The Productive Writer: Review

Two of my favourite topics are ‘Writing’ and ‘Productivity’ and the planning linked to bringing successful outcomes about. So Sage Cohen’s latest book, ‘The Productive Writer’ is perfectly attuned to my interests and priorities and I’m sure relevant to other writers interested in making the most of their time and creative efforts.

It’s eminently practical and full of tips for anyone interested in being more organised and able to produce outcomes, especially words framed in a meaningful way to make an impact. It’s relevant to all kinds of writing: poetry, fiction, business writing, non-fiction, blogs and freelance approaches. Ultimately it’s about the place of that writing in the context of your life and how to make all this work.

Sage’s key platform is that productivity is a ‘lifestyle choice’ as she outlines in the introduction:

Productivity, then, is your own, personal GPS as you navigate the endless windernesses of your mind, craft, or subject matter and bring the best of what you have to offer to the page – and the world. Productivity is a means of witnessing and steering yourself toward your greatest good and training yourself to weed out the interference along the way.

‘The Productive Writer’ then navigates its own GPS through these wide waters to cut a swathe of practical advice to assist writers to be as productive as they can in every facet of their work. The weave of the book traverses critical themes you can hang onto as signposts for your own journey. These include:

• building a case for your future as a writer
• studying your heroes and how they work
• establishing a platform or organising principle for your work
• thinking productively & capturing ideas
• goal-setting and organisational tips
• managing time and procrastination tendencies
• revising tips
• publishing and promoting
• sustaining relationships around your work
• celebrating your success

I especially loved Chapter 12, ‘Writing in the Margins of a Full-time Life’ that reminded me that I am not the only one working full-time and trying to write; that it’s not just about balancing work and writing – it’s about balancing life and writing; and the value of my day job to my writing life and the need to remember to acknowledge the skills I learn there. As Sage comments in the context of her own diverse mix of writing commitments:

Each skill I acquire in service to someone else’s goals becomes a part of my own toolbox.’ (p115)

Sage, as her name suggests, is a very wise writer. This book, linked in with her new platform ‘The Path of Possibility’, brings writing and productivity together in a way that amplifies both and clearly sets them in the context of a broader creative life. Like Sage’s previous book, the wonderful ‘Writing the Life Poetic’, ‘The Productive Writer’ has the effect of taking you by the hand and encouraging you, gently and practically, every step of the way from vision to fruition. Committing to writing is not an easy task and we all need all the support and advice we can get to overcome resistance, barriers and excuses. Sage’s book demonstrates that:

…when we see that there are endless ways to establish and sustain a productive writing life – at any age, in any work-family circumstance – we may have an easier time trusting that we will find our own way forward.’

As you can see from the recent gaps here, for a number of reasons, I am having my own struggles with balancing writing in my life. Thankfully, in the meantime, I have also been reading ‘The Productive Writer’. Whilst struggling with the immediate application at present, the ideas contained there will become a critical part of reorienting my own GPS in moving forward to achieve my writing goals.

About stillness

While I have been doing my annual review of 2010 and goal setting for 2011 (and yes I do know it’s the middle of February already!), I have been thinking about my theme and word for this year.

It has become a popular concept to have a word for the year. I like the idea of having a word to focus you, direct you and power you, offering the opportunity of a clearly identified source of strength.

Here are some writers and thinkers employing and celebrating the word of the year in their lives and work:

• Sage Cohen wrote on this issue on her new site, the Path of Possibility, especially in relation to being a productive writer. Sage’s word of the year is grace.
• Shanna Germain’s piece on her word of the year and how its various meanings might play out in 2011 is so full of energy. Shanna’s word is the very powerful prime.
•  Ali Edwards has been writing about the power of One Little Word since 2007. She has a One Little Word online workshop where you can learn more about the power of working with the one word concept.  Ali’s word of the year is light.
• Christine Kane has a Word of the Year worksheet tool which provides a framework for working through your words and your goals.

