writing

Goal Orientation and Process Orientation

elizabethcaulfieldfelt writing

A number of years ago, I heard a speaker at a workshop talk about how some people are goal-oriented and some people are process-oriented.

Goal-oriented people work steadily until they achieve their goal. Their motivation is the finished product. Their sense of satisfaction lies in a well-done, finished product. Goal-oriented people tend to work quickly, sometimes to the detriment of the finished product.

Process-oriented people are motivated by the process of a project. They are interested in the planning and development. They receive their satisfaction in the work itself, and the completed process is secondary to the process. Process-oriented people sometimes have trouble finishing a project. By the time they near the end, the process is winding down, and their motivation and interest are lost.

I learned this in terms of teaching. Most academics are process-oriented people (hence the reason so many take so long to finish their PhDs). Unfortunately, most students are goal-oriented people (hence the reason they ask questions like “Will this be on the test?”) . Understanding and working with these differing orientations can help lower frustration for both teachers and students.

Although I teach at a university, I am a goal-oriented person. I like to finish things. As a writer, I work toward that completed manuscript. If I spend a day writing and I don’t have anything to show for it, I’m terribly frustrated. If I finish a scene or a chapter, I feel exhilarated.

There are many goal-oriented writers: you know the ones. They write a book a year for thirty years: Stephen King. Agatha Christie. You can name some of your own, I’m sure.

There are a lot of process-oriented writers too. A former colleague of mine wrote a fantasy trilogy over about a twelve year time period. He sent it off to agents and publishers for several years and finally it was accepted for publication. The first book came out and was an enormous success. The second book in the trilogy is about to come out, four years after the publication of the first. It took him four years to finish something that was already “finished.” I don’t know him very well personally, but I’m guessing he’s a process guy.

That last paragraph made it seem like I think it is better to be goal-oriented. Not at all. A lot of the time, I wish I were process-oriented. I wish I could be satisfied and fascinated by the process. Being goal-oriented, I sometimes go too fast, push things too hard, give up because the road to the finished product seems too long.

I started thinking about all this last week because of a parenting situation. My husband is process-oriented, and he sometimes handled our children in ways that I found unfathomable. For example, when they were little he would sometimes argue and get a tired child all emotional just before bed, when the goal should have been to get the child to calm down and fall asleep. Last week, I realized that he wasn’t looking at the goal, he was looking at the bedtime process and trying to make it a logical, efficient one. The unfathomable became fathomable. It was an epiphany for me.

I think our differing orientations are fortunate for our family. My husband and I have different strengths, and we are adept at learning from each other.

As for writing…. if I could sell a book and afford to work full-time as a writer, I think I could be one of those people popping out a book every year. Doesn’t that seem enticing to you publishers????

Grief

elizabethcaulfieldfelt reading, writing

When I wrote Syncopation, I had never unexpectedly lost someone I loved. I had to imagine Adele’s grief. I had to create the things she would think and feel and do. When Adele learns that her sister has drowned, she wants to be there as quickly as she can. She feels that if she can get there soon, there will be something left of Didine.

My mother died this week. She was sixty-eight and in good health. She had a massive stroke and died quickly. I live far away from my mother, but I felt a passionate need to get to her as quickly as possible. The shock and surprise are nearly overwhelming.

People grieve in different ways, as I can see around me. I am disconcerted by the fact that I’m grieving so much like Adele. I guess I shouldn’t be, as she is my creation. I have a pretty accurate imagination, I guess. It is still odd, as Adele and I are so different.

I said a few blogs ago that I have the best mother. I’m so glad I said it. She was a writer herself and was my best reader. She was amazing at being both supportive and constructively critical. We talked regularly, spending some part of every conversation on books and writing.

When I was packing for this trip, I didn’t take the library book I had been reading, instead I grabbed Pride and Prejudice for the plane, as a comfort read. Yesterday my sister and I were going through things in our mother’s room, and I discovered that she had a copy of Pride and Prejudice on her bedside table.

My mom was a quiet person, a literary person. She was also actively engaged in a variety of volunteer jobs, all with the goal of making the world a better place.

Because of the way she died, my mother was able to donate many of her organs. I get great comfort from this. My mother would be so happy that through her death, others will live.

I was trying to think of the best way to describe my mother, and I remembered Matthew Arnold’s words:

Sweetness and light.

