Writing Practice Prescription

I have just returned from two days in San Francisco where I attended the Writing for Change Conference put on by the San Francisco Writers Conferences group headed up by agents Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada. Without a doubt, this was one of the best writing conferences I have ever attended.

What made this conference so good?

• For one thing, it was for nonfiction folks who want their nonfiction writing produce positive change in the world. We did not have to waste time weaving through the masses of fiction writers who turn out at writing conference and usually out number us non-fiction 9 to 1.
• There were scads of writers, agents, and editors present and so very accessible to every attendee throughout the whole conference. It did not cost extra to speak to them and there was no lottery to see who could speak whom.
• All the staff and presenters were masters at sharing and caring.
• Hotel Kabuki was a great meeting site with outstanding and wholesome food served at each of the meal.
• Every presentation that I attended was interesting, fact-filled, and added to my personal knowledge base–no wasted moments the whole meeting.

Take a few minutes to drop by their website, sign up for their newsletter, and order a few of the tapes that might be of interest to you. Click here to go there now.

This same group will host a larger conference for all writers this coming Feb 13 to 15. I’ll be there and hope to see you there too! Click here to check out the February 2009 conference.

Italy was wonderful and quite a change from work-a-day life. It has taken a week, but catch up from being way is almost done. Now it’s time to return to biz as usual.

So let’s start with the business at hand. One of my roles in life this year consists of being the program chair for our National Speakers Association, Northern California Chapter. Speaker Karyn Ruth White was referred to me today by our Chapter president, Ian Griffin. When I checked out Karyn’s website and my whole day got instantly better.

Who says writing can’t be healing?

Writers who make you laugh have a healing touch. If you laugh as hard as I did after visiting this speaker’s website, you will dump so many endorphins into your blood stream that you will fly through your troubles.

Check it out by clicking here or on her photo in this post.

I offer you one big apology if you came to this blog today looking for any post made after June 1, 2008. It’s all gone–vanished in the thin, unknown atmosphere of the cyberspace universe.

I worked on another website two nights ago under the careful guidance of a GoDaddy help desk employee. Yesterday morning after attempting to log in to this website, I discovered that the whole database-in-the sky had simply disappeared. Two phone calls later  with marginal help and some uncalled for finger pointing from the GoDaddy help desk, I wasn’t much better off until this a.m. when a small voice of early dawn awakening gave me one more thing to try–and Voila, I was able to restore everything from June first backwards.

Save, save, save your data must be the mantra of every writer. I have long trained myself to hit “Control + S” to save data that I an working on when the phone rings or someone comes into my office to talk. In addition, I back up all data on my hard drive at least once a day onto an auxiliary disk. What I failed to realize when I started this blog, and then lost everything around the new year of 2008, is that the data in a blog lives in the sky on the website database, and not on my desk. Bummer. I did have a learning experience the first part of the year and started backing up my database on the website which I last did on June 1st. Current learning lesson: database once a month is not enough. Freebie learning experience: GoDaddy help is variable, indeed.

I have a friend who began a book and over the period of days made a lot of progress, each time minimizing the document but never naming and saving it. One day it vanished, never to be found again by the best of the experts called in to play hard disk sleuth. To this date, the elusive words of that first draft have never been coaxed back. I have the same experience with some of the posts on the first version of this blog. Now I’ll see if I can recall what went down between June 1 and now.

Back to the old keyboard.

Sam Horn posts this tip in a current issue of SpeakerNet News:

Tips for making the most out of Book Expo — Sam Horn

Are you going to Book Expo in Los Angeles this weekend (www.BookExpoAmerica.com) — the largest gathering of publishing industry professionals in the country? Want to know how to make the most of your time there?