I have been reflecting on my word and waiting for it. It came suddenly and perfectly whole one day in January. The word is stillness.

This word is about all aspects of my life and especially how I source my strength. I am highly intuitive and introspective according to the Myer Briggs Inventory.  I spend most of my days in constant contact with people at work; often very extraverted people, full of energy and ideas. I am keen to be more aware of how to be still, to listen, to charge my batteries and to be calm and to make a difference wherever I am.

Some definitions of stillness include:

• tranquil silence
• state of being quiet or calm
• the absence of sound
• calmness without winds
• a state of no motion of movement
• motionlessness, immobility, remaining in place

Here are some examples of what stillness means to me:

• choosing to close the door a little more to write and reflect
• listening to others and learning
• creating the space to enable people to come to their own solutions
• asking the right questions at the right time
• being early instead of rushing, being late or just on time
• resisting a sense of urgency to solve everything now
• being comfortable with a phase of muddle and overwhelm
• finding the right way to focus a difficult or unproductive team or meeting
• taking the time to consult and map a complex problem to get to the heart of it
• keeping things simple and not over-complicating
• knowing and allowing the space and conditions for creativity
• a candle burning steadily
• a walk on the beach and standing in a cool pool of water

Stillness is not always a complete absence of movement; it’s more the calm that will power the right moves and provide the time for reflection for myself and others. I am finding much strength in that ‘one little word’. As Ali Edwards says:

It can be the ripple in the pond that changes everything.

There is a sense of ‘stillness’ being absolutely the right word to navigate myself and consequently others. Through a sense of ease and calm, it seems more likely that desired goals like creative process, business success, teamwork and balance will be achieved.

And via @DennyCoates on twitter, comes a perfect quote from D H Lawrence:

“One’s action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.”

Perfect. What word is working for you in 2011?

Gems #13 Time to write

I’m working on my annual review at present, reviewing 2010 and setting priorities for 2011. A consistent theme for me is about finding time to write. I work full-time in a very busy leadership role in the vocational education sector. I am passionate about my work and making a difference. At the same time, I am committed to creativity, writing and my personal goals. Making the time and space to write is a constant challenge.

Here are some gems I’ve come across recently, and in the past, about making time to write and basically getting on with it.

Anne Lamott’s article, Time Lost and Found, hit me pretty hard mainly because it rang so true. It’s about priorities in life, what matters and how we fritter away time and miss the important things. Her main message is that you need to make time for writing and other priorities and that this time can be found by having a good look at how you live. Twitter and other social media, television, cleaning, work and the gym are mentioned as areas where we might be losing time that we could allocate to our creative priorities such as writing. Anne says, in essence, that we do have this precious time and we can find it, though it might take some work to recover:

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

An excellent article in last weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum (January 22-23) by Australian author and teacher, Sue Woolfe, encourages us just to get on with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the article online anywhere to link to but I can share the main points. Entitled,  ‘Don’t think about it – just keep scribbling’, Sue says that the way you need to work to write a novel is:

…to find a way of thinking that is mocked in our culture but that is all in the day’s work for artists, composers and writers.

This is a way based on discipline: reading fiction for an hour a day; writing for at least an hour a day; not rereading, editing or formulating and not sticking to a subject, character or plot when first writing. The whole focus is the discipline of writing and then later imposing other aspects such as narrative technique, plot structure and editing. In summary:

The whole endeavour is to lose self-consciousness.

However, it starts with those two fundamental ingredients: read fiction for an hour a day and write for at least an hour a day. Linking back to Anne Lamott’s article, the trick is to find this time by managing your priorities.

Some of my favourite practical articles on making time to write are by Australian blogger and author, Joanna Penn. Joanna lives and breathes this way of working and writing to come up with real outcomes such as completing her first novel, Pentecost and receiving a strong following and awards for her highly successful blog, The Creative Penn.

