HOW TO KILL YOUR CREATIVITY

I just made a classical writer's mistake. I rushed out to the family room to tell my husband the fantastic name of a new book I intend to write, starting today, and he said, “EEEYOOOGH!” Exactly the way a teenager says "EEEYOOOGH!" when you suggest he abandon his texting and start writing his term paper. Or maybe that he pull his jeans up to somewhere near his waist.

I don’t know how to spell that sound, but I recognize it when I hear it--and so do you! Every published author has heard that dismaying noise at one time or another, so we all know how it strikes the ear, even if we can't capture it letter by letter. It’s the sound of No Way, You’ve Got to be Kidding, or worse . . . That’s a Rotten Idea If I’ve Ever Heard One.

My idea for the new book fizzled like a party balloon with a tiny pin prick. The creative air seeped out, faster and faster, and I just stood there, dismayed. And finally I even said it. “Well, I’ve just broken the first rule of creativity.” Rob simply looked at me. He doesn’t know the rule, and he wouldn’t care about it if he knew. But he’ll gladly give me his first reaction to what he considers a bad title.

Have you caught on to the rule?

In case you haven’t, the rule is, Never share the first blush of a creative idea with ANYONE. Not until you’ve got it all down on paper, until the thing is mostly written and you can’t unwrite it.

If it was a dumb idea in the first place, you’ll soon know. If it wasn’t a dumb idea, you risk letting someone kill your baby while it’s still in the womb.

Everyone who writes knows this rule, and no one better than I. My inner voice said, “Don’t share this,” and I should have listened, but I didn’t, I rushed out to expose my great idea to toxic fumes. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

I finally said, “Nora Ephron’s published book is called, ‘I Remember Nothing.’ Do you think that’s a good title?" And he said No.

Well, that was some comfort, anyway. I’m sure Ephron has sold a million copies of this very funny book with the dumb title. Except I happen to love it, bad title and all.

ARE YOU READY TO PUBLISH?

Probably not. If you have doubts, you are certainly not ready.

It’s an impatient world out there—too many of us with too much to do. Too many newspapers to read, phone calls to make, e-mails to answer, meals to cook, minutes to spend exercising, dishes to wash.

And besides, you’re writing a book. (Or maybe something shorter.)

How much time did you give your writing? One edit? Two? Possibly three?

How many people have read it? And what did they say?

“This is interesting.” “I like it.” “You’ve done a good job.” “Nice article.” “An okay first chapter.” “Keep going.”

“Interesting” doesn’t cut it. Nor do any of the other comments. These people are your friends, and they don’t want to hurt your feelings. But their level of enthusiasm is tepid. And you know tepid when you see it.

Your piece is clearly not good enough. None of these people are raving. So all you’ve done is make a decent first start. A dent. But the thing is not publishable. Not even close.

If you go “out there” with this work, even spend money to get it published, nobody will make the effort to read more than a few pages. (Except, maybe, your three best friends and your mother.) You will have spent time and energy on a piece of writing that needs lots more work.

Now wait!! Don’t throw it away. Your idea is probably worth keeping. It’s worth re-working. It’s worth cutting, enriching, dissecting, made funnier. You are no dummy, you doubtless have unusual and interesting thoughts. Your work deserves to be read by others. Trust me on that one. Or rather, trust yourself. If you’re reading this, you are not a throw-away writer.

The stark reality that few of us fully grasp is—good writing takes a ton of work. More work than any newbie ever imagines. It takes more refinement, more re-working, more polishing than most of us dreamed would be necessary. It takes more tweaking than a Lamborghini.

But all that effort is a must. Unless you’re willing to edit obsessively, your piece will never be ready for the larger world. Which means most people won’t read it. So what’s the point?

Okay, then, you’ve gone over your work a dozen times. It’s finally begun to thrill you, to capture even your over-exposed attention. You honestly believe it reads like the best stuff you’ve seen elsewhere. So you give it back to your friends.

