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‘Writing Process’ Category

  1. Mining the Rough

    May 3, 2013 by admin

    This morning, I dredged up the past.

    I sat on the floor in my closet with two shoeboxes full of journals and combed through them, looking for one in particular. In the process, I came across a lot of dusty old memories: boyfriends gone bad, seething insecurities, angry prayers to God.IMG_5138

    I had procrastinated diving into this part of my work. Because I knew it could potentially bring up some long-healed scars, exhibit a glaring reminder of my obvious imperfections. But when we moved to Kansas in January, I had unearthed from a box an essay I wrote 12 years ago – an essay that was good but had gone nowhere. I needed to revive it. And to do that thoroughly, I needed to revisit a particular corner of my past.

    Diving head-first into our own history can be one scary endeavor. Among the nostalgic and forgotten memories quite potentially lurk some dark emotions, deep insecurities, experiences and feelings we’d rather keep deep and buried. It’s risky business to go there.

    But sometimes, we have to. If we want to weave stories that are meaningful and raw with truth, we often have to dig deep. It can be rough. It can be painful. It can downright suck.

    But you know what? I submit that, nine times out of 10, the effort and the risk will be wholly worth it. Sometimes you have to mine to get to the good stuff. Mining is unglamorous work at best. But a diamond never starts out smooth and beautiful.

    We have to believe in our work so much we’re willing to do the hard work, take the big risk.

    What is holding you back from going into that place? If it is fear, acknowledge it. Join the club. But at some point, take a deep breath and dive in. Hold someone’s hand if you have to. Chances are, by visiting those spaces where emotions run raw and deep, you will emerge with something worth holding onto.

    *My interview with writer, colleague and friend Alissa Johnson, in which I share some thoughts about the writing life, balancing motherhood with writing, and the writing process of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, was posted on Writing Strides yesterday. It also includes a beautiful testament to real friendship, and the bond that writing can weave. You can read it here.

    Category Creativity, Family, Family History, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  2. How to Eat an Elephant: A Rare Glimpse of an Artist’s Success

    April 23, 2013 by admin

     

    Today I received an email from a writer whose novel will soon be published by the Pronghorn Press, which last year published my Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    To share in this writer’s raw excitement and arrival in hard-earned book publication is nothing short of exhilarating.Spring Mill 035

    Dawn Wink shares her journey to publication with an openness that is entirely beautiful – beautiful because in her tremendous accomplishment she exposes the hard and messy process of writing and her own jagged edges that, in effect, forced her to turn to her craft.

    She is human. She wrestles and tugs to create beautiful art in the midst of an upended life. And when she succeeds at it, she wants her whole world to know.

    How can that not be inspiring?

    “Meadowlark was the book that should never have been written,” she writes. “Too much happened in my life as I wrote. Too much upheaval, too much transition, too much pain. And yet, I couldn’t stop writing. Like Gretel following the bread crumbs, I stumbled through the forest of my life, focusing on that next bread crumb …”

    In Dawn’s journey I am reminded of three things:

    1)      Writing is and can be such an act of discovery.

    2)      A life story can hold tremendous, mind-boggling power. If you have a strong story to tell – be it yours or someone else’s – the words must find their way out. Even when you don’t think you can go on, even when the noise of life is so loud you can hardly think straight, the story wriggles itself free. And, as Wink learned, the power of story can be a writer’s biggest ally during times of personal hardship. “I believed in Grace and her story,” she writes, “when I had lost all faith in my own.”

    3)      Times change, and circumstances change. We are tested by many hardships in this thing called life, moments of intense heat in which we, like hot iron, are bended and shaped. We won’t be in the furnace forever. But those trying times are the nuggets that test our true character. Writers count these times as gold for their craft – moments and emotions that provide foundations for creating riveting stories.

     

    Now, as Wink finds herself “in a place of family, stability and home … a place where I can at last settle in deeply to love, live and write,” she is able to reflect back with a sense of celebration.

    During a recent upheaval of my own – a new book out right alongside my second child being born – I clung to my mom’s persistent wisdom. How do you eat an elephant? she’d say. One bite at a time.

    As writers, we have to keep on keeping on. There will always be too much. Too much going on. Too much to worry about. Too many balls in the air. But we have to put our heads down and charge ahead in the business of artmaking, one bite (or one sentence) at a time.