Joanna’s two posts: ‘On efficiency or how to get everything done as a multi-tasking writer,’ and ‘What will you give up to write your book?’ are perfect reads on the issue of writing and time and are grounded in practicality. Joanna’s tips include getting rid of the TV, sleeping less, maximising travel time, being organised and investing in education. Setting clear goals and priorities and ‘loving the process’ are also right up there as key motivators. 

As in Anne Lamott’s article, the emphasis is on the value of the outcomes spent on writing and other creative activities vs spending too much watching TV and engaging in an uncontrolled way with social media such as twitter. And as in Sue Woolfe’s article, the discipline to carry it all through is critical.

Now it’s back to my annual review with these valuable thoughts in mind. How are you making time to write this year?

Image, Time disappears by jtravism  from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Planning for the Future Starts with Celebrating the Past

A guest post from author Sage Cohen

  A note from Terri:

I am thrilled to have Sage Cohen, pictured left, writing here for my first guest post. Sage’s background and the details of her latest work, including her new book, ‘The Productive Writer‘ are below.  I am indebted to Sage and her work as a gifted writer and teacher who has enriched my writing life.

In this post, Sage encourages us to review our broader writing successes in 2010 in preparation for a productive 2011! 

  

Happy New Year, writers! I believe that there is no better launching pad into the great, blank page of 2011 than a thorough inventory of all that went right in 2010. With this in mind, I’m going to ask a series of questions to guide you in recounting your many successes this past year! I encourage you to take your time and be as thorough as you can in listing every single thing you appreciate about yourself and what you’ve accomplished in each dimension of your writing life–even if the best you can do is admire that you stopped burning your rejection letters. Deal?

• What was most fun, exhilarating or rewarding in your writing life this year?
• What obstacles did you face and overcome?
• What relationships did you build, repair or retire, and how has this contributed to your writing life?
• What did you let go of (habits, relationships, attitudes, clutter) that was no longer serving you?
• What did you read that taught you something about your craft, your platform or how to take your writing and publishing forward?
• What did you earn or what opportunity did you land that felt prosperous?
• How has your confidence and/or craft improved?
• What have you learned about social media that is serving your writing life?
• What strategies worked best for being effective with your time?
• How did you nurture and sustain your well being–in mind, body, spirit?
• Who has praised your writing or teaching or facilitating? What did they say and how did it give you a new sense of appreciation for yourself and your work?
• What did you learn about your writing rhythms: time of day to write, managing procrastination, how and when to revise, making use of slim margins of time, etc.?
• Who did you help, and who helped you?
• What did you learn about yourself from rejection, and how has it helped your writing, your confidence or your submissions approach develop?
• What did you do that terrified you–but you did it any way? And how did that benefit your life and your writing?
• How were you patient?
• When and how were you successful at juggling the competing demands of family, writing, work, and everything else in your full life?
• Who did you forgive? Who forgave you?

Because it’s so easy to keep our minds trained to the loop of an unsolvable problem or two, you may be surprised at how many triumphs are revealed as you answer these questions. Every risk you took, skill you fortified and skin you shed in the service of your writing life is a foothold in the future you are aspiring to create. Nice work!

 About Sage Cohen

Sage Cohen is the author of The Productive Writer (just released from Writer’s Digest Books);Writing the Life Poetic and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. She blogs about all that is possible in the writing life at pathofpossibility.com, where you can: Download a FREE “Productivity Power Tools” workbook companion to The Productive Writer. Get the FREE, 10-week email series, “10 Ways to Boost Writing Productivity” when you sign up to receive email updates. Sign up for the FREE, Writing the Life Poetic e-zine. Plus, check out the events page for the latest free teleclasses, scholarships and more.

Looking back, moving forward

A new year is traditionally a time for resolutions; however, there seems to be a renewed focus on the more concrete work of reviewing the past year and celebrating milestones and special moments as a prelude to future planning.

