Category Archives: Nandy Ekle

The Good Ideas

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

The Good Ideas

By Nandy Ekle

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any. 

— Orson Scott Card

 

So where are these thousands of ideas? Everything in your world is the same as it’s always been. The kids fight. The office is business as usual. Dinner must be cooked, kids must be bathed and you finally crawl into bed. Then it starts all over tomorrow.

So where are these thousands of ideas? Everything in your world is the same. Why are the kids fighting? One kid wants his turn on the game console. The solution in the past has always been to give each one a time limit by setting a timer. When the timer dings, he must pass the controller to the next child in line. Only, when the timer goes off, he’s in the middle of a puzzle and nowhere near a saving point. It would be a horrible injustice to force the boy to give up the controller and lose it all. But it’s also not fair to the girl who’s been waiting her turn patiently. So the rule is made that the player must save as soon as possible (within the next three minutes) or allow his character to die. From your place in the other room you suddenly hear the waiting child blurts out, “Will you just die already!”

Story idea?

At the office, business as usual. You boot up your computer and read your email. Pushing the “get work” button, you read a request from a client for a detailed history of every payment ever made. But you’ve been trained and written several of these letters in the past. No problem. You open the other program and realize the client has more than ten payments, each with six different steps to report.

Story idea?

After a day of writing challenging letters, you walk in the door and greet the four other people living in your house–and they all have a starved look deep in their eyes. Oh no! You forgot to thaw something for dinner. Opening the fridge you find a bit of soup, a bag of salad, one and a half carton of eggs, and a couple of bowls of undetermined something.

Story idea?

The kids must be bathed. Yes, they are old enough to bathe themselves, but they must also be coerced to do it. You manage to pull the two wrestling children apart and march them to the bathroom. As you start the water running, the younger one says, “Guess what my brother told me about where babies come from.”

Story idea?

You finally crawl into bed. Exhaustion has crept all through your body and brain. Laying on your back with your head on your pillow, your eyes refuse to close. You have characters running through your head accusing you of all kinds of negligence toward them and their stories. You beg their forgiveness, you’re just too tired to think anymore. But your eyes still don’t close.

Story idea?

Mr. Card was right. There are thousands of story ideas every day. Just change your perspective.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

R.I.P Brain

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

R.I.P Brain

By Nandy Ekle

The alarm rings at a mythical a.m. time. You rub your eyes and roll yourself to a sitting position. Then you hobble to the bathroom with one eye partially open. After your bath/shower and all your other bathroom duties are done, you style your hair, apply your make up, and head to your car.

The sun finally peeks over the horizon just as the traffic thickens and slows. You turn into the parking lot and race for the space closest to the door. As you trudge into the office the sun turns up the heat and your keys twist on your finger.

The computer is sulky and the programs are glitchy. The requests you deal with are confusing and you’re far behind where you should be in your duties.

By the time you get home your characters are screaming for attention. But you still have to prepare a meal and clean up. When the time comes for you to sit and talk with your characters, they have gone to bed.

Welcome to brain dead exhaustion. How in the world do we continue to write in this state? One thing we can do is to read the last couple of pages of the last thing we wrote. This will usually get the voice whispering again. Another thing we can do is read a few pages of a book we enjoy. This also turns on our creative juices. Deep cleansing breaths of oxygen, and maybe a few calisthenic exercises to get the blood to our brains. Set a word count goal. try your hand at some free verse writing.

If none of that works, start a new story. But whatever you do, write SOMETHING.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Who Loves You Baby

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Who Loves You Baby

By Nandy Ekle

The second and fourth Thursdays of every month I subject myself to a bloodletting beyond anything Stephen King could ever write–and I love it. These are the nights my critique group meet.

We six writers sit around a conference room table and expose our deepest thoughts and passions to each other, and then beg to be ripped apart. Afterwards, we gather our shredded souls and hug each other, thank each other, and promise to do it again in two weeks.

This group of tough word lovers is one of the finer things in life. Writing itself is a huge rush; then add reading your work out loud to friends who believe in you enough to tell you the truth about what works and what doesn’t work, what makes them think, makes them laugh, makes them cry. These wonderful brothers and sisters of ink and paper care enough to slap my hands when the writing is bad and to raise me up on a pedestal when the writing is good.

So tonight I raise my glass in the most honorable toast I can put together. You five lovelies have educated me better than I could have dreamed and I love you all. And just so you know, red is an amazingly fantastic color for ink!

