Category: The Writing Life

The ethereal part of writing.

A New Joy and A New Challenge

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life9 Comments

On July 30th 2013, my son was born. I cannot believe how amazing my wife was through the process (Once again! Seriously, you amaze me). Now my son is home, healthy, and destroying sleeping patterns but that is to be expected. Newborns do that to their parents.

As you might expect, having a child changes a lot of things. It also causes parents to reflect on the direction of their life, finances, and the future of their family. I began to think things like; where do I want to live in five years? Am I satisfied with my career? Am I satisfied with how I parent, treat my wife, and write? I hope I can never say I have done enough and continue to dig deeper.

Cute, isn't he?
Cute, isn’t he?

As this is a blog about writing, I wish to speak to that today. When my first daughter was born nearly four years ago I was blindsided by the joy of parenting. I barely wrote for recreation, but I did keep a journal for her every day for the first year of her life. I did not get back to writing for about ten months. For my second daughter I wrote in a journal as well, and got back to it after about six months. Now, for the third child, I want to make a change. I want to keep at it. No interruptions.

The reason for this declaration is not because my son is less important. It is not because I wish to put my own dreams in front of my children and my wife. The reason is that change will always come in life. Roadblocks, new joys, and redirections will come in various forms. That is something I cannot change. What I can strive for is to continue to write despite what life may bring.

How about you?

What excuse do you have in your pocket to pull out and show your novel or writing friends?

What is stopping you today? Got that in your mind? Good. Now, how can you get around it? How can you create space and time to do what you love? Let me know in the comments section below.

Write 500 words today.

Cheers,

Bob

On Sacrificing Sleep

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life5 Comments

I want to be good at a lot of things. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good father.  I want to be a good friend, worker, and man. I also want to be a good writer.

These areas of my life pull me back and forth like a current and are simultaneously in conflict with each other. To be a good husband I have to let someone else be a father to my kids for a few hours while I go out and romance my wife. If I want to be a good worker I have to leave my wife to go to work and sometimes stay at the office a little later than planned. To be a good man I have to be sane and with two kids and one due any day – it can be a struggle.

When writing invaded my life, I told my wife I would never allow it to become something that would take away time from her or my kids. I am not going to come home and then leave for six hours to get a chapter out.

I began to realize that something had to go.

That something was sleep.

Time
Time

Sleep and I have had an interesting relationship over the last few years. Yes, I realize that you need it. I acknowledge it as I slam another cup of coffee. I toy with it and lay down for twenty minutes in the middle of the day. But, our relationship has been rocky at best and though I crave it nearly every second of the day I do whatever I can to fight it off.

Why you ask? Why do I torture myself like this? I already said I wanted to be a writer didn’t I?

As my family grew I began to understand that twenty four hours is not actually a lot of time. In fact I think it is a joke sometimes. Really? It’s 10:30! Come on clock, you’re kidding right? But alas, no, it is not.

Great writing takes time. I once evaluated how many hours I wrote one week and it was not enough to fulfill my writing aspirations. I knew I needed a schedule. Using an excel spreadsheet I evaluated how I spent every single hour each day. When I was finished there was no time left, other than sleep. That is all I have to sacrifice.

So, I plan to get up at 5am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This will be tough especially when a newborn enters our family in the next few days.

I want to be a great writer. I want to produce short stories, novels, blogs, and articles. These all take time. By sacrificing sleep I might have enough time to accomplish it all. After all, if this is the life I want I should be living it now. Its time I started to act like it.

Do you struggle to find time to write? What sacrifices have you made or are you willing to make?

Cheers,

Bob

 

 

Adventures with (and lessons from) Ernest Hemingway

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing LifeLeave a comment

Think back to the first time you read a novel and it opened a new world. You finished the last page, sat back, and soaked it all in, knowing you read something grand.

Now imagine you jump on a train and travel across a continent to meet this literary giant and end up being their apprentice on a sailing vessel for a year. You have great discussions late into the night, have writing time (after all there is no place to go!), and you get a really really great tan.

Sounds like something from a movie, right? Well this happened to a man named Arnold SailingSamuelson in the spring of 1934. He met and was an apprentice to none other than Ernest Hemingway.

It might shock some of you, though not all, that I never liked Hemingway. His stripped down brilliance and clarity of prose is obvious to anyone trained in literature but, I think most of his stories are depressive like Burmese Days by George Orwell. However, I have begun to enjoy his stories more and more. Okay, let’s be honest. I was finally won over by Corey Stoll’s brilliant rendition of him in Midnight in Paris.

I wanted to share this article with my writer friends and thought a post was the best way to do that.

