Category: free writing

When Morning Pages feel useless

You’ve heard, I’m sure, of morning pages. It’s a habit started, as far as I can tell, from a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I don’t know anything about this person or this book. But I do know that morning pages, the act of writing three freewriting pages right when you get up is a good habit to have. And it’s one that I’ve been working hard to develop. 

This isn’t to say it’s always easy. I’ve had a hell of a time getting this habit in place. See, I have this problem where if I don’t see a direct, tangible benefit to something, I don’t do it. So these three pages in the morning were a struggle for me because they didn’t give me a clear reward. If I write three pages of blog posts, I can then share them with you all. If I write three pages in a novel or short story, then I’m three pages closer to a finished document.

Hell, if I spend the same amount of time on dishes, I would then have clean dishes. 

Now, some of you might say that writing is its own reward. As a professional writer, I should just take the time to write for writing’s sake.

Okay, but that doesn’t help motivate me. It just makes me feel like I’m somehow failing as an artist. It also kind of ignores the fact that I’ve produced nine novels, two seasons of a horror/sci-fi podcast and nine years of writing advice content. Say what you will about me, but clearly, I enjoy writing. 

And I wouldn’t still be doing Morning Pages if they weren’t giving me something. I’ve written some lovely prose poetry during those times. I come across good blog post ideas or story breakthroughs. There are lots of mornings when I walk away from those pages with something good I can then share with the world.

And most mornings, that doesn’t happen at all. But there are still real, tangible reasons to come to the page every morning for Morning Pages. Even if all you write about is how bored you are or how pissed off you are at your manager at work. Here are my reasons. 

It still builds the habit

Yesterday all I wrote about during my morning pages was a weird dream I had. The day before I just bitched about money worries. But I still came to the page this morning. I still didn’t write anything clever or sharable. 

Seems like I could skip a day. But honestly, that’s a terrible idea. Because even if you’re not doing much of anything, you’re still building that habit. 

Every morning that you come to the page, you are training yourself to come there again. We’ve all heard that it takes 21 days to form a habit. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But I do know that every day you create that habit, you make it stronger. So show up to keep the habit going, because it’s going to make it easier as you go along. 

It gives you room to write garbage

You can use the Morning Pages to get your bad writing out. We all know there’s just a certain amount of bad writing we all need to do. If we can let these Morning Pages be that bad writing, then it’s out of your system. 

I’m lying, of course. You don’t have to write badly to get better. It’s just very possible that you’re going to write badly. And if you can let yourself do that, then you’ll eventually start writing well.

It gives you a space to do some shadow work

Shadow work is kind of a witchy thing, but don’t let it scare you. It’s just spicy therapy. Shadow work is facing the parts of yourself that you don’t like, and working through them. 

Most of the time, I do shadow work on purpose. I’ll get a piece of paper, light a candle and draw a circle for protection. This can also be seen as giving myself specific cues to let my brain know that now is when we are going to safely unpack big emotions. When I’m done writing about these things, I like to burn the paper to release the energy. If you like, this is a way to symbolically tell myself that now we are done exploring these emotions for now and I don’t have to carry them with me for the rest of my day. 

Sometimes, though, I wake up with something digging at me. Money worries, bad dream hangovers, fights. Or you know, just the fact that people are starving and dying of preventable illnesses and the whole world is literally on fire. 

Some mornings start bad, is what I’m saying.

When that happens, Morning Pages give me the chance to get all that anger or sadness out in sort of an unplanned shadow session. Once that pain and anger are out, the day becomes easier. Or at least, possible. The day becomes possible.

Your writing might surprise you

Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that you do not know what’s going to come out of your morning pages until you sit down and write them. Maybe this will be a boring morning when you write about the fly on the windowsill or how much you don’t want to go to work or how you’re worried that the washing machine is making that weird sound again. 

But maybe this morning you write a cool poem. Or you get an idea for a short story or blog post. Maybe you’ll figure out the solution to something that’s been bothering you about your WIP.

If you’re doing morning pages right, you’re not going to know what’s coming until it comes.

So please, if you’re not doing Morning Pages, consider them. And if you are but it feels pointless, keep going. I promise you, it’s not pointless. No writing is ever wasted. 

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And check out AA, season two. Coming August 15th on Haunted MTL. (Season one is available now.)

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Storytelling with Tarot, Pt 4 The Tower to The World

We’ve come now to the last part of our tarot storytelling journey. And our Fool has been through a lot. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better, I’m afraid. But we’ll get through it together, don’t worry. 

(In case you missed them, here are links to parts one, two and three.)

The Tower

Let me start by saying that this is honestly my least favorite card in the whole tarot deck. And I don’t know how this happened, but the tower card in my deck has a stain at the bottom. Which just makes perfect sense.

The Tower represents the moment when everything goes wrong for our heroes. When everything comes tumbling down. It is the lowest point. 

This is when Scar is in charge of Pride Rock. This is when Obi-Wan Kenobi is killed. It is a dark night of the soul for your Fool. 

The Star

After every dark night of the soul, there’s a moment of hope. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. 

That’s the Star card. It’s not the happy ending, not yet. Not by a long shot. But it’s a sign that our story might have a happy ending after all. 

My favorite example of this is in an episode of Avatar the Last Airbender. Aang is furious that a forest has been destroyed. To cheer him up, Katara throws an acorn at him. She explains that the acorns will grow eventually into trees. The trees will grow back, and the animals will come home.

This is the Star card. It’s not the moment when the forest is renewed. It’s the acorn that will someday be a tree. 

The Moon 

The Moon is one of the more confusing cards, in my opinion. We see a dog and a wolf howling at the moon, while a lobster comes out of the water. 

Why the hell is there a lobster? Because lobsters represent an emotional knowing of things.

Let’s get back to the dog and the wolf, though. They’re freaking out because they know something is coming.

They don’t know how they know. They don’t know what’s coming. But they know something is coming.

This is the moment when our Fool just knows that something is coming for them. Call it a premonition. Call it an educated guess. Call it foreshadowing because of course you as the author know what’s coming for them already. But whatever it is, your Fool can feel it like a wolf feels an earthquake before it comes. 

The Sun

Now we come to the best part of the story. The part where our Fool wins the day. The sun has risen, and the journey is almost at its end. 

This is the moment when our Fool has defeated their foe or reached their destination. It’s Frodo and Sam destroying the One Ring. It’s Aang defeating the Fire Lord. It’s The World Turned Upside Down in Hamilton.

We won. 

This could also be called the climax of your story. But remember, the climax and the ending aren’t the same thing. We’re almost there, though.

Judgement

After the battle is over, there are consequences. Even for our most honest and well-meaning fool. All actions have consequences. 

Okay, that sounds terrible. And sometimes it is.

This is the moment when Mulan has to face the Emperor. It’s when you have to bury those lost in battle. It’s when the Blues Brothers have to go back to jail. 

But it’s not all bad. At least, it had better not be all bad or that would be a shitty ending to your story. This is the moment when your Fool is praised for saving whoever it is they saved. It’s when they get all the good things that are coming to them.

I like to think of a scene in American Gods. An elderly woman passes away, and the Egyptian God Anubis comes for her. He weighs her heart against the weight of a feather and judges her. After letting her sweat for a minute, he judges her well and takes her to a beautiful afterlife.

I’m not saying your Fool has to die. But their story is at its end, and it’s time for them to be judged. 

The World

Even if you did decide to kill your Fool, the world keeps spinning. And you probably have characters that still exist in your world. So, what is their life going to look like now? 

Where do we go from here? How has the journey changed the world, the people, the community? 

You don’t need to go on for pages and pages, of course. But the events in your story had an impact. We should see a little bit of what that impact is. 

To end this on a happy note, I’ll compare this to the very end of The Lion King. Simba and Nala watch proudly as Rafiki holds up their newborn child for the whole kingdom to see. We know nothing about the baby, or what kind of life they’re going to lead. But we know that the world is going to keep spinning. And there are more adventures to come. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tarot storytelling adventure. Please let me know in the comments if you have a favorite card, or if you’ll be trying this method of outlining for yourself.

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Storytelling with Tarot Pt 2, The Lovers to Wheel of Fortune

If you missed last week’s episode, please check it out here. I went through a lengthy disclaimer that I don’t think anyone wants me to repeat.

The short version is this. Tarot cards tell a story. It’s the Heroe’s Journey told in playing cards, with The Fool as our hero. Being both a witch and writer, I like to use the Major Arcana cards of the tarot to outline my story. This is not a lesson on how to read tarot, but a lesson on how to use tarot as a tool to write a detailed outline in a fun way. 

One thing I don’t think I mentioned last week is this. This is not a list of plot points that we’re going to hit in order. This is a way to hit some important plot points, as well as discover important characters and relationships. Some stories will have all of these things, and some won’t. This is just a fun way to get you thinking about the details of your story. 

We’re talking about some of my favorite cards today, so let’s get started. 

The Lovers

Ah, the love interest. The character that makes your Fool’s heart skip a beat. The one who seems to light up the room when they come in.

The one that isn’t necessarily needed, in my opinion.

Look, I got five books into Station 86 before Sennett found a partner. 

But love can be a wonderful addition to a story, even if it’s added later. Love stories like Jack and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, or Chuck and Sara from Chuck. These sorts of warm, lovely relationships can be a breeding ground for plot bunnies. 

The Chariot

This is one of my favorite cards to pull because it’s so empowering. It’s all about having control of a situation.

In your Fool’s journey, this is when they realize that maybe they do have this under control. This is facing a challenge that is well suited to our Fool’s strengths. Like Klause Baudelaire in a library, this is the moment when your character has everything under control. 

Strength

This card is all about grace and success under pressure. It’s handling a battle, struggle, or uncomfortable family gathering with ease. Especially when this was something that would have once felled the Fool. 

This should be something difficult. Like when Mulan climbs the pole to fetch the arrow. She does so using her strength and intelligence, both of which she’s earned. This is the moment, maybe after our Fool has failed and become more determined to meet their goal, that we start to think they might really win this thing. 

Or at least not die. 

The Hermit

There are times when we all need to do something alone. Or at least, take some time alone to sort ourselves out. That’s the moment the hermit card represents. It’s a solitary time to grow. To be alone, but maybe not lonely. This is the time to grow, to learn. To like our own company. 

Maybe your character was cast out of their home or friendship circle. Maybe everyone they love was taken from them or walked away.

The best example I can think of this is going to show my age. But it’s the song Close Every Door from Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. Joseph is tossed in jail, away from his doting parents and jealous brothers. And he takes that time to figure himself out. He comes out a better person than when he went in. 

Wheel of Fortune

Plot twist! 

Maybe our Fool is doing well. Then it’s time for them to face something way too powerful for them. Maybe our Fool’s been a sad sack so far, and they’re in desperate need of a win. Wherever we are now, it’s time for the tides to turn.

How many examples can I possibly reference here? Think of Cordelia in Angel, after her family loses all their money. Whatever moment your character’s world flips upside down, that’s the Wheel of Fortune. 

Another way to think about this is karma. What character in your story needs to get what’s coming to them? Either good or bad. There’s a great line from the first episode of Firefly that I always think about when I see this card.

Mal, the main character, looks at Badger, the underworld mob boss who just betrayed him. “The wheel never stops turning,” he says. Badger responds, “That only matters to the people on the rim.” 

We are all on the rim, Badger. And sometimes when that wheel turns, our characters are going to get chucked off. 

That’s it for this time. I’ll be back next week with the next five tarot cards. And I want to hear what you think. Have you tried using any of these tarot cards as outlining prompts so far? Let us know in the comments.

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Writing 101, Day Nineteen

Day 19, freewrite 400 words

Well, that’s not hard.  I am famous for not being able to shut up, not having a problem starting.

So, let’s see.  Right now I’m sitting at my awesome desk, with my daughter’s rats on my shoulder.  She’s cleaning their cage, and needed sitting.  I guess this will be funny in like twenty years when I’m babysitting for her.

It’s the same desk in the picture of my rough draft.  Man, I’m still proud about that.  Took me so long to finish Starting Chains, when the rough draft of the first book took no longer than six weeks.

To be fair, nothing was going right or going on when I wrote Patterns.  Starting Chains was written after PBW was in full swing, and I had a bunch of other story telling opportunities in the making.  Looking back, I think I’m going to shut everything else down when I write the rough draft of the next book.  Maybe write all my articles for a month in advance, and work just on the draft.  Really pour ever bit of my creative energy on that one project for just as long as it takes.

Maybe.  As much as I’d like to think my brain works that way, I’d probably get bored.  No matter how many projects I have in motion, I always want to do something new.  I’ve got a ton going on, now I want to take a day off to learn about ways to boost my twitter following.  I have so many plans, so many ideas, that I can’t ever really focus on one long enough.

Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve managed to write two books in the same series already.  Except for the fact that it’s the series that saved me.

In September of 2013, something really bad happened to my family.  I’d made an outline for Broken Patterns, and made maybe a token effort at writing it.  Then, my whole world flipped over.  Nothing was going right in my life, and it all got worse for the next few months.  The only thing that was going right, that made me feel in control, was my writing.  I finished the last 500 pages in two weeks.  As we went through a nightmare that included my husband nearly dying, a horrible custody fight, and a less than congenial parting of the ways with my old day job, my writing was my escape.  My safety net after days and days of tears and torture.

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Writing 101, Day 15

Today’s Prompt: Think about an event you’ve attended and loved. Your hometown’s annual fair. That life-changing music festival. A conference that shifted your worldview. Imagine you’re told it will be cancelled forever or taken over by an evil corporate force.

So, this is ironic, because there’s a chance that’s actually going to happen this year in my town.

My favorite season is fall.  I know, that’s not a normal season to be someone’s favorite, but it’s mine.  I love all things pumpkin flavored, Halloween is my favorite holiday, fall leaves are beautiful here in Western PA, cinnamon is my favorite thing ever, and I really don’t like to shave my legs.

There’s this great fall festival in town, and we look forward to it every year.  There are games, and carny food, and live bands.  My kids get their faces painted, and their hair colored.  We make sand art, and play awful games.  We also take the opportunity to donate to some of our favorite local charities, like VOICE, and our local chapter of GLAD.

One big part of the Fall Festival that lots of people like but I think is rather boring is the car show.  There are actually two other car shoes downtown every year, Cruisaplouza and the Jeep festival.  Did you know that the Jeep was invented in Butler?  People come from all over America for the event every year, if you can believe that.

The problem is, the fall festival isn’t being as well funded as we might like.  In fact, we’re being told that this might be the very last year for it.  My older daughter and I have been going for the past ten years, and my whole family for five.  Last year my daughter wouldn’t let us paint her face, and she was flirting with some boy on the bungee jump.  I’m literally gauging them growing up by the pictures I take of them every year.  I honestly don’t know what we’ll do if this is the last year.

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Writing 101, day 14

Today’s Prompt: Pick up the nearest book and flip to page 29. What’s the first word that jumps off the page? Use this word as your springboard for inspiration.

The closest book to me was Zen Inspirations.  The first word I saw on page 29 was kind.

Dear Dr. Sanders,

I have tried to be kind, at least as much as I could have been in this situation.  Really, I have.  It’s not always been easy, but I have tried.

You, sadly, have not returned this kindness, have you now?  In the months that I have wasted, seeking a peaceful resolution to this sad situation, you have been anything but kind.  I have tried to send you letters, which you’ve returned unopened.  I call, and you’re receptionist says that you are too busy to come to the phone.  Surely, she will call you back, he informed me over and over.  But do you?  No, you do not.  Surely it wouldn’t take more than a moment for you to call, and set my mind at ease over this whole situation.  This messy, awful situation that you, Madam, started.

I was finally forced to come to your offices myself, and speak with you.  Again, though, I was told that you were too busy to spare a moment for me.  Me, who you have so terribly wronged.  You couldn’t come speak to me.  I waited, in the office.  I was patient.  I didn’t make a scene, nore did I do anything to earn the looks of discomfort that I received from your staff.  Even so, you didn’t come out to speak to me.  I know that you think I didn’t see you sneaking out the back door to avoid me.  But I saw you.  Oh yes, I saw you.

So now, I’m afraid I have come to the end of my kindness.  If you will not speak to me to resolve this injustice, if you will not give me back what is rightfully mine, then I will have to take it by force.  I will be in your office Monday morning, Doctor, and if you do not put my reproductive organs back where they were, I will be forced to mark the entire office as my personal territory.  As I’m sure you know, it’s a very hard thing to remove cat urine smell.  Consider your next move wisely.

Sincerely,

Socks.

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Writing 101, Day 13

On day four, you wrote a post about losing something. Today’s Prompt: write about finding something.

So, I’m supposed to relate this post to the one in which I lost something, which can be found here.

Alright, I lost that very important box of things the day that my husband and I moved into that crappy little apartment.  Except that was before we were married.  So then he was just my boyfriend, and we were moving in together on a strictly temporary basis.  He was looking for a place for just him and our younger daughter, who was then just his daughter.  I just wanted out of this terrible apartment complex I’d been living in up until then.

There were obvious issues with my first apartment.  It was too small, the walls were so thin I could hear my neighbors shaving.  The landlady was a control freak that conducted inspections and threatened to evict people if their house wasn’t as clean as ‘she’ wanted it to be.  It was like living in a college dorm, with the housemother Hell kicked out for being too much of a bitch to the sinners.

It was also not an apartment that I chose.  I moved out on my own within one month of turning eighteen.  I wanted to stay in my mom’s place for another year, because I had a three month old and another year of high school.  I wanted to have a job, and a way to support myself.  Instead, my mom walked me by the hand down to apply for welfare benefits, and get an apartment of my own in the HUD sponsored housing that we were already living in.  I was still with my evil ex at the time, and he even got a job for a month or two.  My mom offered to watch my older daughter while I was in school, (if I paid her).  I thought everything would work out fine, because ‘smarter people than me’ had told me what to do, and I had listened to them.

Nothing turned out right.  My ex’s job didn’t last, and I couldn’t handle going to school, and raising a baby, and keeping a home of my own with no forethought as to how that actually worked.  The people that had been so quick to tell me what I should do with my life were equally as quick to not help me at all once I’d listened to them.  So there I was, in an apartment I hated, with no income at all, holding a baby that depended on me for everything, when I didn’t have anyone to depend on at all.

Now we get to the part where I found something.  My strength, and my spine.  I got a job, a really crappy one.  I sorted trash, washed cars, washed dishes.  Eventually I got a job at a local health food store, which helped me get a job at GNC, where I rose to the rank of manager.  That let me get a better management job at a shoe store.  Along the way, I kicked my ex out, and met my current husband.  And, I started writing again, like I’d wanted to when I was a kid.

When we moved into that first apartment together, it was just supposed to be me and my older daughter.  We thought we weren’t ready to be a family yet.  We both wanted to make sure we were okay on our own before we committed to being okay as one family.

Well, that didn’t work.  We found that it was really nice having the other person there when we woke up.  We got a cat, Harper, the one from my picture last week.  There was a pregnancy scare that didn’t really scare us so bad, and was a real disappointment when we found out it wasn’t real.  The girls went from ‘your kid,’ and ‘my kid,’ to ‘our kids.’  I found my voice, my strength.  I spent a lot of time deciding what sort of woman I wanted to be.  Then, my family sort of built itself around that.

We moved again a few years after that.  This time, we picked the home together.  We’re still there.  Three bedrooms, a bathroom I fell in love with on sight.  This fluffy shag carpet that I hated until I took my shoes off and walked around on it barefoot.

I lost so much of my past in the last ten years.  Most of it’s better off gone, but not all of it.  What I’ve found instead, is my place in the greater scheme of things, and my family.

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Writing 101, Day 12

Today’s Prompt: Write a post inspired by a real-world conversation.

