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I just threw an excellent time management book in the waste basket.   And good riddance!  What writer has time to turn life upside down and adopt a whole new way of working?   What the organized time management author wants me to throw out might be what delights my muse or gives me the flexibility to follow a story when it’s flowing.

So instead I’m doing the hard work.  I’m giving up computer solitaire.  (Oh, no!  I can’t believe I told all of you I’m giving it up.  Now I have to do it.  For one month).  One habit.  One month.   By the end of the month, I’ll have broken the spell of the game and found out whether it really does feed my muse or just wastes time.

Maybe I won’t write with all that time.  Tonight I worked on my taxes when I was feeling fidgety.  Yesterday, while I was thinking about this step, I tried writing American sentences and short poems for focus.  Tomorrow I might do poets’ word exercises like 12 words that sound like rain on a window or finding 10 words that sound like a peach tastes.

I might clean closets or get on the treadmill.

What I won’t do is solitaire.  One month.  One habit change.   Find out where it takes me.

And I’m inviting you to join me.  Pick a habit, any habit, that wastes your time.  Give it up for a month.  Keep notes.  Try another habit the next month.

Did you see the Kennedy Center Awards last night?  Awesome.

And Mel Brooks had a flop that kept him off Broadway for six years.   What a loss–for all of us!

But he didn’t let it stop them   Robert de Niro’s movies weren’t all stellar.   But he and Martin Scorcese teamed up early and kept going until they’d mastered their media.

Besides talent, what stood out last night was the heart and courage of the national treasures honored at the Kennedy Center.  Racism didn’t stop them.  Flops and bad press didn’t stop them.  Heartbreak became part of the art.

President Obama and the First Lady were actively engrossed, entranced, enjoying the arts, obviously appreciating the artists.   And that’s a huge change from President Bush’s bored expression during earlier award nights–or Laura Bush’s cancelling the state poet laureate’s dinner at the White House so she wouldn’t have to listen to poets who disagreed with her husband about the war.   Finally, a little support for President Kennedy’s dream of art at the heart of our culture.

T.S. Eliot asked a poet’s question I’d like to share with every writer I know:   “What do I have to say that can be said in this form?”

It’s an innocuous question, quieter than Joseph Campbell’s famous recommendation to “Follow your bliss”.”  But Eliot’s question opens doors that Campbell only tells us to expect.

Multi-published writers, blessed by contracts spiraling off into the future, can get tired of writing about cowboys and babies or serial killers.   And along comes Eliot with a question that breathes new life into old forms and brings back the bliss.

Unpublished writers, hanging onto market lists as if they were promises, need Eliot, too.   When editors say they want the same thing, but different, Eliot’s question is as valuable as a great chef’s talent for making the same old dish new and enticing and memorable.

What each person has to say is the creative spark that lifts a story out of the ordinary.

What you have to say comes out of your own life, and it can be a hard-won lesson for your main character or a hobby you share.  It may be your yearning to shop on Rodeo Drive that makes a heroine lust for shoes–or it may be your memory, like mine, of happy winter days in a kitchen where hot chocolate and clothes warmed around a fireplace made winter mornings a treat.

Eliot, of course, was talking about poetic forms.  You could ask the same question about short stories or novellas or novels of any length.   What do you have to say that needs the intricate repetition of subplots and belongs in a longer novel?   What story is so clear that it belongs in a very short novel or even a novella?   What is a snapshot idea that belongs in a short story?

Best sellers like Bridges of Madison County and Love Story were in shorter forms of the novel, in the form that was right for the story.  But who could compress Rebecca into a short story?  Or expand some of Hemingway’s stories into novels?  Not even the masters.

Julia Cameron recommends an artist’s date a week–an hour or more when you and your inner artist go out to play and to refill the well of creative raw material.  Cameron also says writers and artists need two play dates a week when they’re writing prolifically.

Supreme self-care is something the corporate world seems to have mastered.   Creative workers–writers, artists, performers, composers–need extreme self-care, too.   And many of us are experts at creating reasons we can’t go play.

Right.  And then we reach brain dead instead.  We drag ourselves to computers and just don’t care.

So we all need first aid kits.   For some it’s music, for others perfumes or special oils.   Massages work for me.

But there are writers who make me feel alive and creative.  One evening off to read a book by Elizabeth Lowell, for example, has my brain believing in the magic of story and racing back to my own writing.   There are other writers whose works I love but whose books don’t have the same impact on me.

So now I have a new emerency first aid shelf for my inner artist.  It’s a few books by writers who always inspire me.  I don’t know why it took so long for me to think about that.   Oh, yeah, it’s because it’s so hard not to read those books the minute they come into the house.  But I’m strong.  I can do this.  Or–just buy more.

