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Laura Davis Hays writes fiction that pushes the boundaries of ordinary reality. 

Laura Davis Hays
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Is there such a thing as Writer’s Block?

8/8/2017

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​Is it real?
 
It seems people fall into several camps on this one. One: Writer’s Block is an excuse for being lazy, so just get busy. Two: Everyone gets to a tough, stuck point once in awhile, so give yourself a little slack, take a break, think about it, then … just get busy. Three: Something real and hidden is going on, like you need a career change or a divorce. Figure it out, change your life, then get busy. Four: You can’t write, because you don’t have anything to say, because you’re not a real writer, or maybe you just plain suck. Advice: Hire a real writer to do the dirty work. Or better yet, just stop writing.
 
The causes are listed as “fear”, “perfectionism”, “bad-timing”, “distractions”, “depression”, “no talent.” I think the problem is often too much self-criticism and self-editing while trying to write a first draft, famously called “a shitty first draft” by Anne Lamott.
 
I fall into the camp of “just get busy.” I know some people, some very good writers, who struggle at times, and some for complicated reasons. My struggle gets closer to the “you just plain suck,” when it’s time to submit to publishers, read aloud, send a draft to a critic or editor. However, in the meantime, I write as much as I can, as fast as I can, as often as I can. Here’s what helps me.
 
Free Writing
 
I’ve done a ton of “Free writing” of one sort or another, and find it, well, freeing. The idea is to just keep scribbling for a set period of time or length, say Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Three Pages first thing in the morning, no stopping, no editing. Or Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Practice. Usually done in a café in pairs, scribbling in notebooks for 20 minutes without stopping. Then there’s Tom Bird’s Divine Writer Within. I went to a seminar called “Write Your Bestseller in a Weekend.” This was the ultimate Free Writing exercise. We were crammed together in a room with the special music playing (coyotes howling, subliminal messages beneath the subtle piano) and wrote as fast as we could. We counted our words every twenty minutes, whether in a notebook, or on computer, so before long, we were driven by the desire to write more and more words in an hour. After a two minute counting break, the bell would ding, and we’d be back at it. I regularly wrote 2000 + words an hour, hour after hour, compared to a goal of 1000 words a day, to which I’ve sometimes adhered. Granted, of the 2000 words many were not always in sentences, or did not follow what came before the bell. The tenses and voice changed and shifted, the story jumped around, but what I got was a beginning, a middle, and an end, in short, a 30K word draft of a novel.
 
I believe in free-writing, the editor is mostly left in the dust, and the muse has a chance to shine through.
 
The first time I did free writing was in college, though I didn’t have a name for it then. At exam time, we were given a ruled notebook and a question or two, say comparing a work of Chaucer with one of Shakespeare. We had to hand-write an essay and turn it in to be graded an hour and a half later. I drank coffee back then, and sometimes took no-doz, so I was a little sped-up as I scribbled in my notebook. (Glad to be freed from the tortures of a pre-computerized typewriter, and my inability to type with any accuracy.) Somewhere in the middle, I would come to the nugget for which I’d been searching. There was still time to expand on my idea, tie it up into a final paragraph, and to seek that illusive A, which oddly, though I considered myself a bit of a dullard in those English classes, I earned more often than not.
 
This, I believe, is the essence of free-writing, even regular, on-the-computer writing that breaks through. If you go forward fast enough, without much editing or judging, without a plan or expectation, maybe driven by some kind of deadline or desperation, you eventually come to that nugget. The nugget can be a new plot twist, or a missing character, or a little bit of truth about the human condition, or even some insight into Chaucer. Some people call writing like that, “being in the zone.” I believe the zone is there, and can be accessed on a regular, though slightly unpredictable, basis.
 
One more thing about deadlines. I think often of all my unfinished novels or ideas for novels or novellas, or story collections, and I worry about the ultimate deadline: death. So, just like in English class, I am motivated to get the words and ideas down before that final bell rings.
 
Editing Later
 
Perhaps this post is more about the effectiveness of writing through the block in a free way, rather than the old-fashioned hunt and peck method, with lots of white-out and notes in the margins, or the computer equivalent. There’s plenty of time for editing later. If you have a chance to get something down, do it.
 
I do love editing and rewriting when the page is no longer blank, and I admit to editing while I go, as well, but there usually comes a point when I need to push out those pesky words and revise them later.
 
How good is it?
 
Just like hearing your own signing voice from inside your head, it is sometimes considered impossible to judge your own work. Can you let go of self-judgment? Can you go back and fix mistakes, improve your point-making without saying “I suck, I’d better quit?” My belief is that if you have a calling to do something, give it a go. A calling to creativity is a precious gift.
 