I am especially enjoying this review process in the blogs I read: the people’s journeys I follow there; their aims and strivings; the progress and success they celebrate in various ways and the collective cheering on in progress to their goals I can take part in. This looking back, checking progress, highlighting achievements and tracking the journey is a critical part of moving forward and I am inspired and informed by the journeys of others.

The review can take the form of the writing of a blog as a way of accountability, checking in with readers on the set metrics of progress; for others, it is sheer celebration; for others, it’s a ‘warts and all’ reflection on what happened in 2010 and also what created interest in readers. For most, it’s a combination of all these.

I’m loving reading some of my favourite bloggers’ reflections on their work and achievements in 2010 and directions for 2011. Here are some of my favourite recent reviews:

Joanna Penn’s Review of the Creative Penn Goals for 2010 celebrates the accountability of blogging and how it motivates. Joanna set some incredibly high goals for 2010 and has achieved much. Read about her wonderful achievements including completing her novel and being way up on the lists of bloggers in the writing field.

For sheer celebratory energy, you can’t beat the white hot retrospective by Danielle La Porte. I am big believer in celebrating achievements as a solid and strengthening base for moving forward and this post just shows you why it’s so powerful. I especially loved the manifesto of encouragement - one of my favourite posts of 2010. As Danielle says:

With 900+ tweets, 3800 Facebook shares and 2,600+ StumbleUpons, the manifesto of encouragement took on a life of its own.

It truly was a magical piece of inspired thought and writing that engendered so much depth of heartfelt words in others. I look forward to the sequel and something I can hold in my hand!

Colleen Wainwright, aka The Communicatrix, reflects on the 100 things I learned in 2010 and what’s more has been doing this same process since 2004. Clever, funny, insightful as always, and like Colleen’s weekly round-ups, a rich read – especially for a fellow Virgo. I am thankful for the many valued reflections and resources that come through Colleen’s annual reviews such as how much growth can come from the darkest times.

I’ve only recently started reading Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog though clearly many other people are ahead of me here. It’s honest, on the edge and often controversial, it seems, as reflected in the number of comments and the level of engagement of her readers. In her recent, Most popular posts of 2010, Penelope provides a summary of the posts that generated the most comments. It’s another great way of reflecting on progress and a clever way to review.

Shanna Germain, whom I love reading for her incredible commitment to writing and publication and her documentation of the journey, has written a fantastic 2010 Writing Stats post demonstrating her passion and productivity in writing in 2010 and setting the metrics for writing goals for 2011. Chris Guillebeau emphasises the importance of metrics in personal planning and this is a great example of how to measure progress and success: number of submissions, rejections, words written, progress to goal. It’s super impressive in both process and achievements.

My seven stars  still mostly light the way for me as I blog forward but I’m loving finding new voices to read to inform my own path. And yes, I know, I need to work on my own review and goals. It’s coming in its own good time and I look forward to it.

In the meantime, reading and reflecting on the reviews of others is very inspiring in informing my own moving forward.

Who’s lighting your path for 2011?

Gems #12 Planning and Productivity

 

Happy New Year!

It’s great to be reading all my favourite blogging writers reflecting on 2010 and plans for 2011. It’s an exciting time for planning to be productive in whatever priority areas are critical for you. I thought I’d share some gems on planning and productivity that might be of interest for setting your agenda for 2011. They will certainly be part of my own personal planning.

Chris Guillebeau is something of a guru of personal planning. With a successful track record of setting and reviewing yearly goals, Chris shares his processes and goals with his readers generously. Chris has recently been working on his annual review of 2010 to inform planning for 2011. It starts with two simple questions:

What went well in 2010?

What did not go well in 2010?

From there, Chris reflects on 2010 and builds his plan for 2011, including setting the metrics for checking the achievement of his goals. I love his process and have found it personally rewarding over the last two years. Here are a couple of links to Chris’s recent writing on his annual review process:

2010 Annual Review – The Beginning

2010 Annual Review – Looking Forward

All of Chris’s recent posts on his annual review process are excellent and I will be revisiting them in full soon when I sit down to do my own reflection and planning process for 2011.

