In the context of the rest of your life, this phenomenon will be known as Paragraph One. At least to me, but only in the context of this post.

I promise that no matter what subtext of slick, icy hell life has slipped under your rug you can still be creative. Even when that shadow of your day rips the rug out from under you. Really. (Well, if the rug is actually ripped out from under you, see a doctor, or a plate tectonic specialist. And if a shadow did it, you’re on your own).

I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t prefer to lock myself in my closet (next to a overly disturbing collection of stuffed ALF dolls from 1987; 37 at last count) and block out the real world to write about fake ones. I’d be lying and I really like to lie. A lot. (I know you believe me.) I don’t get to pick and choose (see Paragraph One) a time to write, or a place, or… Hell, who am I kidding? I don’t get to pick much of anything. I write when I can and surprisingly, the more I try to ignore these things, the more I’ve come to depend on them. I write better under pressure with noise and yelling and broken volume control.

This wasn’t supposed to be a post about distraction. It was really supposed to be a post about writing prompts, but something grabbed my attention and… Nevermind.

A creative bugbear, Sue (twitter.com/BrightEyedDyer and steampunk operator of chocolatescotch.com), likes to throw out increasingly bizarre prompts typically in triplet and dare|beg|taunt me to write something that includes all of them. And she usually does this as I’m experiencing Paragraph One in a mindless bliss of blue static electricity or blued elasticity. I’ve come to consider her exercise as an embedded part of Paragraph One and I love it (think she’ll notice I just called her a distraction?).

Not everyone can write while undergoing the critical brain surgery that can be Paragraph One. And not everyone can write to prompts. That’s OK. You are you and without you, you wouldn’t be special. But there will be a time when you think the world is against you and 90% of Paragraph One is bearing down on you with the jaw strength of a rhino’s left eyelid, so turn up the TV and give prompt writing a try.

1. Milk
2. Shannon Doherty when she was cool
3. Rocket Scientestry

See, at least one of those isn’t fiction. For the others, you’ll have to dig really deep for that creative part of your writing.

(Before everyone gets all bent out of shape… I don’t consider everything in Paragraph One a true distraction. TV loves me dammit. And yes… Scientestry.)

I know. Sharing is an evil, a big, nasty scary one. An often-repeated cliché is “You can’t please everyone.” Yet, we want to. We really, really want to. No one wants readers, or fans, or other aspiring (or professional) authors to tear apart a story or plot or even a simple idea. We can all strive to stand tall in light of negative press, but the truth is we want to be accepted. An appropriate stance is to know, to really know that only a percentage of readers will get, or like, or enjoy a story. And those might never share their bliss with the author. No. Negative comments always float to the top of our day like a dirty oil spill on the face of our success.

I know. An email or letter with an acceptance from a publisher is one of the most prized things a writer can ever get. It’s validation that someone else gets it. Unfortunately, most of the feedback we get from the publishing world isn’t so pleasant. I want to learn and grow from the steady stream of rejection, I do. And I feel blessed that I have gotten a few responses that were more than a simple form rejection. It’s a warming feeling when editors take an extra minute to explain what they liked (or didn’t like) about a particular submission. It’s special to me when he or she (the editor) asks for me to submit something else in the future.

I know. Well, I’ve come to know that not everything I write is good or not good for everyone or every market. I want everything to be, but that’s just not realistic or healthy. One the most important lessons any of us can learn is that everyone can’t be happy with everything. It had to be force-fed to me. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s not easy to accept. But that’s OK. Once you realize it, you can get through almost anything (creatively anyway). The world doesn’t melt against our will when someone says no thanks.

I know. We’ve all had that story that we love. The one we worked so hard on. The one we think will change the worldview of fiction in a few thousand words. So, we set it out into the market and anxiously wait for the bartering to begin. Except that it doesn’t. No one gets it. No one likes it. And everyone says, “This isn’t for us, good luck placing it elsewhere.” It stings, it hurts and we want to believe that they are all on some reality-altering drug that displaces realism with their slanted form of disillusion. After all, our story is perfect. But it’s not. And that’s OK, too. What’s important in all this chaos? You, the writer, are creating new and unique ways to say old and mundane things. And you are sharing with the rest of us. Someone will get it and someone will like it.

I know. I wrote a short story a few years ago that was really closer to flash fiction than a short. Even with my minimalist style, I can rarely do a solid job at storytelling in less than two thousand words or so. But I liked it and I sent it out to magazines and publishers. It didn’t change the world. I hope everyone else is as persistent (or as hard headed) as I am because I didn’t let that get me down. And I didn’t rewrite it. While I went on to other stories and ideas, that one stuck around. It poked at me in the dark and I believed that there was a market for it. Recently, a publisher did accept that short story that no one else liked. Someone else saw the same thing I did or they saw it with a different eye than all the others that had passed on it before.

