10 Ways to Reconnect With Your Writing Core-The "Roar" Series Presents Noelle Sterne

Depressed about your writing? Buried under an avalanche of rejections? Ready to unsubscribe from your own email and pursue a career in dry wall?
What you need is to reconnect with your writing core.
If you feel you don't have one, you do. If you feel you haven't written enough to deserve one, you qualify anyway.

Your writing core doesn't care how much or what you write—poetry, publicity releases, or plumbing manuals. It doesn't test, screen, require a resume, or demand membership dues. It never asks hard questions like how much you've published, what awards you've won, or what you've earned this year from writing.

How do you get to your writing core? You don't need to meditate bare-chested in frigid temperatures. Or trek through some brow-scorching wilderness on your knees. Or walk without socks on a bed of nails even an enlightened master would reject.
It's much simpler. Wherever you are—right now—you can find your writing core. Even though you may not yet be certain what it is, like every other writer, you have experienced it.

But this doesn't mean your writing core is accessible at the snap of a pencil. It's more than our fantasies of book tours and talk shows, more than our January sworn oath to write 20 pages a day, and more than the uncontrollable grin when we manage to get something published. Our writing core hides beneath all our reasons, promised self-discipline, and dreams of reward.

Our writing core is different for each of us, and we may not easily be able to label it. But when you reach it, you'll recognize it like a longlost childhood doll.
Our writing core is what makes us write.

Sometimes we don't need to invoke it consciously. It bubbles up joyfully, sending us bounding to our computer, typewriter, clipboard, yellow pad, spiral notebook, or the nearest used napkin. Other times, our core knocks, nudges, pulls, or shames us into punching off the TV, despite the hot new cable movie, and go tussle with our manuscript.

But at more desperate hours, our core seems to dive deep underwater, allowing only tantalizing glimpses, like lightning fish darting through coral. Our core submerges when yet another rejection arrives of that most cherished, labored-over piece. Or we've inexplicably lost all interest in the work that so fired us up last week. Or we get a great idea but haven't a clue where to begin.

At such times, to get going again, we must tap more consciously into our writing core. How?
          
Most of the time, our connection is haphazard, the result of combined lamentation, supplication to the god of abandoned writers, and decimation of a two-pound bag of corn chips. But this approach can take days, weeks, or months, and gain you 30 pounds.

There's a better, more conscious way to reconnect with your writing core. It's much less damaging and much more quickly reviving than all that weeping and munching.

1. Stop trying to write. Stop telling yourself you have to. If you miss a few days, you won't be destroyed or condemned to eternal block.

2. Go to a quiet spot, with no disturbances of kids, neighbors, phone, stereo, or reality shows. Take a few deep breaths. Relax.

3. Let your mind go back to a time you really enjoyed writing. Maybe it was two years ago, last month, or yesterday. What were you working on? What materials were you using?

4. Reconstruct that experience. Where were you? What was the physical setting like? How were you dressed? See yourself writing in that environment. Replay it.

5. How did you feel? Don't try to force the memories or bully them into being. They haven't been lost. If you're quiet and patient, they'll emerge.

6. Live those feelings. Re-experience them. Feel your ideas flowing, fingers again moving, singing on the page.

7. As you allow these thoughts, pictures, and feelings to surface, you'll start sensing something. It will stir in you, as excitement, maybe, a physical sensation, a desire, a word, phrase, or image.

8. Whatever arises, give it time. You'll know it . . . .
You've reached your writing core.

9. Bask in your core. Let it move you, as naturally as a cat stretching in the sun.

10. And then, gently, without hurry, listen as it tells you what to write. No judgments. If it's a current project, fine. If it's a journal entry, fine. If it's a long-delayed letter, also fine.

You’ve reawakened your writing core. And whatever your lapses, it cannot be lost. It's always within you, ready to support, sustain, and guide.

So, when you feel frustrated, bored, hopeless, or any of the other buzzing self-disparagements that swarm in our heads, don't despair. Wherever you are, just stop, sit quietly, breathe, and let yourself remember. And as surely as you blink in the first morning light, you’ll reconnect with your writing core.


Bio:
Author, editor, writing coach, and spiritual counselor, Noelle Sterne writes fiction and nonfiction, with specialties in writing craft, spiritual self-help, and personal essays. She has published over 250 pieces in print and online venues, with many guest posts. Noelle’s Ph.D. is from Columbia University, and for over 28 years she has helped doctoral candidates (finally) complete their dissertations. In her book, Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books), Noelle draws examples from her practice and many other aspects of life to help readers let go of regrets, relabel their past, and reach their lifelong yearnings. Visit Noelle at www.trustyourlifenow.com.

