Category: Writing Advice

Keep Going

Keep Going

Emily Penrose

I’m going to be honest here, I just finished a different blog post which was then lost when my program crashed. The autosave wasn’t working. And I’m fighting a breakdown.

It’s not been a good day. My day job has been slowly eroding my enthusiasm and breaking down my resolve. Things keep going wrong. I’m sitting in the library with a haze of angst just out of arms reach, threatening to overtake me. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lighting or the other folks placidly tapping away on their keyboards, but I feel better for setting aside the lost writing and getting back to why I’m doing this in the first place–for the writing.

Just writing those last two paragraphs has given me more strength. I’m using my favorite stress techniques and thinking about the positive future I hope for. You never know what good things you’ll miss when you’re having a panic.

I often wish I had better advice for myself or anyone struggling to overcome panic and stress. I dislike oversimplifying complicated negative emotions, especially ones that can constitute disorders. I do not presume to have solutions for anyone, let alone myself. All I can do is share this post which I wrote while trying to ease my anxiety. It seems to have worked for a change. Perhaps the public forum is an aide for once? Darkness can’t stand up to daylight. Similarly, doing what you love (despite the panic and depression) might hijack your brain into a better space. I don’t know and that’s okay for now. Maybe I’ll handle the next hurdle better than this one–and someday I’ll rewrite that blog post.

Writing a Marathon: Slow and Steady Kills the Burnout

Writing a Marathon: Slow and Steady Kills the Burnout

Emily Penrose

Fingers hit keys like sneakers on asphalt. The words race from your fingertips. The blank white page of death is no more. All the training and preparation is paying off! Before long, you have a few thousand words logged away. Nothing can stop you now.

So what happened? Three weeks ago the project wrote itself. You were meeting every checkpoint on schedule. Now your peers pass you by the minute. You keep plodding along but you’re tired. Is it this hard for everyone?

Finishing projects, especially long creative projects, pushes against the void of the status quo. To quote John Mulaney, “Percentage wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them, and so much fun not to do them—especially when you were supposed to do them. In terms of instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.” Adult life calls more often than not, procrastination feels better than working (in the short term), and the energy you had at the beginning is a distant memory. Even on your best days, someone’s liable to pop in for a chat or invite you to dinner. It’s just this once, right?

As writers, the “no, I must exercise restraint” muscle must be honed. Cheat days be damned, the work must continue! Here is a short list of how I aim to finish the marathon.

  1. Positive Consistency – Try using a simple reward everyday you achieve your goal. I use a set of cute stamps on a calendar to commemorate a good day. This encourages me to never miss a day and doesn’t make me feel like I’ve over-rewarded myself on days where I wasn’t able to get much done, despite my best efforts.
  2. Protect your creative side – You’ve got your grocery shopping, work projects, the button popped off your shirt, and the sink at home is scary enough to inspire folklore. Instead of going over your to-do list in your head, try keeping it written down. Keep your mind unburdened while cleaning by working without music or podcasts. Try using the time as a meditation for your future. Allow yourself to dream, even during the mundane.
  3. Make your schedule self-reinforcing – I get invested in projects. A lot. It’s a lot of energy to maintain over the course of years which is discouraging. Instead of front-loading the project by binging on one task, set a wide variety of tasks in your routine. Include time everyday for creatively rejuvenating tasks like reading or working on a one-off project. Instead of zoning-out watching Netflix, play a video game with an engrossing story to keep your mind active. Listen to writing podcasts (preferably some with some humor). You can also set aside time for more critical work like planning and researching. By pacing yourself and varying your tasks from the get-go, you can maintain a healthy pace that won’t leave you wracked with guilt when you miss a day. And if you don’t have a fixed schedule, try thinking instead of necessary events in your day that you can use as reminders or “triggers” for your tasks. If you take public transit, use your daily commute as a “trigger” for your research time. If you know you’ll always be alone at home from 9 to 11, use that as your sign for dedicated writing.
  4. Less than 5 minutes? Do it! Don’t get bogged down by size of a to-do list–set aside some time to knock out quick tasks all at once for a boost of energy and a more manageable day. So often we stress about how much time we think something will take, we paralyze ourselves into wasting the amount of time it would have taken to do it straight away. You have permission to take 5 minutes to get it off your plate.
  5. Limit your portions – If you’re like me, you always bite off more than you can chew. You think, “that won’t take long!” but soon it’s 1 AM and you have a meeting at 7 AM tomorrow and you can’t live with less than 8 hours of sleep. Instead of bolting out from the starting gate, set yourself the goal of achieving the minimum viable product each day rather than the full release. For me, this meant breaking myself of the revise-by-chapter method in favor of the revise-by-scene method. This allows me to take smaller chunks of time during the day to get some work done rather than waiting so I can work for hours all at once.
  6. Go with the flow – If you’re not feeling your scheduled goal, don’t force it! If you’re feeling inspired, let yourself go where you are called. You’ll be happier for it.
  7. Own yourself – “A writer writes.” If you can claim the task of writing, you are a writer. You don’t have anything to prove to anyone but yourself. If you are writing–no asterisk, no caveat, no gatekeeping–you are a writer. Write it down where you can see it (I have it in my Twitter bio) and believe yourself. You’ve got this.

