Warmth has returned to the Niagara wine belt, and with it comes a thousand muse-murdering distractions. How does a writer stay focused on her pages when trilling birds are building nests (ok, maybe they don’t do this yet, maybe they’re only dry humping at this point), the construction guys are out (hellooooo hard bodies!), the untended garden is shaming  me with its drab floral corpses and exposed clay (o, neglected garden, where is thy mantle of mulch?). I have the rare urge to clean everything in this house from sinister cellar to little peaked roof, but that has to wait, because my Word Count tool–that tyrant, that bully, that big doody-head–is informing me that today I have written: 0 words. That can’t be good.

Since I no longer believe in writer’s block (though I have imposed the phrase on my mood in the past) I have been forced to learn some strategies to staying on track. If you do believe in the traditional my-muse-is-silent-therefore-I-cannot-create view of writer’s block, ask yourself if any of these methods might help you command the muse’s attention. If they wouldn’t help, perhaps giving your muse a swift backhand might work (unless your muse is an actual person, then stick to wedgies and nipple-twists).

1. Sharpen the Saw (StS). This is something my husband prescribes for burn-out. He’s not an artist, but he’s lived with one long enough to know the signs. Where he learned StS, I know not, but what I do know is this: it works wonders. In the same way that cutting wood with a dull saw fails, writing with a dulled mind also falls short. Perhaps the ease with which you are distracted today is an indication that you simply need an StS day. Take a walk, read something you’ve been putting off, watch an old movie, crank some tunes, take a snooze, teach your dog to maul pig carcasses in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, cook something interesting. Wait, did I say snooze? Don’t do that, that’s absurd.

2. Refocus the Lens. Say you’re writing an historical romance novel about moss monsters invading 17th century Earth from a rift in reality originating in the Paris Catacombs. You might want to consider a good psychiatrist, because that’s weird. Also: you might want to look up the word “romance” as it applies to genre fiction, because you might be in trouble unless those moss monsters are dreamy alpha males invading Earth in some sexy swashbuckling fashion (roses and a reach-around? Clearly I know nothing of romance and cannot help you). But while you’re waiting to see that shrink (hint: don’t tell him you have lurid sex fantasies about little green plant people) you might want to Refocus your Lens with research. Surely, there’s more you can learn about the Paris Catacombs that would make a difference to a subplot? No? You’re an expert? You were born there? In the Catacombs? Oh, just conceived. Well, that doesn’t count.

Try using your thesaurus to make a list of possible words you might use to describe moss men (no, moss men would not have rippling abs, but they might have lichen infecting their bush. Investigate, researcher!). While this Refocus the Lens day might not be writing per se, it’s vital in helping you remember what’s important (and fun) about your story. Fleshing out details is never a waste of time.

3. Jackknife! This might be my favourite non-writing-day activity; since it’s fluff writing which probably won’t be used, the pressure of saying the Right Thing is negated completely, and your creative center can trip happily along, buzzing with some fresh perspectives on a novel that might be starting to feel more like work than fun. Middles have this meh effect on me, so I use the Jackknife to stir the shit (boy, that didn’t sound right at all. Please don’t quote me on that). The Jackknife involves taking the last thing you wrote, just the end of it, and throwing it in the opposite direction to see what would happen. Fold it like a tractor trailer accident on the QEW, spilling characters out of the cab, slicing plot lines like fuel hoses, busting relationships like windshields (enough? Did I hear an “uncle”? OK), until it’s all kinds of wrong. Don’t be afraid: you’re probably not using it, so it’s fine to mess around. Ask the “what if”s. Fiddle with the “she’d never do this, but …”s. Occasionally, Jackknifing leads to surprise developments that can be used in your work. More often, it reinforces that you were on the right track all along, and the uncomfortable bend in plot forces your attention back to your original outline. 