So, I guess you, my dear readers, are waiting for some clever bit of inspiration from me as the muse tonight.  Okay. Here it is. Find yourself a critique partner. It really will change your writing life.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Islands in the Sun

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Islands in the Sun

By Nandy Ekle

It’s time for a vacation. Actually, checking my watch a good vacation is way past due.

So where shall we go? What shall we do? The calendar says, “Fall is preparing to fall.” The weatherman says, “Fat chance.” The stress meter says, “Who cares?” This makes the boundaries wide open.

We can go to a tall mountain covered by a dense forest, find a small cabin and sit on the front porch counting the trees. Or we can go to a beach next to the ocean and count the grains of sand.

And really and truly, why do we wait until we have time and money, or until we’re so stressed we begin to make mistakes because we’re trying so hard not to make mistakes? Aren’t we writers? Don’t we possess a great a power in our imaginations?

Exactly.

So take deep cleansing breath and close your eyes. Picture the clear air brusing your face, whether it’s salty from the ocean or woodsy from the forest. Take a deep lungful of the quiet relaxation you smell. Kisten to the slight breeze blowing fluffy white clouds around. And taste the freedom.

While you’re there counting trees/sand, describe what you see. A jellyfish dancing in the water? A doe daintily picking her way through the grass? A pirate ship on the horizen? A bear running between trunks?

Write it all down along with why they’re there.

Now come back home and go back to work.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Calling the Doctor

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Calling the Doctor

By Nandy Ekle

Entire new computer system. Tons of mandatory overtime. Drama going on all around me, in the work place, out of the work place. Chocolate therapy adds weight in places that I never wanted to see weight again. Retail therapy is expensive and piles up the bills. My gripe and scream fits do nothing but get me weird stares.

t’s times like these that I have to remember who and what I am. I am a writer. I’ve been a writer since I was old enough to hold a pencil. Reading stories and telling stories have always been as natural for me as breathing. Words are my toys, companions, my comfort.

When dark rainy days come along, the acceptable way to vent is to write it out. You don’t even have to have a starting place. Just put the pen on the paper–and I do mean pen and paper because the physicality of doing that also has its place–and start writing. Free writing is a prewriting exercise in which you just write the words that come into your head. Spelling and punctuation is absolutely not to be considered during this time.

Several things happen during this process. For one thing, you vent all the frustrations bottled up inside while dealing with unpleasant adventures flinging themselves at your face. Also the word veins in your imagination loosen up and allow a flood of wonderful words to come through. And sometimes the biggest surprise is what lives down under the sludge of a bad day is actually a superhero of a story that’s just been hiding and waiting to be written down.

So when you’re tired and unhappy, take out a pen and paper and try some free writing. The results are amazing.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Who Loves You Baby

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Who Loves You Baby

By Nandy Ekle

The second and fourth Thursdays of every month I subject myself to a bloodletting beyond anything Stephen King could ever write–and I love it. These are the nights my critique group meet.

We six writers sit around a conference room table and expose our deepest thoughts and passions to each other, and then beg to be ripped apart. Afterwards, we gather our shredded souls and hug each other, thank each other, and promise to do it again in two weeks.

This group of tough word lovers is one of the finer things in life. Writing itself is a huge rush; then add reading your work out loud to friends who believe in you enough to tell you the truth about what works and what doesn’t work, what makes them think, makes them laugh, makes them cry. These wonderful brothers and sisters of ink and paper care enough to slap my hands when the writing is bad and to raise me up on a pedestal when the writing is good.

So tonight I raise my glass in the most honorable toast I can put together. You five lovelies have educated me better than I could have dreamed and I love you all. And just so you know, red is an amazingly fantastic color for ink!

So, I guess you, my dear readers, are waiting for some clever bit of inspiration from me as the muse tonight.  Okay. Here it is. Find yourself a critique partner. It really will change your writing life.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Homework

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POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Homework

By Nandy Ekle

The time has come to assign homework.

Here’s the scenario. You’re walking through a bookstore. The hunger for a new story, the smell of new ink, the need to feel new paper is burning in your eyes. You must have a new book.

Standing at the end of the aisle you see hundreds of colorful tomes on the shelves, but they aren’t just waiting to be chosen. They are waving and whistling, competing for your attention.

You saunter down that aisle and hear several books throwing out come-on lines, complimenting you, hawking their words, begging you to take them home.

