Category: Core Story Club

The Writer’s Compass – No Chores Allowed- BLOG

April 11, 2018

NO CHORES ALLOWED

I don’t like vacuuming, and I particularly don’t enjoy vacuuming stairs. In order to do it well, I have to change the nozel, plug and unplug the vacuum, position the vacuum itself sideways across each step so it doesn’t fall off as I move up or down, and no matter what I try, I always end up banging or nicking the wall along the way.  Ugggggghhhh it’s just too much work. Vacuuming stairs is totally a chore.

I don’t mind doing the dishes. Yes, I have to give up twenty minutes of my life. Yes, I’m often cleaning up someone else’s jam, or scraping macaroni and cheese off someone else’s lunch pot, but it’s not so bad. Doing dishes may be work, but it doesn’t feel like a chore to me.

I don’t really have an opinion about laundry anymore. It’s not work or a chore, it’s a habit. If I grumbled every time I unballed a dirty sock or folded a towel, laundry would be pretty obnoxious for me. I just do it. It’s not work. It’s not a chore. It’s become a practice.

Here’s a Zen Proverb I love because it sums up chores/work/practices and writing beautifully:

Before enlightenment;

chop wood carry water.

After enlightenment;

chop wood carry water. 

You’re likely writing something or you wouldn’t be reading this post. You’re probably hoping to find a tip to make your writing process easier, more efficient and maybe even more joyful.

So here it is: Don’t make writing a chore.

That’s it. That’s all. Make writing a choice by building a practice around it. Simply write and keep writing, and as you write, explore new ways to show up to the page again and again and again until the process becomes your practice and it feels like coming home.

Here are some tips to developing your writing practice:

  • Notice when words come easy for you. Is it when you’re the most awake with more thinking power? Is it when it’s late and there’s less energy to resist? Is it something else?
  • Try commiting to a small daily word count. Some people do their best work in a sustainable way with a 300-500 daily word count. Did you know Stephen King follows a 3000/day word count and some days he’s done before 11:30am? (BTW… if this makes you groan, you’re in good company. This is not my process).
  • Try linking writing with a regular activity. E.G. everytime you’re on the bus, write 300 words in your notebook.
  • Try using writing prompts by finishing a sentence which then becomes a paragraph. Set a timer for three minutes.
  • Try blocking out one, three to four day weekend per month and create a writing retreat around it. BTW…this is how I write in a non-chore, non-work way. I call myself an immersive writer.

These are just a few ideas to play with and there are oodles more out there. We’ll talk about many of them here.

Here’s the bottomline:  Don’t make writing a chore or you’ll be vacumming stairs all day, and who wants to do that? Bleccchhhhh…. not me, and Meribeth and I certainly don’t want that for you.

We want to help you write, finish and deliver your book… repeat.

Here’s to your writing adventure,

Much love,

TinaO

TinaO is a Writer, Story Coach and the other half of The Writer’s Compass with Meribeth Deen. She is the host of the TinaOShow, collecting and telling Stories from the Core and the co-owner with Gina Best of The Leap Learning Lab. The Writer’s Compass encourages writers to get off the beaten path and create impactful stories from the core. We teach: writing isn’t precious, it’s a practice. 
Want to join our online writing group? Check out our private Facebook Group: Core Story Writers here.

Why Write? – VIDEO

September 18, 2017

Do you write for the love of language?

Do you write to learn?

To fall in?

To discover?

Why do you write?

Let’s keep this really simple. Meribeth and I write because it’s how we connect with ourselves, with you, and with the world. Language is like oxygen for us. Writing is Breathing. Writing is your birthright.

Seriously, it is.

Here are some thoughts we shared under an umbrella on a rainy day on the West Coast. We’re a little pixelated because this started out as a Facebook Live so it’s been downloaded and uploaded a few times… but hey, it’s not about how we look, it’s about the message right?

What is important for you to claim, to understand, to share, to experience, to love, to deepen with?