4. Dreamworks. No, not the movie production company. I’m talking about your subconscious, and putting it to work for you overnight. Your moss monster novel (which you’ve now changed to an erotica novel, tentatively entitled “The Grass is Greener”, you cheeky bugger, you) has hit a point where you’re not sure whether to stick to your original outline, or follow an intriguing tangent. Or, perhaps you had no outline, and you write like I do–willy nilly and hoping for the best. You have ideas, and options, but commiting to them on paper (or virtual paperspace) is making you feel squinky (Squinky: (adj) altogether icky, as in “I just saw Saw 3D and now I feel squinky, please pass the brain bleach.”). Jot down all of the possibles just before bed, and put them out of your mind. Your subconscious will ruminate on the problem while you sleep. It’s like having a little grey writing coach in your skull. Actually, that would be terrifying. How would you get him out? Could you hear him up there, whispering plot ideas to you? Would his plots become schemes for his escape involving a garden claw and some pliers? Oh great, now I’ll never sleep tonight …

5. Read. Read, read, read. And this time, I mean your own words. Take a time-out to go over what you’ve already accomplished. Are there places in the book that really shine? Try to remember how it felt to write that. Were your fingers flying? Did the words come out before you even knew what you were going to type? Are there places in the book that fall flat? Can you improve on them today, while you’re not making strides to add to the meat of your novel? Take your story somewhere else: a park, a friend’s house, a coffee shop, to prison, to bed, to the back porch. Read it out loud. Does it flow well when spoken aloud? Are there phrases over which you stammer? Does the dialogue ring true? Do your characters sound distinct from one another? Mark for later those places you feel need a boost or a rewrite (and yes, I do work in hard copy when I do rereads. This wee author loves a nice fresh red pen and some stick-it notes). 

I hope this helps/inspires my writerly friends and my readers from blogland. Do you have favourite methods for getting around the distractions and doldrums, the stagnations, slumps and stallings?  When do you find you have the most trouble writing? Is it seasonal, based on personal commitments, or something else entirely?

 (Author’s note: AJ Aalto is currently seeking agent representation for Touched, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Chronicles, while completing the first draft of her second novel, Death Rejoices, Book Two of the same. She may also be standing in front of her bathroom mirror, snort-giggling at exploratory homemade zombie noises, like all horror writers are wont to do.)

Greetings to my new readers. Before we begin, I offer you the following pro-tip: Zombies can’t crouch, and they’re piss-poor climbers. How do I know this? I have bad knees. But AJ, what the crap does that have to do with zombies, you ask? Follow my logic: zombies are reanimated dead people. I am alive. Therefore, no matter how bad my knees are, they must be better than dead knees, no? Humour me, or rub this Ben Gay clockwise on my kneecaps. Choose wisely, my friends.

Point of View: First Person

As the author of a deeply-flawed protagonist, I’m compelled to dig pretty deep into the crudpuddle of humanity to get my head around some of her knee-jerk reactions. Many writers will tell you, sometimes a character shocks the hell out of  her author. My main character, Marnie Baranuik, is an ex-pro psychic,cookie addict and the reluctant guardian of a fussypants vampire. She’s more Mr. Magoo than MacGyver, is under no illusions about it and makes no apologies for it. I try to make her more heroic, I really do, but it never feels right. And bihourly (or, on a day when I’ve indulged my vein-shuddering need for 13 X-large Tim Hortons teas and a 6-pack of Apple Fritters, on an every-other-minute basis) she manages to make me choke a little on my tongue. 

(Side-note: wondering for the first time if there’s a measurable relationship between author’s caffeine intake and character’s use of the word “fuckspigot”. Will investigate presently.)

I’ll sit down to write a triumphant scene of her kicking evil in the gonads, and mentally will tell this character: “OK, Marnie, bust that shit open and drop his ass!” But by the time I’m done the scene, she’s managed a brief, screaming trip down a hill on a stolen motorcycle and executed a textbook face-plant into a hedge. The bad guy is dead, but only because she accidentally plowed through him. She did have a fist-fight. It was with a shrub. This does not in any way resemble the mission I sent her on. 

