Open Your Heart

I've been cranky lately.

Its a number of things. First world problems mainly, but still, they've been weighing on me. Work's been kinda meh and I've been sick more than I haven't, but really, it's mostly the book's fault. I'm still not done!
Enough complaining.

I was driving home the other night, crabbing at the traffic, and thinking that all I wanted was to get home and get to work editing but I knew I needed to do some yoga first. It's two hours out of my evening, but I've been putting it off a lot and that's not helping things either.

So I got home and pulled up the Yoga Glow website and this class on heart openers jumped out at me. So I did it. And it was awesome. The instructor spoke of making space around your heart, of casting aside those old thoughts that weigh you down and opening up to truth and light and intuition.

That's good advice, eh? It doesn't matter if you are talking about work, or relationships, or editing. You have to be open to new ideas but that process of making yourself receptive isn't always easy. Sometimes the answer your looking for isn't even new.

Sometimes you just need to rediscover acceptance.

I am where I need to be. The rest will follow, if I open up my heart.

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Originally posted at my blog, Writing and Whatnot, on 6-21-12

When Do You Know It's Time To Move On?

I have lost track of the number of full revisions Once We Were Bears has gone through. Which is to say it has been uncountably many.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to "move Beryl into the world." I'm quoting from the fragments of intentions I developed last January when I took advantage of a generous offer from my massage therapist: a free, New Year's yoga session for her clients. Some wicked challenging poses, a variety of thoughts on values, goals, and courage, and then space and silence and time to write.

In that stillness an image came to me: blackbirds flying.

I'm getting close to letting Beryl take flight, but I'm still holding on, fiddling with the small stuff before sending her out to Beta Readers. How small? Well, let's just leave it at the fact that I'm currently running a search for the word of. Yes. OF. (I use it a lot, and sometimes the line works better without it.) But seriously? Of?

So, yeah, I suppose it's about time for those birds to fly.

And what better time for blackbirds and endings and moving on than autumn?

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The opening image is the paper cut art of Nikki McClure, whose calendar I buy every year for myself and those close friends and family unable to make monthly use my bathroom in order to see the beauty she creates with a piece of paper and an X-acto knife.

#reverb10 – The Catch-up Post! (Shawn's 9-12)

I’m a wee bit behind.

It all started with Friday. Hey, it was Friday people, and Friday means beer, not blogs. Plus, Claudia posted and I was having fun arguing with Mark about Lucifer. Yah, THAT Lucifer.

Then, there was the snowstorm, or #snownami as it’s called on Twitter. 17 inches or so in these parts. Let’s just say I had a lot of quality time with my snowblower.

But I can’t blame it all on #snownami. There was also a lot of fun. Baking cookies with the lovely @mplstravelkitty and devouring a delicious slow cooked pork roast were among the highlights.

Now it’s Monday – back on the horse and all that.

Let’s get cracking!

December 9 – Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

I know this is going to be a huge surprise to those who know me, but I’m not big into the party scene. For me, my favorite social gatherings are small, intimate affairs with friends and/or family.

My favorite times are when it’s just the lovely @mplstravelkitty and I. I’m thinking summer. A trip to the farmer’s market and then grilling, throwing together a spread of veggies, grabbing a bottle of wine, and enjoying it all on our deck.

Sorry, a gentleman doesn’t give details about shenanigans.

December 11 – 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

OK, seriously? 11 things?  11?!?

I don't have all year, you know...

PS  Yes, I know I skipped #10! Wait for it!

December 12 – Body Integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

Oh, this one is easy. Almost every time I go to yoga.

December 10 – Wisdom. Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

I saved this one for last because it’s actually related to writing – shocker!

(To be fair, the Scribblerati will probably remember that I half made this decision in late 2009, but it wasn’t until this year that I actually went full in.)

The wisest decision I made this year was to rewrite my book. From scratch.