Creating a Pen

elizabethcaulfieldfelt poetry, writing

I subscribe to the Writer’s Almanac. It’s a wonderful service which I recommend to everyone. The right poem can be like clean mountain air, like the almond-cherry memory-scent of your grandmother, like the throbbing orange embers of a dying fire. Beauty in the morning—why start a day any other way? Of course, I don’t connect with every poem, but the Writer’s Almanac nearly always presents some small diamond for me to ponder. Today’s jewel:

To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say. — Jim Harrison

I’ve been thinking about this all day.

My family bought me a netbook as an early Christmas present, and I’ve been hoping it will be the “pen” that gets me writing more. At home, I don’t have an office or a private place of my own. I’ve always shared a computer and somehow manage to be last in precedence—by my own doing because it is easier to let someone else use the computer than to write.

But really, to create my pen, I need more than my own computer. I need privacy and a designated time to write. I don’t do spontaneity. If I suddenly have two hours alone at home with nothing to do, I should write—but I can’t (don’t?). I’m not ready. It’s like I need to talk with my characters ahead of time and let them know when I’m coming. I can’t just drop in. They won’t talk to me. Or if they do, it is only to mess up the story with anachronisms or dead-ends.

My pen is not a tool but a state-of-mind. Writing flows from me when I know I’ll have some time and privacy and have prepared for it.

I imagine every writer has a different pen.

Killing A Story

elizabethcaulfieldfelt writing

This morning I read a quote from Ann Patchett:

“The way I write, I have a novel in my head for a long time that I think about, and in those months it is so beautiful, so incredibly profound …. The novel in my imagination travels with me like a small lavender moth making loopy circles around my head. As soon as I start to put it on the page I kill it. It always breaks my heart. For me, the greatest challenge is to stick with the book I’m writing when what I want to do is hit the delete button.”

Wow! She could not have more perfectly described what I go through with my writing. I love thinking about my novel. I love my characters and spending time with them in my head. I’m enthralled by their thoughts and moods. I’m transfixed by their challenges and inspired by the way they overcome them.

And so, I try to share all this with the world, and the minute my thoughts hit paper they are vapid. My characters are empty and stale, the action barely action at all.

This is the challenge as a writer. Many people seem to think that coming up with ideas is difficult–not at all. The hard part is the writing. So much is lost in the transfer from mind to word. The difficulty is to stay at the task despite how demoralizing it seems. Because with revisions and alterations and lots of hard work, the story can be shared. And perhaps there is one perfect reader out there who will see the lavendar moth. And maybe there are other readers who, even if they cannot see the moth, will like the characters a little and will desire to read the story to its conclusion. And even if all they say is, “Yeah, that was pretty good,” I would feel satisfied.

The End of November

elizabethcaulfieldfelt marketing, writing

We had a great book signing at Fireside Books in West Bend. There was a bigger crowd than I’d expected. (The local paper did a very nice write-up the day before.) The boys played Christmas music, and people asked a lot of questions about the writing process and the Suzuki method. And, of course, people bought our book! We love book signings!

Now I am back in Stevens Point, November is almost over, and I am nowhere near to having a successful NaNoWriMo.

I was looking at the NaNoWriMo page that graphs my word count against how much I need to write every day to reach 50,000. My word count is currently 14,089, so you can imagine how small my little bar is on the graph. I was feeling a little sad about it when it occurred to me that I wrote over 14,000 words this month. That’s amazing!

I don’t normally keep track of word count, but I’d guess that I don’t normally write 14,000 words in a month. I started patting myself on the back and thinking positive.

So, I didn’t write a novel. I didn’t finish a novel. But I wrote and I’ll keep on writing. And, hey, I’ve still got two days, right?

NaNoWriMo Nonsense

elizabethcaulfieldfelt writing

It’s hard to believe that this time last year I was participating in NaNoWriMo and creating the book that I spent the weekend selling. I had decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year as I didn’t have a project in the wings or one I wanted to stop to do something else.

But then….

A friend of mine talked me into signing up for it. I thought I would cheat a little–I would keep writing my Olivia mystery and just use the word count for what I wrote during November. I had hoped that this decision would force me to write every day.

Ha! I wrote the first three days of November, then I got 45 papers to grade from my students. They were very poorly written papers, so it took me a long time to grade them and left me horribly depressed. I’ve only written two days since then.

Writing is such a strange beast.

I went to my writers’ group last night and have become inspired to keep plugging away. I hope to spend the morning today writing.

Gosh, what a boring blog! Should I post it? I guess I better so I can log out and begin work on my novel.

Tschuss!

