On Monday, we posted a book review of this title and today we offer an excerpt from Making Your Creative Mark by Eric Maisel. Many creative people and most would-be creative people are interested in their artistic projects but not passionately interested in them. There is a huge difference here, and a big problem. Mere interest does not sustain motivational energy, and it isn’t a match for the obstacles that arise as you try to create. You need passionate interest in order to generate energy and to see you through the rigors of creating. Passion and its synonyms — love , curiosity , enthusiasm , excitement , and energy — are vital to the creative process. Though it is possible to create without passion, your art will suffer, and the likelihood of your continuing over the long haul is greatly reduced. Opt for passionate work. Lukewarm work will not really sustain you. If I had to tease out the key motivator that fuels the artist’s journey, it would be passion. Passion creates ...

This past month I arrived at the narrow end of the editing funnel, where we examined all of the final finicky details. Copyedits Thankfully, considering I’m an editor, I received a pretty light copyedit. Comments from two copyeditors dotted my manuscript. Even though I recommend that my clients spell out all numerals, I had applied my own advice inconsistently. I had to decide when God was the almighty or the god of casual “oh my—” usage. My “blonde” was changed to “blond.” I surrendered a few commas, they traded a few back. One editor pointed out the possible unintentional humor in the sentence, “By the time we got to the butt-blaster, Angela looked pooped.” I had two weeks to address these edits and make any other final changes. Template review My first glimpse at the interior design and all its elements! Everything looked great. Because my book quotes "articles" written by a character who is a dance critic, and in one place contains a formal invitation, we had a lit...

We continue with our story seed featuring Dick, love interest Sally, bossy Jane, jealous Ted, and the meteor streaking toward earth. We have gowned it as a Romance. We have twisted it into a Thriller. What else can we do with it? We can apply the Literary skeleton and explore the theme that relationships are vulnerable to unexpected blows. The impending meteor strike could be real or imagined, past or present. The tension it creates, or the mystery that surrounds it, tests the bonds of the people involved. Threatening situations can bring out the best or worst in people. The central question becomes: what life altering decision will Dick make and how will his life change? He can decide to walk away from his chosen career, stay or leave an unsatisfying relationship, or come to terms with the fact that you can’t save everyone, especially from themselves. We can take it on a Road Trip. Dick, Sally, Jane, and Ted travel to the crash site. What they find when they get there isn’t the...

I first discovered Eric Maisel’s creativity books about ten years ago, as I stood at the threshold of a creative career change. I’d worked as a professional painter for more than ten years with my artist husband, and found myself yearning to write. So I switched careers and over the past ten years, added blogging, social marketing, and editing to my professional hat rack. I’m happy to report I’ve made a living at it and earned a good deal of satisfaction in the process. That doesn’t mean my life is perfect. Often it's like riding a roller coaster. Maisel understands the ups and downs of the creative life and building a career, and that’s what Making Your Creative Mark is about. From the book cover: Writers, painters, singers, filmmakers, musicians, craftspeople, and actors confront daunting challenges every day. It is hard to produce new work, find success in the marketplace, manage relationships, and keep spirits up… Intended for professional artists and those aspiri...

Books should come with ratings, like movies. As a reader, I'd mostly select R-rated titles, like I do with movies. Not because I love sex and violence, but because I like stories that push the limits of conventional expectations, and I find that most authors who push those limits don't limit their characters to polite language. I would steer away from G-ratings, or anywhere I might encounter a bakeshop mystery or a cat named Fluffy. Not because I hate cats or cupcakes, but because I feel like I'd be less likely to be challenged or surprised by those stories—and I like to feel both when I read. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a book that should have been rated . Great story, compelling characters, but lots of people were repulsed by the brutality of the rape scene, and more. I would choose to read it again in a heartbeat—in fact, an R-rating would have likely made me pick it up even sooner than I did. But others could have saved their time, money, and sensitivity and s...