Carry your book face-out *everywhere* you go, and place it face-up on the table in front of you when you sit down for lunch or attend sessions. (It’s often a great conversation starter.)
Have postcards made up of your book cover, most impressive endorsements, a couple of media sound bites or counter-intuitive tips, your contact info and the link for a free Top Ten List. Mention that you’re available for an audio deal, foreign rights sales, speaking engagements, book signings/seminars, etc. Pass these out to everyone you meet to generate buzz, to give them a memorable, purposeful take-away, and to (hopefully) land some extra contracts.
Interview people about *their* experiences related to your topic. TAKE NOTES. This gives you additional insights and fresh anecdotes for your programs and products, leads to productive, meaningful conversations and connections, and favorably impresses publishing insiders who are tired of being *pitched*

(Editors’ note: Sam has conducted three excellent SNN teleseminars: • Branding Ph.D.: The Secret to Becoming the Top-of-Mind Expert on Your Topic so Prospects, Media, and Publishers Call You!, • Ten Secrets to Finishing That Book You’ve Been Working On — For Months, Years, Decades! and • That’s Original!: Create Clever, Proprietary Titles and Content. You can order the CD or MP3.)

You can sign up for Sam Horn’s online newsletter by clicking here. Her informative newsletter brings at least one smile and several tips each time it comes out.

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SpeakerNet News gives writers another great resource to add to their writing kit. Even if you view yourself as “only” a writer and you belong to the large group of Americans who are more afraid of speaking than dying, you will find much valuable information here. While you are in “sign up mode,” take a few minutes to click on SpeakerNet News logo above to visit their website and sign up for their weekly online newsletter.

As a writer, you have already learned about the benefits of writing. You may have even have discovered that writing your work is only step one. The next task is to sell your work if you want to share your work with the world. Towards this end, I joined the National Speakers Association (NSA) in 2004.

Joining NSA has turned out to be one the best investments for me. To my delight, I have learned as much about writing as I have about speaking. It turns out all the speakers want to have written a book to enhance their speaking business. At the same time the more introverted writers want to learn about speaking so they can pitch their books and do book signings. But if you write books, do you know how to write speeches or craft a good presentation about your book or product?

Communications coach and author of the book, Carmine Gallo presents four steps on how to copy the success of Steve Jobs’ presentations. To read about the four steps, click here. To see a video of a Jobs’ presentation analyzed by Carmine Gallo, click here.

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Want to benefit more from Carmine Gallo? Then check out his book Fire Them Up!

by

Juliet Platt

Last year, with the kids home for summer I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to have much time for writing or research. Not wishing to feel like the weeks were slipping by unproductively, I needed to look to other sources to keep my creative imagination alive.

While the kids watched TV or played with friends I either got on with chores or picked my way through a jigsaw. Curiously, I began to notice that writing ideas were flowing thick and fast over the jigsaw pieces or the ironing, and I realised that certain manual tasks lend themselves very well to the flow of writing inspiration. Like therapeutic basket-weaving, certain activities serve not just as relaxing, enjoyable and productive past-times, but also as a way of stimulating the creative process. And I started to wonder, what’s the link between mundane manual or logical tasks and heightened powers of imagination?

My curiosity was further sparked during a creative writing course I attended. The course tutor was Crysse Morrison, novelist and performance poet. In a very relaxed and comfortable atmosphere she invited our group of writers and nervous wannabes to throw caution to the wind and get writing. She introduced us to numerous exercises to “silence our inner critic”, and allow our imagination to fly. She talked about left-brain and right-brain functions, and again I found myself wanting to know more.

Googling “left brain right brain” throws up an intriguing visual illusion circulating on the internet. It portrays the silhouette of a pirouetting ballerina. Whether you view the pirouette as moving in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction indicates which side of your brain is dominant at that particular time. I’m fascinated by how long it takes for me to see her switch direction, and how my view of her is affected by the activity I was engaged in before I looked. Searching through files on my computer? How does that make her spin? Reading a poem? How then?

Our brain is the most amazing of all human tools. Yet we probably don’t really know how to use it properly. In our hectic modern lifestyles we find ourselves stressed-out and anxious, often unable to sleep, and frequently frustrated by the lack of creativity and spirituality in our lives.

