Dreamers

Last night was the fourth meeting of my Beta class, The Writer's Mind. After every class I feel so inspired and want to blog about it, but do something else instead, like my own writing, or bathtub reading, or sleeping. Last night one of my students shared a piece about swimming nude and other outdoor water related recreation. She mentioned rope swings, cliff diving. There was one phrase I am thinking of now and that is the "flinging oneself into oblivion." This is how I feel about teaching this class. As far as I know no one has ever combined a writing workshop with hypnosis, imagery, EFT, dream therapy, and all the tools I am using and giving to this cozy group of willing subjects. I have no tracks to follow, I'm just flinging myself into open space. I do this often in life and sometimes there are bruises when I fall on my elbow, but other times, the payoff is wonderful. As in this case.

Basically, we go in and out of trance sometimes several times a night and then we workshop writing and I teach them cool stuff about the mind--like how to re-frame some of those negative internal voices, how to release negative emotion, connect with their muse. Last night I taught them how to interpret dreams and stimulate dreams to give them information. They all left a little skeptical that it would work, but this morning I got 2 emails and one call by surprised and excited dreamers.

Re-use, Recycle, Renew - A Video Diary About Cutting Up My Wedding Dress

To give you an example of video diary, here is one I made about what I did last week. As you can see, it doesn't have to be fancy. But it's different than home videos in that it tells a story directly to the camera. Video diaries are usually short. They are moment or slice of time. But a series of them can piece together some cool insights over time. And like a poem or a personal essay, they can be about anything--about tripping on the sidewalk, riding your bike, or watching your neighbor's move.

These days everyone has a video camera in their pocket. Either as part of their point and shoot camera or on their phone. So if you don't have a pen and paper, whip out that camera and record your thoughts or experiences this way. Memoir and personal stories are not limited to paper and ink. And each new way of recording our stories has it's own unique value. This two and a half minute video tells a lot more about me than what I did this week.. I hope you enjoy it and that you make your own and send us your links.

Send Us Your Video Diaries

In the spirit of expanding the genre of memoir, we'd love to see your video diaries. What's a diary? I'm not sure I want to be pinned down in to a definition. But let's just say it is a video, or series of videos that documents some part of your story. Maybe just a moment in time, or something that captures a larger range of moments--but all in a few minutes. Send us your links and if we like them, we'll share them. They don't have to be fancy or professional. Of course, we'd love to see those, too--but what we are most interested in is what is real. What is your reality. Your truth. And hoping that this inspires others. Hooray!

What Makes a Best Seller? The Secret About Readability Statistics

What do these books have in common?

I can not take credit for this information. I am not obsessive enough--although I admire the discoveries obsessive behavior has led to in this world.

So here's the story and the secret. More than 10 years ago I went to a writing conference and heard a writer named James V. Smith talk. I guess I would classify his writing as military/sci-fi/fantasy. Not really my thing, but he had some cool things to say about writing. He lived in Montana where I guess he had a lot of time on his hands and so wanted to discover if there was anything best sellers had in common. By best sellers, I mean everything--from pulp romance (think Danielle Steel) to Pulitzer prize winners like Wallace Stegner. So he spent a good deal of time typing in entire chapters from these books into his word processor then running readability statistics on them.

He discovered, that every best-seller had similar readability stats. Readability stats are what sometimes pop up after you do a spelling and grammar check in Word (if not, click options in the spell check dialog box and then click show readability statistics). They look like this:

Of particular note was the characters per word count. He found that best sellers of any genre all had a characters/word count of less than 4.5. Most were less than 4.3 In fact, the lower it was--let's say 4.1, the better the seller.

Best-sellers also had a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 6th Grade or lower. That means that the text could be understood by a 6th grader. This doesn't mean the content would be interesting or appropriate for an 11-year-old, but a 6th grader could understand it and read it.

Reading ease is also interesting. Apparently a sentence's reading ease is inversely related (roughly) to how many words are in it. For example, a one word sentence would be understood by 99% of people. A 10-word sentence can be understood by 90% and so on. The software takes an average from your whole document. This is another reason to vary sentence lengths and make sure your long sentences don't have more than half of readers lost.

Of course, not much of this applies to academic writing--don't even dare run readability stats on your college thesis project-but for fiction and memoir, it's brilliant. I have to say that I have tried out James's little theory and after ten years, it is still by best trick in the book. Of all the pieces I have written and sold, the ones with a characters/word count of 4.1 sold the fastest. The ones above 4.3 have never sold.

So the secret to writing a best seller is really in revising. How do you do it?

I don't do it until I am totally done with the creative revisions and when I think it's ready to send out--because this type of revision uses a very analytical part of the mind and I don't want to introduce it in the creative part. But once I'm ready, I turn into a machine. Here's what I do.

First, I go through each paragraph and try to shorten it by a line. So if it ends with a little widow line of two words, it's not too hard to find a few words to cut out and shorten it. If it is a longer line, it becomes more challenging. A fun challenge. Sometimes I do it by shortening each line by a word and other times I see a whole sentence that doesn't need to be there. This helps my goal of shortening each page by a paragraph. Lastly, I go through and try to see if each word could be replaced by a shorter word that does the same or a better job.

It is literally like combing your hair one strand at a time. Some of you might find it a tedious process, but it can also be terribly fun. Try it out and let me know about your experience.

An Open Letter to the Smiley Face After an Insult

You know how we feel about emoticons. For the most part, I have been relaxing my stance on this, just because if I didn't, I might have to hate everyone, and as the writer of this awesome letter we found at mcsweenys.net says, I have to say "No" to hate. But there are still some things that drive me crazy. Here's how Jade Ologunja begins her letter:

Dearest :) ,

So there you are, just smiling directly at me immediately after an unfriendly statement has been typed. As if my crushed spirits are suddenly supposed to be lifted because you decided to suddenly emerge out of nowhere. You're meant to reside directly behind mean statements so as to reduce the impact of an insult.

"Your shirt is very ugly." :)
"What happened to your face in this picture?" :)
"Wow, you are not photogenic." :)
"You're a douche." :)

Smiley Face, you normally have a stupendous reputation. You're able to turn someone's frown upside down right? ....

You can read the rest here.

The letter is a great personal essay form, and is often easier to begin than a more traditional style essay. If tend to compose letters in your head or find yourself narrating your day in the form of a conversation with someone, this might be the form for you. To be honest, I like this form, and we don't get many in this style submitted to our writing contest. So if you try it out and like it, send it to us--we might like it, too. :)

The Writer's Mind

That's what I am thinking of titling my new writing class, and the book that I foresee coming out of the class. Or perhaps the Creative Mind--because most writers are also doing a million other creative things and the tools and benefits of this program will be applicable to all creative modalities. I am working on the syllabus now, in a happy trance. Mmm.

If you have been thinking about taking this class, it's filling up.

Hypno-What?

I have been getting quite a few questions about our upcoming writing class. Here are the answers:

• It is a personal essay class.

• You can expect to do writing assignments, read essays and critique them, and have brilliant discussions over tea.

• Fiction writers and screen writers are welcome. All writing comes from personal experience so it should help your craft, regardless what your favorite genre.

• Yes you can get (most of) your money back after the first class if you don't like it or think it is weird.
• No you will not bark like a dog.
• Hypnosis is a natural state--nothing like a stage hypnosis show. What Ms. Austin will be doing is actually called Therapeutic Imagery. Which means you use your imagination. Imagine that! You should be good at it by now. It's actually quite fun and relaxing and has dramatically changed my life. But that is for another post.

Please direct any other questions to me or Ms. Austin.

Happy Writing!