Balance Life and Writing with Kristi Holl

We writers tend to look at our work and our process as the most important thing in our lives. We read books about writing, about specific techniques that will help us write better. We buy software to help us write faster and more effectively. We look for ways to wring out every last second of the day that we can spend on our writing. In other words, we frequently overlook our lives themselves. At best this leaves us crippled in our writing.

Our lives shape our experiences, which shapes our writing. Most of us realize this. But do we stop to think about how the quality of our lives shapes the quality of our writing? Stressed lives produce stressed writing. But how can we escape the emotions and stresses that complicate our day-to-day lives? It seems as if it would be great to live in a safe, supportive writers' retreat year-round. But realistically, even the most imaginative writer I know realizes that's not going to happen. And it wouldn't be good for us if we could do it, anyway.

We share with fellow writers stories of writing through stress and dealing with writing issues like procrastination or writer's block, but when we're not with our writers group or enjoying daily coffee breaks or visits with writing friends, what do we do? I have a suggestion: we should all go to Kristi Holl's website and download her More Writers First Aid in pdf form or for your Kindle. It is one of the few practical how-to books on dealing with the emotions, stress and issues in our personal life that prevent us from doing our best writing and enjoying the process more than ever.

Kristi (I'm delighted to disclose that she is a longtime writing friend of mine) also offers practical how-to-write booklets at her site, such as Writing Mysteries for Young People and 50 Tension Techniques. Her years of experience and teaching allow her to give her readers simple, direct, easy-to-follow writing tips in these booklets. But the best writing tips are useless if you're strung so tight, or such a perfectionist, or a perpetual procrastinator, or someone who clings unknowingly to poor writing habits. Kristi's More Writers First Aid helps the writer, whether that writer has published many books or is only just getting started, recognize how she's sabotaging herself and shows her how to make wiser decisions about balancing life and writing.

I admit, I was predisposed to like this book because of the teddy bear on the cover - I know I write better when I've got a teddy bear for company. But I wasn't prepared to love it until I began dipping into the book and recognized so many of my own problems in her practical advice in dealing with burn-out, rejections, facing fears, writing in pain, and derailing our own writing. What is so helpful about the book is that Kristi doesn't write from way above us lowly mortals, telling us how to solve our problems; she generously writes as if she has experienced every problem we face, and shares how she has lived through it, or triumphed over it. Reading this book is like having a terrific visit with a friend. Even if all your friends are busy, you know that Kristi isn't too busy to spend some time with you, and help you through that rough spot so you can balance the ups and downs of life with your writing to give yourself write better than you ever thought you could, and to be happier doing it than you've ever been.

The Second Draft

Writers like to talk about the first draft, and then the excitement (or the torture) of revision. But for me there's a pretty major step in between those two parts of the process. That's the second draft.

For me, the second draft isn't a revision, or a re-envisioning of the book I set out to write. The second draft is when I read through my first draft and add in details that I realize I left out in my rush to complete the first draft (the phase I like to think of as taking a roller coaster ride with my characters.) There's no time for pausing to consider the perfect word or the small, descriptive details that accompany the main action while you, as the writer, are riding the roller coaster. The second draft is the time to consider those.

The second draft is also the time when I look at what I've written and recognize the subtle threads that are woven through the story as a whole. These threads may only peek through here and there in the first draft, because they may be so subtle that I didn't recognize their significance while I was on the roller coaster. Now they spring out at me in vivid relief, and as I work on the second draft I can pull those threads through, so they find their proper place in the book as a whole.

The second draft is also the opportunity for adding in facts. I do a great deal of research before I get on that first draft roller coaster, but once I've taken off I always run up against questions that I discover I need to answer before the manuscript is ready to be revised. Interrupting the roller coaster ride in order to look up these facts can upset the flow of the writing,

so I leave notes or gaps in the first draft to remind me to find out about this or that, and the second draft is my chance to look up those facts and fit them in correctly. These can't be big facts that will alter the way your characters behave, or course, or how your plot turns out - those have to be answered before I climb on the roller coaster. But the second draft is my chance to research those little facts I didn't know I needed to discover when I first started writing.

