Self Awareness/Directed Awareness

by Bill Johnson

For people, self-awareness has many facets. People in general need brain power to filter out much of the information their senses collect. I think self-awareness for particular people can end up running in channels, so that we can quickly assign meaning and values to people and relationships in our lives and not get bogged down/drown in processing details. Relationships can also be symbolic, in the sense that a symbol can stand in for a relationship, a kind of short hand code.

The problem arises when a new writer doesn't realize their particular short hand code (a dark-haired woman with thick glasses could be a symbol for an abusive parent) doesn't evoke anything for a reader. The job of our brains to filter out details or shape our reality to a particular design can lead to a kind of neutered, thin writing that fails to ring true. Except for the person writing in their particular symbolic code.

Directed awareness, however, is a choice about where to focus awareness. Cynthia Whitcomb, the President of Willamette Writers, has had a long career as a successful screenwriter. When she began focusing more on writing plays, she read a play a day for a year. That was one way she assimilated a deeper understanding of what makes for a good play.

I find students in my screenwriting classes who don't like or watch movies. They simply want to imagine an idea of theirs turned into a Hollywood film, or imagine their life being turned into a major motion picture, with the money involved. I sometimes lose 50% to 70% of my students in a particular class. I suspect when I try and teach them directed awareness about storytelling -- consciously learning the craft -- they aren't ready for the work involved, or they come to realize the work involved.

About directed awareness versus intuition, recent brain scan studies have shown that once people have assimilated understanding (gained understanding about some facet of writing like plot, for example), when a problem arises, the subconscious can take that assimilated understanding of storytelling and find a solution to a particular plot problem. Then pop the answer in to the conscious mind.

Which some people interpret as intuition.

The catch is, the subconscious can only present that answer to the conscious mind when that mind is not preoccupied with a particular problem. Being preoccupied with a problem blocks the subconscious mind from accessing the conscious mind and providing an answer.

I go over this more in the latest version of my book, and reference some of these new scientific studies. I find it fascinating that brain scans give a more accurate representation of how the brain works and functions.

Many years ago I was in a state of deep meditation where I could see the flow of my subconscious thoughts/feelings/awareness welling up into my conscious mind; be aware of thoughts before they became conscious thoughts. Odd, enchanting process to observe.

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A fifth edition of my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, is now available for $2.99 from Amazon Kindle.

Power Networking for Writers: It is About Who You Know, by Julie Fast

It's very exciting to finish a writing project. This requires time and diligence and is a true accomplishment. Unfortunately, some of the most talented writers work for years to sell a project, be it a book or a screenplay and wonder why the success they crave remains elusive.

It's easy to feel that authors who are published know something secret. And they often do. They understand that who you know is sometimes as important as the project itself. They understand the power of networking.

Networking takes confidence, research and planning. But it can make a huge difference in your conference experience.

My best advice is to take advantage of every networking opportunity you can find. Scope out the agents and publishers you want to meet and take their classes. You can then hear their special offers. Talk with people in the café and sit next to the person at lunch who has something you want. Yes, it's Machiavellian, but if you want to get published, this is often what it takes.  

I've taught ePublishing classes at the conference for seven years. I always say, "Let me know your topic and I will point you in the right direction of an agent or my agent." Guess what? About 10% take me up on the offer. Five of my students are now published and one worked with my agent. As a teacher, I'm impressed by networking. So don't be shy about networking. They weren't.

You are no different than writers who seem more successful than yourself. They wrote well (as I hope you do!) and then knew how to relentlessly network to get what they wanted. I've been in the publishing world for ten years and I know the big secret. Agents and published writers have to network as much as you do. So get out there, network at the conference and sell your project!

I hope to see you in class.

Julie A. Fast

 

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Julie is teaching a class at the Willamette Writers conference, August 3-5th in Portland, Oregon.

http://www.willamettewriters.com/wwc/3/

About Doubt, by Molly Best Tinsley

  Writers hear voices--a provocative sentence or two bubbling up in the mind’s ear; a created, or remembered, character beginning to speak autonomously.  These are gifts of the creative process to be cherished.  Then there are the other voices, the ones that chime in when we’re mustering the energy to get started on a project, or when the first burst of energy has been spent and we’re trying to figure out where to go next.  “Why bother?” these voices ask.  “You’re not a real writer.  That was a dumb idea.  You’ll never get it  to come out right.  What’s the point of going on?”

 

These doubts are the legacies of childhood, when parents and other adults defined who we were and decreed what we had to do.  Back then, writing meant navigating a tangle of rules—spelling, grammar, and “what the teacher wants.”  There is safety in all these obsolete limitations; they maintain the status quo.  But they have nothing to do with our creative abilities or the vitality of our writing.  We must laugh them off our mental stage, embrace the freedom, and forge on. 