Geronimo! Their critiques have changed. “This is great!” “I love it!” “Powerful!” “I’ve given it to all my friends!” “Wonderful!” “Couldn’t stop reading!” “I stayed up all night!”

These are the critiques that should send you to a publisher. Immediately.

A WORLD TURNING UPSIDE DOWN

For all of you who see your everyday lives morphing faster than you ever dreamed possible, let me say that nothing is changing quicker, or with more uncertainty, than book publishing. Those of us on the inside can only stare and shake our heads. As authors we try to adjust, but few of us can predict which of our books will sell best—if at all--or in what format. Will old-fashioned paper even be involved?

Only a handful of years ago, nobody thought book stores would soon become obsolete. Yet while they still stand around looking formal and important, except for teens with computers under their arms—all heading for the coffee bar—adult readers have largely abandoned them.

Part of this is the fault of the chain bookstores themselves. In their zeal to rid themselves of competing independents, they also killed off the eager librarian types who once “sold” their readers the world’s best books. Today, the chains are not known for selling anything; all they do is display. Which Costco--or your best friends--do just as well.

Meanwhile, we authors are scrambling to become known in that mysterious and semi-visible world of the Net. Those of us who aren’t kids any longer soon learn we need expertise on steroids--so I’m finding computer mavins to make me and my books internet-visible. Will this help me sell some of the books in my garage?

I honestly don’t know.

I’ll be happy to share the answer in a few months.

PUBLICITY: THE WALL TOO STEEP TO CLIMB?

EACH DAY I'M learning afresh: There are writers and PR types, and they're seldom the same person. My daily wish is simple: Please, dear brain, grant me the skills to find the readers for all these words I've already written.

Writing is the part I love. I could cheerfully spend every day creating word pictures. I love the process, and everything about it: the search for rhythm, for vividness, for the exact right word. I love looking back to see what I've done, to decide whether I managed to get to where I intended to go. I love the re-writing--taking this wobbly little skeleton and propping it up, making it stand on its own feet and sing to the world.

There's nothing about writing I don't like. The moments spent in creation--surely they are a kind of life force, a renewal of the most exquisite sort. When you've written something good, you've LIVED. And nobody can take it away.

But what's this business about PR?

How hard should we work to get known? How many internet/web tricks must we learn? And how many of them work? How many people read what I've written on the web? And will any of that reading translate into sales of my books?

What about the hucksters who appear on your e-mail and glibly promise to make you famous, who swear up and down they can make your books best sellers? How often does this happen? Are any of these promotions worth the price? Can they REALLY create huge audiences for your books? Or are all these promotional types simply padding their own pockets? Of one thing I'm sure. If I send this Harrison fellow ten thousand dollars, I am definitely making HIM rich.

I haven't a clue as to whether he'll do the same for me. And frankly, at the risk of losing ten thousand dollars, I'm afraid to find out.

Meanwhile, as I ask these questions, I keep searching--I peek behind new internet doors, scramble to learn the latest tricks, ask other authors what they do. Currently I'm trying everything: Writing blogs; enhancing my author page on Amazon; calling all the groups I can think of, offering myself as a speaker. I'm giving writing workshops at libraries, applying for slots at writers conferences, calling womens' groups and book clubs.

Once in awhile, to my amazement, somebody calls me. I try to act blase, as if it happens all the time. I never tell them that they've just made my day.

If any of you have suggestions, please tell me. I'd love to hear them.

Do I yearn to be rich and famous? Well, maybe. But only because rich and famous would mean people are reading my books. But more than that, it would mean I could stop making all these phone calls, soliciting speeches.

Rich and famous would mean I could once again concentrate on writing books. Maralys












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I'm not crazy about giving away time. After twelve published books it feels like I ought to be paid for speaking and teaching. Yet more and more I'm learning that what you do for free often pays off best.