Sometimes I don't even realize when my first draft turns into my second draft. This evening my husband asked how close I was to the end of the book. As I tried to explain that I'd already written the end, I realized what I've been doing these last couple of days was pulling threads through and adding in those descriptive details and those additional facts. I realized I've completed my first draft, and I'm partway through my second draft. That means my new book should be ready to give my critique group soon, and then read to revise and send to my agent. I've got to admit, I'm thrilled to realize I'm well into my second draft!

Take Time to Celebrate!

I was very touched when I heard Marion Dane Bauer's story about not properly celebrating her Newbery Honor win for On My Honor. And I've taken to heart her advice to celebrate each step of the way. As writer, it used to be true that ours was a solitary journey, but thanks to our writers groups, thanks to the internet, thanks to Facebook, we're now active participants in a larger community that allows us to have virtual celebrations with our friends and colleagues any time we want!

I celebrate a good writing day by updating my Facebook status, and share good news about great reviews or awards with my writers group by bringing

chocolate to our meetings. (My previous writers group celebrated with cookies - different foods, but both great ways to share good news with your friends.

Still, the writing itself, at least the first draft, is something done alone. And I do have a more private celebration ritual for good news or awards for one of my books - one that doesn't involve eating. I celebrate by getting myself a new fountain pen. It's a way to celebrate the writing, and my personal participation in it. No, I don't write my first drafts by fountain pen - but I write my notes for each book, and my journal, and my handwritten letters with fountain pens. I cherish the way the ink flows, and how a fountain pen solidly fills my hand. And I always love the way children and teachers point at it and say, "Look! A real writer's pen."

My fountain pens aren't magic, but they're special to me, and I was delighted to start writing with the newest addition to my working collection, the silver one at the bottom in this photo. We all have good writing news to celebrate much more often than we give ourselves credit for: finishing a scene, finishing a chapter, completing a first draft, trusting our first draft to our critique group, completing a second draft, completing a revision, placing the manuscript, signing a contract, completing revisions for the publisher, seeing reviews, holding the first copy in our hands. Make sure you do something to celebrate each step of the way, with writing friends, and perhaps even a personal celebration ritual of your own.

Endorphins and Writing

My husband's work keeps him on the road, away from home way too much of the time - which means there are too many nights when it's just me and my teddy bear trying to fall asleep. Some nights I toss and turn, worrying about things that are beyond my power to control. I've found I sleep best when I lie in bed and think about the book that's currently in progress.

I've heard that writers shouldn't do that, because either it keeps you awake all night or you forget any insights you had by the time you wake up in the morning. I don't find that's a problem for me. I keep my current WIP notebook within easy reach, and my teddy bear doesn't mind my turning on the light when inspiration strikes. As soon as a scene or an insight from my MC comes into focus, I'm sitting up in bed and writing it down, so it's safely preserved for my more wakeful writer persona of the next morning.

And here's my discovery: writing seems to be as good as making love when it comes to releasing hormones! Making good love releases endorphins that activate the body's opiate receptors - in other words, endorphins make you slide happily into sleep. So does tapping into your book's soul. As soon as I've written down my new insight and switched off the light, I slip happily into sleep and have a good night. Okay, being with my husband is even better for a loving night's sleep, but it doesn't increase my word count or my character insights.

Whichever option you have tonight, sweet dreams.

On Fire

No, I'm not talking about Katniss, the Girl on Fire (though I do already have a cool Mockingjay t-shirt that I can't wait to wear while I'm reading the book, which I've pre-ordered). I'm talking about something a member of my writers' group said after I reported to them on everything I've been up to since landing my new agent, Jill Corcoran. My friend told me I was on fire with writing, now that I didn't have to think about the business aspect of the work.