So, your assignment:  What do they say? How do they seduce you? Leave a comment at the bottom of this blog and tell me what a book says that makes you spend your money and take them to your home. Are they romantic like a lover? Are they whiney like a small child? Or do they threaten you like a scary villain?

Feel free to research this assignment by actually going to a bookstore and walking through it. Just be sure and post your discoveries in the comment section below.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

The Diamond Mine

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The Diamond Mine

By Nandy Ekle

I looked at the dark cave and started picking my way through. The walls were covered with black rocks, but I knew I would be happy by the time I dug through it all. The black dust swirled around all over me as I raised my tool and began digging.

I broke chunks of black rock off the wall and watched them fall to the ground. More black dust flew around the cave and I coughed. It was painful but I finally found a nice sized rock. I brushed all the dust off, then put it in my pocket and headed back to the light.

When I got to my room I rinsed it and put it on my desk. I took out my finer tools and went to work. I looked at the cracks and chips and found the right spot to tap. It didn’t take long, and pretty soon I could see the faint outline of a work of art.

As soon as I identified the shape, I placed the rock in a kiln with high pressurized heat. After a few days I took it out and went back to work. It had changed from a black rock to a harder rock. I sanded and washed and tapped, then started again. All the while I kept thinking about the sculptor who said, “I find the shape in the medium and just knock off the parts that don’t belong.

When I finish the destruction of my lump of coal, I have a beautiful sparkling diamond.

Every story starts out as a lump coal begging to be turned to a valuable diamond. It takes a lot of digging and a lot of shining, but it’s worth every inch of it.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Heart

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Heart

By Nandy Ekle

The heart, the center, the core, the theme, the main idea. This is a very important part of your story. The heart is what the story is about.

Look at anatomy. On the outside we see skin, hair, fingernails. But we don’t see what’s under the skin. We don’t see the bones, the muscles, or the blood in its vessels. But we can look at the skin and see the evidence of those deeper body parts. Our skin has a firm shape because of the bones under it and it’s warm and has a rosy color because of the blood being pumped by the heart through the blood vessels.

Our stories are the same. We talk about story layers all the time, and that’s another good analogy—the onion theory. On the topmost layer of the story you have what’s happening at the moment. The next layer might be what’s going on inside the characters’ heads, and there might be a layer of tension between the characters because of the relationship between them. You could even have a layer of discovery and healing when the relationships change. But the very center of the story, the heart, is what the whole thing is really all about.

The other definition of “heart” I want to talk about sort of fits parallel with this one. Heart equals feelings. One of the best ways to connect with your reader is with emotions. You have a main character that wants something so much they are willing to risk everything to get it. You want your reader to feel this yearning and hunger as much as the character. You want your reader to feel every struggle, every disappointment, every victory with your character. When that happens, the center layer of your story goes right into the reader’s heart and they learn the same lesson the character learns.

In my blog next week, we will look at ways to burrow down into a reader’s heart and make your story become their story.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

The Modern Time Machine

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The Modern Time Machine

By Nandy Ekle

A show of hands; who here gets aggravated with Facebook. It’s okay, you can tell me. I get irritated myself. It’s not the periodic changes and up dates. I understand that things in the technological world constantly need to change. After all, we wouldn’t be where we are today if it didn’t. I also understand that sometimes tiny, minute little things slip between the cracks and that one small dot or slash mark can mean a melt down of enormous proportions.

But I’ll just tell you, the thing that aggravates me is when Facebook decides whose statuses I should be looking at and whose are inconsequential. I accept friendships for a reason—I’m interested in what these new friends have to say.

Now, I also work in a place where I cannot get on Facebook during the day. Therefore when I get home in the evenings, I have a whole day of statuses to go through. And I don’t want to skip around or be transported backward or forward in the day’s news. I want it in order and complete.

During one of these episodes of trying to catch up, the idea suddenly occurred to me that this particular form of social media is as near to a time machine as I’ve ever seen. When I get home in the evenings I am able to go back in time to the start of the day and read to the end of the day. I can even go back further than that. And good friends of mine who have passed on, I can visit their Facebook pages and read their previous statuses, which is almost as good as calling them back to my side.

Using modern amenities of today’s world can open up possibilities to all sorts of abilities for our characters. If there’s a new technological device, learn all you can about it. It will enhance your story and make it believable for your readers.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

 

 

Tag words: Facebook, time machine, technological device, up date