Just Kill ‘Em

A friend of mine writes murder mysteries. She has found a positive way to channel negative energy connected to a particular person: she turns the person she is angry with into a character in a book. Then she kills them. End of story. End of her frustration.

I found that tactic hilarious. I didn’t think it would work for me. Then, I had a fight.

After I had strong words with a person, I felt badly. My head ached, and I was sick to my stomach. I realized I needed to change my response to this negative stimulation. I pulled out my laptop and began working on a story as a way to get my mind off things. The adrenaline increase from the argument was rerouted to my creative brain. Before I knew it, that re-channeled energy helped me produce 1,000 new written words.

I liked the outcome of that choice. My body appreciated my turning away from the gut-churning negative emotions to the zen-inducing creative thoughts. I am certain my blood pressure dropped several points while writing.

So there you have it. Redirect your anger or angst. Get writing. Lower your blood pressure. And, if need be, kill the bugger!

When Life Throws You a Curve Ball

It’s crazy. Just when I have plotted out my life for the next umpteen months and settled back to work the plan, Life throws me a curve ball. It shouldn’t surprise me.

Enough seasons have passed through my earth-bound existence that I should know better than to think any long-term plan will play out exactly as I have envisioned it. It must be the optimist in me, for I keep planning.

Or maybe it’s my insanity. You know the old definition of lunacy: doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome.

However, my recent roadblocks are just that–little obstacles. The unanticipated hiccups don’t really change my plans. My destination is still the same: write books. Now, I will have a few detours through unfamiliar neighborhoods. That can be a good thing, right? It adds color, dimensions, flavor to my collection of life experience.

I’ll stop rambling and be more concrete.

I make my living by farming. I make hay, cut wood, and grow vegetables for selling. This year I planned to add the sale of landscaping stone to my product line. Due to another hiccup in my life plan, my way of making a living was to be more important than ever in 2013. But. . . .

Karma has other plans. I have torn my rotator cuff. I am scheduled for surgery soon and will be convalescing for six months afterward. No farming this season. No farming means no income.

Thankfully, there is nothing wrong with my brain. So I have to ask myself, is the Universe clearing a path for me to write?

I’m Off My Meds Again!

Listening to advice from friends, I am going to start other blogs to carry topics unrelated to writing, instead of clogging the space here. Since my favorite off-topic interest is off-the-wall stories in our modern or pop culture, the first new blog is called “I’m Off My Meds Again” and can be found at http://www.offmymedsagain.wordpress.com. It’s MY platform for MY craziness. If you love the world of abnormal, bizarre, whacko things, then you’ll love this space. If crazy talk isn’t your cup of tea, stay away!

A Series of Thoughts on the Power of the Mind, Part 2

Two psychological laws from a list in Robert Assagioli’s book The Act of Will are:

• Needs, urges, drives and desires tend to arouse corresponding images, ideas and emotions.
• Urges, drives, desires and emotions tend to and demand to be expressed.

It’s the demanding to be expressed that struck me. As an author, how do I use that law to good advantage? Then it struck me.

How often have you experienced writer’s block? The phenomenon is a blocking–a failing to express, if you will–of ideas to continue the telling of a story. It is getting so far in your tale, then hitting a wall. Nothing more comes to mind.

The two psychological laws above suggest a solution to writer’s block. However, you, as writer, will have to become an actor. How so?

The next time you are stymied on where to go with your storyline, try this. Stand up and act out the role of each character, one individual at a time, in their actions, feelings, needs, urges (especially urges), and desires as you have written about them up to now. Become the person (obviously, you want to do this in privacy to keep your friends or family from locking you up). Get inside the person and feel the motivation. What are they thinking? Feeling? Smelling, hearing, tasting? Use their body language: stance, posture, expressions, gestures, ticks. Do this for each person in the story line. Be uninhibited. Get into it.

If you truly become the character and incorporate the ideals, zeal, passion of the persona in your role play, then, according to the psychological laws, the urges, drives, desires and emotions of the personage will demand to be expressed. A pathway will open down which to take the story. The character will lead YOU by the hand. Just follow–and write it down!