I think she's right. Ever since I started writing, lo these many years ago, I've worked at submitting all my manuscripts on my own and dealing with the business end of the craft by negotiating my own contracts. But this business aspect has sapped more and more of my creative energy as publishers have made the business of being a writer increasingly difficult. Now that I've found an agent who believes in me and has shouldered that burden with gusto, I feel free to focus on the writing aspect. That doesn't mean I'm ignoring the concept of marketing entirely and writing in a vacuum, because if you're not cognizant of market demand you're not doing your creativity any favors! But I can concentrate on what I want to write, with the idea of how it fits into market requirements as a background to the work, not as the next phase of responsibility I have to take on myself.

So I've worked on planning out three chapter books in a series and started a new YA novel, Fire at Will, and I feel as if I'm fizzing with creative energy and excitement. In short, I feel as enthusiastic as I used to feel when I started writing. I know I'll still have revision work with editors as Permanent Record and other books are sold, and I'm looking forward to it, as I used to look forward to every phase of this craft, but being able to focus on only the creative side of the business is incredibly liberating. My friend was right - I'm on fire with the thrill of writing all over again, thanks to partnering with my agent!

Sleep Writing - Part 2

The last piece of sleep advice that conference speakers like to give writers is: "Record your dreams - you may find wonderful stories in them." I resisted this advice for years.

Perhaps I was hampered by a story my mother used to tell me. She had a recurring dream in which she would get out of bed, sit down at a desk, and begin writing by hand. She would write through the long hours of the night and finally stop at dawn, with a stack of manuscript pages to show for her efforts.

At that point my mother would wake up. She always remembered the dream in detail, and she knew she had written a bestseller. The only catch was - she couldn't remember a word of what she had written.This might be an understandable dream for a writer, but my mother wasn't one. In fact, she tried to discourage me from becoming a writer. "Be a doctor," she advised, "and write in your spare time."

I, however, couldn't imagine writing in my spare time any more than I could imagine creating stories from my dreams. They made perfect sense while I was asleep, but they lacked coherence in the light of my computer monitor, and faded into wisps of insubstantial plot and character. So I was astounded to wake one morning from a vivid dream that would not let me go.

I'd dreamed of a boy in a dark, smelly cellar. The boy stood in a small room, in front of the open drawer of a file cabinet, reading through a file of news clippings. And I knew exactly what he was doing. His name was Cameron, and he was the son of a serial killer. His father locked him in the cellar while he tortured and murdered the young boys who were his victims. Then the man made Cameron help him bury the boys in the cellar, but the smell never completely went away.

Serial killers always keep souvenirs from their victims, and Cameron's father kept news clippings about the search for the missing boys in a file cabinet in his cellar. But his son had found them and read them until he knew the dead boys almost better than he knew himself. And when his father was killed in an attempted arrest, Cameron decided to take on the identity of one of the murdered boys, and try to begin a new life with a real family, as an impostor.

That morning, with the dream still fresh in my mind, I wrote what would become the prologue of COUNTERFEIT SON. Six months of research and writing later, the novel was finished. When the book was published, it was chosen immediately for the YALSA Quick Picks list and went on to win an Edgar for Best Young Adult mystery and quite a few other honors.

Do I keep a pad at my bedside these days so I can write down my dreams? You bet I do. Lightning doesn't usually strike twice, but I've since had another vivid dream that I turned into a story called "Gatekeeper" available from iPulp. Who knows what I'll dream tonight? I'm now a believer in making my sleep work for me.

Sleep Writing - Part 1

I love attending writing conferences. I particularly love listening to writers share their techniques for maximizing their writing time. Much of this has to do with sleep. As Snoopy, the world-famous author, often said, "Sleep is life" and we writers often sleep when we could be writing. In fact, speakers frequently advise attendees to get up early and write while their family sleeps. That's probably terrific advice, if you're conscious in the early morning hours.

