One of my favorite things to do is going on a writing date.  Sometimes I go alone, sometimes I’ll meet up with a fellow writer and we’ll sit and write side-by-side for a while.  Over the past few years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve learned that there’s a certain code for writing out.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

1)  If you’re writing in a cafe or restaurant, try to avoid rush hours.   Chances are, the lunch rush at your favorite cafe will be busy and noisy and not conducive to writing.  If you go during an off-hour, like between meals, not only are you likely to get more writing done because it won’t be as hectic, but you also won’t tick off the staff by taking up a table just to sip coffee and write.

2)  If it’s a cafe with table service, order food and leave a good tip.  This is especially important if you want to become a regular and come back again to write.  Once you’ve established that you’re not just there to take up space and that you’re a good tipper, the waitstaff is more likely to give you some perks, like a regular table or even the occasional freebie.

3)  Know when it’s time to say goodbye to a writing spot.  If your favorite, best-kept-secret spot suddenly becomes THE place to be, then it’s time to find a new writing locale.  There’s this amazing little tea shop near me where I used to go to write and draw in my sketchbook.  It used to be so quiet that I could sit there for two hours and just order a pot of tea (and sometimes they’d even give me a scone on the house!)  Then this place got super-popular and now good luck getting a table for lunch or tea, much less a spot to sit and write.

At the risk of these places getting uber-popular and being overrun with writers, let me share some of my writing spots in NYC:

• Shakespeare Garden in Central Park (that’s where the photos come from – it’s near the Great Lawn, toward the SW end, and near-ish the 81st West Side entrance to the park.)  This beautiful, quiet garden is great for writing or just sitting and contemplating life.
• s’Nice on 8th Ave, just south of 14th St. or in Brooklyn (5th Ave btwn 2nd and 3rd St.) Yummy sandwiches and salads.  They’re sort of sticklers about not using laptops on certain tables but if you sit at the communal table it’s no problem.
• The Atrium at Lincoln Center (Broadway between 62nd and 63rd St.)  Free wifi!  Also the space is completely free and open to the public.  And some Saturdays they even have free live classical music.
• Le Pain Quotidien a Belgian bistro that has branches all over the city.  My favorite one is the Lincoln Center space on 65th between Broadway and CPW.  They get a bit mobbed with the lunch crowd but later in the afternoon it quiets down and is a great place to sit and work.

Do you have a favorite spot to “write out”?  What about the “writing out” code… do you have any additional tips to share?

Before I started writing seriously, before I even started writing fiction at all, I kept a journal.  I have journals dating back to when I was nine years old and my biggest concerns were dealing with the school bully or trying to figure out if The Boy liked me.  Of course, some notebooks have gotten lost over the years, and there are definitely some dry spells in there when I didn’t write at all, but between then and now I have a pretty good written record of what was pressing on my mind through the past twenty-or-so years.

OK, so I kept a journal.  So what?  I’ve learned several things from all this journal-writing and I’ve discovered that not only has it made me a better writer, it’s also made me a better thinker.  If you don’t keep a journal, I highly recommend you start, but before you do, read on to find out more about what you’ll gain from it.

1)  A journal can be whatever you want it to be.  There’s no law that says you have to keep a daily diary or that a journal must record your deepest, secretest thoughts.   The truth is, you can write whatever you want in your journal.  I write a lot of lists: to-do lists, lists of post topics for my blog, lists of character names or story ideas.  You name it… there’s probably a list like that in one of my notebooks.  I take my notebook with me when I go to talks or conferences and jot down notes or interesting quotes from the speakers.  I often find that seeing my notes on paper helps me better understand the concepts at hand.

Tip:  Make journal-writing fun.  Draw cartoons or doodles–iggi started out as a random doodle in one of my journals.  Clip funny pictures and paste them in your notebook.  Oh, and don’t forget… Stickers!

