner writing demons take the form of monkeys. She expresses relief on learning that others, such as Kimberly  Brock, have similar problems. In my opinion, Kimberly’s challenge is worse. She is beset by Jackasses.

Carol invited readers to share their experiences. I also have demons, as I believe we all do. Like Carol, I battle monkeys, described by Zen masters as Monkey Mind. My monkeys are different from Carol’s. Mine swing through the trees at random, taking my thoughts along with them, rendering me incapable of staying focused. They dangle distractions, and they're a hindrance all the time, not just while writing.

Look this up NOW! Right NOW! one shouts while I'm unloading the dishwasher or chopping celery for salad. When the monkey shouts, I enter a state of paralyzing need to obey. I crave the closure of filling that gap. Sometimes I return to chopping celery, but laundry may remain unfolded for days, a blog post unfinished for ... maybe ever.

Jackasses? I’ve known a few of those, but they don’t live in my head. For me the voices Kimberly attributes to jackasses are more subtle and indirect. Much harder to quantify. Mine are formless entities. They whisper from wisps of mist. "It's not good enough. It's shallow," they whisper. But wait. I reread my work and it is shallow. It isn’t ready for print. Those critical voices protect me. They drive me to more research on craft, to yet another round of edits. My whispering wisps protect me. I cherish them.

Tips for silencing monkeys, jackasses and wispy mist

1. Talk to them – ask them for their advice. If they tell you to work on your craft, they speak true. Heed them. If they tell you you’ll never succeed, you’ll never be good enough … tell them firmly to zip their lips and stuff them into their crates.
2. Talk to others – like Carol Bodensteiner, you may find it a huge relief to compare notes with fellow writers and learn that they battle the same demons. Compare notes on coping strategies.
3. Write stories about them – especially stories that poke fun at them. Write yourself as the shero of your own story (or hero, as the case may be). Have fun with these stories. Be silly, be bold, be outrageous. Smash and bash away.
4. Feed them cookies and make friends – because they can be helpful, as mine have turned out to be. Just don’t eat the cookies yourself. It is not true that writing success is directly proportional to body mass.
5. Call their bluffs – by succeeding in spite of them and yourself. Just write. And edit. And get lots of feedback. And then publish or share your work with legions of others. Those critters will get the message.

Write now: write a story about your inner demons. What form do they take? What do they sound like? How have you dealt with them? If you haven’t yet neutralized or harnessed their power, imagine that you have and write about that. Post your story in a comment or email me a copy. I’d love to read it.

Breathe Life Into Stories

Your story seems flat. You knew that even before writing group members confirmed your suspicion. You’ve been working on descriptions. You’ve double-checked details to be sure give readers have a clear picture of the situation.

You’ve scattered plenty of sensory description through your story, without clumping it or making it sound like you used a checklist. It still seems flat and shallow. How can you make it pop off the page? What magic will breathe life into it and connect with readers?

A clue to a solution lies in this excerpt from a scene in Dinty Moore’s memoir, The Accidental Buddhist, where Moore is being exposed to the ancient art of meditation in a Buddhist monastery:

… I turn out to have a particularly unrelenting monkey. He not only swings from tree to tree, he rips off big green leaves and chatters at the top of his monkey lungs, an angry baboon somehow set loose in an espresso bar.

Zen students will immediately recognize this monkey as a metaphor for the state of Moore’s mind. That metaphor brings mental chaos into focus as something tangible, something we can see and hear, and at least imagine touching and smelling.

Moore’s static image of  sitting zazen on a zafu* snaps to life with this metaphor. I hope he will forgive me for taking the liberty of publicly imagining how he might have initially written the thought in that paragraph:

… I have a terrible case of monkey mind. I can’t stay focused on anything for longer than a second….

That simple statement would suffice to describe the situation, but it leaves me yawning and my monkey mind swings into another tree, maybe to find coconuts to lob at his. In the completed version, his napkin sketch image has become a mind movie with depth and dimension as the monkey swings from tree to tree, rips leaves and chatters.

Some simpler examples:

Her eyes were lively.	Her eyes sparkled.
The scene was picturesque.	Hundred-foot oaks and maples stood guard behind the cabin, wildflowers dotted the meadow, and …
The scent of wild roses was in the air.	Wild roses wafted scent through the air.

The first two examples above use a form of “to be” to link to an adjective describing the subject. In the third example, “in the air” is an participial phrase that tells where the scent was. Don’t worry about remembering that term. The important thing is that functionally the phrase gives additional information about the subject without imparting any sense of vitality.