    At its base, Dawn Wink’s journey is a story of beautiful persistence. If you’re a true writer, you can’t ever give up. You have to want your words to succeed so bad you can’t take your eyes off the prize. You have to obsess over it and sweat over it and cry and pound your fists. And when you break through into the light of a hard-won success, you have to wholly and entirely celebrate it.

    Well done, Dawn. And best of luck as Meadowlark soon finds its way into the hands of readers.

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Feel-Good Stories, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  3. Win a Book – or Just Have a Little Fun

    April 15, 2013 by admin

    Exercise a bit of creativity for your chance to win a copy of my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood – or just have a little fun with the creative process.9781932636956-Cover

    Either way you look at it, it’s sort of a win-win deal.

    http://www.writingstrides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/4.png

    Image courtesy of www.writingstrides.com.

    Today, in celebration of the launch of her new writing business, Writing Strides, a dear friend of mine is asking readers and writers and creative gurus to help her write a story. She’s got the first paragraph already down. (And she warns, it’s a bit dramatic.)

    Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to read the continuing story (posted by other readers in the “Comments” section below the post) and add to it. Participants will be entered to win a free copy of my book (a work which Johnson knows well, as she played a crucial role in critiquing and editing the chapters from the ground up).

    I am so privileged to call Johnson a fellow writer and a close friend. Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Mountain Gazette and Green Woman Magazine, among others, and she has won awards from the Colorado Press Association and Funds for Writers. Her mission is to help people take their writing farther, via writing classes, one-on-one coaching and writing prompts. She is full of inspiration and compassion, and I am so excited to share in the beginning of this journey with her.

    So whether you’re ready to start something, need a creative writing prompt or just want to be a bit silly and let loose, head to the Writing Strides blog for some fun and ambition. You won’t regret it!

    Category Books, Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, News, Social Media, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  4. To Write Again: A Return to the Sweet Life of Art Making

    February 21, 2013 by admin

    So. Days melt into days, and weeks into weeks. Across five states and two time zones, from a place that perpetually feels like summer back to a place where winter is in full force and (amen) the weather comes and goes in seasons. It has been a long road from southern California back to Kansas City, the challenges of moving with two young kids fierce and at times unrelenting. Yet we have pulled through it, and in all the chaos, things are beginning to make sense again.

    Finally, we are emerging into a new normal. We are putting down roots here fast and hard. Desperately, we want them to stick because if we’re honest, this life of mobility, of pulling up our lives every one to two years to begin again in a new place, is just plain tough. It was the life of adventure five years ago, when we were still relatively newly married and without kids. Now, with two little boys in tow, we simply crave to be settled. For the wellbeing of our kids. For the wellbeing of our family.

    As I write, the wind outside is fierce, hurling hard snow against the upstairs windows. My little Eli, who was born in sunny California just seven months ago, can’t take his eyes off of the mean white stuff. I finished nursing him this morning, and he lay his head on my shoulder and snuggled into me, quiet. That’s odd, I thought. And I said out loud, ”Why are you so quiet?”

    Then I saw why. His eyes were wide open, staring intently out the window at the onslaught of blizzard.

    Snow. Something completely new to him.

    As I ease myself back into these waters of a writing life, I feel more and more at home. To be honest, I don’t know where my work will take me next. We have started over yet again, in a new community, a new place. Ideas throw themselves at me ruthlessly, and I snatch at them as if trying to catch beautiful butterflies in a net, wanting to keep them, study them, turn them over in my hands and then release them into the world again.

    I revisit old essays, wonder why some of them have remained untouched deep in a folder for so long. But the answer comes quickly. Mothering. Family. Life.

    Most important right now is that we have weathered a stretch of tremendous transition and upheaval. In this new normal, this new place we so much long to call “home” for the long haul, I am writing again. And dang, it feels good.

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Travel, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,, | 5 Comments

  5. What is Your Life’s Theme?

    September 13, 2012 by katemeadows

    If you could pull one theme out of your life, what would it be?

    For me, that theme is “tough.” As in, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    I didn’t know this when I first set out to write a series of essays profiling the colorful characters of rural western Wyoming around whom I grew up. That series of essays now comprises my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press.

    The essays were, at first, quaint and almost fluffy, mere sketches of people and experiences in my life that I found interesting. One piece did not necessarily relate to another; they just sort of fell out of me, one by one, like stones. I knew I had to write them – but I didn’t exactly know why.

    It was a long time before a pattern started to emerge, some sort of thread or echo that started resonating within each piece. I realized I wanted to know how these people – people like big-bellied bachelor Uncle John, the rancher-turned-writer woman named Chris, and my wild and impulsive Grandpa Bucky– helped to shape my upbringing and, consequently, shape the woman I am today.

