Writing about writing – Page 3

Writing Life

Published on April 14, 2021April 14, 2021 by Noreen Lace4 Comments

I called a friend out of the blue today. I updated her on the weirdness that is my life. People showing up, others moving away, the strange, the wild, the fantastical. Every one, a true story, replayed for my friend.

She commented, you always have so much going on.

I reflected, not by choice. But, doesn’t she? doesn’t everyone?

Maybe the way we talk about our lives is the way we write stories.

Her stories are gentle, calm, always well paced. Her imagination is vast, but her writing is serene, as if you were reading a swan.

My stories are varied. One day I’m writing about someone finding a gold tooth and the next I’m writing about Poe’s hauntings. Mine work at different paces. They surf from one side of the galaxy to the next. My readers are sometimes intrigued, sometimes put off. They like the story of a girl falling in love with a dog, but not the story of a girl talking to mirrors.

One reader wrote, “Who is Noreen Lace?” He’d read Eddy, then ordered How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party.

I guess this is me. There’s a lot going on. Remember what they used to say about the quiet ones? Still waters run deep. I’m not very quiet, not very still. I am the river that rushes around the corner and is calmed by the expanse. In some places, I’m deep enough to fall in and drown and, in others, I’m skimming over rocks, just slick enough to pass.

I can’t contain it. I can’t limit it. I can’t label it. And I won’t.

I like ’em short

Published on April 12, 2021April 11, 2021 by Noreen LaceLeave a comment

I’ve been reading and writing novel length works lately. I belong to a few online book groups and people are always posting great reviews of this book or that. Sometimes I pick them up, sometimes I like them. It’s hard for me to find that book that hits the sweet spot – the perfect mix of good writing and a good story.

I love the exceptional use of language. That’s a talent.

In my literature and writing classes, I use Best American Short Stories. I chanced upon an old copy the other day. I read half of the first story and felt engaged, awakened!

Picking up the book of short stories immediately energized me with ideas for short fiction.

The joy of reading a short story happens because they’re tight, no nonsense needed, straight to the point, well written and excellently executed niblets of fiction.

The joy of writing a short story is the challenge. The point, the characters, the setting all expertly set up in concise wording in a small period of time. The use of language is easier to control, the beauty and rhythm easier to accomplish.

I once belonged to a short story group. It was so gratifying to read the short fiction. If you didn’t like what someone chose, you could still read the ten or twenty pages and talk about it. It’s not 300 pages of silently cursing your book group.

So… I’m going to recommend some books of short fiction. Of course, I recommend the Best American Short Story Series. Wonderful writing by newbies and scholars alike!

And mine: But also – I’m a huge fan of Jo Rousseau and Ron Terranova.

Jo Rousseau and Ron Terranova also have websites/blog. Stop by and check them out!

3 Habits of Highly Effective Writers

Published on March 31, 2021March 28, 2021 by Noreen LaceLeave a comment

They Write.
They Write some more.
Then they Write even more.

Where do you write?

Published on March 29, 2021March 28, 2021 by Noreen Lace2 Comments

I stumbled upon an article about writing space that I wanted to share.

I used to write, quite successfully, at my dining room table. I love the early morning light that comes through the window, not too bright until right after lunch – sometimes, I’m still writing and I have to draw the blinds.

From my dining room table, I can also view of what happens in front of my house. It’s minimal distraction. But just distracting enough for when I need to look up from any painfully blank pages. A neighbor walking a dog. A child riding a bike. My neighbor searching through the recycling bin.

I have a cafe style table. Far too big for my little space. A little taller than average. But it works when I get tired of sitting, I can stand.

The chair got hard to sit on. Back pain. Hip pain. The minimal cushion became even more minimal after so many days and hours and years sitting there.

I’ve thought about getting a little table. A table built for two – me and my computer – and set it right near the window – even closer than I am now. But would it be big enough for my tea? my snack? my stack of junk mail?

I changed my writing space to a proper desk. Big. Wooden. Dark. A drawer filled with paper, pens, stapler, and the like – whatever I might need. A nearby printer. A proper chair.

Yet, reading this article, I realized I’m nowhere near as productive as I used to be.

Starting tomorrow – it’s back to my table!

Where do you write?

Recharge, Recover, Release.

Published on March 24, 2021March 23, 2021 by Noreen LaceLeave a comment

There are all kinds of tired. Some of which I sleep well, some of which I do not.

Sometimes I’m physically tired. I worked out. I hiked. I did enough manual labor to make my body exhausted. I sleep well on these nights.

There’s mentally tired. My brain wore out from working facts and figures into some sort of rhythmic sense in my world. Sometimes, on these nights, I do not sleep well. I’m disturbed, wondering if it formed into a smooth shape of being.

Then there’s emotionally tired. Dealing with people – angry, upset, unhappy, or even large groups of chaotic masses wear me out. I do not sleep well on these nights. I toss and turn, trying to work out the ugly aura left around me.

But – I never get any of those types of tired from writing. Writing is recharging, recovering, releasing. I let go of the day, the facts and figures, the angry masses, the physical exhaustion, and I’m able to create something that is life giving, soul soothing, and has meaning.

Writing is a way of living free from outside infections.

In Dreams

Published on March 15, 2021March 14, 2021 by Noreen Lace1 Comment

There is some magic that happens between midnight and three a.m. Words fall like rain, ideas bloom like tulips in the spring.

That state, somewhere between alpha and theta, when the mind is past meditation and drifting – freed.