Using a “be” verb this way is grammatically correct and adds variety in sentence structure, but this wording has a calming effect. Switching to an active verb, as the second column shows, is one of the many ways to liven up your language.

Keep an eye out for was, were, and related forms that link to subject modifiers, and replace them with stronger verbs and additional details when appropriate.

Write now: Review a story you wrote and underline each place you use a verb that links to an adjective or other subject modifier. Circle each active linking verb (smells, feels, proves …). Rewrite the other sentences to include some motion or sense of action.

*Standard usage puts foreign words in italics. Adding the English translation immediately after the italicized term is optional. Whichever form you choose, be consistent throughout your story.

Write Like Nobody Will Read

Dance like nobody’s watching,
Write like nobody will read.

These words darted into my monkey mind as I gazed at Christmas lights, thinking back to high school days when folk dancing was a favorite activity. A motley mixture of adults and teenagers gathered each week at the Rec Hall for a medley of line and couples’ dances from many nations. College kids home for Christmas made holiday dances especially festive.

There were never any lessons – you just picked the dances up as you went, with occasional pointers from old-timers. Any athletic ability in our family went to my sister and brother. I was one of those kids always picked last for whatever team was forming in P.E., so, although I loved the music and the dancing, I was never a picture of grace. On some level I knew this, but put it out of  mind. I was having fun. At least until the night Kelly gave me some startling advice.

“Quit trying to make like a ballerina,” she said with a sneer. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look?”

Ouch! Where’s the nearest hole? I fled to the ladies’ room to do battle with my Inner Critic.

Kelly was a couple of years older than I and home on break from college. She had studied ballet practically all her life, and she was good enough to turn pro. Undoubtedly watching my awkward attempts was painful for her, and tact had never been her strong suit. Perhaps she meant well, but her words stung. Fortunately she disappeared back to school, and I soon got over the humiliation and enjoyed dancing as much as ever, perhaps more.

I didn’t discount her message. After thinking it through, I did begin to relax into the music more, and seemed to move a bit more fluidly. If I was still a little awkward, so what? It didn’t seem to bother anyone but Kelly. We were there for the joy of dancing, not to put on a performance, and in general we were an accepting group.

Today as I recalled that horrific moment, I made the obvious connection to writing. There was a time when my writing was almost as awkward as my dancing. I have drafts of two short stories I wrote in 1978. They are utterly dreadful! I keep them as benchmarks for measuring progress. When I went to college I fell away from folk dancing, so I’ve had little opportunity to refine those skills. But I have continued writing for over thirty years now, and with lots of feedback, study and practice, I’ve made progress.

Today I often dance at home alone. I dance because I love to dance. I dance like nobody is watching, which is easy, because they aren’t. I write the same way. I write thousands of words nobody will ever see for every hundred I share. Maybe if I took up folk dancing again, I’d do better at it for all the private practice.

My advice for you: Forget the Kelly’s in life. Dance like nobody’s watching and write like nobody will read. If a Kelly wanders in, look for what you can learn and forget the rest.

Write now: about a Kelly experience in your life. How did you react? Did you shut down or keep slogging away? What did you learn then? What can you learn now for revisiting the event?

Image credit: Brendan Lally

One Memory (Link) Leads to Another

Not long ago I discovered Write Your Life, written by Seniorwriter, aka Marlys Marshall Styne. (I just added her site to my Links list.) The post I landed on, Teddy Turns Fifty, was about a teddy bear she bought as a gift for her newborn niece, Cynthia. Cynthia and Teddy just passed the half-century mark.

The post is delightful, and so are the comments. One comment mentioned what appeared to be a pile of diapers behind a shoulder. Seniorwriter replied, “Yes, Karen, I imagine that is, indeed, a stack of cloth diapers. I don't suppose that any other kind existed back then.”

My monkey mind hopped from that comment to a personal memory about disposable diapers. I had extensive experience with cloth diapers at an early age. I was eleven years old when my baby brother was born, so I was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of changing, rinsing the messes in the toilet, washing, hanging the wet rags on the clothesline to dry, then folding them. Changing diapers can’t be avoided, but the rest of that routine was a nasty drag to be avoided whenever possible! Not long before our first child was born, I heard of disposable diapers, and found the idea tantalizingly attractive.

Our first son was born in Boston in 1966, and the day he turned four weeks old, he and I boarded a plane to fly to Philadelphia as the first leg of an adventurous trip we would undertake as we relocated from Boston to Richland, Washington. Using cloth diapers his first four weeks were easy, thanks to a generous gift of diaper service from a compassionate grandmother. The fifth week was also easy, with Grandmother’s washing machine and dryer at hand.