Charlie Gilkey has some excellent planning tools also at Productive Flourishing on his Free Planners page. There are all kinds of planning tools: ones for planning blog posts and daily, weekly and monthly action planners. There are also tools for identifying your most productive times. I will be looking to apply these in 2011. Highly recommended and again, shared generously which is appreciated.

In the writing field, Sage Cohen’s new book The Productive Writer provides strategies and systems for writers looking to maximise their time with all types of writing. Sage’s background crosses a broad range of writing areas including being a writer of strategic marketing content as well as a successful published poet. She is also a skilled and sensitive teacher; I have been an avid and appreciative student of her ‘Poetry for the People’ online courses. She is the author of one of my favourite books on writing, ‘Writing the Life Poetic: an Invitation to Read and Write Poetry’.  

I’ll write a fuller review of ‘The Productive Writer’ soon and Sage will also visit here soon for a guest post, so stay tuned. Sage’s writing is always clear, heartfelt and grounded in practicality and this book will be of great value to writers in getting organised and maximising their creative time. Sage’s new Path of Possibility site offers advice and resources for productivity in writing and in life.

What tips do you have for planning and productivity for 2011?

The one clear thing Part 3: the essential work

There has been a bit of a gap between parts 2 and 3 of this little series on clarity so let’s recap. These thoughts stem from a year of struggling with some complex challenges especially culminating at the end of the year. I have learnt much from this experience and am distilling this here as a form of clarity for myself and others.

My experiences this year taught me that it is very easy to over-complicate things. Keeping things simple is a very powerful cut-through tool to keep a focus on solving issues. So my suggestions for moving forward are to find the one clear thing that is the essence of what you are trying to do or solve. The one clear thing emerges for me as:

1. Finding the single question to ask that will answer much in its wake
2. Identifying the essential work that needs to be done to answer it
3. Putting in place the daily steps to get there and keep moving

Let’s think here about the essential work. Once you have identified the single question to ask, then you need to identify the essential work to be done to answer it. The key word here is ‘essential‘. It’s so easy to get side-tracked and over-complicate at this stage. So, at this point, identify the essential work that needs to be done to reach your goal or answer your question.

Examples of questions to ask at this point to identify or begin the essential work include:

• How do we isolate the critical work to be done?
• What data would provide clarity?
• What tools would really help move through this block?
• What’s the one change that would make the biggest difference?
• What are the essential priority tasks to be completed now?
• What is the immediate step forward to achieve this?
• What’s the one real block to moving on?
• Which critical people could help solve this issue?

Focused thought on these or similar questions can help you move through issues that are often quite simple and apparent but have become complex and muddy. If we can step away for some higher level thinking and rise above the detail, we can get a clearer view.

Talking to critical others can also be of great assistance: trusted friends, coaches, mentors, external customers and other stakeholders. Sometimes we are simply too close. A quick, sharply focused survey might assist for feedback to get improved clarity.

Mind-mapping, brain-storming and other problem-solving tools can also be of great value at this point. I have had a lot of success with Appreciative Inquiry as an overall framework for moving forward through complex situations as it focuses on the positive and what the future might look like. The four steps of Appreciative Inquiry are in themselves tools for identifying the essential work and getting a roadmap for moving forward.

Looking for the essential work, the key question and how to answer it, can also help overcome resistance, as complexity and murkiness are in themselves engaging and can stop resolution of issues. You can find yourself easily stuck and doing a lot of busywork and conceptualising and achieve very little.

What’s the essential work for you at present? How can you progress it?

Image, The sky is clear now by vincepal from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Gems #11 Managing complexity

Some recent gems about managing complexity.

