Ann Marie Gamble

Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

The New Ann Plan

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

It’s been a good year for the Brain Trust, a group of writers I meet with in person. We chat, brainstorm, commiserate, and egg each other on. We pick apart story structure of movies we’ve seen instead of rating them; I can admit in this crowd that I read eleven True Blood books in twenty days even though I profess no interest in paranormal stories. But we got a lot of writing done, tried some new things, got things submitted and accepted, and had a couple of NaNo winners.

This week the activity has been thinking concretely about goals for the year. We e-mail our list to the group and cheerlead. I like reading what the others are cooking up and how their year ebbs and flows—kids at home and university campus neighbor, I know that really the new year starts in August (you even get new supplies), but I’m willing to play along with the January people.

But I’m having a rocky week. Work? Argh! Family? I’d like to put the “diss” in “dysfunctional.” Writing plans? I’m quivering. But I’ve done this before, and I’m starting to see that I go through stages.

Grandiosity: This is the year, baby! I’ve got this nailed! I will draft that FBI trilogy and a screenplay and I’ll sell a TV pilot! You can hardly tell I’m not thirty! Letterman, save me a chair!

Around this time the Christmas candy runs out.

Despair: Oh. My. God. I can’t even get the dishes washed in the same day that we eat off them. I’ll be lucky to finish a poem—no, a haiku. No, wait, don’t they have rules about lines or something? A free-verse tweet. Nobody wants to read any of this claptrap. I need glasses. I need a haircut. I need to spend my time looking for a real job. I’m going to put on all my fleece clothing and go back to bed.

Resignation: I’ll just keep slogging along . . . like I’ve been doing. It’s not glamorous, or fast, but I’m chipping away. Make the list, roll up the sleeves–and Facebook games are the Devil’s spawn.

A whiff of excitement creeps in: Some of this stuff is lame, but this one here is a pretty good idea. Yes, spring break never turns out to be Novel Writing Retreat Week, but I get inspired and get tons done in April. This is doable.

These next you might flicker through pretty fast. Recognize that feeling it doesn’t make it permanent.

Abandon the whole thing: This is crazy, I feel crazy, I’ve got things to do.

Paralysis: Where the heck do I start?

Research: With more background information, I’ll really be ready to launch this thing. In fact, here’s a whole stack of vital background info.

And finally . . .

Launch: Sitting down in front of a fresh piece of paper, a new notebook, a blank screen. Do you dip in a toe or dive?

I might be moving out of the resignation phase. Unlike my writing buddies, I’m having trouble making a numbered list. My main project is a revision, where the predicted timetable has been thrown out of whack as I realize that it needs a period of percolation before it gets another pass. My goal is to finish it (where “finish” means “get into readable shape”) rather than make myself frustrated missing more deadlines. So my other goal is to keep working, on other projects while this one rests. My plan this year is less about counting and more about process.

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Fresh Eyes

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

It’s getting cold around here. We had a few false alarms–”Feels like winter is here to stay!”–and a couple days later it was 70, but today there was a good, from-the-ground-up edge to it that had us hunkering into our coats as we waited for the bus.

So we were staring at our shoes, younger son and I, instead of at the birds, the cars, the passersby; wedging our chins into the openings of our jackets and wondering whether it was time to look at the time again, when we noticed something on the sidewalk.

(more…)

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Finding the Perfect Gift

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

I’m blogging about the tricky people on my Christmas present list at the Pop Culture Divas.

I remain this easy to buy gifts for

Posted in Blogging, Creativity, Travel | No Comments »

Harvest

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Lately when we pick up our CSA veggies, my thoughts turn to soups and preserves and things we can freeze. We’ll still be able to get local vegetables into November, but there’s a chill in the air and the Tupperware drawer is full; I dump out the week’s haul and think, “What here do I want to be eating in three months?”

This week I drafted my kids as sous-chefs. They chopped most of the ingredients for big batches of potato soup and gumbo. They won’t eat the gumbo, probably, so I pour that into cup-and-a-half-sized containers so I can thaw out single servings for my lunch. Most of the potato soup we ate in one sitting—soccer practice takes it out of you, and they didn’t know I’d subbed cauliflower for some of the potatoes.

Last week the farm had a glut of cucumbers, so we made refrigerator pickles. Like the soups, I’m long past using a recipe. I put the ingredients into the pot in patches so I can see the ratios and what I’ve already added. I’ve learned to pour spices into my hand first just in case the lid is loose, and that way get the desired amount into the pot. (more…)

Posted in Creativity, NaNoWriMo, Process | 2 Comments »

The Raccoon-Free Attic

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

I'm here to tear up the window frames, rustle around in your crawl space, and eat all the Girl Scout cookies

The wildlife doesn’t quit just because we come back from vacation.

We live in what demographers call an “urban-rural county.” The town is big enough and the countryside is close enough that we have the qualities of both. Traffic jams and deer patrols! Smog and pollen! But also theater and parks!

I live blocks from downtown. A block in one direction is the university campus, and a block in another direction is a ravine leading to a creek. It’s a little green artery into the city, and it means that in addition to frat boys, I can spot woodchucks, opossums, raccoons, and even the occasional deer in the neighborhood. (more…)

Posted in Characters, Creativity, home repair | 1 Comment »

Script Frenzy Mood Map

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

I like keeping track of word count to help me learn about my work habits—what works, what stressors take their toll, what’s really happening versus what I think is happening. NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy have a widget that graphs your daily word count or page count, and I added some notes about what was going on away from the keyboard.

(click the image to make it bigger)

Now that I’ve done more than one of these power-through, get-the-draft-down challenges, I think I can say this about my writing process: (more…)

Posted in Creativity, Process, Script Frenzy | No Comments »

Thrilled to Pick a Book to Read

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

I’m excited about a new book, and I haven’t even started reading it. I entered a contest on Goodreads for an ARC of Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution, by Michelle Moran because the blurb is everything I love about creative writing. The novel follows Tussaud through the French Revolution, which she survived despite her ties to nobility because of her skills as a sculptor–she made death masks of some of the nobles who were executed.

It’s not so much the specifics that thrill me (although I am interested in the French revolution) as the combination of factors, the indication of an author being someone who has swirled past some information and become intrigued, read some tidbit and thought, “There’s a story there.” (more…)

Posted in Creativity, Reading, Review | No Comments »

Why I Write What I Write

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Keri Stevens wrote recently about the power of words and the kind of the world she wants to create with hers. It’s about as clear a statement about why writing romance appeals as anything I have read, but I do have a few words to add.

Writing a novel takes a long time, even when things are going well. Not just writing the thing, but coming up with the idea, researching, revising, polishing, promoting . . . I’m going to be engaged with this material for a long time. I write at least in part for fun, so I want this world I’m creating to be someplace I don’t mind living. So, when a friend suggests I tackle the story about the single mom whose kid comes down with a chronic illness? Um, no. (more…)

Posted in Characters, Creativity, Play | 3 Comments »

Waiting

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

I’ve taken a long break from blogging. We had a lot going on last summer, fall is always swept up in the new school routine, I participated in NaNoWriMo and I crashed my computer. On some levels, it was a needed break. I have finished drafts that needed to percolate before I knew what I wanted to do with them. I needed to let the project dust settle to see what I wanted to work on next. I needed to unpack. And although I got less the writing done than I wanted to, this time was productive in other ways. I did figure out (at least parts of) what I want to do in my revisions. I found a new toy, Tumblr, my great scrapbook in the cloud, which has helped me decide what novel I want to write next. Several novels later, I’m becoming more comfortable with with my discomfort at various stages of the process, if that makes any sense. (more…)

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