At 5 AM I'm incoherent. I'm doing amazingly well if I can find the keys to pick out: "I am a writer. I am writing now." But progress on a book at that hour? Forget it. I used to write after my husband went to sleep, since I'm more conscious at night and better able to wake my characters up at late hours. While working on my latest book, however, I've been waking up around 7:30 or 8 (or 8:30 or...), lying in bed and thinking about the book, and getting immediately to work on it without any distractions (do not pass the kitchen, do not eat breakfast, do not watch the morning news).

This is more in keeping with another suggestion conference speakers like to make: "Keep a notepad by your bed. Inspiration can strike while you're sleeping." When I'm deeply in the world of a book, I always try to think about it just as I'm falling asleep. And I'll often wake up with terrific ideas that came to my subconscious while my conscious brain was sleeping.

I rely on this technique when I'm working through a problem with a book. When I was writing Ghost Soldier, I realized I'd done such a good job in the first part of the book of making Alexander frightened of a Civil War ghost and determined not to help him, that I had no idea how Alexander would end up making friends with the ghost so they could work together in the remainder of the book. So I slept on it.

I woke up with the melody of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" running through my head.

I already knew that Alexander spent his evenings sitting on the back porch playing his alto recorder to annoy his father. I realized he was going to start playing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" one evening, deliberately playing it angrily, to hurt the ghost because he never got to march home to his family. But as Alexander plays it, he hears an eerie, reedy harmony weaving itself around his mellow recorder melody. When he looks around, he sees that the ghost has joined him, playing his own ghostly harmonica. It's a song the ghost knew well because it was popular when he was alive, and it doesn't hurt him at all. Instead, his harmony calms Alexander. Somehow it's hard to be angry at someone after you've made music together. The song opens Alexander up to listen to the ghost, befriend him and agree to help him.

Where did the idea come from? Somewhere in my subconscious as I slept. And sometimes the subconscious can be even more generous in your sleep - but I'll cover that in Part 2.

A Remarkable Concurrence of Events

A coincidence is defined as "a remarkable concurrence of events without apparent causal connection." When I lead writing workshops, I warn writers to avoid coincidences that work to the main character's advantage. A malign coincidence that makes things worse for the main character can sometimes be okay, as readers are prone to believe coincidences for the worst much more than coincidences for the better.

But recently I've been thinking about books that rely on coincidence and still work. I reread one of my favorites books, I Am David by Anne Holm (much, much better than the movie!) and it occurred to me in this rereading just how many coincidences there were in it. David's final scene could never have happened without several critical coincidences working to help him. His meeting the artist in order to acquire a vital piece of information always struck me, from my very first reading, as way too convenient. Yet the book works for me.

Right after that (a coincidence?) I read The Line by Teri Hall, and was again struck by the remarkable coincidence that, of all the "Others" Rachel might conceivably meet, she meets a boy who knows someone she has always wanted to learn more about. What are the odds? Yet, again, the book works for me.

Then it occurred to me that some critics have called the end of my own book, Counterfeit Son, a coincidence, and yet it won the Edgar Award, which means it certainly worked for the judges, and it has worked for many readers. And I remembered how I met my husband, Art - a coincidence if there ever was one, that required my coming back to work at my college bookstore years after I had graduated, his masters professor going on sabbatical during Art's last semester so that Art ended up teaching a 300 level history seminar that usually attracted 5-10 students, and Art's having made so many friends among the athletes that 100 signed up for the seminar and he came to the bookstore to order more books at just the right moment for me to see him and fall in love.

Even though fact is always stranger than fiction, and all writers know we shouldn't write anything that really happened in our lives exactly the way it happened as part of our fiction, maybe coincidences aren't all that unbelievable after all. But they certainly are remarkable.

Don't Hold Anything Back

Some writers hold back a little in a manuscript. They don't want to risk leaving their well of ideas empty for their next project. To me, that's like the Indianapolis Colts holding back when they were undefeated at 14 and 0. Their front office didn't want to risk injury because they wanted to guarantee that the Colts could go into the playoffs healthy. So what happens? Dwight Freeney gets injured anyway in the playoffs; in practice, Reggie Wayne worsens the right knee injury that has plagued him throughout the season; and, despite all of Peyton Manning's determination and preparation, the Colts lose dramatically to the Saints in the Super Bowl. Why? The New Orleans Saints never held back. They left everything on the field in every game all season and post season, while they were undefeated, and even when they started losing. They still played with heart. The Colts management played it safe and the players lost heart. Winning - and writing - is all about heart.

Never hold back when you're writing. Put everything you've got into every manuscript you write. More ideas will come for your next project, ideas better suited for that project, but if you shortchange what you're writing now, chances are you (and your current manuscript) will lose heart, and won't be able to go the distance. You have to be willing to risk it all, and put it all on the page. The Indianapolis front office wasn't willing to take risks - New Orleans risked it all on tricky plays like an unexpected onside kick, and today the people of New Orleans are starting their Mardi Gras celebration early with their Saints and the Lombardi trophy in hand. The Colts are going home, having fallen short. Don't let your manuscript fall short because you held something back.

Writing for a Touchdown

Football has had unexpected influences on my writing life. I didn't always know I cared about it.  But when I lived abroad for a year, researching my English ghost story, Tournament of Time, I realized I missed the sport. Neither soccer nor rugby quite seemed to inspire me. I came home to Houston and began watching football like a lifetime fan— writing my novel after work every afternoon and evening, except for Monday Night Football. When the opening music filled my one-room apartment, I swiveled away from my typewriter and toward the screen.

When I met my husband-to-be, two things about him struck me immediately. He believed in my dream of writing for children, even though I had only published some magazine pieces for adults up to that point. And he loved football. We discovered this mutual passion on our first date—the night before the Super Bowl. Needless to say, we watched that game together.

Unfortunately, my characters refuse to play football. I knew my main character in The Perfect Shot was an athlete with a strong sense of fair play. Wonderful, I told myself - he can be a quarterback. "No," Brian replied. "I'm a point guard." I said "Nonsense - there are no point guards in football." "You're right," he told me. "I play basketball." So I had to master basketball plays and terminology in order to write that book.

Now I'm writing about another athlete in Permanent Record. Once again I assured myself that I could write about a football player. But Ramón informed me he was a shortstop, and produced photos and baseball cards of his heroes to prove that he lived and breathed baseball, not football. So, once again, I'm struggling to familiarize myself with a sport that's not one I know intimately. But someday, I assure myself, I will write about a football player, and not have to do so much research into unfamiliar territory.

So why my fascination with football? As I was writing Simon Says, about a group of teenagers at a boarding school for fine arts, I was surprised when my main character, a painter, felt compelled to paint a moment from a football game his father dragged him to:

All I want to do is paint the receiver, hanging in mid-air, his fingertips brushing the rough, pebbly texture of the ball. He knows that three defenders, each one twice his size, are about to crash into him, but he makes himself tune them out, straining to clasp that ball to his chest and bring it safely to earth with him.

Maybe that’s why I feel so drawn to football - every time I write a manuscript I love and send it out, it seems as if a whole squad of editorial readers who reject it, and critics who dislike it, are leaping up at me like those defending players. But I hold onto the manuscript - yard by yard, down the field, editor by editor until I find the right one, and then its publication is my touchdown and a letter from a reader my extra point. And none of the tackles and rejections along the way matter any more.

Shower Writing

My writing retreat is drawing near the end - back to the real world with its distractions. But there's one technique I must remember when I'm struggling to make time to write: the power of standing in the shower, especially a long one while I wash my hair.

When I lead writing workshops, I often tell the attendees that, if they run into a situation where they're not sure what to write next, they should walk away from their computer or pad of paper, and do something that will get their hands dirty (weeding, or working on engines are two good activities). As soon as the imagination knows your hands are too grubby to write, it lets loose a flood of ideas on how to get past the current writing blockade. Then you trick your imagination by having a pencil handy that you don't mind getting muddy or greasy, and write down your idea before it can get away. But showers are even better.

I spend my time in the shower thinking about my characters - not about them taking showers, but about what they're doing in the upcoming chapter. I allow them to carry on conversations and take action - apparently, the notion that I can't write while my hands are covered in soap or shampoo frees up my imagination wonderfully. Whole scenes write themselves. The trick is to get out of the shower and write them down immediately. What I write doesn't have to be perfect; I just get what I've imagined down on paper. Then, after my hair is brushed out, I can keystroke it into my Mac and tweak and polish as I go.

Presto: my imagination is satisfied, my drive to move forward with my manuscript is satisfied, and since a shower a day is good for one's health (and for the comfort of everybody in one's vicinity), it's a terrific way to make good progress every day.

Making Yourself Write

When I was in college, I had no trouble whatsoever making time to write. In four years I wrote four novels, had a paying newspaper job, was active with the theatre group, and graduated with three majors (my university didn't offer minors). One of those novels was even ultimately published, once I had learned a good deal more about novel writing. But the point is that I must have known how to manage my time - taking all those classes successfully and enjoying myself with the theatre crowd and doing a great deal of writing.

When I got out of college, I took part time jobs, lived cheaply, and kept on writing both fiction and journalism. After I became a full-time writer, I usually managed to produce more than one book a year, balancing the novels with shorter nonfiction books. But somewhere along the way I discovered I was having trouble getting the writing done.

First it was because I was in a terrible auto wreck, and my right wrist was seriously damaged. (I am very right-handed.) It took almost four years to find the right surgeon (who had just gotten FDA approval for a prosthetic wrist joint) to repair the damage. During those years I struggled to write, and was generously helped by writer friends who gifted me with dictation software for my Mac. That software got me through the crisis of deadlines that had to be met despite the injury. Several of my editors were more than understanding, but publishers can't wait forever, and I refused to be permanently sidelined by my wrist. Fortunately, after the surgery, my wrist is back to typing energetically, at all hours of the day or night.

But since then I've found it more and more difficult to overcome writing complications. Case in point: I am on a writer's retreat to make serious headway on my new novel. I got out of bed yesterday morning with a swollen, painful left ankle. It had been fine when I went to bed and dreamed about my characters. But sometime in the night, I (or my teddy bear) did something to it. Yesterday, I barely managed a page of usable writing, because my ankle hurt enough to make me sick to my stomach. I tried taking Advil, I tried propping it up (a pillow on the top of a cooler makes a very nice ankle support), I tried to lose myself in the book, but it just wouldn't work. I went to bed hoping the ankle pain would disappear as mysteriously as it had appeared. 

But when I woke up this morning - I think you can guess what I found. That's right - I hobbled to my computer with my ankle still hurting. And I asked myself: what magic had I employed back in college to accomplish everything? I distinctly remember taking some rather serious spills off my bike (just a ten-speed, but you can still fall hard when you're pedalling full out and hit a city pothole). I'm sure I was sick, and I know I slept in and missed many a morning class. But I never missed a deadline for either a paper or a newspaper article, and I finished one novel for each year I was there. What did I do?

I honestly can't remember, but today I decided that, with that sublime confidence that only a teenager can possess, I must simply not have cared whether I was sick or injured. I had writing to do, so I did it. And today I did just that. I told my ankle to just sit there and be glad I wasn't walking on it, and I wrote. And I produced 8 good pages today. And this blog entry.

Of course, I'm going to have to hobble to bed, and I know I hope again that the pain will miraculously disappear, but even if it doesn't, I'm determined to rise and write again. That's the only way to finish a book.

And an ankle has very little to do with the writing process, after all.