You see, naive me had this notion that I wanted to write my book a certain way. I wanted to write a fantasy loosely based on the same event timeline as 9/11, a timeline where the characters didn’t understand what was happening or what the stakes were until the big event at the end of the book. So I did. I did it perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that not even the Scribblerati understood.

FAIL.

So, I took their comments and reactions in stride and reassessed. I knew I couldn’t change the major plot arc, not and still be true to the story I wanted to tell, but I could tell the story in a different way. I could still have the same loose 9/11 concept, but this time I would need to make sure the reader understood what was at stake and what the consequences were, even if my characters didn’t.

As a result, I’ve changed a ton of things. Some characters are gone completely while other have been introduced. As for their arcs, they all start and end in the same place, but the way they get there is almost entirely different. All told, I’ve kept maybe 10-15% of what I had in the previous draft. The rest is entirely new.

People, especially writers, tend to look at me with a wide-eyed ‘you did what?’ reaction when I tell them I did this, but truthfully, it was liberating. It’s also been a lot of fun because this time I know I’m doing it right and comments from the Scribblerati – so far – have been largely positive.

The last 1/3 of my book is just starting to work it’s way through the Scribblerati right now. My fingers are crossed!

#reverb10 (Shawn's #4 & 5)

What? Another blog already?

Didn’t I warn you there might be a lot of activity around here with this #reverb10 thing?

Yes, I believe I did. I think.

Anyway, after my last post geeked out on football, I decided I wanted to real this thing back in a little bit and keep things as focused as I can on writing. After all, this is a writing blog.

Enough foreplay -- let's get to it!

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I have to admit, my initial reaction to this one was underwhelming. The first thing I thought of was that wide-eyed kind of little kid wonder and, let's face it folks, that's just a little bit too Oprah Book Club for the kind of goings on around here.

Naturally, in the long and steadfast tradition of those made uncomfortable by something, my first inclination was to write a blog making fun of it. I thought of doing something like this.

Wonder. I wonder why all the batteries in this house seem to be dying all at once. (Anyone else having that problem?)

Or maybe…

Wonder. I wonder if the world really will end when the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012 and, if it is going to, would Jessica Alba consent to swinging by? (It's okay people. She's on my free five card.)

But then I had a realization: wonder is what we writers do every day.

For those of you who don't write, I'll let you in on a secret. Half the time you see a writer they aren't there. Oh sure, they may be sitting right across from you with a beer in hand but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that there is a part of their brain that is constantly observing, taking notes, speculating, wondering. Now, don't get all angry. This is just what we writers do. If we didn't sit around spaced out half the time the rest of you wouldn't have any stories to read.

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

This was an easy one for me. I let go of my need for control while writing.

That may not seem like much, but it was huge, at least for me. You see, it's taken me a long time to really learn how to write. There was a long, long time where nothing I wrote was good enough. I would struggle to make early drafts as good as I could. I would wrestle with the words as they tried to come out and the result was words flowing onto the page with all the rapidity of dishwater seeping through a clogged drain. Writing took forever, and the result was almost always disheartening.

Somewhere along the line, and I don't even think it was a really conscious thing, I just began to let go. Instead of fighting the words, I just let them flow out any old way they wanted to. I didn't care if they were crap, or if there was no punctuation, or if I shortened whole paragraphs into “so-and-so walks across town thinking about the bad guy.”

The result has been both surprising and liberating. In my last post, I briefly mentioned getting caned from my day job. During the two months I was unemployed I wrote close to two thirds of my book in exactly this fashion, just letting the words pour out any old which way. It was amazing.

So why do I think this change took place? The only thing I can think of is yoga. In yoga, you are constantly being instructed to let go. Let go of your fear, your resistance, your thoughts that you can't do what you're being asked to do. Somehow, I think all that leaked into my writing and I am now the better for it. Yoga, as they say, isn't a practice, it's a way of life.

PS. I can't do that - yet.