Realizing that cloth diapers would be a problem during the drive across the country, Hubby and I searched stores around South Jersey for disposable diapers. Both selection and stock were meager, but we found enough to serve the purpose. The day he was five weeks old, we hit the road, with Baby happily ensconced in a folding canvas car bed/bassinet in the back seat. He was no problem at all on the long drive. When he was hungry, he joined Mommy in the front seat for a soothing swig of milk while Daddy drove. How simple! (How do parents manage to get anywhere today when children must be anchored firmly in the back seat at all times when the car is moving?)

Diapers weren’t a problem on the road. I could easily change them while kneeling backward on my seat. They became a problem the evening we spent in Omaha. Fortunately, we had nearly finished eating our dinner in a family restaurant near our motel when our wee tyke answered an exceedingly urgent call from Nature. I’ll spare you the details, other than to mention that the disposable diaper he was wearing might as well not have been there. Suffice it to say that I grabbed him, Infantseat and all, and ran to the car while Daddy paid the bill. We went straight back to the motel where Baby had a bath. When he was asleep in his car bed, I hand-washed all his clothing and blanket, and scrubbed the plastic Infantseat shell and liner. (That infant seat, baby carrier of choice in the 1960s and 70s for cars and everywhere else, appears in the photo.)

Even if cost hadn’t been a factor, this single experience was sufficient to allay any temptation to bypass the washing machine. My rinsing, soaking, washing and folding expertise came into play. Thank goodness, my dryer was a welcome change, and I didn't have to deal with a clothesline.

Isn’t it funny how reading one little thing like that comment, or seeing one seemingly insignificant detail in a photo can bring back a gush of memories? I could go on for pages with other diaper stories. I share this snip of one in hopes it will trigger similar memories for you — that one memory link will lead to another.

Write now: memories of diaper-related experiences, whether they be with your own children, children of friends or relatives, children you babysat for, or anyone else. Let the memories go where they will — potty training, washing clothes, hanging them on the clothes line, types of diapers, diaper-changing avoidance, etc.
Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Real Writing Versus Virtual

Don’t panic. The writing world as you’ve known it is not ending. Pencils, paper and keyboards will be around for ages to come, but today I want to pull aside the curtain on a writing tool you’ve probably used forever, but never thought about: virtual writing.

I can’t remember the first time I heard of the study where a coach divided basketball players into three groups, but I think it was at least twenty-five years ago. He had one group practice shooting 100 baskets a day for a period of time. Another group didn't touch a ball, but visualized sinking 100 perfect baskets, and a third group did neither. It was no surprise that the performance of the last group suffered, but it was a surprise that the players who simply visualized did better than those who threw balls.

In Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, author Sharon Begley details numerous similar studies neuroscientists have conducted to further explore this phenomenon. The evidence is conclusive: merely visualizing actions strengthens motor skills. (Don’t get the idea you can train for a marathon while you lie on a couch visualizing. These results addressed dexterity, not strength or endurance.)

As I stood in the shower recently, I was cogitating evocative ways of describing a certain memory. I wanted to go beyond the standard, “It smelled delicious.” I wanted to convey the sense of intense delight and wonder the remembered fragrance induced. In one sense the shower was limiting, because I didn’t have thesaurus.com available to pave the way, but in another it was liberating. I was freed from the need for speed I generally feel as I sit at my keyboard. There was no need to “write it and be done.”

My monkey mind soon leapt into the fray, reminding me of a joke that includes the line “everything makes me think about women.” I realized that I could substitute writing for women. Everything makes me think about writing and how to best convey an experience or impression in words.

Then my monkey swung off to the next branch: honing wording in the shower is the writer’s equivalent of visualizing a perfect basket. Score one for the monkey!

Finally, my monkey handed me a banana that I share here with you: many aspiring (lifestory) writers, for one reason or another, feel guilty or stressed about not writing more often or every day. If you are one of these people, give yourself a break. Instead of beating yourself up about being too busy to write, or whatever the case may be, do a little virtual writing. Visualize a specific aspect of a memory and think about how to word it. Let your own monkey out to play and see what new story ideas come to mind. Explore an area where your writing is blocked and visualize the tip of a pen sliding the knot open.

When you come up with a specific phrase, story idea or other resolution, jot a reminder down at the earliest opportunity so you won’t forget it later. (I hope you have an index card handy!) Remember, you are not abandoning actual writing, you are adding virtual practice to enhance your physical performance.

I have a strong hunch that once you play around with some virtual writing practice, your fingers will soon be itching to pick up a pencil or touch the keyboard to produce some actual words.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal