More on novels and reunions

Like in a good novel, flashbacks and back-story should be kept to a minimum during family reunions, and only if they can be seamlessly woven into the narrative.

More from Friends from Far Away:
In real life get out of the way when a person with a gun is running down the street, In your writing life step in front of his path, let him shoot you in the heart.

What you fear, if you turn toward it, will give your writing teeth.

Go and be confident!

I was going to write some book reviews this week, but I've received some really good critiques of my book recently and need to revise before my enthusiasm wanes. Also, the week on hiatus seems to have recharged me and I am on a bit of a roll in my revision and definitely do not want to lose the momentum.

So instead of changing focus to write my book review, I'll leave you with the fortune I got a couple of weeks ago:

You are capable, competent, creative and careful.

Maybe this veers too closely toward Deep Thoughts territory but I see no harm in some self-affirmation.

Of course, you can always have a discussion amongst yourselves on the topic of:

Do self-affirmations actually work or are we just deluding ourselves?

or

Are alliterations annoying or affirming?

Discuss.

Poetry Friday on Pep Talk Week: Optimism

Tenacity, optimism, persistence, hope, resilience: aren't these the best words for when you feel drained of anything that can propel you on the path that you thought you wanted to take?

Optimism
by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and
over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree:

Here is the rest of the poem.

Poetry Friday Roundup is at Mommy's Favorite Children's Books this week.

Pep Talk Week: Resilience

Every once in a while, I'd get drawn to the promises of a self-help book and imagine my life improved after following its recommendations. More often than not, I can't even finish reading it. The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte, however, is an exception. This is one that I've read and come back to several times.

When we face seemingly unending and insurmountable obstacles--oh, I don't know, such as trying to get published when the likelihood of that happening is shrinking daily--there is a temptation to give in to hopelessness. Resilience is the trait that prevents that.

Excerpt:

[Resilient people] seem to soar in spite of the hardship and trauma they face. In fact, the most resilient people seek out new and challenging experiences because they've learned that it's only through struggle, through pushing themselves to their limits, that they will expand their horizons.

It's a good thing we don't have to seek out challenges.

...they don't wither when confronted with risky or dangerous situations...have found a system to galvanizing themselves and tackling problems thoughtfully, thoroughly, and energetically.

The authors are cognitive psychologists, so they advocate changing our lives by changing our thinking. They offer resilience tests, examples of thinking traps, and of course, ways to increase our RQ, (you've got it: resilience quotient!)

A couple of ideas that I find most relevant to me as a writer have to do with numbers 5 and 6 of the seven essential skills:

• Putting it in perspective
  
• calming and focusing

Yes, the book is written in the format of standard self-help books, with punchy titles and handy lists. But if you can get pass these distractions, I think the ideas may offer us dreamers and wordmules some tools for banishing negative thoughts that keep us from doing what we do.

Pep Talk Week: Things May Not Be As Bad

I don't know if anyone is still reeling over the stock market dive yesterday, but I wanted to share an article that outlines several reasons for optimism in the juvenile book market.

Excerpt:

Children’s Books are Still Selling Strongly. According to Publishers Weekly, children’s books “proved to be one of the most recession resistant segments of the book business” throughout the 2008 holiday season. Sales were strong across age groups. Many stores reported increased sales numbers over 2007.

Children’s Books are Outselling Adult Books. As we write this, the top five overall best-sellers in America, according to USA Today, are children’s/YA books. The Last Straw, the latest installment of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, is number one. The Twilight series claims slots two through five.

If you don't know Jon and Laura from the Children's Book Insider, you should check them out. At a recent writing retreat, the Big Sur at the Rockies, run by Andrea Brown, I had the privilege of being in a critique group led by Laura, and found her to be a superhero.

So, writers, especially of children's and YA lit, keep those words coming.

Pep Talk Week: No Regrets

The subject today: Regret

Regrets come in two flavors:

• "I wish I had told the guy I admired him."
  
• "I came within 0.2 points of getting my summa cum laude."
  

The first has to do with a decision, made differently than what we think we should have. The second has to do with something outside our control. We could have studied a bit harder maybe, but in the end, the 0.2 points are not our say.

A few years ago, I realized I've prevented myself from a lot of good things because I didn't have enough guts to pursue them. All those opportunities forgone!

Faulty thinking: if I didn't go for it, at least nobody could say I've failed.

It's sad enough that appearing good in front of people had so much power, but sadder still that it wasn't even the whole story. The real reason was that I didn't want to find out for myself if I really had what it took, and didn't know if I could handle it if I had to admit I didn't have what it took. So I simply took myself out of running. All because I didn't want to face a possible truth about myself.

I decided then that I wanted to live a life of no regrets. It hasn't been easy, nor has it been totally successful, but I can say I'm pursuing more scary things now than before.

In my recent funk as a writer, I wondered if it was all worth it. I toyed with the idea that I should just stop pursuing the dream. I am not going to get published anyway, why spend all that energy and time on a dead end? This blog offers me an outlet for my writing, and maybe that should be enough.

Old habits, especially thought habits, really do die hard.

New mantra: It is always better to try and fail than not to try at all.

If I were to have any regrets, let them be of the second variety. I will not allow myself to fall back into forgoing dreams out of fear.

Pep Talk Time

I got these quotes from my gym this morning--probably because I haven't been in a while--applicable to exercising and writing:

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden

Our greatest battles are that with our own minds.
Jameson Frank

You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
Charles Buxton

So, go make time to battle the self-doubts and distractions of the mind, not allowing them to interfere with whatever small efforts we can put in at this moment. Lather, rinse, repeat.