As writers we are plagued from time to time by an unsettling dearth of ideas, or with debilitating hesitation and censorious tendencies when it comes to developing the ideas that eventually present themselves.

Is it possible that our experiences in life and in our writing indicate an over-reliance on mental processes that are typically the preserve of one side of our brain only?

Neurological science shows that the brain is divided into two lateral hemispheres, the left and right, which are each responsible for different mental and intellectual functions.

The left side typically governs muscular activity in the right side of the body, our use of logic and language, as well as our perception and understanding of order, patterns, details and numbers. The right side governs muscular activity in the left side of our body, is more imaginative, and governs our capacity for artistic ability, belief, intuition and spatial awareness. Scientific evidence suggests that any imbalance between the two hemispheres results in psychological and behavioural problems, diminished feelings of well-being and below-optimum performance.

Of course, the brain is an extremely complex organ, and popular psychology has been quite rightly criticised for over-simplifying it, such that there is a tendency towards categorising people as predominantly “left-brain” or “right-brain” thinkers.

Over-simplification of brain function can also lead to one side being promoted over the other, depending on the desired context. In the business world right-brain intuition can be judged as “wishy-washy” and insubstantial, whilst creative types sometimes view left-brain logic as prosaic and constraining.

Interesting as the simplified insights may be, it is more helpful to consider our brain function in its entirety, in order to learn how to use our cognitive and creative abilities more effectively.

For writers, the creative process of producing something that others will read clearly involves a “whole-brain” approach. The difference between “becoming a published writer” and “daydreaming about writing”, as Simon Whaley puts it in his recent “Positively Productive” piece for Writers’ Bureau, could be down to how well we integrate the two sides of our brain.

Words, language, grammar, punctuation, structure, submission guidelines and deadlines typically fire the left-brain hemisphere. Language nuance, intonation and emphasis, along with imaginative ideas and vision are typically governed by the right-brain. The craft of the writer is to bring together both modes of thinking and deliver something new, illuminating and pleasing to read.

By return, the experience of the reader is to recreate the picture in their own mind, using the building blocks of language presented to them. Both reader and writer engage their brains holistically in the creative and re-creative process.

Modern western society has frequently been characterised as the product of predominantly left-brain thinking. Our preference for logic, reason, rules and knowledge is curious. It might be the result of the predominance of right-handedness, which fires the left hemisphere of the brain with greater regularity; it might be due to the rise of scientific education, and the importance we place on commercial viability and efficiency; it might equally be a consequence of the decline of old-fashioned manual crafts, hobbies, and past-times such as cross-stitch, knitting, model-making, pottery, even origami.

Research by Katrin and Yuri Shumakov at Rostov State University demonstrates that the bi-manual nature of origami significantly enhances communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. It seems that the slogan of the Protestant work ethic “the devil makes work for idle hands” has more significance for neurological development than it would first appear. Using both hands in a creative activity seems to strengthen and stimulate both sides of the brain in equal measure, leading to a calmer disposition, better understanding of language and greater non-verbal awareness.

Dr Roger Mills, president of the Center for Sustainable Change in California, emphasises that our minds are most productive when we are relaxed and calm, and when we aren’t thinking too hard. This usually means when we aren’t allowing our left-brain to run the show with worries and anxieties about how things should be, or how they’ve been in the past.

Dr Mills says of our more analytical, left-brain processing capacity, “Used in the way it is supposed to be used …[it] is helpful and necessary in life. Used in the wrong way - against ourselves - it can be our worst enemy!”

The idea that we can use our brains differently, and change our thinking habits and patterns, is testament to the brain’s plasticity and reflexivity. In a remarkable feat of cerebral acrobatics we can use our analytical minds to create the environment and container for our imagination. This neurological “double-jointedness” can be compared to using our right hand to scratch an itch on our right elbow.