The lesson is simple: Not everyone will like what you create. The beauty is that someone will. Once you realize and embrace that, you will be successful even if you never sell anything to anyone. Persistence is key and there is a market and a fan base for everything. I know and I’m glad that my hard head is soft enough to learn the lessons that are so obviously waiting for me out there.

It’s not always about why. Creating something new is a terrific rush. Mulling over a new plot is like musical crack; it’s addictive to fall into an accidental idea and to thankfully have the words burst onto the page like a digital explosion of forethought, afterthought, and the warming glow of post-coital satisfaction. And I sketch quite a bit. Not a sketch in the artist’s sense, but instead I write scenes or vignettes or just sentences that push my #10 envelope of creativity. More than my share of sketches are just exercises and won’t see much more activity than that. Though a few of these wiggle and writhe their way into later works. A suggestion? Never, ever delete anything. No matter what. Ever, never. Even if smooth-skinned, patently purple aliens are swooping down to cull every last one of us for sexual favors and a simple press of the Delete key is the ultimate weapon. Got it?

It’s not always about why. I am evil. I hold nothing back. And when I’m editing my writing, I am my own worse enemy. Though I hate editing, I know that every single word and every single sentence will be better after a second or third pass. If a writer won’t or can’t realize that, he or she should consider another passion. (Try waffle making, or peanut butter painting as alternatives.) No one’s first product is his or her best. And sometimes neither is the second or third or fourth revision. I like most of my stories and I hate parts of every one of them. I’m a penis wrinkle.

It’s not always about why. But my first answer to that question is usually a cliché. I write because I want to. Even if no one ever reads a single word. Even then. I like the process from beginning to end. Really. It is at times hard and easy, fun and boring, infuriating and calming, pleasurable and immensely painful. All of it (sometimes all at once). And I’m in love with it all. Of course, the next time someone asks, I may just say that I write so I can experience the look on a reader’s face when they actually see one of my stories for the first time. And get it.

It’s not always about why. But it is always about you.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a religious experience, but I used to think it was. Maybe it was, in a purple pixie wisp sort of way.

It tells me what to do, or what not to do. I sometimes listen. It pushes and prods and pokes at me until I give in. Until I do. Inaction is an enemy of the creative. It eats away and digests us from the inside. A friend often asks, “Where is the hunger?” That hunger is the undeniable pull to take action, to do, and to stop planning and dreaming, thinking and talking about what if. Where is the hunger to just go and do… something? Anything?

There is a voice. And when I don’t ignore it, when I do give in, it guides me to wonderful places. It tells me bizarre little stories about difficult situations or dark and scary slices of time. It speaks in code, sometimes so fast that the imagery it shares is lost in a blur of regurgitated confusion, disturbed imagination and surreal sounds. If creativity had a language of its own, it’d be soul-food Latin twisted together with a Sumerian dialect so long forgotten that it sounds alien. Or at least gnomish.

I’d like to tell you that the voice is real, that it’s a strong male voice guiding me toward some quest-worthy goal or a soothing female voice talking me down from a danger so high that I gasp for air. I’d like to tell you that I’m not a little crazy or that I start to worry when the voice stops talking. I can’t, though. Your voice is your own. You have to give it action and no one can do that for you. And if I let you hear the sound of mine, she (he) might decide to talk to someone else.

There is a voice. Today I stopped dreaming and took action. I listened. I did. And I didn’t worry. All I can share is that you have to decide when it’s time to stop dreaming and start believing. And start listening to that voice of hunger.

(You can even give your voice a name. I’d tell you mine, but it is decidedly for the best that it remains a secret. Otherwise, the purple pixie wisps might get a little angry. And that’s a sight for sure.)

But it’s not about the bacon. At least it shouldn’t be. The goodness of bacon comes from the process, the smoking, the aging. This is bacon’s storytelling. We can’t wrap a horrible story in a wonderful flavor and pass it off as gourmet. If we start with a good foundation (the process) and execute it correctly, the flavor of a great story will become a side effect of storytelling itself. A reader should not come away from a story and remember the writing. That’s the bacon talking. Readers should remember the story, not the way it is told. Even when I fail, that’s what I’m working to achieve.

Yes, bacon-wrapped-bacon is good stuff. Bacon Today will tell you that and more. And a ground-bacon hamburger is better than your heart should allow, but loves anyway.

Don’t let anyone argue with you. Bacon can be a good side dish to your story or your storytelling methods. Just don’t overdo it and your arteries and readers will thank you in the morning.

(Only the smallest amount of toe cheese was harvested for this post; I’m all for conservation, but I promise you it was aged, smoked and riddled with that blue squirminess that makes it so good.)