    The resounding thread? Each of the characters I wrote about exhibited some form of tough. And moreover, they displayed senses of toughness I never felt I had. Having to homestead on a desolate landscape so barren that nothing grew? Not me. Driving cattle home at four in the morning? Not me. Spending lonely winters alone in a boxy cabin miles off a main road? Not me.

    Through writing, I started to look hard at this theme of “tough” and ask myself, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    All of these things, yes. But wasn’t there more to the meaning of that word? If not, I realized, I wasn’t tough at all.

    Except I know I am tough. Just not necessarily in the ways a rural Wyoming life demands. Through writing, I realized that my notion of “tough” was narrow. By holding myself up so sharply against these people who had truly lived hard and noble lives, I had for far too long denied that “tough” badge for myself.

    Looking back on the essays prompted me to examine my life via other questions as well.

    If you could re-do any moment of your life, what would it be?

    If you could live one sweet and precious moment of your past, what would it be?

    Thinking about our lives from a variety of angles can help give us a better grasp on ourselves, who we really are. Peeking through multiple lenses can help us to better understand ourselves – who we have been, who we are, who we hope to become.

    The former New York Times and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen writes: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

    I am not yet 30 years old. As someone once told me, “You’re not old enough to write a memoir.”

    But in writing about my younger self, I discovered a powerful theme at work. It’s a theme that, piggybacked with a theme of confidence, I take with me into the wilds now of motherhood. It’s a theme that is molding me now, and a theme I believe will continue to shape me in the future.

    And all because once, I wanted to write about and therefore recall some colorful and strangely admirable characters of my past.

    Look at how these “tough” people defined me. Because of them – and because of the writing process – I am now tougher and more beautiful, a more complete person.

    You can receive a signed copy of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood here.

    So? What about you? What is your theme?

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  6. Book Publication and Birth: A Tale of Two Converging Loves

    September 4, 2012 by katemeadows

    I never meant for it to happen this way.

    I couldn’t have planned it if I tried.

    Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction.

    Here I am, though, with a new baby and two books being published this month. Yes, two.

    How? I don’t quite know, except that life happens.

    Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press, recounts my experience as an only child growing up among the raw and grisly characters in rural western Wyoming. It began in 2008 as a collection of essays for my Master’s thesis in creative nonfiction writing. I knew from the get-go I would go all the way with it, writing the pieces one at a time, piecing them together with a thread of a theme (what does it mean to be tough?), and eventually pursuing publication, sending out query after query until a “yes” finally came.

    The “yes” did come – but, unexpectedly, so did a positive pregnancy test, three days later.

    That “yes,” along with the blue “+” sign on the stick, came while I was knee-deep in work on my family’s small business history. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, commemorates the grit and determination of a small-town service, repair and retail shop doing whatever it took to survive off of a quiet western main street. I began the project while Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood grinded its way through the query mill, back before a pregnancy was even on the horizon. The business history was a grand effort in helping my family carve out its well-deserved legacy. It was to be for me a venture in self-publishing, my intention to learn the ropes of the trade to be better informed and equipped as a writer during this tumultuous time in the publishing industry. I planned to publish the “Bucky’s book,” as it affectionately came to be called, in June 2012.

    Then the nod came for Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    Then I got pregnant.

    In other words, life happened.

    And here I am, with a baby who was born the end of July, a book of essays to be published on schedule by a traditional publisher, and a self-published small business history that, due to life circumstances, was postponed for release until September – the month of the business’ annual grand open house.

    So we leave next week, traveling from California to Wyoming, where for the better part of the month I will be promoting my work. September will be a crazy month. But I can’t wait.

    I go into it with heart racing and eyes bright with excitement. Here are the moments where the hard, dogged work will be worth it. Finally, I will meet the finished products.  Works of art into which I put my whole self. I will get to talk about this craft I love so much. I get to share words, encourage others to share theirs, and talk about the value of preserving life stories and leaving legacies.

    This is work that I love. I am packing my bags now.

    Please, join me if you can. Click here for a list of events.  Stay tuned for upcoming readings and get-togethers in California. And, if you’re interested in using Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood as a pick for a book group, ordering copies of either book, or learning more about the crafts of creative nonfiction writing and/or telling your own life story, please get in touch.

    Writing, at its very core, is about communication. If I can reach people, if I can inspire and encourage, only then can I smile and say to myself, “Job well done.”