Prema Sheerin, Coactive Coach and spiritual shaman distinguishes between “head” (left-brain) and “heart” (right-brain) intelligence, and suggests that we think of our logical, safe, rule-based, head as our Personal Assistant rather than our Managing Director. In this way we can consciously find tasks to delegate to that part of our function in order to occupy it productively, and prevent its less productive characteristics of anxiety and worry from dominating proceedings. To-do lists, project plans, budgets, goals, background problem-solving, devising strategies, commitments and routines are all activities perfectly suited to our left-brain PA, which thus engaged, allows our creative and visionary MD to flourish.

When we read accounts of fellow writers’ approaches to their craft, there are two words which consistently appear: routine and discipline. Philip Pullman will not allow himself to indulge his passion for carpentry until he has completed his mandatory three pages a day. Sue Gee describes a day that is punctuated by the Today Programme at 1pm and “exactly the same thing for lunch as I’ve had for the past 20 years.”

Rather than demonstrating writing martyrdom, these are meaningful examples of writers recognising the well-structured container they need to have in place to support their creative process, and to satisfy the needs of both sides of the brain.

So what is Crysse’s advice for writers wanting to boost their creative powers and fill pages? The answer is short sharp exercises containing a set of constraints to satisfy and quieten left-brain anxieties, so that it has a job to be getting on with while the right-brain does its creative bit. Spontaneity is crucial too. The longer we linger over a piece of writing, the more likely it is that our inner critic will have something to say on the matter, so spending no longer than 5 minutes on each exercise is important. For example:

• Write a list of your favourite things without using the letter “e”
• Write down the name of the place you think of as home so all the letters are in capitals and vertically arranged towards the left hand side of the page. Use each letter to begin a new idea, which evokes home for you and write this horizontally beside each letter. Across-sticks like this can be used for any word that you feel like getting creative about, and as long as you spend no more than a couple of minutes on it you will be surprised by the results.
• Take an opening or closing line of a story and write your own paragraph from it
• Start a paragraph with a memory, such as “I remember wearing…..”

A combination of daily writing practice, short, medium and long term goals, a comfortable routine, a positive approach to life, work, relationships and leisure, and maybe the odd jigsaw, folded paper bird, or bit of wood-craft, seem to be the practical keys to keeping our brains happy and healthy, and our writing flowing.

By learning to use all of our mental capacities appropriately and wisely we can become stress-free, infinitely more creative and give our writing a boost. All we need to do is give each half of our brain the right stuff to get to work on. After that it’s like riding a bike.
Activities to maximise inter-hemispheric communication and connection in the brain are those which involve manual dexterity, such as:

Doing jigsaws;
Cross-stitch;
Origami;
Drawing;
Painting;
Writing pen to paper;
Doing the ironing;
Gardening;
Preparing food;
Driving

Further information about concepts and courses mentioned here can be found at the following web-sites:
www.cryssemorrison.co.uk - writing courses in the UK and the Greek Islands
www.oriland.com - for fascinating insights into the benefits of paper-folding on brain performance
www.principlespsychology.org - for information about the work of Dr. Roger Mills
www.healingwisdomcoaching.com - spiritually-inclined life coaching with Prema Sheerin

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You can visit by Juliet’s website by clicking here.

The 2008 Writers Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers just arrived in my mailbox. I look forward to this list each year and find that I have some favorites that I follow, such as C. Hope Clark’s Funds for Writers. Having exchanged some emails with Hope in the past (she is a neat lady), I find myself rooting for her to make the list each year. Once again, she is there with her content-rich website.

Writers, whether or not they intend to keep their writing personal for their own healing or hope to be published, need resources. Why not take a stroll over to this year’s 101 Best Websites and start exploring right now?

When thinking about our current state of health care, I am reminded of a joke that one of my medical school classmates used to tell: “There was a little girl; who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead; and when she was good, she was very, very good; and when she was bad she was…..popular!” In some ways, the current health care system is just like that little girl–popular. Yet, American medicine, so good in so many arenas, fails to measure up to the test most of the time when it comes to taking care of patients with chronic diseases.