There lies the risk. If you’re a computer user that has never lost files on a hard drive, floppy drive (shudder at the ancient history), or even a CD-Rom to a glitch or a crash, then you have an electronic angel watching over you. The sad truth is that you will lose something valuable to your creative heart at some point.

Okay. Come out of the dark closet. That cluttered corner won’t protect your stories and poems and novels. But you do perform regularly, automated backups, don’t you? No? Well, don’t feel bad. You are in the majority.

There are a number of free or inexpensive online backup solutions that can cut some of that chill that just swept up your spine. For example,  Carbonite averages less than $5 a month and works great. I personally like Mozy which has a free service (2GB total) that is simple to use and an upgrade to unlimited use is only $4.95 per month. There are more expensive solutions online that I won’t go into here, but a quick search engine trip will turn up dozens of paid (and additional free) services.

You might not need an automated service and there are other free ideas that will cover you in a crash, but aren’t automated. So, if you forget to backup your files, you’re toast (Orange Marmalade is extra). I’ve heard of writers emailing their documents to an online email service (like Gmail or Yahoo Mail). Of course, you can burn files to a CD-R(W) or copy them to a thumb drive or external hard drive (MS SyncToy is a great tool for scheduling a synchronization of your internal document folders to an external hard drive).

The final detail for you to iron out is how often you should backup your files and how many copies to make. I’m a little paranoid (alright, alright, more than a little). Since Word documents are relatively small, I use SyncToy to synchronize my writing folders from my internal hard drive to an inexpensive USB drive daily. Some standards-setting gurus will say that you need to keep three separate copies of your critical data to prevent double failures (again, paranoid). I use Mozy to automatically backup changed files (my third copy). And then my real paranoia kicks in. I burn a CD-R once a week and hide it in the back yard far away from the Yard Gnome party pit. Those guys will burn anything to keep their fire going.

You want to funnel your worry into something creative and fun and not wonder if that best-selling novel you’ve been working on for that past XX years is being eaten by hungry hard drive marmots dead set on seeing your career disappear with your files. A backup is nearly as important as your drunk muse. So, backup your files and leave out a shot of Tito’s Vodka for the muse.

While I’m not an expert writer or editor, I want to share my process for self-editing that I use even before my first beta reader gets a glimpse.

First Draft

For short stories (and I’ll stick to short stories for this post), I usually write a first draft in a single sitting and I mostly do it in one (sometimes rapid) stream of consciousness. (For reference, I feel lucky that I can carve up 2,000 – 2,500 words in less than an hour once a story is straight in my head.) I try to stay away from deep edits at this point. I want to get the concept out and saved before my short-term memory eats another idea (and it’s a hungry beast), but I’ll admit that I do simple spelling corrections though I shouldn’t. After the first draft, I’ll set the story aside for a period of hours or days.

Second Draft

Once the cooling off period is over, I read the story from beginning to end and try to see the work with a reader’s eye. I note terse structure or words that might not fit and take note of things I’d like to expand or add. Notice that I didn’t say delete. No. At this stage, I hope to let the story grow and not get too bogged down with the dreaded razor blade that is the Delete key.

Third Draft

This is the point where friends and neighbors think I’m a little crazy. I print stories out and walk around reading them aloud over and over. I read sentences backwards (I’ve tried upside down, but all the blood runs to my head and I pass out.) Of course, I can’t take credit for this idea. Almost every mentor, teacher and advisor says to read one’s own work aloud to find mistakes. Why? Because it works.

I’m a minimalist by nature and I like using rhythm and cadence in my fiction. Reading aloud is the only way I am able to incorporate those things. This is also the point where I decide (tentatively) if I should move paragraphs or scenes around for stronger impact. Sometimes an ending works better as a beginning.

Final (hopefully) Draft

I’m careful to call this stage a final draft. I have three very trustworthy and invaluable beta readers that aren’t afraid to point out things that need to be fixed. No, this stage isn’t the last of the work, it’s merely the point where the real work begins (and that’s something I might blog about another time). I do break out the razor blade during this edit and have been known to cut huge chucks. Everything should drive either character development or plot. If not, it dies to the sharp edges of the Delete key.

I recently got suckered into doing a few audio recordings and podcasts. This is new for me, but it has helped me as a writer more than anything. While I’m recording a story, passages or words that will be difficult for readers stand out like a pink nail gun at a flamingo dance party. I pause and fix as I go. Plus, listening to myself read a story over and over allows me to focus my limited brain power on the writing itself (versus reading and editing). I’ve caught more issues with this new method than I could have hoped for.