    Category Books, Bookstores, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  7. Life in the Trenches

    August 14, 2012 by katemeadows

    Mark Twain is known to have once said this: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

    When we sit down to write, be it fiction or nonfiction or something entirely different, how important it is that we are cushioned by some life experience. How important it is to our careers as writers that we spend time in the trenches, digging through the dirt and getting dirty, beautifully dirty.

    Copyright 2011, Kate Meadows, southern California.

    I think about this now, as I am deep in the trenches of motherhood and daily trying to find my way through new struggles and questions surrounding life with a new baby and a toddler. Part of me is anxious that my time to write is less, the demands of being mom more.

    But right now, “Mom” is the life part that will inform and is informing my writing. And there are so many themes to explore with that: identity, stereotypes, love. The list goes on.

    Last week, my cousin – who is also a journalist – encouraged me to write from my sweet spot. It’s that spot where you find your life thrumming, where you find the struggles to be had and the lessons to be learned. We had been chatting about our own recent struggles as writers, and mine entailed a potential story for Highlights Magazine that had fallen through. I suspect the magazine’s editor had turned down the piece because she saw through the curtain: there wasn’t an ounce of passion in it.

    In other words, I had pitched an idea and written a story about something that did not at all inspire me, a topic I knew something about but had little connection to at this stage in my life. And I was pitching it to an audience with which I have little experience and, admittedly, little desire to reach.

    I am not a children’s writer.

    The story lacked the zest it needed because I was reaching too far for it. I wasn’t writing from that sweet spot.

    Admittedly, the sweet spot, that place where I find I have so much to explore and process and so much learning to do, is not easy. But it is necessary.

    Copyright 2011, Kate Meadows, southern California.

    It is necessary for me to grow, both as a person and as a writer. I am hard at work in the trenches, drumming up some good old life experience that I hope will make for some sparkling words and killer story ideas later.

    Can you imagine what would happen to your writing if you didn’t get out and live a little, if you rode only the ripples of your ocean as opposed to the crashing waves?

    Take time to write, always. But always, too, take time to live and to fully experience the moments – the great ones, the hard ones, and all of the ones in between.

    Category Creativity, Family, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 6 Comments

  8. Your Story is Bigger Than You

    July 16, 2012 by katemeadows

    What if your story, whatever life story you have to tell, is about more than you?

    I speak about and advocate for telling our life stories. At a recent workshop, I encouraged attendees to think outside of themselves when they resolve to put a story down – be it their own, their family history, their small business, what have you.

    One man, who has been at work on his family history for 30 years, asked why.

    Why do I need to think about others, he asked, when my primary motivation to explore my family history is to learn more about who I am?

    New York fountain. Copyright 2010 Kate Meadows.

    It was a good question, and I wasn’t shocked to hear it.

    But I think we so often fail to think outside of ourselves when we pursue our own endeavors. So often, we think, a) no one else will care; or b) this story won’t do anyone else any good, when in reality, the opportunities to speak to others through are stories are simply untapped goldmines waiting to be explored.

    This same man, in his tireless pursuit for names, dates and places of long-dead or long-lost family members, found a treasure trove of stories lurking beneath that hard data – stories I don’t think he necessarily bargained for. He wrote letters to people asking for information, and received stories and memories in return. You know what that tells me? Others in the family besides him have an interest in the family legacy.

    When I suggested this to him, he nodded, as if giving me the benefit of the doubt. Then, he was quiet for a long time.

    A year and a half ago, I set out to piece together a complete small business history. I wrote letters to 250 of the business’ mainstay customers, asking for their stories and memories of how the business had been a part of their lives.

    I had no idea who, if anyone, would respond.

    For a while, no one responded.

    Then, some stories started to trickle in. Followed by more. And more.

    In the end, thanks to the submissions I received, the history of the business was, in page numbers, twice as large as I had bargained for.

    Know what that means?

    People besides myself and my family became invested in the larger story. People had something to say; they wanted their hand in it. Now, still pre-publication, the book has sold almost 150 copies.

    That tells me this small business history is about more than just the business itself. It comprises threads of numerous people’s lives, people who care about their part in the larger story.

    Consider your own story. Who is a part of it? Would they care to know it? How can you reach out to others with your own message?

    Category Books, Creativity, Family History, Ideas, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,, | 2 Comments

  9. Taming the Lack-of-Confidence Beast

    June 28, 2012 by katemeadows

    At a recent Telling Our Life Stories workshop I hosted, a man attended who has been working on his family history longer than I’ve been alive.

