The Muse Awakens

So you want to tell your story? I invite you to write with me and make your story come alive. I’ll be sharing my tips, tricks, what I’ve learned or tried and resources to help you get started.

Today is a switch from my normal posts from Nitty Gritty Health. I’ll be writing monthly updates for the Beggar’s Velvet part of my blog. These posts will not be included in the Nitty Gritty Health posts when you click on the top menu above. The menu option for Beggar’s Velvet will show only the posts about writing for your future reference.

My goal is to have at least a weekly post for my health topics for Nitty Gritty Health three times a month and for the last week of the month my plans are to feature an update on my book I’m writing on my Beggar’s Velvet blog.

Writing Daily

I try to write daily just to keep in practice and to keep me motivated but I need to spend time writing my book instead of blog posts every day. I’ve been on a roll lately, posting every day but going forward I’ll be slowing down. Deadlines may help some people to accomplish their task on time but I find it another stress I don’t need. The actual writing, that is typing up the words, is relatively easy. It’s the conjuring of the idea and developing it that needs teasing and mulling over in my brain before I commit the words to paper.

Welcome to the Writer’s Corner I call “Beggar’s Velvet”

Hello again, and welcome to my first post exclusively for writing. Creating a story and penning a book is a daunting task. Opening up and sharing my story by actually writing it down gives me hope of gaining a new perspective to my past. This close up examination and revealing it’s various facets is another layer of vulnerability that seems foreign to me. But I must go on.

As time goes by I have become more introverted and treasure my privacy more. When I was a kid I might say anything without thinking twice…”out of the mouths of babes”. What motivates me to write, to open up and share with the world now? There have been times when I doubted myself, could I really write a book? Scared that no one would read it. I think every writer has moments of doubt, the “imposter syndrome”. What I needed (and maybe you do too) is a pep talk and a little motivating video like the one I found below that inspired me to go for it! I hope it motivates and inspires you too.

MOTIVATION FOR WRITERS

I hope by sharing my joys, my pain and my pitfalls others can learn from my mistakes and believe me, I’ve made plenty. I hope others find healing from pain and/or trauma as I explore how these negative experiences can wreck havoc on your health and may be the leading cause of chronic illness.

I anticipate writing a monthly update post on my writing progress. Sharing with my readers and fellow writers, words of encouragement, tools of the trade I find and want to share with you (just in case you haven’t seen it) and whatever suits my fancy. The other weekly posts will feature the health discoveries (Nitty Gritty Health) for healing that I make along my journey and anything life throws my way.

Sharing my insights into life, writing and it’s process and self publishing my book will be the focus on my musings for Beggar’s Velvet. I hope you’ll join me on my journey of writing my story and the benefits it can bring to healing the body, the mind and the soul.

I’ve created a Writer’s Resource page of some great books on writing that I’ve found valuable for my first book. You know the first book is the hardest, right? I have some YouTube channels, writing tools or other links you might find useful. This page may be updated from time to time so make sure to check back.

What My Cats Taught Me

Sometimes you learn things about life and subjects for writing by observing nature. Our two calico barn cats both had kittens within about a week of each other. The last litter was born on Mother’s Day. The kittens are approaching the age of finding their new forever homes. This time is bittersweet for me as I will miss their little personalities when they leave but I will have so much more time to write instead of feeding three meals a day, cleaning faces and other things…we won’t go there.

My “Little Tigers” (video)

I’m working on my memoir and I had been writing about my mother and our relationship when I noticed my two mama cats. It was wonderful to watch how they would care for and nurse each other’s kittens. They are one big happy family with 2 moms and 9 kittens. I marveled at how one mom would mind the kittens while the other mom would go off hunting or perhaps take a nap. They often worked in tandem cleaning a kitten with one mom cleaning the kitten’s face and the other mom, well you know, at the other end. Why has society changed so much? We have drifted when we need community.

The animals teach us humans a lot if we just pay attention. So out of the original nine kittens, three got adopted, three more boys (Derby, Sting and Buzz) are waiting for someone to fall in love with them and take them home and two boys are staying here with their moms and us. All the boys have been fixed and vet checked and ready to curl up in your lap. The littlest one, Bear, had to be put to sleep this week with an inoperable condition. We will miss her sweet little voice.

Available for Adoption - Three Boys (fixed)

Derby is watching our dog Sadie, just making sure he’s ready to pounce if need be.

Sting is my orange and white boy I caught sitting on the tree.

Last, but not least, is Buzz, a little ginger boy. He’s a really sweet little fella.

Somewhere in Time We Got it Right

Long ago multi-generational families lived together and there were grandmothers to help nurture the young or grandfathers to go fishing with. Things in life were simple and broken things could often be fixed. Today’s generation is quick to throw it away, both the relationships and the broken items made of plastic. I think we should go back in time, with culture and not with “progressiveness” at the helm. A time when works of art and music were truly beautiful. Like the soundtrack (below) from the movie, Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Did you know it was filmed on Mackinac Island at the Grand Hotel?

The theme song from the movie, Somewhere in Time, is so relaxing and I often have it playing in the background while writing. Do you listen to music when you write?

Writing Progress

My book is just getting started. I spent time outlining the three act story structure and plugged in a line or two, sometimes a paragraph of my story that fit in that part of the puzzle. I think of writing my memoir like a jigsaw puzzle, each act or beat a puzzle piece that plugs into the whole and ultimately forms the story. These pieces, can be moved around to some extent and rearranged as the plot develops. I found myself trying to follow something of a chronological order as much as possible but the flashbacks are the exception.