2)  Verbal spillage is OK.  Sometimes you just need your journal to be a catch-all for the junk that’s in your head.  Julia Cameron, of The Artist’s Way, advocates writing 3 pages longhand every morning (she calls them Morning Pages) to get all those mundane ideas out of our heads and onto paper.  Then once we’ve cleared our brains of the clutter, we’re ready to be creative.  I agree with her thinking, though I’ve loosened the requirements for myself.  I don’t always write 3 pages and I rarely do it in the morning because I’m just not functional until I’ve had my coffee.  But I think it’s a great idea to put your nagging thoughts and worries on paper to clear them from your mind.  Once I’ve written in my notebook, my thinking feels sharper, clearer, more focused.  I think that’s why I write so many lists… to get all those pesky ideas out of my head so I can think straight.

Tip:  Try not to let your inner censor interfere with your journal writing.  Toss the words on the page, then shut the notebook and trap them in there so your inner censor can’t judge.

3)  Longhand.  While some people might prefer keeping a journal on their computer or iPad or iPhone or what have you, I am a firm believer in writing longhand.  There are two reasons for this.  First, writing longhand allows your brain time to mull things over between when the thought leaves your mind and when it travels all the way down your arm to your pen.  Typing is more immediate and it’s a lot easier to type without thinking.  If the purpose of keeping a journal is to improve one’s thinking then it stands to reason that longhand would better serve the writer than typing would because longhand forces you to think things over.

Second, I find that handwriting is a great diagnostic tool.  My handwriting changes drastically depending on my mood and state of mind.  Even writers whose handwriting stays pretty stable will see subtle shifts in their print and script over time.  Looking through a notebook, I can quickly tell what mood I was in during a given time period based on how messy the writing is, how big the lettering is or how hard I pressed the pen.  These are all diagnostic clues that tell me what was going on between the lines when I was writing those words.

Tip:  If you use different colored pens, that’s another great insight to what your mood was.  After all, you must’ve chosen that color pen for a reason.

4)  Write something every day.  One of the great things about Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages concept is that by the time you’re done, you’ve already written 3 whole pages and it’s only the morning.  Granted, those pages may be nothing more than lists or gripes or worries but at least you’ve been writing.  I feel the same way about my notebook.  When I feel stressed out or intimidated by the computer, I pull out my notebook and start writing there.  I find it much easier to approach the computer if I already have something written.  If I’m just typing it up, it’s a lot less scary than having to face that blank-screen-of-death.  Writing in a notebook where I can be messy and make mistakes makes writing “no big deal” and the less of a big deal I make my writing, the more of it actually gets done.

Tip:  I used to keep my notebook on the floor right next to my bed so that when I woke up, I would literally trip over it and remember to do some writing.

Today’s Task:  If you don’t keep a journal, go to a store and pick out a notebook that you love, one that will be inviting and fun to write in.  Make your journal writing festive so invest in a pretty-colored pen or some stickers.  If you have old magazines lying around, clip some pretty pictures and paste them on the cover or in your journal.

Tell me, do you keep a journal or notebook?  Have you found that it helps you think more clearly when you sort ideas out on paper?

Hello everyone!

Hope you all had a great week.  I started teaching this week and next week I’ll take on an additional class, so things have been busy busy busy.  But that’s the way I like things to be, so it’s all good.  How about you?  How has your week been?

Before I get to the recap, I wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to our two guest-post authors this week.  Michelle and Merrilee both wrote wonderful posts and shared their insights on various aspects of the creative process.  You guys are great.  Thank you!

Recap of this Week in DIY MFA:

Saturday: Guest Post: Michelle Davidson Argyle Discusses Self-Publishing
Michelle shares her experiences in self-publishing CINDERS.

Also, the winner of the CINDERS giveaway is… *drum roll*…  J.C. Martin.  Thank you to everyone who participated by leaving comments, and congrats to our winner!  J.C. Martin please email me your mailing info so that I can send you your copy of CINDERS.

Sunday: Guest Post: Merrilee Faber Writes About Creative Revision
Merrilee gives some fabulous tips on how to make revision part of the creative process.

Monday: Writing About Individual Works
How to use our writing to expand our understanding of what we read.  In particular, ways to make the most of reviews and response essays.

Tuesday: Choosing the Right Conference
Choosing which conference to attend can be tricky, but if you know what you want to get out of the conference, it makes the choice much easier.

Wednesday: Technical Tips for Writing Dialogue
iggi and I provided a dialogue sample, then I ripped it apart pointing out all the mistakes.  What mistakes can you find?