A Defense of Cursive Writing

Emily Penrose

“Oh no, you write in cursive!”

“What does that say?”

“Can you even read that?”

“I always print, who needs cursive?”

“You know it’s not faster than printing, right?”

 

The public extols the death of cursive. News outlets like Vox tout cursive education as an example of outdated educational standards and wasteful spending. Young Adults recall their antiquated youth where spindly teachers taught success hinged upon effective cursive—a future that was not to be. And, for the most part, these criticisms have a point. Educational standards and techniques are outdated. Printing is more intuitive and is just as pragmatic as cursive.

But I refuse to surrender my beloved cursive script to the wastes of time like the French Revolutionary Calendar–a failed experiment forced upon the masses by an educated elite. The much-maligned cursive is so much more than that.

Cursive handwriting means more to me than just ink on paper. As a child, I viewed cursive as a rite of passage, a way to know I was an adult. It was like learning to spell words and shattering your parents’ last hold over you. Reading and writing cursive meant you could hold your own with the adults. I knew my printing was terrible (it still is) so I told myself, this is how I’ll write until I die. I threw myself into cursive and, unless I’m filling out a form which restricts me, my writing flows in the same loopy letters I learned at seven years old. I challenge myself every time I sit down to write a journal entry or take notes in a meeting to improve my form and clarity. In my historical research, I learn new techniques from writers long dead. I marvel at the studied artistry of even a novice hand. The pen lines flow from thick to thin, sentences laid out as straight as a plumb line. Every writing session is more than banal mechanics; it’s tied to the artistry of a word well executed or a lesson in control, and so on.

Unlike people in the past, I did not spend my youth perfecting the art in the hopes of gaining a lucrative clerical job (no one has time for all that rote practice anyhow). In a world where handwriting alternatives abound, how can cursive hope to compete? We have awkward touch keyboards and photographs to convey meaning. Better yet, a mechanical keyboard (because who doesn’t want to push 100 WPM?) In the age of computers, who needs cursive?

I take this question one step further–in the age of computers, who needs handwriting at all? After school and college, there isn’t much need for most Americans to handwrite outside of niche opportunities or enthusiasts. You take a picture on your phone rather than describe or type your shopping list on your memo app. Modern convenience aside, I submit the human condition needs that connection to the physical page. Cursive’s inherent artistry and difficulty is what I find so enjoyable. Print script from a word processor fills the pragmatic writing applications—why not use cursive for flowing ink and wrinkled page?

I worry about the future students who look at cursive script and think “that’s too complicated to understand so I won’t bother.” Cursive is the pure joy of writing in the everyday. The feel of crisp paper in a newly-bound notebook and using your hand to craft something tactile and ephemeral elevates the simplest activity. You can do it every day and elevate the mundane to something satisfying. I still remember some of the best cursive letters and words I’ve ever written (I once cut a beautiful ‘l’ from my math notes in high school). How many of us can say that about a tapped-out note?

I’m sure some enjoy their printed letters as much as I enjoy my cursive. As I type this into a word processor, I cannot deny the pragmatism of clear, digital text. I only hope my cursive is respected, remembered, and allowed a stay of execution.