    I was daunted at first, wondering what I as a (ahem) young writer could possibly teach him that he didn’t already know.

    That old wavering, persistent voice of insecurity threatened to tear me down. Who did I think I was, offering strangers tips and advice for how to effectively tell their own life stories? Would this man think my presentation was a joke? Would anyone else, for that matter?

    I pushed my fear and doubt aside and did my best to be confident in what I was presenting.

    And you know what? People listened. They asked questions. This man, who was so deep into his own family history, took notes as I talked. He even approached me afterward and asked if we could spend some one-on-one time together so he could get my input on some specific challenges he was facing regarding his project.

    Isn’t it funny how we can so easily doubt ourselves? How easily that familiar fear of failure creeps up on us.

    Online entrepreneur Pat Flynn addresses his own battle with confidence this way:

    “… When I was told by a successful colleague to write an eBook for my site, I thought of every excuse not do it:

    • ‘I don’t know how to make an eBook.’
    • ‘I don’t think it’s going to sell very well.’
    • ‘People will be upset because most of the material can be found for free on the blog already.’
    • ‘I’m not a good writer.’
    • ‘There are probably other books that are way better out there already.’

    This lack of self confidence delayed any sort of action on my eBook, and it was only after several other people begged me to write it, including a couple of my own readers who heard I had thought about it and said they were already waiting to pay for it when it was finished, did I finally take action and do it.”

    As a result, Flynn writes, he finished the book in a couple of months, and it sold very well. After $250,000 in sales, not one person had complained about the same content appearing on the Website. His writing improved as a result of producing the book, and perhaps there were others books out there that were better than his, but it didn’t matter.

    What mattered? He shoved excuses and insecurities aside, put his nose to the grindstone and went to work on something he ultimately believed in. Sure that voice of doubt probably lingered every step of the way, but he tamped it down.

    Fear of failure will always exist. Sneaky nudges of insecurity will always threaten to seep into your work, your attitude. But I think more often than not, the hardest person to convince that we and our work matter is not the complete stranger in the audience or the friend sitting across the table.

    The hardest person to convince that we and our work matter is ourselves.

    Let’s stop being our own worst critics and give ourselves some credit for the good that we do. A little extra dose of believing in yourself can go a long way.

    How do you respond to moments of insecurity?

    Category Creativity, Family History, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Self-doubt, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  10. 3 Things I Learned from Trying Something New

    June 18, 2012 by katemeadows

    On Saturday, I did something new.

    I taught a workshop on a topic I am passionate about: Telling Our Life Stories.

    It was a process, putting the content for the workshop together, organizing it in a way that made sense, and – perhaps the greatest joy and challenge – anticipating the needs and questions of those who attended.

    I was nervous, yes. Nervous that the content I put together might be too general or easy, nervous that my “expertise” might not hold up, nervous that nobody would show.

    But as I got down and into it, both the creating of the event and the sharing, I realized a few things.

    California Pacific Coast, Copyright 2012, Kate Meadows.

    First, I was having fun. By exploring a topic of interest to me – Telling Our Life Stories – I was allowing myself to spend time immersed in something I loved. Good had to come from that, I thought.

    Second, the preparation for the event allowed me to view myself and my work in a different light. I have never considered myself a teacher. Never really thought I had the skills or desire to teach. That might be true if I were talking about a fourth grade classroom or a room full of preschoolers. But give me something I’m passionate about and some listening, interested ears and what do you know, I can find a groove. This workshop also challenged me to think of that word “teacher” in a broader form. I am a teacher every day, as a mother. As a writer, I hope my words speak and shed new or re-discovered light on topics and experiences that are important to others. As a workshop leader, I can aim to inspire and challenge conventional ways of thinking. This workshop allowed me to see that I am a teacher – just perhaps not in the most formal of ways.

    Third, sharing knowledge I’m passionate about with others who are interested in the same subject presented me with an invaluable opportunity to give. Saturday’s workshop was, for me, a small act of service in which I hope I empowered others to think more intentionally about their own life stories and ways they can communicate them. Rather than lecture, I aimed for conversation. And boy, did I strike gold. The conversation that unfolded in that small room on Saturday was entirely a joy to me – and with so many questions and insights, I could be confident that the others who were there were getting something out of it, too.

    What “new thing” is on your bucket list to try? Take the leap – and you just might surprise yourself.

    Category Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, Life Stories, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,, | 2 Comments

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