Thursday: Taking Critique
Some tips for helping to ease the sting of rough critiques.

Don’t Forget:  There’s still time to register for iggi U.  Check out the iggi U tab for more information or to catch up on previous posts.  If you register, you automatically get entered in the DIY MFA contest.

And one more thing…  As we make our way into our last week of this DIY MFA extrabloganza, I’ve already started mulling over where DIY MFA should go next.  I’d love to hear from all of you:

• Which “classes” have been the most useful?
• What would you like to see more of?
• Any other ideas of things you’d like to see in DIY MFA after September?

Please tell me because I’m DYING to know: what ideas/thoughts/suggestions do you have of where DIY MFA should go?  

We’ve talked a lot about critique: forming a good group, giving critique, etc.  Now we come to the tricky subject.  What do you do when you find yourself on the receiving end of a critique?

Writers are a brave but fragile species.  After all, anyone who pours her soul out onto a piece of paper, no matter how thick-skinned she may want to be, has got to have some nerve endings somewhere.  As soon as we let our work out into the world we open ourselves to the possibility that someone might not like it and, let’s face it, getting our work squashed is painful.  The only reason we allow this pain to happen is because we want our work to get better.  But how do we, as writers, reconcile our desire to improve our work with our desire not… to hurt?

Below are some lessons I have learned which have helped take the edge off critique.

1)  It’s not personal.  This is probably the toughest piece of advice to swallow, but also the most important.  As writers we must remember that a critique of our work is not a commentary on us as people.  Instead, we must accept it for what it is: a critique of our work.

2)  Critique is like a bottle of wine, it needs time to breathe.  The temptation after a workshop session is to go home and read all the comments right away, but don’t do it.  It’s too close.  Too soon.  This is especially true if the critique fell on either the extreme positive or extreme negative end of the spectrum.  The more emotionally charged the critique session, the more time you need to gain objectivity.

3)  There’s no such thing as a perfect critique.  Sometimes overly-positive critiques can be just as painful as the negative ones.  You’re probably saying “What?!?”  After all, wouldn’t any writer want to have someone else say their work is perfect?  I myself find positive critiques to be especially crippling because rather than telling me what needs fixing, a positive critique leaves me thinking: “Now what?”  We’re writers, after all.  It’s in our nature to be perfectionists and having someone tell us our work is perfect can sometimes do more harm than good.  So if you find yourself feeling disappointed after an overwhelmingly positive critique, remember this: anyone who tells you your work is perfect is either lying or insane.  In either case, do you really want to heed their opinion?  Which brings me to our next point.

4)  Critiques are not commandments handed down from on high.  They’re just opinions, and sometimes opinions are wrong.  Self-serving writers who want nothing more out of a critique session than a glowing audience tend to latch on to this advice.  They chalk up all negative critiques as being someone’s misguided opinion and fail to hear what their critique buddies are saying.  But writers who are really serious about their work often need this point hammered into their brains.  Critiques are just people’s opinions and sometimes opinions might conflict or someone might misunderstand.  If you find yourself thinking “What the…?” about someone else’s comments on your work, allow for the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they didn’t get it.  Of course, if ten people all say the same thing…

5)  Learn to identify critique buddies who are there to help you and those who are there to help themselves.  Then ditch the latter.  A good critique session should include feedback that feeds the writer and leaves the writer wanting to hurry home and keep writing.  A critique session that tears a writer down so other people can feel “smart” or leaves the writer feeling empty and directionless do not serve the writer being critiqued.

Curious as to how good you are at taking critique?  Take this quiz.

So, what do I do when I get that stack of papers and have to make sense of critiques?  Here’s a quick look into my process:

1. First I let the pile of papers sit for at least a week.  Maybe longer.
2. Next, I go through and read all the end comments and overall notes.
3. After that, I go through the margin notes, copying important ones down on a clean copy so that I can see all the comments next to each other (that way if two people have differing opinions on a particular point, I can see that contrast).
4. Later, I’ll let the comments sit again and mull them over.
5. Finally, I take my one copy with everyone’s notes and my stack of end comments and start implementing the changes, usually starting with the easy ones first and working my way up to the tougher edits.

What about you?  What’s your critique process and what do you do to ease the sting of negative comments?