Book Signings

elizabethcaulfieldfelt marketing, reading, writing

Sat, Nov 13, Stevens Point:
We will be selling books all day at HolidayFest which is held in St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Sat, Nov 27, West Bend:
We will be signing books and the boys will be playing Christmas music at Fireside Books and Gifts in West Bend, Wisconsin.

Thurs, Dec 2, Stevens Point:
I will be selling signed books at the High School Writers Workshop at the student union at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point.

Being other people

elizabethcaulfieldfelt writing

Yesterday morning on The Writer’s Almanac I heard Anne Tyler quoted as saying, “I want to live other lives. I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances. It’s lucky I do it on paper. Probably I would be schizophrenic — and six times divorced — if I weren’t writing.” This was amazing because I’d been planning to write a blog on this very topic.

I’ve always been a bit of a tom-boy. I don’t wear (or even own) any make-up, and I don’t care about clothes. I don’t notice when my friends get new hairstyles.

Still, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a person who was stylish, who cared about clothes and makeup, who owned hundreds of shoes. What is that sort of life like? Is it possible to be like that and not have much money? How would one manage that?

My character Olivia Snow is an adventure into that sort of personality. She’s fun to write, and she lets me be stylish and obsessed with clothes without actually being stylish or obsessed with clothes. Writing can be so cool sometimes.

And, of course, this transformation can go much deeper than just a superficial aspect like fashion. For instance, what would it be like to be a person who is angry all the time?

Or what about a woman who was happy and friendly and got along with everyone, but who was constantly annoyed by her own daughter? Maybe the mother was an out-going, successful businesswoman and the daughter was a quiet artist type. Or vice-versa.

And what would it be like to be that daughter, who could never please her mother. Who knew no matter what she did, it wouldn’t be good enough because she just wasn’t the kind of daughter her mother wanted. How would that affect all aspects of her life?

I love diving into the psyche of another person, putting on their problems and their joys and feeling what it is like. Of course, it is always nice to slide that costume off and return to my own simple and happy life.

The Best Mom

elizabethcaulfieldfelt writing

I have the best mom.

I was talking with her today on the phone, basically explaining everything that was in my last post, how un-inspired I’ve felt, my feelings about writing “fluff,” etc.

What does my mom say?

She proclaims that my Olivia story is NOT fluff. She says it is smart. She says it is as good as anything she’s ever read. She loves the characters and wishes I would write more because she can’t wait to find out what’s going to happen.

And just like that, I am inspired and joyful!

I have the best mom!

Inspiration

elizabethcaulfieldfelt reading, writing

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a workshop run by the UWSP English Department’s ACORN (A Chance tO Read in compaNy) program. The ACORN book this year is Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, and the workshop sessions I attended were Tomoko Kuribayashi’s lecture on Margaret Atwood, Per Henningsgaard’s lecture on the role of colonialism in Alias Grace, and Sarah Pogell’s lecture on nineteenth century psychology.

The workshop was fabulous. The UWSP faculty were knowledgeable and interesting, and the topics fascinating. The day was fun and got me excited about literature again . . . . and made me question myself as a writer.

I began my first novel, Charlotte’s Inheritance, while I was in graduate school: taking literature classes, discussing literature, analyzing literature. I was immersed in the literary world. The idea of Syncopation came to me during the same time period, though I wrote it after I’d finished school. These books reflect my mind at that time.

I don’t want to say that my novels are in the same class as the novels of Margaret Atwood or Tracy Chevalier or A.S. Byatt, but they are heavily influenced by these writers. Charlotte’s Inheritance and Syncopation have themes and layers and complicated characters. They could be studied. I’ve spent many years trying to get them published, and a common criticism from agents and editors is that they are “too literary” for such-and-such a publisher’s list.

I’m a practical person. I want to be a published writer; I want to have an actual career as a writer. So, I’ve decided to write more light-weight novels in the hopes that this is what the publishing world is willing to publish—something like The Stolen Goldin Violin. I wrote this with / for my family with no illusions as to it having literary merit. The Stolen Goldin Violin is a quick, light, fun read.

In the past two years, I’ve gotten excited by a few ideas for light-weight books (see my previous blog postings), but after a little time, I find myself uninspired. This didn’t happen with either of my first two novels. I had slumps, but these stories were forged by a fire within me that raged until the story was out.

I don’t want to spend more years of my life pouring my soul into a literary novel which will never be published, read only by a few close friends. I’m not a literary snob. I read everything. I like fluff and didn’t expect to have trouble writing fluff.

Recently I’m just so uninspired, and I guess I’m just trying to figure out why . . . .