A couple of stories make the point: A writers group at Leisure World contacted me to speak at a writers day--the first big event of their new writers club. Nobody offered to pay me, but I agreed to go anyway. I was one of several speakers, and sold a few books--four or five. Not many, but I felt good about the day. I felt I'd really connected with the group.

It seems I did. Weeks later they called me again, this time to give a talk on memoirs. They asked how much I wanted to be paid--always a tough question to answer. How much is too much? But I asked for $75.00, and the club readily agreed. Expecting 20-30 people, I was flabbergasted to find a crowd of over 70. This time, to the group's excitement, I gave away some books--but I also sold about a dozen.

Now the group wants me back again, for two in-depth, all-day memoir workshops. With no fuss at all, the price has gone up to $150 each. Even so, it's not the money that's so exciting, but the fact that this group and I have made an exciting connection. We all expect the best out of each other, and my stints down there have become a lot of fun and not much work. For everything I gave away in the beginning, I've been repaid many times over.

And just today I heard a wonderful story about Landgrove Inn in Vermont--an inn I've stayed at many times and with whom I'm now engaged for my second writer's workshop. It seems Landgrove agreed to host a charity event for a worthy cause, offering not only their site, but also picking up the bar tab. In what could have been a losing event, with perhaps 50 to 100 people, the Chocolate Festival attracted 500 people and earned $30,000--giving the inn free publicity up and down the state of Vermont. For the price of some liquor, they received what will turn out to be a hundred-thousand-dollars worth of publicity. You couldn't BUY an event that attracted so many people from so many Vermont towns. Because of their generosity, little-known Landgrove Inn has suddenly become one of the premier inns in the state.

Whenever I consider the advisability of doing something "for free," I think twice about turning it down. The payoff is sometimes in doubt, and never the reason you do anything. On the other hand, often enough the good-luck gods are right there with a reward.

BLAME IT ON THE BALL

People acquire reputations for all kinds of crazy things: the number of days spent camped out in a tree; the unlikelihood of delivering eight babies in one sitting; the variety of women willing to appear naked in your magazine. I've yet to hear of a "name" acquired by the number of times you get hit by a ball.

The Wills family does have a ball reputation of sorts--trophies and medals won by hitting balls with a racket, smashing balls with a wrist, slinging balls over water, slamming balls against a wall. No medals have yet been won by offering one's body as a pelt spot. However, this is about to change; I demand that personal impact be recognized as an official event.

My unique sport began innocently enough when I stood near a railing at my grandson's ice hockey game. First time I'd ever personally witnessed this game--and to add to my uncanny luck, other family members stood beside me. But only I was singled out by the puck that ricocheted off the ice and found its target on my upper arm. It was Chris, (standing next to me), who noted, "Of course, Mom, you were the one that got hit." How he recognized this tendency so early, is difficult to imagine. But let's just say his statement was predictive of future events.

Once Dane became fully invested in volleyball, Rob and I attended most of his matches. The Anaheim Sports Arena contains some twenty volleyball courts. Unlike other spectators, I've been hit by balls flying out of at least ten of those courts. Balls from courts behind me smash against the net and find my back. Balls from warm-up smashes clunk off my head. Balls from near-empty courts find me as I head for the cafeteria--and one managed to knock off my glasses. In fact my glasses alone have been tweaked three times. Other parents noticed and began saying things like, "You do seem to have a bulls eye painted on your body." "You need to arrive wearing a helmet." "Don't sit by her--she gets hit every time."

Once a ball from a nearby court followed me down a narrow hall and nailed me as I entered the ladies room.

The gold-medal moment actually occurred in a high school gymnasium. Like other spectators, I was sitting innocently in the bleachers when it happened. A ball from the court in front of us sailed down the length of the gymnasium, hit a side wall at the end of our bleachers, and flew like a homing pigeon straight for my head. Dozens of other heads were available, of course, but obviously none of them qualified.

Aware of my propensities, this year 23 members of our family spent Christmas Eve trying to hit me with an under-inflated beach ball. They gave themselves great credit for originality and timing--howling with glee when they connected. Only at the end did I assure them they hardly qualified for "best shot of the year."

