PSYCHIC REALITIES: Writers and their Minds

Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I just abandoned it. I had been working on it for the past one month. It’d been six weeks since I hadn’t touched it. Would I be able to resume it? How could I do justice to the story, now, after such a long time of discontinuation? I did have some notes made from the times, while I worked on the stuff. I do not think those notes are of any help, anymore, though. 

It is clear to me how vague the classification of writers would be if I categorized them based on such feelings as above. A writer, at almost all stages of his or her growth feels this way. Most of those super-successful writers may not experience it the same way, because they have the ability to pursue writing without bothering much about another day-job, but apparently have other issues that affect them the same way.

If writing gives a person immense pleasure or joy, and the person is forced to work in a bakery in order to make a living, the resulting conflict could damage the mental equilibrium of that person. Those person(s) who have no aptitude for working in a bakery, when forced to compromise their psychological ecosystem with the sophistication of an altogether different system of things, creative writing suffers. This is when one feels; “Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I have abandoned it.”

The fear for being not able to do justice to one’s work of a lifetime deserves wise handling. If not, it will consume the writer, wholly. The totality of all fears has their common grounding in the unknown. In the case of the above-mentioned writer (let us call him Paul), the unknown part is the quality of his work. Paul does not know and fears this fact: how would it all turn out to be. How could I do justice to the story now, after such a long time of discontinuation?

In order to undo the fear of the unknown, the simplest method can be the Jungian concept of assimilation of psychic realities. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a German psychoanalyst, whose groundbreaking theories on human mind, guided the world into a modern-renaissance. He argues about a specific course of action through which a human being can bring out the contents of his unconscious and experience it in the conscious level in order to alleviate the pressure from the unconscious side.

This same method is useful in undoing the fear for the unknown in Paul’s case. If Paul is uncertain of the results his work could bring him after a considerable gap in the process of writing, he should first, look at the results. There is only one way he can get the result—by completing the work. Paul just needs some gut feeling to cross the initial fear.  

Image Courtesy: meetville.com

If one is stuck with the fear of how the work would turn out to be, the possibility of writing a book or a story is obliterated entirely. It is up to you to take that step courageously. Your work deserves to be born, simply because you have such strong feeling for it. Let your fears not obligate the stopping of your creative work.

If you liked this article, you might like my book too. Take a look.

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colors and Other Stories. His latest book is Clenched Hands, Bloody Nails. 

You can catch up with him in Facebook too.      

The Problem of New Book

I want to start on a new book. I have the plot idea and even a title. The problem is that it is historical fiction and requires some research. I don’t mind doing research – especially as some of it may include travel, which is always fun. In this case I’ll have to go to Nebraska and interview some Winnebago Native Americans. I may also want to go to Carlisle, PA to visit the old Indian school there. Maybe even a bit of time looking at old farms in the Pennsylvania countryside. Yes, that might all be lovely.

BUT! I want to write now. The problem is something like hydraulics. I’m sure there are equally good similes to be found in electronics and computers, but I like hydraulics – something I can dip my feet into. The ideas for the new book have become a torrent so forceful that they keep other writing ideas from entering the river that leads from my brain to my fingers and thence to keyboard and computer. I might tell myself that I need a new short story, a poem, or a blog piece; but I end up thinking about Red and White. Sorry, that’s the title.

The preoccupation has gotten so bad that I even have difficulty making time for marketing. With three novels already published, I should be writing about them: bothering people on Facebook and Linkedin and creating clever 140 character blurbs to tweet. Focusing becomes difficult. “No,” I have to remind myself, “Memoirs From the Asylum isn’t about the injustice of trying to destroy a culture.” Those mental hospitals may have taken away freedom, they may have been sanctuaries for those who fear being free, they may have been filled with strange and at times funny events, but they weren’t there to teach youngsters to be servants instead of free roaming hunters.

Delete another false start.

“Darn, I’d better start a new comment to post on Book Junkies. Something about mental health.”  I know this one won’t go any better. I keep thinking about the visits I have made to the various “reservations” here in Arizona. I wonder the forbearers of the men and women I have met among the Apache and the Navajo. What were their cultures like before they were corralled and their children ripped away to be indoctrinated?

I had the pleasure of meeting one woman from a tribe in California. The treaty between her people and the American government had never been formally ratified. The state had sent the tribal members paperwork to complete the long-suspended process. Her grandmother had shredded the documents and fed them to the fire. “Tell your mother to do the same thing,” she had instructed.

“Why?” they girl had asked.

“Because they want to come and take you away from us,” was the grandmother’s response.