Here’s to YOU and YOUR WRITING…

with support,

TinaO & Meribeth

TinaO and Meribeth Deen are the creators of The Writer’s Compass, a method of writing that encourages being lost as a way to create, connect and deliver writing from the core. Want to join in our online writing group? Check out our Private Facebook Group: Core Story Writers here. You can also find our programs: WRITE and PUBLISH on The Leap Learning Lab.

Core Story Writing Prompt – Where the Wild Things Are – VIDEO

April 20, 2017

Our communication is only ever as powerful as the core we’re willing to plug into.  It’s kind of like saying a team is only as strong as it’s weakest link or, the strength of how you start ‘off the block’ often sets up the fire of how you finish. Writing from the core is like being powered straight from the source. It takes courage and muscle and a lot of practice. Using writing prompts can help with that.

Every week in my Core Story Club (which I run with my writing partner Meribeth Deen), we post a weekly writing prompt. Today’s is inspired by Maurice Sendak’s book, Where the Wild Things Are which I read as a child and loved so much so that I had to find it and read it to my three boys as they grew up.

Remember this?

I swear I can still smell the carpet in the library I first heard this in.

 

Sendak’s book won multiple awards including the 1964 Caldecott Medal, the most Notable Children’s Books of 1940-1970 (ALA), the 1981 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Illustration, the 1963 & 1982 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book), the Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 1963, 1982 (NYT), and the 1964 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. It was later made into a stunningly evocative film in 2009 by the celebrated director Spike Jonze. I frickin’ love it.

Today, I’m asking you, if you were in the land of Where the Wild Things Are…

What would you do?

How would you live?

What might you say?

Where might you say it?

When might you care the most?

Who would you let yourself be?

Why would you roar?

 

Set your timer for 3 minutes and finish this sentence:  Where the Wild Things Are I…

Keep going – do not cross out

Keep writing – do not erase

Keep breathing – do not crumple up

What does your story want to tell you today?

 

Here’s the thing… I never post without doing it myself, so here is mine.

I’m setting the timer now.

Ready… Set… now I Go…

Where the wild things are I write like a demon. Words spill out of me and I don’t hold back. Where the wild things are I can see full colour and I say the things that my heart wants to sing. The truth is, I feel like I live where the wild things are anyway. I kinda am a wild thing. Okay, so I’m not kinda a wild thing, I am one. I’m afraid of that sometimes. Truly. I wear red because it reminds me that I am that. I wear red because it has a beginning, a middle and an end and the world understands it. Okay, so true that people have opinions about women who wear red. Lady in Red. Revlon Red. Red nails. Oh my goodness that makes me think of Cheap Trick and that album cover with the red leather pants. I was only nine years old when that album came out.  I had lots of opinions about women and men who wear red. I’m a wild thing and I hold on to my red purse, remember my red dock martins, eat red tomatoes and colour my hair red (well sometimes) when I’m brave enough to let the world know how wild I am.  I like primary red. I like that you can’t blend it to make it. It just is. It’s red, wild and wonderful. I’m a wild thing – what can I say?

What do I learn from this?

RED is an expression of my core story even if it’s a secretive part for me. It’s how I share my wild self in a contained kind of way.

How might I use this?

Well… look at my logo.  Interesting right?

Here’s another way to use these prompts.  Our stories come through us in different ways.  How I share my story as a writer is different than how I share as a speaker. I did this writing prompt as a vlog too.  I still timed it. I still did the stream of consciousness thingy without filtering.

JOIN IN THE CORE STORY CLUB HERE

 

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist and a Program Director of PUBLISH with Meribeth Deen for The LEAP Learning Lab. She’s a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub to Live, Give and Be Your Story, plus the deep listening weekend retreat Live Your Best Story. She’s been in the PR and Marketing world since she could put words together and has been a professional network marketer for over twelve years. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey, marketing isn’t make-believe and writing won’t give you an aneurysm (it’s not hard). You can be yourself in all that you do. In fact, that’s what the world is waiting for. 