Dianna:
Mary: What do you know how about collaborating that you wish you’d known before you started your first book with Sherrilyn?

Dianna:  In all honesty, not a thing.  I might have over-thought it on my end and worried too much about “how to collaborate.” As it was, we had about eight weeks to turn in the manuscript and I won’t turn in anything that hasn’t been through outside cold reads so we needed time for that, too.  Our editor loved the first book, sent back a few edits then we polished the last time and sent it through two more reads before handing the book in.  After the first one, we just continued as we’d started.  I think I’m very fortunate in how both collaborations have turned out, but part of that comes from the company you keep.  I like to think I choose intelligent, pleasant and creatively-generous people to spend my time around,  then try to return the same courtesy and genuine consideration to them.

Mary: I’m asking such serious questions–but all three of you are women with great senses of humor.  Is there anything you’d like to say about the importance of laughter in a writing partnership?

Dianna:  LOL – there is NO way to collaborate UNLESS you have a sense of humor.  Mary and I work by phone (she lives in the Pacific Northwest and I live in the Southeast) sometimes for hours.  She is an amazing author just based on her writing, but finding out she types everything with two fingers totally blew me away (I want all of you who take her online classes to think about those detailed responses she gives hundreds of writers at a time).  Once when we were working via phone with our files open on each computer.  I was telling her something we needed to change then said, “Wait, I’ll make the changes here because you’re only using two fingers.”  She replied, “I’m using the third one now.”  I told her I couldn’t see it with the curve of the earth and all. <g>  Sherri and I write snarky comments to each other in brackets all the time and have to remember to take them out before sending in the pages.  During the final polish on the first book, we were in her cabin working in two different rooms and emailing each other finished chapters.  I got up at one point and walked in to where she was sitting and pointed to a line on a hard copy.  I asked what that meant.  She thought “I” had written it and I thought she’d written it.  We decided to delete it and act like it never happened. <g>

Mary:  And finally, although I know you’re all good friends as well as writing partners, do you also have written agreements specifying your responsibilities for the work and your profit shares?

Dianna:  I suggest to all writers who plan to collaborate that they be very clear about the terms of their agreement and work out the details in a way that is acceptable for everyone – in advance of starting.  I follow that advice myself.  Having things in writing shows that you are approaching your partnership as a business person and simplifies things down the road if either of you change your mind.

Mary:  Is there anything else you’d like to share about collaborating?

Dianna:  The only other thing I will add is that collaborating isn’t easier than writing solo.  I know you may think sometimes it is when you’re beating your head against the wall trying to finish a book, but collaborating is something you do only because the two of you on that particular project are going to create something greater than each of you on your own.  You will write other things by yourself that are outstanding, but a collaboration is the blending of two talents to come up with something unexpected and fresh.  Go into a collaboration only to create a powerful story and be willing to hear the other person’s ideas.  If you have any other reason for co-writing a story and have your mind set on exactly how that book has to be written – then do it yourself and save a friendship

Mary:  Dianna, you’re amazing.  Thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with all of us.

Mary: Sherrilyn had already written one book in the B.A.D. series before your collaboration on the next two books. Did you write a detailed “bible” for the series?

Dianna:
Nope. No bible…yet. I’d read the other books and sometimes go back through to cross reference information I don’t know when I’m working on the story. But I have someone who is building a bible based on a template I created to help both of us, because sometimes I’ll ask Sherri something and neither one of us know the answer without digging. We all know how annoying it is to read that someone had green eyes in one book and brown eyes later on. It’s generally the small details that hang us up, but those are the important ones, too.

Mary: Can you describe your role and the way you work with each of your collaborators?

Dianna: It’s hard to define a role since I feel I work equally with Mary and with Sherri.  Sometimes one of us will say “I’ll do the edits, you do X” then swap out the next time.  With Mary, we worked together through every step of building the programs and reviewing movies to fill out the templates for examples.  We traded off handling communications with our publisher at times, depending on who was the least busy.  Sherri and I see each other so much on the road and talk pretty much every day so, again, we work out what is the best time management.  I do handle the edits on all our BAD Agency books since I’m not dyslexic (Sherri is), which means we can send in very clean stories then only have to do maybe a day or two on edits.  On the other hand, Sherri takes on a lot of the marketing part that is very helpful for me since I don’t have a staff of people.  I don’t know that I’d be as happy working with someone who wanted to divide the work in some calculated way.  I think when both people in a collaboration are pulling in the right direction the work load feels evenly distributed.

Mary:  What qualities does it take to make a great collaboration.  Is friendship your glue or did the collaboration make the friendship close?