That came a few weeks earlier when, with my granddaughter, I visited a tiny tots birthday party. Like grasshoppers, some ten three-year-olds leaped and frolicked across a small living room, chasing little toys and pinata candies. Among the objects on the floor was a tiny ball. To my astonishment, a miniature boy took a mighty swing with his miniature toe, caught the ball just right, and sent it cascading into my face.

The man sitting next to me said, "Oh! Are you all right?" He probably didn't believe me when I said, "Well, that was certainly the smallest of my assailants. You wouldn't know this, of course, but I do have a national reputation--as a target."

THE PERILS OF POPCORN

My husband, Rob, has a THING about burning down the house. "Don't leave the teakettle on, Babe. You'll incinerate our place." The other night he rousted me out of bed at midnight. "What? You left the clothes dryer running? Probably oughta shut it off. By the time the smoke reaches our bedroom, the house will be gone." Once he even closed down the oven when I wasn't looking. "I turned it off. You weren't in the room."

"I was in the bathroom."

"When something's cooking, you have to be in the kitchen." Before my eyes he turned deaf when I tried to explain that ovens are DESIGNED to function when you're not physically present. For Rob, the most logical man I know, the logic has to arrive when he asks for it--from a source that's more exotic than a wife. As to the house burning down . . . apparently he wants me right there, watching, when flames start licking out of the oven.

This same Rob has few problems with stenching up the house. One evening, two weeks ago, he stuck a bag of popcorn in the microwave and set the timer in the dark. Exempt from the watch-the-oven rule, he hobbled back to his chair, using a cane because his knee hadn't quite recovered from its eighth surgery.

I began smelling a smell. Not a good smell. Tentatively, I peeked into the microwave, and quickly slammed it shut. Smoke had already collected into a black, stampeding ball, just waiting for some fool to let it out. "The popcorn's burned!" I shouted toward his chair. "The microwave is full of smoke. I don't dare open the door!"

"Just wait, Babe," he said calmly. "It'll go away." Well, he was right. Some of the smoke escaped without anyone's help. Out through seams and cracks that only a demon could find. Our kitchen took on an overlay of evil. This wasn't your ordinary smoke--it was the kind of chemical effluvium that seeps out of dangerous labs, forcing people to grab gas masks.

Unprotected, I ran around the family room and front hall, opening outside doors, propping them open. The cats were bewildered. She's letting us come and go--at willl? I turned on the attic fan in the hall, which sucks in air from outside. I switched on the fan over the stove. Nothing helped. The foul air grew worse, crept over to Rob's chair.

He said, "You'd better remove the popcorn. Grab it quick and throw it outside." He made it sound easy, but the job actually required preparation. First I ran to the back door, grabbed a lungful of clean air, and holding my breath, I darted to the microwave, grabbed the popcorn, and flung it out toward the garage. Eventually I allowed myself another real breath. But not in the kitchen.

For the rest of the night, our kitchen and family room remained toxic. Unless you stood in an outside doorway, breathing seemed a dangerous option. Inevitably, a question ocurred to me: WHAT did they put in the popcorn? I said to Rob, "Surely you'll never eat THAT again!" And Rob, who would abandon a wheelchair for a penny in the gutter, said, "Well, there's only one more bag." Implying that even one bag of poison was worth saving.

We could only escape the fumes by going to bed.

The next day the two rooms were still alive with odor. A rag dipped in Pinesol and swabbed around the microwave's interior removed a horrible, yellowish layer of scum, but in no way interrupted the smell. A second swabbing was equally useless. Some odors simply can't be overcome. We'd have done as well with the residue from a skunk.

At last, one week later, the kitchen was once again breathable. But not near the microwave. Our appliance survived a bad encounter with popcorn, but now it has putrid pores and bad breath, and so do parts of the family room. You don't have to burn down a house to destroy it. You can actually accomplish the same thing by stinking it to death.



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