 

Private vs. Public Readiness to Share your Writing – VIDEO

April 14, 2017

 

The writing process is messy and it’s supposed to be. When you truly dive into a story and let all that you are jumble up with all that your story asks to be, there will be many times when you have no idea which end is up.

And this is good news. When this is your experience, it means you are on the path even if you think you’re lost in the woods.

You look up, flushed, and a bit out of sorts as if you’ve emerged from a deep dive and strangely peaceful even though you’re not sure where the shore is. This is what it feels like to write from your core. You nailed it:  the last paragraph, page, stanza, totally delivered.

You get a bit of a rush. Your confidence spikes and your endorphins kick in. You decide to do the unthinkable: show it to someone. You practically leap over the sofa as your partner comes through the door and thrust your journal at him.  “Read this. Tell me what you think”, you say.  So he does. Then he looks at you funny. But not funny bad, funny weird. You know the face: polite cheeks just a little too high because of the tight smile, and the distant but encouraging eyes.  Yes, he is being super friendly but you can read it all over him. He doesn’t get it. 

You get that dropping full stop in your stomach.  Your bum cheeks let go. You smile back and say “thanks” as he says “it’s good”.

Good.

Right.

Damage done. Your second guessing starts. You start to stagger and stammer through “I just started.  I’m not sure exactly where I’m at yet.  Really. Hey, thanks for looking at it. No really. I’m okay. Thanks for looking at it.”

Then what do you do?

You stop. Right?

Or maybe it’s like this:  You’re writing something deeply personal. It might be a memoir piece.  You might be capturing a sliver of your life that was treacherously difficult but because you lived through it and came through stronger for it you feel an intense desire to write about it. This horrendous thing which like a phoenix, you rose from the ashes as it blazed this knowing inside you: to whom much is given much is expected is WHY you feel compelled to share your story. And so you do. Bravely, courageously and unabashedly let us all in.

Again, this is good.

This IS what we write about.

Your instincts are bang on.

But then something happens.

You write about it instead of into it. You know what you want to say so you say it on purpose. You don’t know this, but your story is now dying a slow painful death inside of you. Because you are so clear about the impact you want to make you take us right to the target but lose us because we didn’t discover it with you. The painful details of your story begin to feel brutal and obvious instead of devastating yet transformative. Your journey takes on a caricature quality because it has become a vehicle to drive instead of a partner to navigate. As the reader, we’re now bored. We’re judging. We stop listening not because we don’t believe you, but because we can’t hear you. We hear your commentary instead.

Harsh right?

I wrote it to protect you from draining all the beauty out of something you treasure as sacred enough to make a difference by giving it away. I want you to have your dream. I want your story of survival into thriving to be protected and nurtured until it’s ready. I want that for you.

You see, your story has to live in order to connect. It has to sit with you as you write it like a mysterious loving friend who word by word lets you in on a precious secret. A part of your writing process is supposed to be unknown to you. We want to go with you as you discover the layers that live between the details, in the pauses, the breaths, and the moments of waiting. But a story needs to be ready for that. Sometimes we have to spend a lot of time alone first, being obvious and hard hitting with our words and images until our bruising heals and we no longer need to give our words away. That’s when we’re free. That’s when it’s time to let someone else in. We invite them we don’t need them.

There is a line between public and personal for every writer and it’s going to be different for you than it is for me. Here’s the way I think about it:  Stories are like children and we’d never send them out into traffic without us – that is, not until they’ve grown up a bit.

Meribeth Deen and I had a good chat about this line today. This is what we came up with.

Want to join in to our Aspiring Author’s Core Story Club, you can do that here.

 

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist and a Program Director of PUBLISH with Meribeth Deen for The LEAP Learning Lab. She’s a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub to Live, Give and Be Your Story, plus the deep listening weekend retreat Live Your Best Story. She’s been in the PR and Marketing world since she could put words together and has been a professional network marketer for over twelve years. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey, marketing isn’t make-believe and writing won’t give you an aneurysm (it’s not hard). You can be yourself in all that you do. In fact, that’s what the world is waiting for.