There were two things I took away from this article that I believe any writer should consider. I implore you to read the whole article by clicking HERE and post your thoughts below.

Lesson’s from Hemingway

  1. Never write too much in one sitting. Essentially, never empty yourself of everything you have. This way you will always be fresh and so will your book.
  2. Read good writers that are dead. Why? Because though they are dust their books have withstood the crashing waves of contemporary literature. Hemingway compiled a list of these books, which I have included below.
    •  “The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane
    • “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane
    • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
    • Dubliners by James Joyce
    • The Red and the Black by Stendhal
    • Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
    • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
    • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
    • Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
    • Hail and Farewell by George Moore
    • The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    • The Oxford Book of English Verse
    • The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings
    • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
    • Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson
    • The American by Henry James

Find some time to write today.

Cheers,

Bob

Inspiration 1000 Years in the Making

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life1 Comment
Stone Knife
Stone Knife

Stephen King takes walks.
CS Lewis took walks.

Walking holds a special place for writers. Perhaps it’s searching for something other than normal or maybe it’s the fresh air that comes with it. But the fact remains that walking or the experiences that happen during a walk, has enchanted for centuries.

A few months ago I went for a walk and found inspiration.

It was cold at first, the wind attacking from the southeast bringing a biting chill that my clothes hardly withstood. I was in a field walking with my dad and brother in between furrows of newly tilled earth. We trained our eyes on the ground and said little. You see, I come from a family of hunters. But that day we were not looking for game. We were searching for history.

“Here are some examples”, my brother said holding up a case of ancient Native American artifacts. There were sacred rocks and arrowheads, stone knifes, and a gamut of other tools. I stared at them excited to get my hands dirty and see what we might find. I knew that we might not find anything at all, but I love the idea of pulling something from the earth that has been there for centuries.

We plodded along for a half hour while bending over to inspect any stone that resembled an arrowhead or tool.

I bent down and pulled a rock from the soil and noticed something. It appeared to have a serrated edge. I brought it to my brother. “That’s a knife probably used for taking the scales off of fish,” he confirmed.

My mind went wild. I swam in and played hockey on the pond nearby.
It was incredible to think Native Americans once fished there.

By the end of the search I held and arrowhead and a knife and a newfound love for wandering in fields. Oh, and a whole bunch of new short stories.

I hope that whatever you do today, be it the same old thing or something new, that you find inspiration to get back to the page.

Stone Arrowhead
My Findings

Cheers,

Bob

Why Writers Need Writers

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life2 Comments

When I have a conversation with an acquaintance that turns personal, this question usually surfaces – “So what do you like to do for fun?”

At times I think about skirting over the question, with – “I like hockey, or I like to read.” However, I have come to learn the value of writing friends and the bond that

Top row (from left): Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Grigorovich, Bottom row (from left): Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin, and Alexander Ostrovsky

writing builds. I understand that I might get occasional sympathetic nod from the person I am talking with, or a few raised eyebrows and “good luck with that.” Or, maybe, just possibly, a fellow word loving comrade.

Since I started on my novel several years ago I have had the benefit of many writing friends, or friends that are kind enough to read my work and encourage me in my novel. They’ve been with me through many drafts and thankfully I don’t think I have ever been given the look or feeling that I should probably do something more productive with my life.

So where am I going with this long rambling post? Perhaps this is a thank you to all of you who keep asking me, “So how’s it going?” as I stomp through the sludge of my latest draft, and it is. But, also, if you are a new writer or a writer who is struggling to find their way, writing friends are the best and sometimes the only remedy to help you to carry on in your quest to become a published author.

As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

The same can be said for any writer you meet.

Keep writing friends. Never give up.

Cheers,

Bob

 

 

The Writer’s Lie – That PERFECT Writing Time

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life12 Comments

When I first started writing it was at a feverish pace. I didn’t have children at the time and my wife was fine with me scribbling away. I spent a lot of time at the kitchen table writing in our old apartment. This was how I finished my first manuscript. It was a great time for wild publishing dreams, before I realized how much work writing is.

Fast forward three years and my wife and I have two kids. I have a house and growing responsibilities. I realize that sleep is now important as I approach thirty, and that I need to manage my time better. Back in the pre-children days I could plan out my writing time. Now I want to spend time with my children and I told my wife, because they are more important, I will sequester my writing time to early in the morning or late at night. A writer never sleeps, or in my case stays up past 11pm.

I was inspired to write this post because I was lying in bed an hour ago thinking, I’m just too tired to write. And then again, if I am too tired I will probably just write something awful that needs to be deleted. I thought I needed rest. I have to drive until about 1am to visit family in New York so the thought was not without merit.