Dear Potential Client, Thank you for your recent e-mail, under the subject line “doctoring,” that sought information about my editing services by asking, “May I ask how many novels you have worked on that have been published via traditional routes?” Of course you can ask. You have every right to. But in my experience, when a potential client starts out with this question, it ends badly. It's sort of like going into a clinic because you know you need a diet for your health, and asking the dietician what her measurements are and what she weighs before she has a chance to find out anything about you and your needs, and how she can help you be the best version of yourself. Or to embrace your subject line metaphor: not all people seek out doctors for the same reason. If your goal is to get rid of your cough, and the doc says the only way to do so is to stop smoking and start exercising, and you institute a new plan of walking home from work but feel you've earned the right t...

If done right, social media can be an effective tool for selling books. A while back, when I began to write seriously, I set up a Twitter account and tweeted four times daily. Some swore that was too much, but it seemed to work for me. My tweets were often about a blog I'd written, an aspect of writing, or one of my books. When the Facebook revolution began, I followed the masses to the pretty and popular place. A page on Facebook looked almost like a website, but could easily be updated. I could post longer messages than on Twitter, plus more pictures. @MorganMandel I was really getting into the Facebook scene, when lo and behold, I was surprised to learn from fellow-author, Bob Sanchez , that Twitter, which I'd thought had become unpopular, had regained steam. Not only that, Bob, as well as many other authors, were successfully using Twitter to promote books. Shonell Bacon posted an article here, called " Using Twitter to Promote Your Book ". And, now, ...

We continue with our story seed featuring Dick, love interest Sally, bossy Jane, jealous Ted, and the meteor streaking toward earth. If we select the Thriller and Suspense skeleton, the overall story problem becomes the catastrophic danger that must be averted: the meteor. If we choose the Psychological Thriller, there is a cat and mouse battle between Dick and Ted or Jane. Dick isn’t certain who the enemy is, but if he can’t identify him/her in time, the meteor strike erases the possibility, along with the entire cast. Sally's life could be threatened by the antagonist. Alternatively, Dick is forced to solve the mystery of the meteor strike location. Was it a space rock or something more nefarious? Can he prove it? If we choose the Religious Thriller, Dick could be a priest or religious scholar. The plot involves a religious prophecy or the meteor is somehow tied to biblical history. Perhaps Dick finds the Arc of the Covenant actually contained a piece of meteor that bestows...

Are you a peacock or a weaver bird? Some writers - peacocks - flaunt their lovely words and beg us to admire them. Others are weaver birds, patiently building a structure that’s serviceable but dull. Some preen. Some delve. Or so I’ve discovered from three years of judging the Writers’ Village story competition. Who wins the prizes? Peacocks or weaver birds? Neither. The cash goes to those who combine both colour and craft, preening and delving - with flair. Here are three fast ways to blend colour and craft and write a best-selling story - or, at least, win a cash award in a story contest: 1. Draft it quickly You have a plot idea, right? A few dramatic events? A snatch or two of dialogue? Scribble it all down as fast as you can. Don’t wait for the ‘right’ words to come to you. Clichés, stagy incidents, clumsy expressions? Welcome them. They’re fine. Just get the tale written! Then throw it in a closet for a month. Pluck it out with a sniff, tone it down and tune each ...

What do you do when you feel like you are "at the end of your rope," with no more to give? Writer and artist Julia Cameron writes in The Artist's Way that each of us has a well or a reservoir of energy and creativity that we are continually drawing from in dealing with the stresses and the demands of our lives. But if we are always taking something out, we will eventually run dry. That's where I have been many times. When I still lived in Washington, after writing my first two novels, intense marketing, traveling, taking care of my home, hubby, and cat, as well as my various writing groups, and completing numerous editing jobs, I suddenly found my well dry. Even though the sun was shining (and that usually gives me lots of energy), I had no energy, no ambition, no creativity and no desire to do anything or go anywhere. So I took an afternoon off, drove to my favorite beach park on Puget Sound and just sat by the water. I watched the seagulls swooping and fighting...