I visit my friend Charles in San Carlos and I see the widespread depression in the community. It is as palpable as the tears that are not shed by these bowed but unbroken Apache. We stop by the community’s center for the elderly. Some of these men and women were sent to a government run boarding school. They do not speak of that time.

I do some reading and learn that the very first experiment in taking Native American children from their parents was with the Apache. A group of Apache had been shipped from the Southwest to Florida, and their children had then been sent off for education – would we perhaps not call it re-education? What mental illness did that process create?

“Back to marketing,” I tell myself and try to kick myself in the rear. It is no good. I cannot escape my preoccupation with those Native American children. “One last thought,” I bargain with myself, “and I’ll get back to work.”

The thought is of the middle and high school in the southeast corner of the Navajo Nation. The U.S. government no longer takes the children away from their families. No, now the government helps to build schools. That school is a beautiful building; it looks like a modern public school should. What nobody mentions is that it is built on contaminated ground. Those teens are daily bombarded with radiation from the Uranium tailings dropped in that area by water from a storage lagoon when its dam had broken and the water had surged from New Mexico across Arizona and into the Colorado River. How will that radioactivity affect the just developing gonads of those Navajo boys? How will it affect the future of their tribe?

No wonder I want to write Red and White, the conscience of my race demands that we tell the stories. I think back to the authors I read as a child. Steinbeck, Dos Pasos, Sinclair. Yes, we writers of serious fiction have a place in the conscience of our society. 

Kenneth Weene http://www.authorkenweene.com/

connect with him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/kenneth.weene 

and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Ken_Weene

Dead Women Don’t Wear Girdles…

I came up with this title…and I love it…I just can’t figure out quite what to do with it…it might help if I’d seen the movie that gave me the inspiration…but…I didn’t…
So…I’m on my own…I keep getting ideas…but they seem morbid…and perhaps insensitive…although…that would never be my intent…I’ll tread lightly…
Okay…since there are no accidents…this popped into my head for a reason…something I need to learn…something I need to say…or…I’ve finally lost that one lone marble that’s been rolling around in my head all these years…
I’m gonna go with something I need to learn…which means it will also get said…
Quit rolling your eyes…guess we know which one you think…geez…
I keep thinking…when I am a corpse…will I ask the undertaker…does this casket make me look fat…do you think you could squeeze me into a smaller size…maybe something in black…
I know…that’s irreverent…I suppose the question I am asking myself…is…am I willing to go to the grave worrying about what other people think of me…
And the answer is…I hope not…
I hope I realize that my life is bigger and fuller than that…I hope that I appreciate who I am and what I do…I hope that I realize I am more than someone else’s opinion of me…more than my size…more than my wardrobe…more than my relationships…more than my job…and even more than my writing…I hope I realize that I am all of that…and more…
I hope that I will not squeeze into a symbolic girdle even one day…ever again…
And that when I do get to that undertaker…I will only ask…do you know what an awesome life I had…it was full…it was fun…you may need a bigger casket to fit it all in…maybe something in lime green and flamingo pink…

Jane Carroll , 

Author                       

Bertha-Size Your Life

Life According to Jane

The 3 Reasons Why You Need To Quit Worrying About Readers Who Won't Spend A Dollar On Your Book

I saw this tweet: #writechat RT @grumblecore People spend $3 for coffee that takes moments to pour but balk at spending $1 on ebook that took months to write.
— Josh Evans (@JoshKEvans) December 27, 2011

This tweet is a common refrain among authors, in particular independent authors.
And it's one we need to stop making because it just reinforces the fact that we don't understand markets and economics.
And more importantly it shows you are focusing on the wrong people.

Starbucks Is Not About The Coffee

The first thing to understand about the price of a Starbucks coffee drink is that Starbucks is not about the coffee. Starbucks managed to change coffee from something that was a pure commodity where the goal for anyone who sold it was to sell it as cheap as you could. And the taste reflected that.
Starbucks pulled a Captain Kirk from Star Trek in the KobayashiMaru test - they changed the conditions of the game.
Instead of just pouring you a mere cup of coffee - they served dozens of varieties of coffee - served by baristas who were trained on how to expertly make these drinks.
Additionally they focused on the experience - nice comfy chairs, nice music and turned it into a destination.
Where you are not paying just for coffee - but rather the experience.
And people do pay for the coffee drink (really people don't buy coffee at Starbucks, mostly they buy sugar-water laced with a hint of coffee) - not just because it tastes good but because they like to be reminded of the experience.
Other factors also play into this - the need to look/feel hip (e.g. you're friends are drinking Starbucks so you want to too), the need to splurge a little luxury on yourself (as luxuries go Starbucks is affordable) and of course sugar addiction (chemically speaking sugar affects the brain similar as an opiate which is why it's so damn hard to give up).
And to their credit Starbucks did a very good job at managing the experience - almost too good. For example they forced McDonald's to update their restaurants to be more comfortable (we have a new McDonald's near my house and it has padded leather booths and even leather chairs). They even forced them to change their coffee - it's actually pretty good now (I prefer McDonald's plain coffee over Starbucks). You can despise McDonald's if you want - but you cannot deny their success at knowing what millions of people want to buy.
Though one twist on the McDonald's vs Starbucks - McDonald's is setup to be low-cost provider and to make money on things beyond coffee. So now they are gaining upper-hand on Starbucks in particular since they can leverage their ability to sell other things to cover costs for people who want to spend all day there.
On the other hand Starbucks has had to make their stores less inviting (notice how many hard-back wood chairs now) to discourage people from staying much longer than just having their cup of coffee.
Tip #1- Think about how you can help create experiences and not just books - example a UStream chat