5 Camp NaNoWriMo Stress Techniques

5 Camp NaNoWriMo Stress Techniques

Emily Penrose

If you’re like me, you’ve been feeling the pinch of Camp NaNoWriMo. Yes, it’s not necessarily a 50,000 word manuscript in 30 days, and yes, it is a goal set by yourself. But is there a better way to practice writing? Setting an achievable, quantifiable goal with a hard deadline and outlining the project in definite terms? What a great way to get your foot in the door!

But if you’re like me, you don’t know when to reign it in. I usually set a crazy goal, stress out when any problems arise, and despair when I can’t achieve what I wanted to. While setting a crazy goal is a topic for another day, everyone can benefit from some proper stress techniques (myself most of all).

1. Notice Your Stress

Sorry to go there, but here we are. You can’t fix what you don’t realize is broken! If you can’t tell when you’re stressed, try thinking back on a time that was very stressful. Everyone handles stress differently so really think about yourself. How did your body react? Did you feel nauseous or tense? Emotionally numb? What was your brain doing? Running a mile a minute, in a circle around your head? Nothing at all? Did you feel compelled to do something you don’t normally do, like binge on junk food or react inappropriately to a loved one? Were you unable to make regular progress on projects you thought you could handle? Pay attention to these responses when they pop up in the future. It takes practice, but it’s worth it!

It’s incredibly difficult to do, but gaining self-awareness is pivotal to your mental and physical health. Stress can be a killer in the long term-plus, who wants to live like that? It’s infinitely simpler to keep stress at bay than to diminish it once it takes over your life. Pay attention to your body and respond accordingly!

2. Set the Stage

You’re sitting down to log your daily word count. In this moment, you have the opportunity to create a successful session or waste your time spinning your wheels. This is a special time and it deserves respect.

  • Why not light a candle at your work space?
  • You can play some relaxing music. I find that finding a radio station (online or otherwise) that does not play ads or songs with lyrics helps relieve the stress of finding what to listen to next. This keeps me writing longer and helps me relax as I do so. (My favorite writing music is lo-fi YouTube radio).
  • I also like to have a glass of water nearby and some hand lotion.
  • Set up your work space to be ergonomic to reduce the chance of long-term pain. It’ll help you stay focused, too!

Your productivity and your well-being are important. When you risk a stressful activity, you can prepare beforehand and set yourself up to succeed. If you treat it like a special-ish occasion, you can avoid the buildup of stress over time.

3. BREATHE

I wish I could take credit for this next one, but this is from a stress workshop I took in 2015. It helps so much! I use this all the time.

When you are experiencing stress, you tend to have shallow, rapid breaths which reinforce your body’s stress response. How do you break the cycle? Regulate your breathing!

The 4-4-4 method resets your breathing cycle. Anytime you need to relax or calm down you can follow these steps!

  • Breathe in slowly through your nose for 4 seconds. Make sure you fill your lungs and expand your chest as you breathe.
  • Next, hold that breath for 4 seconds. Feel the muscles in your chest stretch.
  • Slowly release your breath through your nose. Make sure your belly muscles expand as you breathe out.
  • Repeat! I usually repeat 4 times–the 4-4-4-4 method!

I use this when trying to fall asleep after a busy day, during rush hour traffic, at my day job, and while writing. It’s incredibly useful!

4. Self-massage

Even if your muscles aren’t tense, you’d be surprised how much a slow touch can help your mood.

  • If you can afford it, I suggest investing in a massage cane (google it–they’re excellent for your back). If you can’t afford one, you can try using the back of a chair, desk, or a ball to relieve the tension.
  • Lightly brush your fingers along your arms and palms
  • Take a minute to firmly and gently massage your neck and shoulder muscles. If you find a very tense area, take a few minutes to focus on that area. Take it slowly and apply heat if necessary.
  • I highly recommend massaging your palms and fingers–we so often overlook them and it feels so nice!
  • Rest your hands on your waist and feel for any tension.