Dianna:  I warn writers who are friends to be careful about jumping into a collaboration.   Mary and I’d been working together teaching workshops for a while so we knew who we were going to be partnering with as far as business ethics, dependability, temperament and such.  I would have to say collaborating on  nonfiction would be easier than trying out fiction the first time, because there isn’t as much creative leeway.  When it comes to fiction – that’s a matter of serious trust.  I think in my and Sherri’s favor was the fact that we had become good friends, the kind that are honest with each other.  If we had tried this when we first met and had been friends for only 6 months it might not have worked so well just because it takes a lot of trust. Trust is something that is earned.  By the time we collaborated, Sherri and I had traveled internationally with each other and toured a lot.  If you tour with someone for 3 weeks straight, flying to a different city every day, less than five hours sleep a night and little food, you’ll either kill each other or know you can do anything together.  We’d gone through all that when she asked me to co-write.  And even knowing all that, our major concern – after the quality of the story – was that we did not lose our friendship.  But Sherri trusts me as a writer and I trust her judgment.  It’s equally balanced, which says a hell of a lot for Sherri since she’s the one with far more background in publishing than me.  Also, Pocket was all for us creating this high concept world filled with conspiracy.  I love the series and so appreciate the feedback we’re getting from readers.

Mary: Do you have multiple books in mind for each partnership or do you just take it one project at a time?

Dianna: Mary and I have other books planned, but we’re putting our fiction ahead of our nonfiction.  Mary has a major project she’s working on that we want to give her time to complete before we start another nonfiction project.  The BAD Agency series with Sherri  is arced over a lot of books right now.  The first major arc may hit around novel number eight.  Then the series will take a new turn.  That’s just one of the ways the series changed when we pushed it up to a romantic thriller.

Rita-winner Dianna Love is both generous in her support of other writers and disciplined in her own prolific schedule that includes both collaboration and independent writing.  Dianma and Mary Buckham are coming to Albuquerque this week end, presenting an all-day workshop they donated to raise money for diabetes research.  Sherrilyn Kenyon (#1 NYT bestselling author) will be present as an honored guest, and Saturday evening all three authors will be at Borders Uptown for a booksigning with other authors.

Mary :  I have two Dianna Love books on my desk, and they’re both collaborative works, a novel with Sherrilyn Kenyon and a nonfiction book with Mary Buckham.  And you just mentioned a new collaboration with a third author.  Can you talk about that, too?

Dianna:  It’s interesting even to me to have several collaborations.  I never planned on cowriting with anyone, but it just happened.  The collaboration on Break Into Fiction®: 11 Steps to Building a Story that Sells came from the Break Into Fiction® program I created with Mary Buckham for workshops we teach nationally. The response to these workshops was overwhelming in a good way, but we quickly realized we’d never be able to share the information with as many struggling writers as in a book.  And we were getting requests from all over the world for the book before we even seriously discussed writing it.

The collaboration with Sherrilyn Kenyon came totally by accident.  I tour every year with her and during one of these multi-week jaunts we started talking about her BAD Agency suspense series (she’d only released one full length novel).  Sherri felt the series could be stronger, but she had reservations about her voice suiting dark and edgy suspense.  I started brainstorming her next story just to give her ideas about how it could be much bigger and edgier – more of a romantic thriller, something larger than romantic suspense.  That’s when she asked me to co-write the series.  What was my answer?  Well, my mama drowned the dumb kids <g>.  Of course, I said yes, but she and I had become very close friends so my only qualification was that we try one book to see if we could do it and still remain friends.  We’ve just turned in our third collaboration – SILENT TRUTH – that will be out April 20, 2010, so we think it’s working out well.

As for the other collaboration, I’ll share more on that when I know more, but the book is completed and being considered.  It’s a mainstream thriller that’s high concept.  My co-writer was an NBC anchor for 46 years and a hoot to work with.  I’m also working on a solo project…just trying to stay busy.

Mary:  You’re a plotter.  Mary Buckham also plots everything in advance, and Sherrilyn Kenyon is a “pantser” who doesn’t want to know the outcome until she writes it.   So how does that affect your role?  Is your contribution and your work style different with each of the other authors?   Or is it just different because one’s nonfiction and the other fiction?

Dianna:  Mary and I think very much alike when it comes to the craft of writing and creating stories.  Even so, we have our own writing process.  I feel very strongly about writers sticking to their “process” of being a plotter or a pantser (seat-of-the-pants writer) or a hybrid like me.  I like to flush out a first couple scenes to get a feel for the characters then I plot, because the suspense threads in the books I’m doing with Sherri are so complex it’s important to know where it’s going.  Sherri and I brainstorm so it’s not like she is writing blind, but she does not read the plot or outline before she writes on the story.