Focus On Creating Super Fans

There are three types of people who will read your books (or buy your music or your painting or movie):

• Super-Fans
• Fans
• Readers

Super-Fans

Super-fans are the audience you want to grow the most. They are the ones who will do the best job of promoting your books (for free!) and will spend the most.
What is a super-fan. A super-fan is someone who will spend thousands of dollars to come here you speak across the country (or as I did to fly across country to see Guns n' Roses in their first US concert in years because they are my all time favorite band and I never got to see them live as a kid and absolutely didn't want to risk the tour collapsing before they came to Dallas).
They are the ones who will pay handsomely for a Cemetery Dance edition of your book.
These are the people you will reward by letting them get free copies or cheap copies. Because they are the smallest portion of the three types. And they will help grow the next two groups.
These are the ones who will religiously check your website, Twitter, etc to look for updates on new stuff.

Fans

Fans are people who read your books when they come out. If the price is right (e.g. less than a Starbucks coffee but doesn't have to a dollar) they might even buy as soon as they get prompted for it.
While they will not buy a Cemetery Dance version - they will understand why those who do - do. They might even wish to buy something like it if they have a particularly favorite book of yours (e.g. maybe a poster of the cover).
These are the most important ones to get on your mailing list because while they want to know when you have new stuff - they are not super-fans so won't be pro-active in searching you out.

Readers

This is the largest group. It's people who read books but generally only after there has been some indication the book is any good (e.g. the fans have bought up copies and posted reviews).
This is the most price sensitive crowd - but it doesn't mean you should pander to them. The economics has to add up.
For example at $3.99 you only need to sell 5,000 copies to earn the same as you would if 40,000 people bought at 99-cents.
This is the group you're really testing your pricing strategy out on. Don't worry about those who bitch and complain about all books need to be free or a buck.
Instead do empirical testing - as you sell 500 books (or a 1000), increase the price of the book a dollar until the sales start to drop off. Because in reality nobody knows how much someone might pay for your book. That's why you need to test.
This is a strategy that ebooks enables that cannot be done in physical books.
Tip #2 - Focus your engagement on people who give you a review or real interest so that you can grow them into fans and super-fans

Don't Do This For The Money   to read more....
Mark Wilcox

The Chainsaw Method of Writing a Novel

Have a clear fall path:  You may not know all that will happen in the novel, but you should know where it will end up, or have a fairly good idea.  The fall path for a novel should target a tight space, say, between an orphanage and a basket of kittens.  In other words, the massive hulking whole must nearly crush but not destroy the story or its characters, and result in near-miss.  At first, the fall path may appear clear, but as the chapters unfold, items begin to gather underneath the drop-zone and thus rising action takes place.
Begin Cutting by Creating the Notch or Face Cut:  The opening chapters should mark the basic direction of your fall path, or where you are going.  These quick cuts must be remarkable enough that reader knows the shape of the characters before you notched them with face cuts.  Also, the initial chapters require action, not pondering souls.  The face cuts of a novel should be action scenes for several reasons: to show your characters in action, to resist digression, and to hook readers.  Actually, these three reasons are based on the same objective: to get the novel moving and the pages turning.  (Does not apply if you happen to be the next Proust or Dostoyevsky.)   The face cuts should also introduce plots from their starting points, which will start to converge when…

The Top Cut and the Bottom Cut Makes the Notch:  A large bite out of the tree forms a notch.  Suspense begins here.  This may be the end of Act I in a sense, because the novel has a large gaping wound in the side, and readers by now can see the branches moving and start to wonder when gravity will cave the trunk on itself.  But this is an illusion, as our lumberjack shows us – many cuts are still to come to bring this great plant to ground.  Once the notch reveals itself to the reader, the main characters or the main plots should have a nice conflict going.  Moreover, these two converging characters or plots (the “Top Cut” and the “Bottom Cut”) should extend from two radically opposed worldviews, such that the conflict is natural and opposing, if not altogether spiteful and nasty.