You don’t need to be an expert here–you’d be surprised what a little bit of attention will do. You may also be surprised how many tense areas you find! If you are interested, you can also look into acupressure and self massage techniques from the experts. There are stretches you can do without equipment, wherever you are. You can even make this part of the stage you set and do some stretches before you write.

5. Self-Care

This should go without saying, but we all need to hear it and we all need to say it. Take care of yourself! If your’e making yourself miserable, your work will suffer. What’s the point in all that work if it’s not going to turn out how you like? Investing in yourself is investing in every aspect of your life. If you are feeling overwhelmed or highly stressed, take action!

  • Take a long shower or bath. Use your fancy bath salts. Put on that face mask. Heck, use a foot bath if you need to!
  • Go for a walk or a bike ride. Physical activity will release pent-up energy and tension.
  • Think positively. No matter how dire things feel, it will work out.
  • Find someone to talk to. I don’t mean about your stress necessarily, I mean just talking. You can listen to how their day went or just chit-chat. Get outside yourself and think about something and someone else and return to your work refreshed.

We’re almost half way through Camp NaNoWriMo–let’s finish strong! But we all need to make sure this is the start of a long habit, not a one-month binge writing session. Take care of yourself and make this a sustainable opportunity where we come out better on the other end. Good luck!

When is a Project “Done”?

When is a Project “Done”?

Emily Penrose

When I was in high school, I drew a portrait for an art assignment. I worked on that portrait for weeks. When I received the graded drawing, I was disappointed to see that I did not receive full points (gasp!) and should have increased the contrast for full effect. “A simple fix,” I thought. “I can do that this summer and proudly display it on my wall.” The project stayed in my to-do list for years. Thirteen years later, my wall is blank, the face is still missing an eye, and the contrast remains lacking.

This trend is nothing new for me. I’m currently re-sewing a kimono I made in 2008. I’ve even gone back and done slight edits in elementary school diary entries. For being obsessed with history and preserving documents in time, I rarely take my own advice. I like to think that I’m able to learn something from my past mistakes and am better creatively for trying to produce a product I can stand behind. Generally, if I was pleased with the product at the time it was created I let it be. But if I have regret about the outcome, nothing is sacred.

In college, I wrote a dreadful historical fiction short story for my senior thesis project. The story suffered from confused characters, non-existent themes, and shoddy research — among a host of other problems. When I thought back on every element of that short story that I wrote for my history degree, I was ashamed. I knew I could do better than that. My story deserved better than that. So after a few years I dragged it out, dusted it off and got to work again. Six years after the fact, that project became my debut novel, Cacophony.

As writers, we must look forward to the next project at some point. Progress demands new ideas, and staying mired in the same topic for decades is no way to develop your skills; however, I do find there is merit in taking things slowly and using your acquired knowledge to revive worthwhile ideas. Old projects should not be something you’re ashamed of–rather, they can be an opportunity to prove to everyone, including yourself, that you are capable of something better. If the idea is sound enough, it deserves to be presented in the best way.

In the end, if the idea moves me, I never let it truly die. It stays with me until I have the skills and ambition to do justice to the project. Sometimes, it stays a regret where I only learn from the experience… but if it needles at me long enough, I may pick it up and try to improve it. Either way, I learn from my not-quite-successes.

Spoiler Alert!

Spoiler Alert!

Emily Penrose

Last week I went to the Utah Opera’s production of Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi. I’m an avid opera-goer, having seen around 35 live operas. This was just another music and drama-filled Wednesday for me.

Before the curtain came up and the lights came down I found myself, along with much of the audience, pouring over the libretto. Inside the libretto were essays on the two compositions, their authors, and a synopsis of both shows. While reading over the cast list I was struck by how unusual it is in our culture for the audience to want to know the entire plot of a story before beginning. Spoilers are so expected that the libretto is there to facilitate last-minute research!

Spoilers, of course, serve their purpose. There’s nothing quite like a well executed plot reveal. I’m reminded of my first viewing of Fight Club, which was dramatic, unexpected, and thoroughly enjoyable. Yet I also remember my first opera, Don Giovanni, where my lack of foreknowledge of the plot hindered my enjoyment of other elements of the production. I couldn’t appreciate the singing, orchestration, and composition. I was too busy watching the supertitles, pouring over every line of recitative for fear of missing vital information. I couldn’t even appreciate costumes, lighting, and the set!