However, I soon found myself dwelling on the ideal writing time. You know that cabin in the woods, coffee fresh off the pot, the sun is just poking over the horizon across the lake and I am already on page fifteen. The story is flowing out of me onto the page and I am typing flawlessly. I think this is the big lie about writing: That there is this ideal time somewhere out there that will unlock our potential. This is what I was thinking about while lying in bed. Then I realized as I did awhile back that it does not exist.

There were times when I first had children where I thought I could not write on a certain day because I was tired. True. There were times I didn’t feel like it because I stare at two computer monitors at work all day. True. Then I thought I needed about two hours to get my gears going to have momentum to write something well.  However, when you look for the perfect time to write, you tend to look for weeks and weeks and stop writing altogether.  This happened to me when my first daughter was born.

The thing is, writing is a lot like exercising. It can be painful when you do it with consistency at first. But soon you will find that doing thirty sit ups are not as hard as it once was. Just as writing that first sentence is not as difficult as it once was. So, find some time to write. Stick to the schedule. Your novel will not write itself. And stop hoping for your schedule to change, your kids to sleep, your work to become more flexible, or all of the worries of your life to fade away. Pick out a time to exercise your writing muscles, and get that novel done. Start today.

Happy writing.

Cheers,

Bob

Why I Listen To Audio Books

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life4 Comments

I love listening to an author read their book. Now some of you might recall an author who gave an awfully monotone rendition leaving you wondering how they could have composed such a beautiful story. So, let me rephrase that. I like to listen to MOST authors read their books.

The reason for this might be as simple as they know the characters and thus know how they might sound in conversation. Another reason is because you hear the intended inflection of each sentence as it was supposed to be heard, unlocking the story even more.

William Golding

For the last few years I have been on a classic binge. This romp has taken me through most of Dickens’ work, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, C. S. Lewis, and Ray Bradbury. Thus, one of my most recent library borrows was William Goldings’ Lord of the Flies.

Mr. Golding, though terribly old at the reading, can deliver a story. His introduction was spectacular and his ability to deliver a line was clear from the first sentence. He painted word pictures effortlessly and just listening to the first few chapters left a vivid impression of the story he wrote.

Recently, I was instructed to work on pacing. Working on structure or verb agreement is much easier. Pacing seems ethereal, like trying to investigate something in a spirit world using scientific instruments. So, besides getting critiques from my writing friends, listening to audio books is the best way I know how to glean this part of the writing craft.

Listening to audio books has helped me more than I expected. It has given me perspective and a glimpse of pacing. It has also given me something to do on the way to and from work each day.

Do you like to listen to audio books? If so, why? Do you use it as a tool to become a better writer?

Cheers,

Bob

Every Writer Needs A Vacation

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life2 Comments

As you are aware I did not blog last week. It was fiscal year end at work. My two daughters had birthdays and family and friends came into town to help celebrate. Also, my wife’s birthday is today. Needless to say it was a busy week. Through it all I barely wrote, and it was the best decision I could have ever made.

So, here are a few reasons why every writer needs a vacation.

Floating Lanterns Over Grand Rapids, MI

1. It’s refreshing – Writer’s write about life. But when it passes by at a thousand miles per hour they don’t have a chance to take it in and it becomes harder and harder to write. At some point the well of creativity dries up. Taking a step back can help revitalize your inner artist. You might even see something that restores child-like wonder.

2. Family is important – I write because I love it. But I love my family more. Spending time with my daughters on their birthdays was grand. We ate cake, opened presents, rode a carousel while my daughter June grinned ear to ear. It was magical and it was as if time stopped. I will never forget that.

3. It is healthy – As a writer, and husband, and father, and worker, and friend, and Christian, I have many roles that demand attention and require tons of energy if I want to do them well. I don’t want to be a Jack of all trades because that just means I’m average at everything. I want to be great. When I focus on one thing, like being a good father, I have more confidence to take a step back from being a parent to write. If I was a terrible husband or absent father it would be difficult, psychologically, to write. I bet I would be consumed by guilt which would certainly stifle my ability to write.

4. It helps you get perspective – Perhaps you are struggling with a concept. Maybe you’ve written yourself into a dead end and cannot see how to bridge a section of your novel with where you want it to go. There are many times when I am not focused on my novel when suddenly I am struck with an idea that will help me continue my work. It’s like the plotting part of my brain works best when I am not writing at all.

These are just a few reasons writers need a break. Have you taken a break from writing for a period? If so why? Did you find your inner artist refreshed?

Find some time to write today.

Cheers,

Bob

Guest Post: Write What You “No” – by Paul Douglas

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life3 Comments

Today’s post comes from Paul Douglas of Words & Pictures.  In the post below he takes the common writing phrase – Write What You Know – and gives it a good thrashing. Enjoy!