A chronic disease persists for over three months and, in general, cannot be prevented by vaccines or cured by medication. For the most part, they don’t just disappear. Chronic illnesses now account for 70% of deaths and for the expenditure of over 75% of direct health care costs in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [1] As of 1998, 88% of Americans over the age of 65 have at lease one chronic health condition. Leading chronic diseases and health problems consist of:

• Arthritis
• Cardiovascular disease
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Epilepsy
• Obesity
• High blood pressure

The burden of caring for chronic diseases taxes our system over $1.5 trillion in direct costs and add several more billion dollars in the form of indirect costs such as lost productivity. [1]

Researchers Halstead and Lorig have this to say about chronic disease and our current health system:

“The present health care system is neither effective nor efficient. The dominant reason for this is a contradiction between the principle problem confronting the system—chronic disease—and the system’s methods of operating, which were designed for acute disease. Resolution of the contradiction requires a different practice of health care, with new roles for the patients, for physicians and other health professionals, and for health services.” [2]

Still we Americans clamor for more treatments, obsess about the lack of health care coverage for millions of Americans, and fixate on our collective chronic pain–all the time looking to the system and not ourselves for improvement. The Stanford Chronic Disease Patient Self-Management Program sets the stage for needed change in addressing chronic disease problems. Their program consists of a six weeks in community settings and covers the following topics:

• Techniques to deal with problems associated with chronic disease problems
• Appropriate exercise for maintaining and improving strength, flexibility, and endurance
• Appropriate use of medications
• Effective communication with family, friends, and health professionals
• Nutrition
• How to evaluate new treatments

If you are blessed with being able to access such a program, by all means try it out. Meanwhile, why not start your own WellWriting practice aimed at exploring and reflecting on the topics taught in the workshop? Chronic diseases and pain syndromes often bring along their friends of frustration, fatigue, pain, and isolation. Write a biography of each and then write out your own prescription of dealing with each one.

Are you getting enough exercise or are you taking medication? Use your writing to keep an exercise or medication log, plan daily activities, and explore how you feel from the exercise and medication. Do the same with your nutrition and added new treatments.

One rich benefit of writing will be to explore how to describe how your condition and state so that you can communicate that in a meaningful way to friends, family, and the helpers in your life. If you want to learn more about the health benefits of putting a personal WellWriting practice into your life, consider joining us for a WellWriting workshop here in beautiful Half Moon Bay.

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[1] James H. Thrall, MD
Prevalence and Costs of Chronic
Health Care System Structured
Treatment of Acute Illness. Radiology. 2005 Apr;235(1):9-12.

[2] Halsted Holman, MD
Kate Lorig, RN, DrPH: Patient Self-Management:
A Key to Effectiveness and Efficiency
in Care of Chronic Disease. Public Health Reports / May–June 2004 / Volume 119 239–243.

To read more about chronic health diseases, click here.

My mantra of recent times has been, “Why pop a pill when you can get better with pen and paper?” Not always, of course, but often. Expressive and quick speed writing forces you into a state where thoughts begin to flow onto the paper–or computer screen should you write on the computer. (I do. I like to be able to read what I have written afterwards. This is not always possible when I write with pen and paper.)

I think this type of writing helps a great deal because a lot of chronic diseases or the impact of them spring from hidden distress and retained anger. Writing provides clarity that brings other options. Or as our grandmothers and mentors alway say, “Don’t get angry. Get clear.” In addition, writing things down provides an opportunity to reflect and the reconsider how to proceed.

In our WellWriting Workshops, we often hear our attendees question whether or not they could get the same emotive clarity and release through fiction writing. Today, I came across a blog post at Babblelogue that addresses that question.