So, I might have mentioned this before, but there’s not one, but two great little coffee shops on Main Street in my town.  One is this quaint little place that’s been there since forever.  The other’s very new, very posh, and serves Starbucks.  I love them both.

It was in the newer of the two that I seem to run into the best conversations, though.  It seems to be the meeting place of some different groups that are just fascinating to listen to.  Lawyers hang out there, and judges.  It’s just a block from the courthouse, you see.

A wonderful group of pastors also meet there once a week.  I love to got write while they’re there.

I’ve never had a very good opinion of organized faith, you see.  I’m a Christian, but anything that smacks of someone having authority over other people and saying it’s in the name of God makes my skin crawl.  I think it’s something about all the arguing over religious dogma, and the constant infighting that always seem to go with it.

But these pastors, they meet, and they talk shop.  They talk about writing their talks, and helping their congregation.  They put all differences aside, and talk to each other like brothers and sisters.  You know, the way we’re supposed to treat each other.

I sneezed once, and they all blessed me.  It was kind of cool.

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Writing 101, Day 11

Today’s Prompt: Where did you live when you were 12 years old? Which town, city, and country? Was it a house or an apartment? A boarding school or foster home? An airstream or an RV? Who lived there with you?

Can I be honest?  I’m not totally sure I remember where we were living that year.  We moved around a lot when I was young, and by a lot I mean once or twice a year.  I realize now, as a grown woman, that my mom must have had some sort of good reason for this constant moving around.  Surely she wouldn’t have put me through the incessant packing, uprooting me from school after school, constantly leaving people places and sometimes pets behind without good reason.

But maybe she didn’t.  If there was ever a reason, she never shared it with me.

What resulted was a very fluid childhood, in which there were very few constants.  Except the town.  I was born in Connecticut, and we spent a year in North Carolina.  But the rest of my life, I’ve lived in Butler, Pennsylvania.

For someone who spent most of her childhood either packing or unpacking boxes, there’s a comfort in this.  I can see the hospital where my daughter was born from my bedroom window.  My first job is here, and so is my first good job.  People know me here.  Some people even like me here.  I take my kids to the coffee shop I used to stop at after school with my friends.  I walk down Main Street, where there’s still a Burger Hut that my mom used to work at.  We lived right above it, in this crappy little apartment.

We lived in a different crappy little apartment on Main Street when my mom managed a greek restaurant for her boyfriend, that’s now a chinese restaurant where I took my older daughter for her fourth birthday.  (After taking her to the Carnegie Science Center, of course.  No four year old wants to go to a chinese place for her birthday.)

I walk past the junior high I went to when I was twelve, every day on my way to work.  It’s across from the Catholic church my great grandmother attended.  The only time I was ever in it was for her funeral.

So, where was I living when I was twelve?  In Butler, and that’s all that really matters.

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Writing 101, Day 10

Today’s Prompt: Tell us something about your favorite childhood meal — the one that was always a treat, that meant “celebration,” or that comforted you and has deep roots in your memory.

So, food.  There wasn’t a real celebration food in my house growing up.  My mom wasn’t a very good cook, and never wanted to be bothered with it, really.  I can’t really think of anything my grandmother made that was particularly memorable, either.

It’s my grandma June that I talk about the most when talking about food.

Grandma June was particular.  Near the end of her life she didn’t eat or drink anything but oranges and diet, caffeine free Pepsi out of a can with a straw.  But the whole time I had her in my life, she always had white tic tacs with her, wherever she was.

She had a little garden in the back yard, and she’d grow tomatoes.  Then she’d slice them, and make tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise, salt and pepper, on bakery bread.  She’d never buy pre-cut bread, my great grandma.  She always went to the bakery, and bought rye bread there.

Then, there was the stuffed cabbage she made.  It was the best thing ever, and she’d make it any time I was coming over to stay the night.  She’s also the one who taught me to make cookies from scratch, and not out of a box.

The best thing, the closest thing to a traditional seasonal meal, would have had to been her pork and sour krout, every New Years Eve.

But the thing I remember most is the tomatoes.  Even to this day, I can’t bite into a tomato without thinking of my Grandma June.

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