What a unique form of storytelling opera is! In the end, the plot is only another element in the whole experience, not overpowering the music or the mise en scene, but working together in beautiful harmony. Each element bolsters the others to make a deeply beautiful experience people will see over and over, even hundreds of years after the premiere.

In modern media, spoilers are held sacred for consumers. No one wants to walk into a Marvel movie knowing every twist and turn–that’s the fun part! But as media producers, this idea is pivotal. We can learn by example how to create interesting, emotional experiences for the viewer, reader, or what have you. How does the author create tension and drama for future plot points? How enjoyable is the work as a whole? Is it fun to read or do you only care about what is explicitly shown? Do the words sound clunky or fluid?

When you step back and view the work as a whole you can balance elements of plot, prose, characterization and other writing tools. Try thinking about the work as a harmonious synthesis of all elements, each of equal importance, rather than unequally emphasizing one part. Your plot may be impeccable, but imagine if it were supporting and harmonizing with your imagery.

And hey, maybe spoilers are important. But they don’t have to be make-or-break for enjoyment purposes. As a kid, I had the main plot twist of Shrek 2 ruined for me. When I saw the movie, it ended up not effecting my enjoyment of the movie. Is knowing the ending of the coming-of-age fantasy novel you’re reading really that important? Unless there’s some major genre subversion, the reader knows what to expect. So make the journey enjoyable!

Why I “Write What I Know”

Why I “Write What I Know”

Emily Penrose

Think back on your life. Go ahead, I’ll wait. First loose tooth, first day of school, first kiss… done? Welcome back. Now what do you think about the ubiquitous writing advice “write what you know”? I’ve been poking around the internet for a while now and this one is a popular adage for writers to refute.

“That’s ridiculous! Where’s the fun in that?”

“I’m so boring, how can I just write what’s happened to me? Isn’t that an autobiography?”

“Tolkien never met a hobbit, why can he get away with it?”

Aside from the horror stories of creative writing teachers reading this rule as strictly literal (seriously, someone’s teacher only allowed the class to write what they had personal experience with), I shake my head at these writers and editors for their lack of imagination. Writing what you know is not a literal prescription for how to write. It’s a shortcut to finding your passion project.

The ideas that call to me are the ideas that I have some experience with–ideas that I “know”. That “knowing” is what gets me so excited about them. Even though writing is hard and life gets in the way, I need to return to these ideas and express them. They needle at me until writing is the only salve. The need spreads and eventually works its way into my writing.

In my high school drama class, there was a quote from Johnny Depp on the wall.

“With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it’s just not acting. It’s lying.”

I loathed this quote. The words bothered me. “I want to use my imagination and get outside of myself”, I thought. “I’m not lying when I act!” But over the years I’ve thought more about it. I finally figured out what Mr. Depp meant. Actors need to have an emotional core for a character or the performance will ring hollow. It will be a lie to the audience. It doesn’t have to be a big piece, just enough for you to build from.

Writers, likewise, ought to find an emotional core in their work. If your character does not act like an actual person, you aren’t writing what you know. Writers do meet people between their coffee-fueled writing binges, they know how people behave. If you’re not inspired by your project, you’re not writing what you know. And what a sad state to be in! I can’t imagine writing something only because it was marketable and I couldn’t care less for it. If a writer forces any facet of their work by not writing what they know, the reader will notice and disengage–hobbits or no.

Of course, no one ever truly “knows”. Not really. This is why we research, learn, and enhance our understanding. We read and we write and we talk to as many people as we can. Writing what you know, in this way, is only as useful as you make it. You could hear “write what you know” and start keeping an immaculate diary or you could think about the human experience, how you fit into it, and how your characters fit into it. What do you have in common? What is different? What makes this story different from your own? Is the situation similar to someone else’s that you have heard of? How can you change it to make it unique and interesting for your reader? Does it feel real to you? Does it spark passion that echos in your work?

And I bet if you thought about your favorite projects, you would find part of yourself in it–something that you “know”. You may find out you “know” a lot more than you thought you did.