Here’s a quote from one my favorite articles on the subject of writer’s block:
 
“In general, it's a good practice to initially treat all blocks as emotional noise, something you can work your way through. You can work under the assumption that Writer's Block is an imaginary beast, a beast you can banish by writing. At the same time, the rare work stoppages that you can't defeat with enthusiasm and discipline are almost certainly signals that something's amiss in your life, your work habits or your goals. In that case, you'd be wise to work under the assumption that Writer's Block is a real live monster that you ignore at your peril.”
 
By Bruce Holland Rogers, The Writer’s Store.
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THIRTY DAYS

7/17/2017

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I recently heard a TED Talk about choosing one new thing to do every day for 30 days. This was a self-improvement exercise. The idea was to pick something simple you’ve always wanted to try, say play the ukulele, and try it out for 15 minutes every day. To further simplify, the month would coincide with the calendar month. Since it’s now the middle of July, I figure I’m off the hook until August 1. I have a few ideas:
 
READ A POEM
 
I should read poetry, I know, I’m a writer after all. People read poems to me all the time and I admire them a lot. But I never seem to get all the way through one of those long ones in the New Yorker by myself. This would definitely improve me.
 
PRACTICE A CLASSICAL PIECE ON THE PIANO
 
How about one of those Chopin Nocturnes I once took a crack at? I’d start out not knowing it much at all, so the playing through might take a very long time at first, and be really really bad. I might get frustrated and it might be hard and it might hurt the ears of those I live with: cats and humans, both. Plus my piano needs tuning.
 
I think I’ll save this one for the winter.
 
TAKE A PHOTOGRAPH
 
My friend, Linda Durham, a discriminating person with an artistic eye, suggests not all the pictures should be “nice.” How about some ugly drying flowers, or bugs, or the inside of my laundry basket? I would, of course, need to post these on my Instagram account. And that means liking a bunch of pictures other people posted so they will like me back.
 
MORNING PAGES OR WRITING PRACTICE
 
Julia Cameron invented Morning Pages—three pages, long-hand first thing in the morning, no self-criticism or editing as you go. Natalie Goldberg invented Writing Practice, kind of the same, only you do it in cafes and any time of the day. The rule is, if the A-bomb goes off, you don’t stop writing. Not even if the waiter comes over to take your order. I’ve done both of these and it certainly keeps the words flowing whether on a personal topic or some fiction backstory. I have notebooks full of these scribblings and have never gotten around to reading any of it, let alone typing it into the computer.
 
TYPE IN MORNING PAGES
 
OK, so I could start sorting through all that crap, and create documents, editing as I type. A lot of work and I promise to do it someday. Or perhaps I’ll just leave these notebooks to my grandchildren.
 
OTHER GOOD HABITS LIKE Exercising, Eating Right, Flossing, Meditating, or Going to bed early
 
OK, I will, later, after the movie’s over.
 
MAYBE A BAD HABIT
 
A could play a game of Spider Solitaire (addictive, can’t play only one), or watch a bad TV show like my 600 Pound Life, or Hoarders, or What Not to Wear. I could eat a bowl of ice cream, or have a martini every day. I could take up smoking.
 
A BLOG A DAY
 
Here’s the one I’m settling on. A bit ambitious, but appeals somehow, as I always was overambitious. I can do it first thing in the morning, or after work in the evening while drinking wine (oh-oh). I could write 30 of them this weekend and then post them one-by-one, or I could dive off the deep end on August 1.  Maybe I could just post a picture, or write a single paragraph by way of simplification.  I could write about the news, my opinions, my dreams, post an old story that never got published. The benefits are many: I would have to give up being so OBSESSIVE about details and perfection. I could get people interested in my blog (maybe). I could become adept at posting, avoiding those typical mistakes that I’ve made before where I replaced my website picture with one of Melania Trump.
 
I would make Art Tucker happy.
 
THE WORRY
 
What if after a few months I picked up all kinds of new habits. What if I felt compelled to do everything every day, as the months built up. Here’s what a Typical day would look like:
 
Get up early
Write morning pages
Type morning pages into computer
Practice Chopin Nocturne
Have a Martini
Play a game of Spider Solitaire, OK play Spider for 2 hours.
Do 5 Salutations to the Sun
Take a selfie of me doing Sun Salutation and post it on Instagram
Browse Instagram for 45 minutes
Have another Martini
Eat some Kale
Eat some Ice Cream
Watch TV
Read a bedtime poem while flossing
Go to bed early
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Writing in Cafes

10/27/2015

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​The best places are cafes with lots of people working on laptop computers, sitting knee to knee. They are writing screenplays and novels and producing, editing, creating web-content, some are studying or reading, mostly they’re young, with a few older like me thrown in to make it interesting.  You must stay intent and focused while sitting side by side with full-ledged conversations about how are you and what are you doing and I haven’t seen you since … Everyone is drinking coffee and nibbling on scones. They have something they want to get down.
 