Try for a One Piece Slice: Make the meeting between the plots fit together.  There should be a silence in the air, and the tree should wobble.  Now is a good time to have some interesting minor characters lean against the tree, provoke the main characters, steal a few scenes, stoke the wind, and otherwise clutter the fall path with risk.  Perhaps a baby carriage is now sitting directly in the fall path, or a bulldozer is unloading from a flatbed trailer and crawling toward the tree with its pusher.

Making a Back Cut, the Third and Final Cut:  While the reader still observes the face cut, return to the story from the opposite side, and begin to notify them that the cause of the collapse is not coming from the expected angle, but from the rear.

The Falling Tree and a Felling Retreat:  The growing slice on the backside of the tree should produce creaks and groans from the trunk as the inevitable collapse begins.  However, the falling, like a tree, should start and stop, and start again, until it reaches a tipping point from which there is no return.  The final process of falling should be swift and devastating, a near-miss of the orphanage and the kittens.

The ending should be nothing more than the settling of leaves and then silence in the woods. 
Peter Anthony                           

James Lee Burke- How Writers an Learn from other Writers

I'm convinced you can't write well unless you read books by writers who have figured it out and learn from them. Classic writers like Hemingway and Faulkner and Wolfe and Steinbeck. Present day writers like Michael Connelly, Nelson DeMille, C.J. Box, Lee Child, Stephen King and Robert Crais. All very different. All highly accomplished. All able to touch something human in us that goes beyond adventure and trouble and crime and spies and bad guys and good guys and all that.
I'm a big fan of James Lee Burke. I've read all of his Dave Robicheaux novels. I just finished Feast Day of Fools, Burke's latest in a series featuring an aging, small town Texas sheriff named Hackberry Holland.
So, what's so great about Burke's writing? What can I (and maybe you) learn from reading a book about dysfunctional, psychopathic characters who consistently carry out brutal and heinous acts as a routine day's work? Why would we want to read about people like this?
 Because Burke is much more than a creative writer with the required skill sets of crafted scenes, powerful dialogue and twisting plots. He's a master at revealing the human heart and the demons that reside within all of us. He's an absolute master of natural description, immersing the reader in the desert harshness of Mexico and Texas or the lush coast of Louisiana or the hard streets of New Orleans. He's a master at revealing the depths of a character in a simple paragraph, of choosing exactly the right words.
Here's an example from Feast Day of Fools. Hackberry Holland, Burke's protagonist, is watching his deputy Pam Tibbs at a crime scene.
In moments like these, when she was totally unguarded and unmindful of herself, Hackberry knew in a private place in the back of his mind that Pam Tibbs belonged to that category of exceptional women whose beauty radiated outward through their skin and had little to do with the physical attributes of their birth. In these moments he felt an undefined longing in his heart that he refused to recognize.
It paints an instant picture of Pam Tibbs. From prior parts of the book we know she's not beautiful in the conventional sense. Burke could have just said she wasn't particularly pretty, not that her beauty had little to do with the physical attributes of her birth. I think the ability to describe a character with a phrase like this is as good as it gets for a writer. To me, it borders on genius.
The paragraph reveals Hackberry. It tells us the essence of who he is. He longs for connection he cannot define. More, he refuses to acknowledge it's there. He must control his emotions or things might turn bad for him. He fears their power.
Two characters defined. All in seventy words. Hackberry, over seventy years old, struggles with unresolved feelings about Pam, who is half his age. Along with the dangerous and evil characters Burke spreads across the pages, we find ourselves engaged with a protagonist aware he is long past his prime, taking it one day at a time, struggling with unexpressed and powerful emotions and doing the best he can to see that justice is done.
Dave Robicheaux is another character any aspiring writer can learn from. He's gentle and full of love for his wives (they get killed every now and then) and his adopted daughter, Alafair. He's full of destructive anger that comes raging out past the walls of polite manners he's built to contain it. He's from a nightmare of a dysfunctional family that was laced with love, sex and alcohol. He's driven by demons many of us might find familiar. He's a Vietnam Vet. He struggles to stay sober and sometimes he slips. He has deep integrity. He cares. He seeks and believes in social justice. He sees Confederate ghosts slipping through the mists of the Bayou.
One hell of a character. Read James Lee Burke and learn.
Alex Lukeman, Author of WHITE JADE and THE LANCE. If you like thrillers, you'll like these. Ebooks and paperback.