After a nerd-raging author tantrum (which may or may not involve a dutiful slap across my own face), I reread, struck silent in awe: once again, my character has expressly disobeyed my direct orders and power-slid toward self-destruction. How? How did this happen? More troubling, how did this happen without my permission? If someone started a dead pool on the likelihood of my character biting the big one, I’d be able to participate, having no prior information of nor control over her misadventures.

(Side-note: wondering now if there’s a measurable relationship between the degree of free reign Marnie has in these stories and the size of the drooling hole in my brain.)

Friends who have beta-read my first/third/eight hundredth drafts of Touched, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Chronicles will tell me “uh, that’s so you” (kindly imagine if you will their grand rolling of eyeballs; they are disgusted by my failed attempts at coolness). I’m blown away, because while Marnie is geek-smart and funny, like yours truly *cough*, her personality is often horrible, horrible! This makes me wonder, if I’m as crass and avoidant as Marnie, why are these people my friends? How do they put up with me? Guess I’m not the only fan of jerks.

It also leads me to wonder, if Marnie is some form of me … do I secretly want to go kamikaze on a Kawasaki, get drop-kicked by little old ladies and pelt down a dark road pursued by a zombie dentist with a dick-hole in his chimp suit, punting aside the defiled husk that was my pride?

Actually, who doesn’t? That’s kooky talk.  

(Author’s note: AJ Aalto is currently seeking agent representation for Touched, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Chronicles, while completing the first draft of her second novel, Death Rejoices, Book Two of the same. She may also be standing in front of her bathroom mirror, snort-giggling at exploratory homemade zombie noises, like all horror writers are wont to do.)

(UPDATE: AJ Aalto is no longer seeking agent representation, as the novel ~Touched~ was launched in eBook format in September of 2011. http://amzn.to/pR0ifw )

I meant to blog sooner, but shortly after I created this page I came down with an accute case of uninteresting with symptomatic boredom, an illness I normally only recognize in certain members of my extended family. Troubling, indeed. I can’t promise I’m more interesting today; in fact, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t hit Interesting without the help of 10 professional con artists and a troop of circus freaks, but I’ll do my best.

I’m back on my special “Writer, Thin-ify Thyself!” diet (she lied, quietly munching on a pecan tart)  and being very healthy, what with all the yoga and daily jogs on the treadmill (lies, all lies) and drinking decaf green tea (blerg! I mean, yum!). Also: I’m working super-hard on the novel rewrites (read: playing pointless games on Facebook while eating the aforementioned tarts, which aren’t even pecan but caramel butter tarts–see? I lie about everything! Maybe I’m not even eating tarts.  You’ll never know for sure.)

For those who don’t know me, I’m currently working on brushing-up my first completed book –a horror novel chock full of monstery goodness of a non-cereal and non-“prom date” sort– in preparation for that bloodcurdling next step: finding an agent or a publisher, whichever I’m lucky enough to procure first. I hope the world of publication isn’t scarier than the novel. I’m reasonably sure there will be fewer ghouls; it’s the only thing that helps me sleep at night.

(My first offer from an agent came from this guy.  I’m not saying it’s a trick for sure, but somethin’ smells “off” ….)

Early this morning, sitting in my car in front of a bookstore at 4 am, I wrote longhand on that flat stuff with one of those lead sticks, like a friggin’ caveman. I was checking to see if I still could work my fingers in a non-tapping motion. My hand couldn’t keep up with my brain, and I ended up with smudgy eraser marks and lots of holes in the page where I had a temper tantrum and stabbed the legal pad 100 times (is murdering a legal pad ironic?) snarling: “kaamea ilma! kaamea ilma!”, which is actually Finnish for “what awful weather” and has nothing at all to do with writing, or words, or my stupid slow appendages, but it must have sounded pretty badass at the time: the people in the other cars appeared genuinely worried.