 

No one ever postpones or stops writing because of lack of talent or technical expertise.  The talent is always there to be tapped, and solutions abound for any technical writing problem.  There’s only one thing that can stop us from writing if we let it, and that is self-doubt.

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Molly Tinsley left the English faculty at the US Naval Academy to write full-time.  Her story collection Throwing Knives won the Oregon Book Award; her most recent release is the memoir Entering the Blue Stone.  Three years ago she donned the editor/publisher hat, co-founding the small press Fuze Publishing (www.fuzepublishing.com).  She facilitates the workshops, Crafting Lively Dialogue and The Second Draft.

For more information about the conference, visit http://www.willamettewriters.com/wwc/3/

Low Cost Book Publicity

by Bill Johnson       

As the office manager for a writers group with over 1,750 members, I'm often asked by newly published or self-published authors, what do I do to promote my book in my local area?


First, it's easier to get an announcement about a talk into a local newspaper than a lone author doing a book signing. Many authors have some lifetime experience they can speak about at a local library. And some libraries also allow book sales for a nominal commission.

If you can't arrange a talk through a library, local community colleges often rent rooms on weekends for a small fee, and such locations generally offer easy parking and access.

Using a space at either a library or school also lends some status to your talk.

If these spaces aren't available to you, many communities have arts organizations, some that meet in publicly subsidized spaces. They can also be a resource for renting a room to hold a talk.

Retirement communities also will host speakers (or performers in general).

My most dependable resource for getting the word out about these kinds of events has been a local alternative weekly (most major cities have one). These weeklies generally have a bulletin board in their print editions that anyone can put notices in for .95+ cents a word. (Online bulletin boards are vastly cheaper, but you get what you pay for).

If you have an event, always keep fliers about it in your car. Bookmarks and post cards are also good resources that you can distribute; Avery provides templates for creating them. There are online services that will print small quantities of inexpensive business cards that can include the cover of your book and info about an event.

If you are near a community college, see if they have a continuing education program that offers non-credit classes. Such programs are frequently open to instructors with new class ideas. Teaching a workshop at a community college will help raise your newsworthy standing.

If you are determined to do a book signing at a book store, I suggest you set up a signing with at least three other authors who write in a similar genre. I've known authors who banded together to set up a signing at a table in a mall during a literary-themed time (like a national poetry month).

I advise new authors to think long and hard about putting down money for table space at another author's book fair, unless money is not an issue. If you choose to be involved in a book fair, look for one that is part of a larger event that generates foot traffic.

If you do want to do a book release party, contact a local book store and see if they can accommodate you. Many book stores are set up to handle authors giving short presentations. This is where a well-designed media kit can make a great first impression.

Prlog offers a free service for sending out PR announcements. I've never had great success with these kind of announcements for local author events getting picked up for distribution, however. Some of these services send announcements to link farms that are set up to automatically post every announcement received, so don't be fooled by promises of wide distribution if you'll just sign up for a service that costs hundreds of dollars.

If you can't get a response from a major newspaper in your area, contact someone at your local neighborhood paper. I've known a number of authors who have been interviewed and featured in smaller, community papers.

Does your town have a local public access radio station called Golden Hours? See if you can get interviewed about your book.

Whatever kind of event you set up, NEVER depend on anyone else (including book stores, loved ones, friends, or fellow authors) to send out your event/meeting/workshop PR. Always do it yourself to be sure it gets out. And if you send out notices to local papers or magazines, make the effort to read their submission guidelines. A third of the PR notices I receive are deleted because the authors didn't bother to find out my guidelines, like someone sending me a website link and telling me I can go there and write an announcement for them.

Ask your extended family if anyone has any media contacts or would be willing to do a book review and post it online. In general, the more relevant links you have on the web, the higher your search engine rating (some search engines discount links posted on link farms).

Authors Den now offers contacts for people who do inexpensive book reviews.

Writing a book is a creative process, but marketing a book requires a different kind of mental focus, determination and planning. But if you put yourself out there in the world, you'll come across avenues to promote your book you never knew existed.

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To read some of my longer reviews of popular movies, visit my website or check out my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise, available on Amazon Kindle. Or, find me on Google+ and tell me what you think.

Writing the Emotionally Resonant Character, by Rosanne Parry

One of the pleasures of great fiction comes when a character you love takes an action that you didn't foresee and yet is so right for the character that it feels inevitable. You find yourself saying, "Of course! That's so like her!" The flip side of the experience is the character whose action so surprises you that you scratch your head and flip to the cover just to make sure you're still reading the same book. That's emotional resonance at work (or not at work in the second example.) Character interviews and charts listing personal appearance and habits are an excellent beginning, but how do you move into the realm of what makes a character internally consistent and emotionally true? To get at the deeper character, a writer has to ask herself deeper questions. Here are two to get you started.

What is the virtue that my character's family or friends or community values most highly? What is the worst sin this character could commit in his social circle?