Calling All Writers, Screen and Otherwise

Book Review of Christina Hamlett’s Screenwriting for Teens
by Noelle Sterne

I’m no screenwriter. My genres are prose and an occasional moody poem. But reading Christina Hamlett’s Screenwriting for Teens (Michael Wiese Productions), I responded exactly as I do to reading her regular column on screenwriting in Writers’ Journal: Hamlett is a master of writing and writing instruction and shares a tremendous amount of wisdom.

Her credentials, as well as her books, are impressive. For the last 30 years, she has contributed to PLAYS, the Magazine for Young People, and PLAYS has published several comedy anthologies of her scripts. In addition, she has written dozens of commercial comedy sketches for Contemporary Drama Service and is a regular contributor of lesson plans to School Video News, a website targeted to K-12 video arts educators.

Hamlett brings this expertise to Screenwriting for Teens. The book is subtitled “The 100 Principles of Scriptwriting Every Budding Writer Must Know.” In addition to much genre-specific information, these principles offer nuggets for every writer, budding, blossomed, and wilted.

The book’s structure, with each principle a chapter, make it easy to choose what you need at a given moment of bafflement or block in your writing. In a relaxed, conversational style, Hamlett covers many technical aspects of screenwriting, as one
would expect: “Speaking the Language of Screenwriters,” “’Reel’” Time Moves Differently Than ‘Real’ Time,” “Catchy Loglines,” “Treatments,” “Bulletproofing Your Script.” But also with wit and conciseness, Hamlett gives us timeless writing principles. A small sampling of the numerous excellent points: “A Theme Is the Glue

That Holds Your Story Together,” “Conflict Grows Out of Character,” “Character Grows Out of Conflict,” “Character and Conflict Comprise the Hero’s Journey,” “Every Story Needs a Point of View.” I for one need such brushups.
Adding to Screenwriting’s value, Hamlett includes at the end of each chapter a section of “Brainstormers.” These provocative exercises, often rooted in classic to contemporary films, prompt our application of the chapter’s content, our knowledge of filmography, our analytic powers, and especially our creativity. So the book is not only a learning tool for writers but also a tool for teachers of screenwriting and theater, directors, and producers.

My only cavil, if it can be called that, is the ambiguity of the title. Or is it purposeful? The book teaches aspiring screenwriting teens how to write, adult screenwriters how to write for teen audiences, and adult screenwriters how to write for any audience. And more, in Screenwriting for Teens, with her compendium of writing knowledge, clear descriptions, and illustrations of the solid principles of writing, Hamlett teaches any writer how to write anything.

--Noelle Sterne Author, Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and
Go After Your Dreams
Columnist, Inscribing Industry

Guest Post

CHECK THOSE GUIDELINES!
by
Noelle Sterne

BIO: Noelle Sterne holds a doctorate degree from Columbia University. She is an accomplished book author who has also published more than 250 pieces in print and online publications.

When, in a market listing, I read the invitation for contributions to an upcoming anthology, I knew my story was perfect. I labored with repeated drafts to get it down to the 2,000 words specified in the guidelines. Finally, two days before the deadline, my auto-word count proudly proclaimed “1,993.”

Ready to send out the story, I went to the anthology website to check the spelling of the editor’s name. To my horror, an updated announcement proclaimed 1,400 words! I’d performed microsurgery to get down to 1,993. How would I ever cut more?
At first. I thought of calling the editor to bark a dozen reasons why my brilliant but now way too long entry should be accepted anyway. But I knew that (a) this would do no good (he probably wouldn’t answer the phone), and (b) the publisher must have dictated the reduction for cost considerations.

So instead, although I had a date to meet a friend for lunch, I phoned her and screamed out my editing emergency. A writer, she understood. Then I turned off the phone, breathed a prayer, scrubbed up, and started excising.

I sweated and groaned, revised and retyped, and almost sobbed to discard what I’d been sure were essentials. But my desire not to be disqualified for length was stronger than love of my lucid prose. After much brutal hacking, repositioning, regrafting, and binding up my psychic wounds, the word count shaped up, miraculously with essence preserved. The night before the deadline, I sent the piece out.

I’d like to report that my story was accepted. It wasn’t. But even though I didn’t make this anthology, I nevertheless learned two important writing lessons that have stuck with me through many other submissions, accepted and not.

First, although I’d been sure the story had been trimmed originally to perfection, when exclusion threatened I found even more places to prune. As I painfully extracted my beautiful adjectives, Walt Whitman’s observation consoled: “The best writing has no lace on its sleeves.” Later, reviewing this piece for another market, I had to admit that the excess wasn’t missed.

Second, publication guidelines can change quickly. Last year’s, last month’s, or even last week’s specifications may not hold today. If you don’t revisit the specifications frequently—and revise accordingly—you’ll risk instant rejection. So, as you get close to submitting to your carefully chosen markets, check, double check, and recheck those guidelines!


Visit Noelle's site and learn about her book at Trustyourlifenow.com

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