The battle between myself and the ghost of Hemingway continues. Not yet to be bored to tears with my stubborn refusal to admit coincidences? Let me catch you up: it all began last November, when I toured his home in Key West. I was thinking inappropriate thoughts about Papa Hemingway’s drinking and his suicide (mostly, that I could understand both, but couldn’t understand why the tour guide neglected to mention either), when I thought to whisper these thoughts to my husband. A coconut whipped past my head from above, cracked into the cement between us with an ungodly noise, startling the tour group into girlish eeeeps; I’m pretty sure the tour guide nearly shat himself. After a moment of stunned silence, I whispered “Sorry, Papa”. But then, I did mention I’m a liar, right?

So this November, my husband and I went to Cuba. One night after too much sun and seafood I had the audacity to suggest we “seek out Hemingway’s Cuban getaway”, because I was under the impression he had one. Once again, I got the coconut-shied-at-skull treatment, this time not two feet from our room’s front door and barely an inch from my noggin. This has taught me two things: 1) I should never mention the name Hemingway aloud, especially in the vicinity of palm trees, and 2) Papa’s afterlife-aim sucks. My ghost would have totally smoked Hemingway’s big head, just sayin’.

Then, this morning, during my pre-work writing session in the cramped front seat of my Toyota Tercel, a thought popped into my head: “I bet Hemingway had no problem writing longhand on paper, which he may have done, not like you’d know, as you’re an uneducated dolt. Also: you completely suck, AJ. You really and truly do.” Now, obviously these thoughts were placed in my head by Papa’s ghost; I might not be a huge fan of myself, but I know I don’t completely suck.

I only mostly suck, with days of psuedo-cleverness punctuated by weeks of semi-coherent nonsense. For instance, I spent a large portion of the last hour debating which cheese would be best if one were going to use dairy products to build the Eiffel Tower. (I chose Beaufort, obviously. It’s the only correct answer.) Some people would think this a grand waste of time, but you never know when you’re going to need information like this. It could inspire a whole new chapter in the novel, although I don’t see how, and if it does, my Beta Reader in Chief is likely to scowl and kick me in the box. A patient wordsmith, she is not. Some completely unrelated advice? … don’t try on your husband’s groin-protective cup thingy if he’s at all likely to walk in on you in the bedroom, to see you standing there with it dangling below your crotch. It’s damn near impossible to explain.

Getting back to Hemingway, I suppose I sort of envy him. Not because he’s dead, but because I think I’d like to drink after my writing sessions. Heavily. If I were single, I might. If I were irresponsible, I would. Because without some chemical assistance, trying to keep my brain focused on one track while it’s skittering off in 8 directions is causing a)self-flaggelation of the non-sexual sort, b)a pile-up of scraps, of jotted notes for “later”, whenever that might come, c) a back-up of unfinished projects, including house renos, learning Finnish, trying to cook, mysteries, fantasies, housework, talking to living human beings, research, etc etc. It’s enough to make a girl drive a nail in her brain just to keep it still for a second. And it’s not the caffeine’s fault (she lied smoothly, tucking 3 Tim Hortons XLRG cups behind her monitor, on the off-chance you people can see it somehow) .

All in all, my life isn’t quite what I think it should be right now. I could write the perfect AJ, and you’d never know the difference, would you? I’d plop in that perfect version of me to prance around in a stress-free environment, where words flow smoothly whether by keyboard or pencil, where novel rewrites get done on time, and the house is clean and the dog hardly ever barks at wind and leaves and every creak the old house makes, and my hair isn’t going grey above disturbing new forehead wrinkles, and my ass is suddenly, magically, 2 sizes smaller. She, Perfect Version, has discipline and energy for yoga, walks–nay, runs–5 miles a day on the treadmill, uphill there and back, and knows how to cook like a genius. She speaks fluent English, French and Finnish, and knows how to serve this Harvey’s Bristol Cream she bought on a whim at the Duty Free at the Peace Bridge.

She certainly isn’t sitting on her big ass swilling cold, heavily-sugared tea, clumsily trying to repeat: “seuraavissa liikennevaloissa” to a language CD but failing at rolling her “r”s in the middle of words, and fantasizing about that last caramel butter tart while trying to find her roll of cinnamon Certs under a shoulder-high mound of random scribbled notes from a disorganized mind. That’s for damn sure.