If you’re a writer, don’t be intimidated. Most of us don’t like to hear our own voice recorded. It’s natural to feel this way, but no one has to hear it unless you want them to. So, get a $3 microphone and use your computer’s built-in audio recorder (or use a digital handheld recorder if that’s easier). It’s a simple and inexpensive way to record your stories and incorporate this method into your editing process. You’ll find things you might have missed without it.

(I only use one razor blade for editing. It’s old, it’s rusty and it’s not really that sharp. I do have an up-to-date Tetanus shot, though. I think. And no, flamingos and nail guns, pink or otherwise, don’t belong at the same dance party. Then again, you might not know flamingos that well.)

Three months is a lifetime.

That’s how long I knew Tia L. Brink. That’s how long she had to teach and guide me and mold me into a better storyteller. And to stop me from using so many ‘ands’ to connect so many thoughts. She was good at a great many things, but my ‘and’ habit is an addiction.

Three months is a lifetime.

Tia loved a great story. She loved reading fiction of every genre and she especially loved it when one of her fledglings pulled off something weird. More than anything, Tia saw the writer in me even when I was blind to it. She pushed me to write tighter prose, to simplify, and on most days of those three months she succeeded. On the other days, she was there to prop me up, beat me into submission and get my fiction back on track.

Three months is a lifetime.

Tia was a champion. Once she got the very best from me, she would set it out into the world. She’d advertise it, cross-post it, share it with her friends and family, and be giddy for me. If a new writer can possibly have a groupie, then Tia was just that. A happily crazed fan that saw the diamonds in spite of the crap. In spite of me.

Three months is a lifetime.

Tia was a brainstormer. No, not a barnstormer, though that’d be great to have seen. She knew how to generate ideas from those around her. She would ask the right questions, pose the perfect scenarios. She’d push and pull and prod until the creative ooze dripped onto the paper. And then she’d edit it down to the best. She was always excited about new projects, or new concepts. Always. We’d bounce email after email back and forth for some new idea for hours and days and months. Gently working it into something worthwhile, something that might succeed.

Three months is a lifetime.

These three months are the shortest 90 days I’ve ever lived as a writer. It was 2,160 hours of creative freedom that I am better for having experienced. It is three months that I wouldn’t trade for the world, but I’d buy back if ever given the chance. The next three months of memories, coping, and recovery are going to be a hundred times longer than the previous three. Yet I smile when I think of the time ahead because I am happy for the time gone.

Tia, a Twizzler-wielding editor that could whip the most defiant writer into shape and push us all to be better at whatever it is we do. This is not goodbye. Every time I get lost in a new story and use too many ‘ands’ and get a little long-winded, I smell the fresh scent of Twizzlers and I know that Tia is out there somewhere guiding my writing. And she’s loving every minute of it even with all the ‘ands’.

Three months is a lifetime, Tia. Thank you.

Please visit ShadowCast Audio and listen to the Tia L. Brink Memorial Podcast.

A worthwhile cause creative-types could stand behind was not hard to find. We turned our attention to the Letters and Light Organization, a non-profit charity that promotes youth creativity.

Since most creative people have a special memory of someone who encouraged and supported them, nurtured their gift and inspired them to pursue their dreams, it seemed like an obvious choice to donate all the proceeds earned from this charity endeavor to The Letters and Light Organization.

Details: Will go on sale electronically July 9, 2010 on Amazon and Smashwords for $4.99 per copy.

Readers do NOT need an eReader in order to download and read the anthology. Amazon offers a download of their Kindle software for PCs and Macs, as well as the iPhone and iTouch. Smashwords has a wide variety of downloadable mediums, from direct browser html and PDF to eReader and Kindle, just to name a few.

View the trailer below and the contributor’s biographies here.

I’ve had the good fortune to pal around with some incredibly creative folks lately. I’m continually amazed at how much work people can fit into their lives, but I’m starting to see some common, and unsettling, threads. If self-doubt  were a color and that color were purple, it is the fear of purple that is bringing some of us down.

All artists have a little self-doubt. I give mine a voice. And a name. My doubt is an evil girl in a white church dress and her name is Sarah Johnson. It’s important to recognize it for what it is and learn ways to overcome it without screeching to a creative halt. But doubt can be a good thing. It makes me more critical of my writing and it makes me better. When Sarah talks too loudly or interrupts me, I keep her buzzing on red Twizzlers and she shuts right up.

The point of purple and Sarah and Twizzlers is to learn that it is perfectly natural to phase in and out of periods of self-doubt (hate, loathing, and overuse of hair products are for another post). Embrace it, feed it to keep it quiet, and write (or draw or play or sing or dance) your way around it.

(No, I don’t hate purple, and fear is not a color. Although, pink kittens scare the crap out of me. All characters in this post are purely fictional and mostly invisible. Any likeness to the real Sarah Johnson is mostly unintended.)