A Series of Thoughts on the Power of the Mind, Part 1

Back in May, I read a post on the blog Course of Mirrors called “. . .on awareness. . .” (To read it yourself, click here: http://courseofmirrors.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/thoughts-on-awareness/ )

The central assumption of the article is that there are psychological laws as immutable as scientific ones. Roberto Assagioli, M. D. has included a list in his book The Act of Will. Assagioli and the blogger Course of Mirrors discuss how the mind (through psychology) affects humans, and specificly the writer.

The mind is powerful. That is why I posted several quotes on New Year’s Eve about the power of preparation. If you re-read those quotes before pondering the postulates I present (how’s that for alliteration?), you’ll begin to see the importance of the mental connection.

So, today I want to emphasize the simple mind-body correlation.

Chris Teo, Ph. D. says:

“Philip Parham wrote about two men who contracted tuberculosis  around the same time. They both went to the same sanatorium. One went home after  eighteen months, fully recovered and healthy. The other man was dead within six  months. The disease was the same but the outcome was different. Why? William  Osler, a famous American physician said: ‘What happens to a patient with  tuberculosis depends more on what he has in his mind than what is in his chest.'”

and

Dr. Robert Good, a leader of psychoneuroimmunology said:

“A positive attitude  and constructive frame of mind all improve our ability to resist infections,  allergies, autoimmune disorders and cancers, whereas depression and pessimism  decrease our ability to do so.”

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/320854

In the post from Course of Mirrors, the author writes:

Having experienced Feldenkreis work — and practices deriving from it  –  after doing a gentle physical exercise and repeating it in my imagination only, with eyes closed, the same physical reactions happen in my body. This  explains why active imagination can affect mind and body at a deep level and change physical symptoms as well as states of mind.

When I hit my toe, elbow or head on an object, I repeat the exact contact and, in my imagination, send the impact back. There remains hardly any pain and the usual swelling is mild or does not occur at all.

Therapeutically, if a tense or hurtful part of the body is listened to and  allowed a voice, the result can be  instantaneous,  much like when you lower yourself at eye-level to a toddler who has a tantrum, and do nothing else but acknowledge the rage, surprise, surprise, the tantrum stops.

What seems like magic, is actually simple and applies both ways: physical activity influences mood and mind,  active imagination influences mood and body.

If researchers, patients and physicians believe that mind set–or use of the mind through thought process or imagination–alone can make a physical difference in our bodies, then we, as writers, should consider how to harness that tool for our work.

The Right Quote

A lot of space is devoted to quotations on this blog. If the blog is a writer’s blog, why quotes? Gayle King, co-anchor of CBS This Morning and editor-at-large at O said it best:

The right quote can change your mood and change your mind.

— Gayle King

For writers, it is often the mood or state of mind that makes a difference in output. Discipline also plays a role. Even so, after I have disciplined myself to sit at my writing table, writing originates inside my head. The inner mechanisms sometimes require a lubricant to get things moving. A quotation sometimes serves that purpose.

Throw Enough at the Wall. . .

. . . and something will stick.

I used that quotation in yesterday’s response to Rarasaur. Immediately, I knew I had to share a motivational thought with you.

Having several irons in the fire can be a good thing, providing you are continually working to complete the projects. Eventually, you will finish a project, then another, then another. As a writer, this means that you will end up with several salable items.

This tactic only works for folks like me whose brains like to jump from one thing to another to avoid boredom. It won’t work for those who start things, but never finish them. You have to finish the projects. It’s finishing them that brings a pay day.

Rarasaur has a good method. She has a list and a concrete goal for each item listed; for example, creating one idea a day for thirty days for a book project. At the end of a month, she will have thirty possibilities to consider for her next writing project. Of the thirty on her list, one is bound to seize her imagination.

You may want to try the “many irons” approach to see if it works for you. The key to success is devising your own method to complete the projects on your list.

“It Was Melancholy that Made Me Write”

Howard Jacobson believes melancholy is a required ingredient of the artist’s temperament. It is the melancholy person who thinks of creating art in the first place. Artistic endeavors are always imbued with melancholy. He says:

CHEERFUL PEOPLE DON’T WRITE NOVELS. CHEERFUL PEOPLE DON’T MAKE ART. THEY BECOME SPORTSMEN.

Quotation for 10-10-2012

The best way out is always through.

–Robert Frost

Author Vernon Vinge: On Writing, Fiction and the Singularity

Excellent interview with science fiction author Vernon Vinge

This video explores the platform of science fiction as a vehicle to advance ideas. The interview offers advice for writers, as well as thoughts about the future.