While working on ‘the one clear thing’ series of posts and also while managing much complexity at work this year, I have been reading and reflecting about complexity: how we make things complex, how we can make them simpler and what enables this. Here are three great recent posts on this topic:

1. Pruning for Better Growth - Dr Monique Beedles

Part of the search for simplicity and clarity may relate to cutting back: weeding out , uncluttering the physical and psychological space and deciding where effort is best directed. Dr Monique Beedles says:

It seems counterintuitive, to cut something back in order to help it grow – but any gardener knows that a good prune is essential to healthy growth.

Are you, your blog or your business trying to be all things to all people? Maybe it’s time to review what’s really important and where to focus strategy and effort. See Monique’s article, a beautiful clear statement in itself, for some powerful questions to help review the focus of your business.

2. It’s complicated! Or is managing complexity simpler than you think? -  Australian School of Business

This excellent article discusses mindsets for managing complexity. It recognises that the old hierarchical, command and control models of leadership may not serve us in increasingly complex and competitive environments. The shift is to new leadership models that focus on creative problem-solving and the enabling of others to be solution focused.

Steve Vamos, president of the Society for Knowledge Economics (SKE) and the former chief executive of Microsoft Australia says:

The focus of modern leadership should be around breaking down complexity – or “making the complex simpler”…

Some of the key strategies discussed are around the concepts of:

• the need for clarity of purpose
• people understanding their place in the business
• being solution-focused
• the re-emergence of generalist leaders with strong problem-solving skills
• the value of conversation and story-telling
• the 80/20 rule and how to use it drive focus of effort
• managing ‘wicked’, seemingly impenetrable problems with a new mind-set
• bravery in tackling ‘wicked’ problems
• strong leadership as the enabling of others to find solutions
• persistence

Suggested approaches for superior leadership and the programs that develop it include: social entrepreneurship, design theory and innovation strategy. These skill-sets are seen as critical to encouraging different ways of thinking and promoting new solutions.

3. The eight word mission statement - Eric Hellweg, Harvard Business Review

Finally, a great approach from  Kevin Starr, the executive director of the Mulago Foundation which channels investments to socially minded businesses. His focus is around how clearly businesses can summarise their main reason for being through their mission statement.

So many mission statements are wordy, long, unclear and fall flat in the communication of their central message to those that matter in achieving it. Starr insists that companies he supports state their mission statement in under eight words using the format, “Verb, target, outcome.” Some examples provided are: “Save endangered species from extinction” and “Improve African children’s health.”

This is an excellent approach for enhancing personal and business focus. How clear are your personal and business goals? Can you express them in an eight word mission statement? How then can you measure success against the statement?

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How are you making the complex easier to manage and solve in your personal and business contexts?

Image, Simple yet Beautiful by pranav from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

The one clear thing Part 2

 

In  The one clear thing Part 1, I talked about the complexity and challenge around me and how the writing of this blog has emerged as one clear thing I can focus on at present. 

Finding ‘the one clear thing’ is the message emerging from all the complexity and multiplicity around me. It can be so easy to get overwhelmed and do the wrong thing or nothing. There is an almost innate tendency to make things more complex than they need to be.

What does it mean to ‘find the one clear thing’? It means keeping the complex simple. It means providing a cut-through to moving on and solution. The one clear thing is emerging for me as:

1. Identifying the key question(s)

2. Beginning the essential work

3. Making the daily steps

 

 1. Identifying the key question(s)

What key question(s) can you focus on, ask, that if answered carefully and consciously, would enable all the rest to fall into place?

This approach enables you to:

• focus energy and effort 
• avoid resistance and distraction
• avoid the allure of complexity

As an example, in a workshop recently, we were working to resolve a complex business issue. The workshop was focused around a single, powerful question honed from a previous workshop of senior managers. It was our task to answer it. It was incredibly hard to keep the group focused but with the aid of a very skilled and dogged external facilitator, at the end, we were able to clearly and succinctly answer the question. We will use these principles to drive future business directions, structure and staff capability development now that we are clear.