I do too. I am intent on my story or my next book and I have momentum from the group energy. I get up from time to time and have a refill or buy another snack, but it doesn’t last long because I need to get back and get the next thought typed into my MacBook Air.
 
I starting doing this back in the late 1980’s when my friend Susana was a student (and friend) of Natalie Goldberg, and Natalie’s iconic book, Writing Down the Bones, was starting its miraculous climb on the charts and her workshops were gaining momentum. (Writing Down the Bones has since sold over one million copies.)
 
Natalie’s idea was revolutionary. Zen inspired, Natalie saw writing as a practice that’s ninety percent listening. You go for “first thoughts,” keep your hand moving, don’t cross out or edit, don’t judge. Just write. My friend Jeanne describes the retreats as, “Shut up and write weekends.”
 
The reason Writing Practice is so good is because you are so good and now you are open and the words are simply flooding out from a hidden source and you are following a discipline. Natalie’s passion and quirky voice helps too. But when you’re writing, you need to forget Natalie and your friend Susana sitting across from you and the noise around you and whatever it is you’re eating or drinking, and just follow that thought. It may lead you someplace you never thought you’d go.

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Susana and I would meet at the Aztec Café over on Montezuma street and someplace else “with the couches,” that I don’t remember and she does, and write longhand in notebooks. We started out with 10 minutes at a time and then 20, 30, even forty, scribbling uninterrupted, and then we’d read to each other.
 
I don’t remember what we were writing then, but now we are working on our deep material that we’ve gotten to after all this time. Susana and I met again recently at a crowded Starbucks on a cold October morning, the day after a heavy storm. I was editing, not doing writing practice, rather combing through looking for places the story didn’t quite satisfy, but I got to some new stuff, and gained momentum on that story called The Lighthouse. Susana was writing another play about her French friend Veronique and their childhood together in France. Both of us are mature writers. Both of us know a thing or two.
 
Why don’t I write at home in my beautiful study with a view?
 
I do, of course, but I like to mix it up these days.
 
My daughter-in-law, Holly, has two little girls and an interesting job working for HGTV, re-writing content for the website. Sadie goes to kindergarten now, but Gemma, age two, is still at home. So Babs comes two or three times a week to watch Gemma, and Holly goes to a café with her computer to work. Since this is the ONLY time she has to work (other than when the girls are sleeping, and who needs to sleep then anyway?) she has to make the time count.
 
I’ve been lucky enough to go along on my recent visits to LA, to hip cafes like Lamille in Silverlake, or Dinosaur Coffee on Sunset Boulevard. Lamille is upscale with menu items like Smoked Salmon Toasts and Gruyere Mushroom Muffins and every kind of coffee or tea you could imagine or desire and table service. Dinosaur is crowded, even the street tables on a recent visit when the temperature in LA soared into the nineties.  
 
We set up across from each other and get our drinks and open our laptops. Then, for 2 ½ to 3 hours, we write without very much conversation with either each other or the waiters or the other diners. Sometimes there’s an interesting conversation nearby because most people in LA are in the “industry,” but we have to filter it out and keep working.
 
Natalie says even if the atomic bombs goes off while you’re doing writing practice, you should keep going no matter what. (What about if a waiter comes over to take your order?) While that is a bit extreme for me, I think the noise distraction helps you focus inside. The part of your brain that filters out the outer conversations and the clatter or dishes, also filters out those distracting inner thoughts that keep you from that pure state of “listening.” So the muscle of your brain filter is engaged and you are free to write any old garbage. Or something that has wanted to come out onto the page for a long time. Something very deep that is your true material.
 
Longhand? Computer? Fast? Slow?
 
I will address this question during an upcoming workshop called “Write Your Book in a Weekend,” led by Sedona “book whisperer” Tom Bird. Tom is a best selling author, a popular speaker, a publisher, and a workshop leader. In a recent teaser evening at Body Café here in Santa Fe, I experienced the dreamy, right-brained state that Tom’s method evokes and clocked in at 3300 words an hour. I have not looked back at what I wrote, but probably it is pure garbage. How I’m going to keep up the pace for 3 days (expected average is 2000 words per hour) and complete a 30,000 word book, I’m not sure. What kind of material I’ll get, I have no idea. But I’m excited to give it a try.
 
All I know is that I have lots more writing inside of me: Blogs, Speeches, Stories, Novels and I want to write them all before I die.
 
Here’s my rules for writing in cafes:
 
Go there like it’s your job.
Don’t try to have a meal or a get-together with a friend.
Shut up and write.
 
My thanks and best regards to Natalie Goldberg, Jeanne Simonoff, and Susana Guillaume.

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    Laura Davis Hays

    Laura Davis Hays writes fiction that pushes the boundaries of ordinary reality. She is driven by Story and a life-long quest for Universal Truth.

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