Because Modern Fantasy fiction comes in so many flavors, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a definitive recipe for writing The Perfect Fantasy Novel. What I propose to do, in this and subsequent posts, is to examine technical strategies for producing a good fantasy novel regardless of sub-genre. One of the first distinguishing features of a fantasy novel is that it takes place in a setting defined by the imagination of the author. Where (as in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings ) the setting is completely detached from the mundane world as we know it, the author must reckon with the sub-creative process known in the trade as world-building . World-building entails “realizing” your fantasy world by endowing it with features analogous to the world we know. These features include geography, history, languages, culture, and technology. As a general rule, the more “concrete” your fantasy world in terms of these attributes, the more convincing the setting becomes to your readers. ...

Bas relief from Mamallapuram, India When we first moved to Colorado, we rented a tiny studio apartment while we went house-hunting. One evening, our landlords invited us up for a glass of wine and some conversation. She is a sculptor who works primarily in stone. She mentioned that it was interesting that we were both artists. Frankly, I'd never considered myself an artist, but we discussed our creative processes. There's an old saying that in order to carve a block of stone into an elephant, you simply chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. In writing, you keep adding until you get the elephant. If writing were like sculpting, it would mean being able to change what comes next, but not what came before. Scary. Really scary. I mean, I know authors who sell on synopsis, but when they write the book, it's all different. As long as it's good, there's usually no problem. When the sculptor asked how I created a book, what my preparation p...

Well, of course, we know it’s both. Anyone who has undertaken the daunting task to actually write and complete a book knows that no choice really exists.  I wrote in January about Inspiration, but this one is more about her evil twin: Work.  Yes, you need the initial inspiration to even talk yourself into starting. And, often, that beginning breath of the gods will take you a long way—through the opening, into the major conflicts, your oh-so-well-drawn characters jumping to life and racing around the first turn and even (hopefully) into the backstretch. Image Courtesy of http://www.horse-races.net/clip/  Ah, we love that muse, and prime her in every way we can think of! We feed her with all the sweet nothings whispered into her ear, with the promise of carrots at the end of our writing day. And she always responds. At least initially.  And then, often, we run smack dab into a soft spot on the rail. Sometimes writers hit a wall but, usually, it’s more of a...

Hello, dearies! You’ll forgive my slovenly attire today, won’t you? Donna Reed might have pulled off the pearls-and-heels look whilst cleaning house, but your Style Maven has better luck with jeans and T-shirts. Especially considering what was under the fridge; egad. It was at some point during my third cappuccino break that my mind started wandering down the to-do list. “Laundry, dishes, lunch, aaaand …” And I gave up right there, I must confess, thanks to the sidetracking effects of conjunctivitis . Not pinkeye; it’s not my shade at all. I mean I was captivated by those lovely little words that connect clauses and sentences. They’re more important than you might think. In fact, the Chicago Manual of Style devotes quite a bit of space to the subject. For the sake of a fresh espresso and some dust-free clothes, we’ll pare it down to a few paragraphs today. Conjunctions can range from simple, one-word examples such as if, and, or but to elaborate phrases like as th...

The Poor Poet by C arl Spitzweg I have a four-year-old grandson who I think is musically talented. In fact, I think he is gifted, although I suppose it is remotely possible that I am a tiny bit prejudiced. But what is my grandson doing in a blog post about writing?   He’s here because I want my grandson to live a happy and fulfilled life, and I fear that he will begin to hear those voices in his head shooting him the very same line of BS that I got when I first knew I wanted to be a writer. These voices are familiar to all American artists, whatever their art form. Art is just a hobby, not a profession. You can’t make money at music, writing, acting, painting, etc.   – unless you are really really lucky and become Beyonce or Dan Brown or Judy Chicago – you have about the same chance of becoming rich in the arts as you do of winning the lottery. Make sure you train for something else to fall back on, because you will need it. People who try to become artists are immature P...