WRITE WHAT YOU NO!

No, that’s not a typo. All my life (OK, maybe not all, but a good percentage of my life) I have heard that a writer should write what they know. Well, think about that for a moment. If we all subscribed to that line of thinking there would be no Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea or Frankenstein (or Dracula) or even Harry Potter. One of my favorite writers, Raymond Chandler, was born in Chicago IL but was raised and schooled in England. At age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. And thus was born Philip Marlowe. Alongside Sam Spade, the character of Philip Marlowe is foremost within the genre of hardboiled detective fiction! What did Raymond Chandler know about hard drinking, tough talking detectives? Probably as much as I do. Did he let that stop him? What do you think?

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.” ~~ Benjamin Disraeli

I know very little about Disraeli save that he was a British Prime Minister in, I believe, the late 1800’s. That has absolutely nothing to do with what I- or he- is saying here. This quote is a direct corollary to what I stated above. Why write only what you know about? That can be so confining. Let your imagination run wild. Isn’t that what writing is all about? Whatever you need to know you can research, especially nowadays where anything can be found in the matter of a few minutes on the internet. The novel I am currently working on is (of course) a detective novel. Do I know anything about detecting? What do you think? Do I let that stop me? What do you think?

“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” ~~ Robert A. Heinlein

Don’t let anything or anybody deter you from writing if that’s what you want to do. I remember writing my first novel by longhand. When it came time to get it into shape I asked someone (who will go unnamed) to type it for me. When they completed it, they handed it to me amidst gales of laughter. That was their critique of my writing. Did I let that stop me? What do you think? (P. S. the unnamed person was my own mother!)

“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” ~~ Thomas Berger

Well I don’t agree at all with this quote. Sorry, Tom. It is there. Every single word, every single plot, every single theme. I’ve heard that every story that will ever be told, has already been told. All we can now do is to vary it in the retelling. How about the Holocaust? Done to death? Then try reading The Book Thief by Australian author Marcus Zusak (and what does an Australian- not an Austrian, but an Australian- know about the Holocaust? This man was born in 1975. What does he know about an event that took place 30 some odd years before he was born?) The narrator of this book is Death himself: a benign and sympathetic Death, who has a tendency to define moments by their color. Try it, After the first few pages you will not be able to put it down.

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” ~~ Thomas Mann

Besides childbirth, writing is the single, most difficult activity I have ever experienced. Well, OK, I haven’t actually experienced childbirth. But I was there when my first son was born. (Well, come to think of it, neither my wife nor I were there when our first child was born as he was adopted. And when our second child was born they wouldn’t let me in the room, but that’s another story.) But I can imagine how painful giving birth can be. And I know how painful writing is. So why would anyone want to be a writer? Why does anyone want to be a mother? Maybe it has something to do with leaving something behind, a part of yourself. In a way, we achieve immortality by having a child, writing a book. So maybe that’s the answer.

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.” ~~ Woody Allen.

Yes, well, I have it on pretty good authority that we’re all going to die sooner or later so you’d better have plan ‘B’ ready for that eventuality. Immortality is not really why I write, though. I don’t really think it’s why any of us write. We do it because we can’t help it.

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” ~~ W. Somerset Maugham

See you next week. Thanks Paul!
Cheers,
Bob

Rising Early To Write

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life10 Comments

I don’t know about you but when I don’t get the opportunity to write each day, I begin to feel the nag of writer’s guilt. This writer’s guilt is no subtle little poke, but a blaring scream. Everything reminds me that I need to write, but life rushes on. When I don’t write I end up half-engaged in all of my daily activities until I get the time to get the words out. It’s like I have programed myself to judge a day’s success on whether I put words on the page or not.

Now, I love to write but I also love my family. I don’t want to be that distant husband or father figure whose wife and kids know only by reading his work. I want to be present. That means I must sequester my writing time to the tail end of the day or early in the morning, which means I cut out an hour or three of sleep.

My peak writing time is usually in the morning. I LOVE early mornings where nothing is about but my mind. When I can get up, write in my journal, read my Bible, enjoy a cup of coffee with a five minute slice of peace and write five hundred words, life is bliss. There is almost nothing that can happen in the day to break this shield of accomplishment. I like to roll out of bed around 6:30am to accomplish all of this. However, when I had kids, this changed.

Finding time to write is hard. In the world of parenthood sleep is not guaranteed and like most real life humans when I am robbed of it I get cranky. However, I must write. Such a conundrum, but one that offers a harsh answer. Keep going, get up, and write. For the writer there is no rest. I had better get used to that.

Cheers,

Bob