By writing in this way I am able to take a snippet of my life and craft a scene that tells the story about that slice of my life. These pieces will eventually connect to each other by threading my main concept in and out of the story’s plot. These threads will be connected to the theme to create the tapestry of my book. My goal is to weave a story that you can’t put down…at least until you finish the book.

Tools of the Trade

I tried using a software program that many writers use and love. Originally my laptop ran on Windows 10 and I downloaded Scrivener (for Windows). I learned how to use it fairly quickly. I’m a retired programmer so this makes the learning curve less steep. I ran into a problem with Windows loading libraries and who knows what processes were running all at once. My laptop couldn’t handle the load. I would watch my Task Manager tipping to 100% used disk space and no room to actually run the program, it was to busy loading libraries I’d probably never need. I’d had it with Windows, spyware, extraneous libraries and runaway processes from the Windows operating system. Windows became to clunky, slow and impossible to work with and I don’t like the guy behind it.

I moved to Linux on my new laptop and set up a file structure in Libre Office to resemble the structure I had become familiar with when using Scrivener. I created a file structure broken down into Act 1, Act 2a and Act 2b and Act 3. Within each of these folders I created another folder for each Chapter and each chapter folder contained a document that was a scene in the chapter. Each scene (file) had a name that easily identified what I wrote about, the story I told in that particular part of the book. This allowed me to think of this in relation to the story and not just a chapter number or scene number that not only may change as I may rearrange the story later but gave me context to refer to. Using just a chapter and a number meant nothing in the scheme of things…at least not to me.

I created a file for research and listed titles and links for each reference I listed. I had a file containing links to music I could listen to as I write or when I just needed to relax. I have a file named “Brain Dump” which is where I initially started writing whatever came into my head. I just made lists of things I wanted to include in my story and if the writing muse arrived, so be it…I wrote. This helped to clear my mind so I could think about the structure of the story and put together the pieces.

Back Ups

I prefer to keep my writing local for several reasons. Privacy and availability are the main two. I don’t trust my work being kept in the cloud (computers online that save your work on their hard drive). Some find it convenient if they work from more than one computer or mobile device to save their work in the “cloud”. I only work on my laptop so there’s no advantage for me there. Everything I put online is accessible by people or entities that do not have my best interests at heart…if you know what I mean (think hacking/spyware and now AI).

A young doe visited us early last winter, just before Thanksgiving on our first real snow. She is tame and came to visit three times before she disappeared for the winter. The other day she came to visit with her two fawns along with her. They still had their spots and swished their little white tails as they sprang into action. That’s what they mean when they say “high tailing it”. I managed to get a picture of the babies before they scampered into the woods. They stayed long enough to munch down some hostas out front before they disappeared. The garden in the picture was eaten on mom’s last visit a few weeks ago. I guess the babies were bedded down in the forest somewhere when she stopped for a snack.

I live out in the “middle of nowhere” as my dad described it on his first and last visit to my home. He followed the GPS which took him on every back road we would never have traveled in March in northern Michigan. We often have power or internet outages that can last for hours and at times, days. I couldn’t get Scrivener to run if I wasn’t connected to the internet (may have been something related to the Windows version). People who had the version for a Mac computer didn’t seem to run into this problem. Power outages could be overcome based on my laptop battery life, at least enough to finish writing whatever I’m working on and need to save.

Making Notes to Myself

I talk to myself too. When you live in the woods you’ll find yourself talking to yourself, especially when outside after dark. Just in case a bear’s hanging around. We had one visit a few years ago. Honest truth.

But seriously, when I take a break from writing, first I’ll jot a note to myself of where I intended to go next in the story. This helps to get me back in the natural flow of writing when I return. Thinking of the next path the story I should take before I actually sit down to write it provides me with time in between writing to consider how I want to write the next scene.

I’ll think about it as I cook dinner or before I fall asleep at night. Some people have referred to it as “taking their characters to dinner”. This is the time my creative juices are flowing at their full potential when I can hold it to the lens of my story’s theme. Sometimes I realize that it doesn’t fit in the story or perhaps it is better told in another chapter of the story. These are the primary editing phases I go through before I even type a word.

My Notebook

Each time I finish writing for the day I print out the scene or chapter I’ve been working on and do a 3 hole punch on the pages and put it in my notebook binder. I like to take a break from the computer screen and make edits on a hard copy. It also provides me with yet another back up of my work, even if it means retyping at least it hasn’t been wiped from a drive and unrecoverable. I shudder at the thought.

Today I put in some dividers that separated my working copy into sections for my opening scene, flashbacks to childhood, adult years and a section for the ending of the story. My plan is to interweave writings my mother did in our family history albums that includes the genelogy too. I need to stay organized to keep everything together where it makes sense. I’ll put her pieces into the story with a sentence here and a paragraph there. Then I’ll frame my story around hers and weave them together so the story becomes one with two voices.

I kind of write like I sew my patchwork quilts — in pieces that are stitched together when I figure out the arrangement. I never start at the beginning either or work in any particular order other than — what do I want to write about today? This helps keep me motivated. Do you have a method you use to keep you on track? Do you write in sequence or do you just write and worry about the order of things later? Like I do.

These are insights on how I put my story together, one piece at a time. I do start with an outline. I know where I’m going I’ve made a roadmap to follow. I just like to develop the story as I am moved. Do you have a writing style that works for you? Are you a plotter or a pantser? I guess I’m sort of both.

Did you say you wanted a kitty? Don’t all writers have cats?