We have no set program for collaborating other than I like to start the stories because I like setting up the opening that is often a black ops operation for the BAD or Bureau of American Defense Agency series.  Sherri and I stop at random places to change off – middle of a scene is normal.  We both edit each other’s writing to give the book the feel of one voice.  We have one rule – No sacred cows.  We both edit at will, because the story is all that matters.  Sherri doesn’t like to know the exact details of the ending, but she knows where it’s going.

We have different processes, but both understand where the story is going.  Something I explain to new writers who are pantsers is that Sherri is not just a gifted writer, but she’s been doing this her entire life.  She’s way past the learning curve of figuring out what has to happen to the characters and the plot to end up with a powerful story.  If a new writer is willing to put in those years of writing constantly they will also reach that learning curve at some point.  What Mary and I offer them in Break Into Fiction® is a shorter learning curve.

How well are your important relationships working?   Is reciptocity still there?  Are you letting time slip away and erode important connections?  Or are you being stifled by a relationship that has grown too close?

Here’s a simple way to journal about vital relationships and keep them alive and thriving over time with just minutes a day:

On the first page of a notebook or journal (inexpensive spiral notebooks are perfect for this, but so are old journals with blank pages at the end you haven’t used) make a list of the days of the week and write the name of an important person in your life next to each of those days.   My current list, for example, might look like this:

Sunday:  My husband

Monday:  Our daughter

Tuesday:  Our older son

Wednesday:  Our younger son

Thursday, Friday and Saturday:  Our grandchildren

But what about all those other important people?   I could expand the list to 14 (two complete weeks) or 15 (halving the month) or even 31 (if I had a really complex life).   Or I could group the grandchildren and our oldest son on one day as older son’s family, neatly tucking our daughter-in-law into the family group.

You might want to do one list for family and one for co-workers or friends.   Or you might want to monitor one group for awhile, then switch.

However you make your list, on the appointed day of the week (or date in the month), take five minutes to assess how you’re faring with that relationship since the last time you wrote about it.   Look at the quality and not just the quantity of your contacts.  How current are you with each other’s lives?

Are you happy with the relatinship as it is now?   Would you like to be closer?  Or a bit less cozy?

Is it working?  (And notice that we’re sometimes happy with unhealthy relatinships even if they’re not functioning–and we need to recognize that situation when it arises.)

Barring traumas, which get special consideration for a time, is it a two-way relationship or one in which one of you does all the nurturing and the other barely participates.  (In some working relationships, that’s not unhealthy, by the way; it might be your boss’s management style to stand apart when things are flowing well, but it’s a warning sign for personal and emotional relationships.)

One week, even one month, doesn’t make or define a relationship.   But over time, a picture emerges.  If a relatioship is out of balance week after week, the situation needs to be addressed.

There are other journal tools that will help you once you’ve made an assessment.   You might write an unsent letter to get rid of anger or excessive emotions in order to think more clearly about what you do want from the relationship and what you’re willing to do to improve it.

You may want to dialogue with the other person.  Maybe what doesn’t function for you does function for the other person–and you have to make your own choices based on that knowledge.

Or you could work with lists or poems, even drawings.  My journal workshop, Nurturing the Writer Within, is filled with ideas for working on your life, and it’s available as a package from maryo@iowapoet.com for $20 ($25 if you’d like to have a CD mailed to you instead of receiving lessons by email attachment).

American idioms, yes.  Anyone with a Brit or Aussie in the family knows about American idioms.  And I, of course, live and write in New Mexico where the idioms of multiple languages abound.

But the American sentence is a new and intriguing idea.  It’s a Japanese import, Allen Ginsburg’s variation on the Japanese haiku.

As all of you probably know, a haiku is a poetry form with 17 counted syllables, usually arranged 5, 7, 5 (although written in a straight line in Japanese).  So Ginsburg restored the idea of the straight line of 17 syllables, with the syntax needed for a full sentence, and called it the American sentence.

For quick journal entries, try writing an American sentence a day.

Morning pages focus energy, move me toward the new morning’s joy

Sunrise over Sandias, pink and lush as their watermelon  name.

Granddaughters on facebook, spanning miles, sharing high tech and high touch smiles.

Or, perhaps, a way to find the heart of a story.

A way to hear the syllables of language, to make your words fresh in a new way.

Or just another way to play with language, delight in being a writer.

I’d love to see comments on what you do with American sentences.

William Safire, whose death appeared in a NY Times news alert this morning, had a mind I will miss.

I won’t miss his politics.   Safire was one of Richard Nixon’s speechwriters while I was an advocate for Nixon’s impeachment.

But Safire and words…one of the masters of the wordsmith’s art.   I was a writer surrounded by people who said (lovingly and hopefully) “Oh, if you’re only writing today…”

And then there was Safire, writing brilliantly about language, about the importance of words.  I couldn’t support his vision of the world, but I’m grateful for his books and columns that supported mine.

Bon voyage, Mr. Safire.