Chris Guillebeau also uses the key question approach in his World Domination work to guide goal-setting for individuals and the difference they can make.  In ‘A Brief Guide to World Domination – How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world’, Chris talks about personal goals, ordinary people pursuing big ideas and also through this, making a difference in the lives of others. The key questions he asks you to consider, ‘the two most important questions in the universe’ are:

#1 What do you really want to get out of life?

#2 What can you offer the world that no-one else can?

I have written about this in an early post, ‘Why Transcending?’ and shown how answering these questions helped me to develop my focus here. Read Chris’s Art of Non-Conformity blog to see many examples of people who have used this technique to get them focused on the one clear thing that matters to them in their life’s work. For me now, the key question is reviewing ‘How can my blog work here bring my answers to those two key questions to life?’

Jonathan Fields in a recent post, The Bucket List Lie on his blog, Awake at the Wheel, also encourages us to keep it simple by making a list of one:

A single, meaningful action you’re going to take before the end of the day to move you one step closer to a single, deeply meaningful quest. 

Julie Kay of JK Leadership Development and the wonderful Developing Leaders Online encourages businesses to focus on The single most effective question you can ask in the context of customer service and feedback from clients. It’s a great question because it’s solution focused and provides some metrics for knowing when improvement has taken place.

You can see that the first step identifying the key question is:

• action oriented
• solution focused
• resistance averse

So what’s the key question for you right now, the one clear thing that can take you forward?

I’ll explore the next step ’The essential work to be done’ in a follow-up post very soon.

Image, The base of Looking Glass Falls near Asheville, North Carolina by Alaskan Dude from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Gems #5 Facts, inspiration and story

Some recent writing gems on fact in fiction, inspiration and writing a story:

I loved the post, Making True Fiction, from Shanna Germain. It contemplates how true the facts need to be in fiction and how far you need to go with your research and accuracy in writing. It contemplates the conundrum of:  ‘In order to make stuff up, you have to convince your readers that it’s real. Both emotionally real and world-wise real.’

I am interested in this as the novel I am planning is in the historical fiction genre. I can see myself researching forever in the name of factual accuracy when the emotional authenticity of the story is the real issue. But how to get the balance? Starting out with the image of drowning vs the reality, Shanna explores what’s true, what’s fact, what’s accuracy and how much we need of these for an authentic reading experience. It’s an excellent thought piece I continue to think about on many levels. Some great readers’ comments also.

The guest post by Benison O’Reilly,’ Writers, Inspiration and the Ideas We Collect,’ on Suzannah Freeman’s ‘Write it Sideways’  was always going to grab me, based as it is on my favourite bird: the beautiful, sleek, dark blue, satin bower bird. The bowers of these fabulous birds are the result of the most amazing courting ritual of gathering blue items to attract a mate. If you ever see a nest, it’s littered with blue bottle tops, blue pegs and other (blue) detritus. All these riches to attract a mate  - check out the great pic in the article.

The point of the article is that writers need to be like bower birds, gathering, noting, recording, attuned to detail so we can use it for writing:

‘Undiscovered gems are scattered everywhere if you care to look. Keep your eyes and ears open and be disciplined, record everything.’

Read it – it’s brilliant just like the blue of the satin bower bird!

And finally, a custom made article just for me. From reading the author’s blog of C Patrick Schulze and a follow-up twitter conversation, he asked if there was anything specific I needed help with in my writing. I mentioned planning my novel as that is what I need to do next. I have done the research, have the idea but need to plan and get started. The result was a fantastic post with my needs in mind, ‘Don’t write a novel, write a story’. I expected structure, plot, planning details but this overall approach to how to manage the framework of the story was perfect for me just now. My main character’s journey doesn’t seem so heroic on the surface, but this is what I feel – a hero underneath to be resurrected, a victim of circumstances and difficult times that lost her way. I am honoured by the article and its helpfulness. Special thanks to C Patrick Schulze!

Image, Gems by Orbital Joe from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license.