Many nights, I wake filled with story. Sometimes I sit up and write, capturing those dream images and ideas. Other times, I hang on to the sweet theta mind and scratch notes to myself that I’ll decipher in the bright light of day.

There’s something quite lovely about theta, about that time of night. The world is soft and quiet. The world is ours and ours alone.

Writers are powerful in the dark, in the aloneness, capturing ideas that flutterby like butterflies.

Once, I fought a poem. The poem lay incomplete, begrudgingly sitting there refusing to become complete. I placed the notebook on the bed and fell asleep.

In a few hours, I sprang to wakefulness when the line in full form drifted by. I snatched it out of theta air and pushed it onto the page.

There, the poem complete.

I woke up one morning with this story playing in the theta playground. I got out of bed and wrote until I had to go to work. When I got back from work, I finished it, edited it, and had it accepted to Pilcrow and Dagger almost immediately.

What’s a girl to do when her ex gives her a stray dog?

Of Strays and Exes – on Kindle

Passion Comes in Waves

Published on March 10, 2021March 9, 2021 by Noreen LaceLeave a comment

Writing is like passion, coming in bursts, wrapping us up, and pulling us forward toward some unknown destination.

Untended passion wanes, loses it’s spark, leaves us alone on the beach, gazing at the sand.

Commitment to job and kids and groceries seems so mundane in comparison with that flow that drags us away from life and onto better places, but we pay that so much more mind. We have to work, and kids have to be fed, and groceries need to be bought.

If only we could commit to that passion, carve out those wee hours, those tiny moments, hidden away from responsibility and live our lives enthralled and in love with that story, poem, act of writing it all out.

Passion can not survive on promises of some day. Passion thrives on action. Write. Write. Write like there’s no tomorrow and no day will ever be wasted.

Check out other entries:

Your Journal is Important

The Myth of Writer’s Block

The Healing Power of Writing

Your Journal is Important, Especially Now

Published on April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Noreen Lace4 Comments

Journaling allows us to process our daily lives. It helps us see patterns that we are taking part in physically and mentally, and most importantly it allows release.

Don’t hold back in journaling. These are your private thoughts and they need voicing and validation. No one ever needs to read them – or you can turn them into a creative efforts. Some of my students have begun painting, writing, or even baking to express their creative outlets.

During this time, my writer friends and I are journaling to keep track of an important time in history. Maybe these will be records of human thoughts and feelings during a very difficult time in our society – much like The Diary of Anne Frank.

Some are doing dream journals as well.

In a few years, this will be forgotten, swept under the rug, or rebranded. Our society, our children, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren will need real life, first person examples of what was happening internally and externally.

I teach topics that deal with slavery, suffrage, native American relocation stories. We read first person accounts. These allow my students to understand critical happenings in our society not from our history books who are written by the victors or the historians recording political acts, but by the people who went through and dealt with racism, oppression, and death our history has reaped on individuals.

Journaling seems more important now than it ever has before.

It can be anything you want it to be, look like anything you want it to look like. Let it be private and burn it later. Or share it.

The Likability of Unlikable Characters

Published on March 18, 2020March 11, 2020 by Noreen LaceLeave a comment

I wonder if the new fad to make unlikable characters because people like them a myth.

I like detective stories, mysteries, among the other things I read. But in the last six months, I think I’ve read far too many stories with these types of characters:

The bad guy who kills other bad guys. Hasn’t this become a cliche? Or have I stumbled upon a pile of similar motifs?

The good guy spends his nights in cheap motels with young prostitutes doing blow. But, you know, he has a heart of gold because he doesn’t actually sleep with the ho; he just talks to them. At one point, it seems, he’s up for three days strung out on coke and coffee and is still able to critically analyze a scene and glean more than the other officers.

My suspension of disbelief has been suspended.

Why am I reading this book?

It’s richly detailed – in parts. It had a good enough beginning to get me interested. Also, I like to finish a book.

But I’m at the point, now, that I’m considering abandoning it. Too many issues for me to keep reading.

The characters names are similar or the same to well known famous book-to-movie characters. It makes it hard for me to picture anyone else but Tom Hanks.

Writing is hard. Originality is challenging.

Some people believe there are only so many stories. They are just told in different ways. But they have to be told in fresh, believable, even likeable ways.

I will read some books with unlikeable characters. But I have to like someone!

Opinions welcomed, please.

Successful Writing

Published on June 21, 2019June 21, 2019 by Noreen LaceLeave a comment

Okay, so not bragging, but….. I’ve been hard at work….

The Healer’s Daughter in The Ear

The Healer’s Daughter is a departure for me. It marks a turns in my writing that came about just this year. It’s more mystical. Risky, maybe. A woman’s daughter describes her mother’s gift and discovers she has her very own gift, but will she actually use it?

The Healer’s Daughter will be featured in my summer release of How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party. It’s a book of short stories, all of which have a special or surprising twist.

Friends, Lovers, and Liars in Home Renovation

Originally titled Deception, it didn’t find a home. In fact, the topic of lies and cheating offended one editor. I think it may have hit too close to home. It, too, will be released in the summer release of How to Throw a Psychic a Surprise Party.

How to Throw a Psychic Surprise Party in The Electric Press Magazine

The title story for the book of short stories. Inspired by a show in which I saw a television host throw a “surprise” party for a psychic. It struck me – How do you throw a psychic a surprise party?

This story may answer that question. Maybe not. How much empathy can you muster?