The author of the post tells of a lecture she attended and then relates how a recent trip to Turkey was “bugging” her to the point that her experience of the here and now was interrupted. Then:

“As usual I began to write down my thoughts, and just allowed my pen to move across the page and spell out whatever came into my mind. As usual this activity began to bring some relief to my emotional state, and then, as sometimes happens during this process I had a real “light-bulb” moment, a sudden insight into what it was that had been bugging me. And I felt tons better from that.

But then things got even better. My imagination started to kick in, and I started to make up a story founded in my emotional mess. I found it was really easy to transfer all my stuff onto a totally made-up character, and allow her then to take up the reins for where it all might lead. Doing this also strenghtened the permission I gave myself to explore more deeply some stuff that was previously making me feel really uncomfortable. I could pretend, through the medium of my own imagination, that the things I’d been experiencing weren’t actually mine, and this made them much more accessible and acceptable to me.”

My experience echoes this. I have not written much fiction but when I have ventured into those waters, I have experienced the “watching” of my fictional character take me into places I would not have explored without her.

Try this as an exercise: take something that is nagging you and then make up a character who can stew in the same nagging juices you are feeling. Write what he or she will do next by letting your pen just spill the story out. Try it. You might like it.

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I think that Babblelogue is a fun, upbeat blog. Why not take a stroll over there now and check out all more posts. To do so, click here.

Are you looking for a way to impart the knowledge you wish to pass along? Then consider writing a “mentor” book. These books take the reader on a journey where the protagonist finds a mentor who guides him or her through difficult life passages. Of interest to the fiction writer, “Meeting with the Mentor,” stage four of the Writer’s Journey, consists of the hero meeting the archetype of the Mentor. The Mentor then provides the hero with needed “supplies, knowledge, and confidence to overcome fear” for the journey ahead into unknown territory.[1]

Not so long ago, a book came in the mail with a letter from author Tom Pace, CEO of the PaceButler corporation in Edmund, OK. Tom had recently joined the National Speakers Association (NSA) and sent every member a copy of the book. I rescued the book from my “books to read” stack a few days ago and sandwiched it into my reading time.

The book is delightful because it lends itself to short reading times or you can whiz right through it in a short time at a single reading. The book follows young Tony from his days in jail as a 19-year-old through his coming of age as a budding entrepreneur. He meets his mentor, a CEO named Malcolm, while in jail and then meets him again the day after he is released from jail. Under Malcolm’s guidance, Tony learns:

• “People that have self-esteem do esteemable things.”
• “It takes a lot of energy to be angry about something. You can be right or you can be happy. Sometimes it’s better to let the little things go so that you can be happy.”
• Exercise is one of the most important things he can add to his life

A short chapter at the end of the book advises the reader how to find a mentor. The author encourages the reader by noting that, “Most successful people want to share their stories and help because they owe their success to people who helped them.”

How true. While there is no substitute for live and present mentors who are dedicated to helping you succeed, many more mentors wait for you at your local bookstore or library. Some have left this earth, but their words stay behind to offer guidance and encouragement.

You, too, can be a mentor. Have you ever had a major turning point that presented you with the choice of giving up and suffering or moving forward and overcoming the misery? If so, you have a story. When you write it out with all the details of how that turning point changed your life, you experience the healing of disclosing your pain and perhaps your long-held secrets. When you write the details of the journey you took to overcome the pain and distress of the turning point, you lay the groundwork to help others achieve relief and success in their own lives. Detail who helped you along the way. Then you can fictionalize your experience by writing about a mentor (you) who then helps another who suffers what happened to you.

When it’s all done, you may even have what publishers call a “pass-along” book. These books are bought in quantity for “passing the book on” to friends, family, and clients.

Did Tom Pace, in his book Mentor, The Kid & the CEO, believe that he wrote a “pass-along” book? I suspect so, because the letter he sent with the book ends with an amazing postscript: “I also want to extend you a personal guarantee; which is if you read my book and believe it to be a waste of your time, then I will personally give you $100.”

Tom won’t be sending this reader the $100.

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Notes:

1. Christopher Vogler: The Writer’s Journey, Mythic structure for writers.