For example, soldiers don't leave men behind. They will risk everything to bring the body of a fallen soldier home. This has been true since Hector and Achilles were fighting at the gates of Troy. The worst shame and guilt that a soldier suffers is from a failure to protect his men, even in death.

This question gets at the heart of what motivates your character's choices, and gives you a basis for escalating the conflict in your story. The more you put a character at odds with his personal moral compass, the more tension you will have in your scenes. It also protects you from unintentionally making a character choose something that is inconsistent with his values. For example a good soldier may well leave bodies on the field in retreat, but he would never do so without exhausting every option and suffering remorse. Having your character's core virtue or sin firmly in mind helps keep that character consistent and emotionally resonant.

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Author Bio: Rosanne Parry

If you are interested in exploring these ideas further, please consider taking Rosanne Parry's conference workshop Character and the Seven Deadly Sins. Rosanne is the award-winning author of Heart of a Shepherd and two other novels. She has taught workshops at Fishtrap, SCBWI, NCTE and numerous schools and book festivals across the country. She lives in Portland. http://www.rosanneparry.com

Jessica Morrell Hosts Summer in Words (Oregon Coast)

Writers of all levels can be inspired from some of the best in their field at the 5th annual Summer in Words Writing Conference.

Dates: June 15-17, 2012 in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Theme: Refinement, Resonance & Renewal.

Keynote speaker: best-selling author Chelsea Cain.

Her Heartsick series is now in development with FX Network.

Other instructors: Sage Cohen, Jessica Glenn, Jessica Morrell, Naseem Rakha, Bruce Holland Rogers Discount room rate at the Hallmark Inn is available through 5/17.

Enjoy an intimate conference experience overlooking Haystack Rock. SIW provides aspiring and established writers the opportunity to hone their writing skills, hear inspiring advice, and network with fellow writers.

Cost for all three days is $265.00; single day pricing is also available. For information contact conference coordinator Jessica Morrell at 503 287-2150 or jessicapage@spiritone.com

Registrations can be mailed to Summer in Words, P.O. Box 820141, Portland, OR 97282-1141 or
 PayPal.

Website: http://summerinwords.wordpress.com

Conveying a Character's Journey on the First Page of a Novel

Notes on Good Grief, a novel by Lolly Winston

by Bill Johnson

I teach that a story creates movement and the movement transports an audience. In many of the unpublished novels I read, I'm often 40 pages into a manuscript before I have any idea of a main character's journey. In some cases, I have to read to the end of a novel to understand that journey. This puts me (and readers) in the unfortunate position of needing to keep track of all the details about a character while I wait for some sense of purpose to become apparent. This makes reading a novel work.

Lolly Winston's novel Good Grief has a structure that clearly conveys the stages of grief that a young woman goes through when her husband dies and leaves her a widow. This external framework communicates that the novel has a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. From its opening lines, the story has a destination.

Each stage of the main character's journey is divided into sections. The chapters in Part One are about denial, oreoes, anger, depression, escrow, and ashes. Each chapter that follows is about the main character's journey in dealing with her grief over her husband's death. The title, Good Grief, speaks to the narrator learning that there can be good grief (which revolves around passing through the stages of grief) and bad grief (getting stuck on the journey).

A review of the opening of Good Grief conveys how a main character's journey is set out.

The opening line:

How can I be a Widow?

The answer to this question comes in the opening paragraphs as the narrator sits in a grief support group. In a few paragraphs, the narrator explains why she's in the group.

My name is Sophie and I've joined the grief group because...well, because I sort of did a crazy thing. I drove my Honda through our garage door.

What's important about these lines is they show the narrator is not only in grief, she's being overwhelmed by grief. What set up the garage accident was an irrational thought that she needed to get into the house quickly to tell her husband something. Except he's deceased. She's in denial.

Continuing in a few paragraphs:

Maybe later I'll tell the group how I dream about Ethan every night. That he's still alive in the eastern standard time zone and if I fly to New York, I can see him for another three hours.

The narrator tries to deal with her grief by going back to work, but she quickly finds herself overwhelmed. In the past, when she felt overwhelmed, she called her husband. The chapter ends with these lines.

The cursor on my computer screen pulses impatiently, and the red voice mail light on my phone flashes. My stomach growls and my head throbs. But I can't call my husband. Because, here's the thing: I am a widow.

She has started to come out of her denial about her husband's death. The first chapter is a clearly defined step on her journey through grief.

Each chapter continues that journey until the narrator has passed through good grief to being whole again.

Highly recommended for writers who want to learn about structure from reading a well-written novel.

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Bill Johnson is the author of A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling. Promise is about the mechanics of telling a story, Deep Characterization (a section of the book) is about how the mechanics break down when people write stories to process their personal issues in life). The Spirit of Storytelling is about how great storytelling relates to the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious minds. Available at Amazon  and Smashwords.