Who wants to talk taxes?

Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert, 1876.

Word count: 485 Reading time: 1-2 minutes

In the Pacific Northwest, this Easter weekend promises to be warm and sunny, heaven-sent. Along with Easter comes tax season so this is a good time to talk about the underbelly of the writing life: the administrative side. In his book Steal Like An Artist Austin Kleon advises writers to stay out of debt and keep our day jobs.

As a former tax auditor, I’d like to expand on Kleon’s nod to financial health:

1. Keep each and every receipt for any cost that is even vaguely related to your creative efforts. If it’s $10 for coffee with a mechanic because you really need to know exactly which cable your character will cut to make the brakes fail, then write that on the back of the receipt. Establish the nexus between money spent and its relationship to your writing.
2. If you attend events that don’t offer receipts, like some writer’s groups, keep clear notes of the date and time of the cost. A photo might be helpful. If there is a hyperlink or email about that event, add that to your file. Remember: contemporaneous notes can be highly persuasive.
3. Take that receipt and throw it in a pile. Once a week, once a fortnight, or at least once a month organize your receipts. Sort them by type of cost: research, office supplies, writers’ groups, memberships, travel etc. You don’t need a fancy filing system: a couple of shoeboxes or some envelopes out of the recycling bin will do. You may not be able to claim everything you collect but in the question of what is and is not deductible, too much substantiation is always better than too little.
4. By the start of March, take everything to your accountant. While it’s too late to do that this year, you can get ready for next year with a little forward planning. Remember – by the beginning of April, most Canadian and American tax preparers are skiing in front of the avalanche. You may not get their full attention.
5. If you want to be very diligent, maybe invest in some basic bookkeeping software. Ask your accountant or tax preparer to recommend a good system for your needs. If you do your own tax preparation, google something like 'bookkeeping for writers' and start your research there.

Yes, this is uninspiring work, just like laundry or washing the dishes. Just like those chores, this is work that is never truly completed. It’s also more manageable in smaller increments. So why not pour yourself a glass of your favourite beverage, promise yourself some sort of treat for when you’re finished, and roll up your sleeves?

How do you manage your financial records? Do you do it as you go along or do you prefer the catch-up-at-end-of-year approach?

 Photos:

Calculator by Daniel Schweinert                                                Chocolate by Cristian Andre Matei

What are your bare necessities?

“The hardest part of writing is writing,” said the legendary Nora Ephron. To me, the hardest thing about writing is getting started.

Word count: 303                       Reading time: 1-2 minutes

When I finally get down to work, the walls recede, the rat stops gnawing the door, and I forget everything but the characters in front of me. Why is it so difficult to get out of the starting gate? Are there physical things that draw a person to the desk? Over the past week, I made a list of things that seemed essential to writing on different days:

• a cup of green tea
• a mug of strong coffee
• a glass of wine
• none of the above – water only, please
• a tidy desk
• a desk heaped with notes and reference material
• a free writing warm-up
• jumping right in
• a good pen and a friendly notebook
• a laptop
• sunshine
• rain
• reading a couple of poems aloud, listening to the diction, tripping out on the images, enjoying the poet’s playfulness
• reading no poetry
• a quiet corner
• music
• complete silence
• incense
• open windows and fresh air

So the list revealed nothing more than the lack of a magic formula. In the end, the main thing that gets me working is a looming deadline, usually a self-imposed one. Without it I could and would avoid the pain and the joy forever. After all: writing is 90% procrastination, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. ~ Paul Rudnick

What makes you get started? Do you have a favourite spot that gets your story spinning? Or do you like variety, somewhere new every time? Do you have routines or physical comforts that that entice you to work?

So what's the big idea?

If you go to writers’ festivals and sit through enough Q&A sessions, it’s likely you’ll hear this question posed to author panels at some time: Where do you get your ideas?

I’ve heard answers that ranged from the vague to the slightly sarcastic, “Ideas 101.”

Word count: 315 Reading time 1-2 minutes

Where do ideas come from? Here are some places:

• First hand experience
• Visual images
• Tactile experiences
• Music
• Dreams
• Conversations overheard
• Stories in the news (TV and the movie industry tap this resource constantly)

If the above fails you, here are some are fallback techniques to open the mind and spark the creative flow:

• Retell an old story
• Write fan fiction (it worked for EL James)
• Use an idea generator like the Archetype Writing. This helpful site doesn’t just give story prompts, it also offers assistance on developing character depth, and breaking writer’s block.

Lynda Barry reminds us, “In the digital age, don’t forget to use your digits.” We can use our digits along with the rest of our senses not just to infuse a story, but to deliver one.

Seven years ago my senses ganged up on me when I walked into an old farmhouse. The former owner had been moved suddenly to a nursing home and her threadbare socks still hung above the Aga stove. The room smelled of washing powder and neglect. The curling family photographs, the dull afternoon light, and the chilly air stirred something deep inside me. That night I wrote the story Constant Cravings which you can read here.

So I’d like to know – where do you get your inspiration? Do your ideas find and possess you until you’ve captured them on the page? Are you often bombarded with so many ideas that the real challenge is in selecting just one? Or are you like Samuel Johnson, turning over half a library to make one book?

***

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Can your work survive a tough cycle?

For years I’ve worn the same pale blue Gore-Tex raincoat, a wardrobe essential in the BC rainforest. Recently it started to look worse for wear, kind of grubby. I didn’t like the replacement options so, with nothing to lose, I threw it into the washing machine one last time. I selected a heavy duty, warm temperature wash (instead of the usual regular and cool). Result: a coat that looks bright and new again.

Word count: 264                    Reading time: 1 minute

That’s very much like writing. When I have a piece (one particular novel comes to mind) that feels shop-worn and tired, I need to put it through a course of no-holds-barred rewriting. I need to stop treating it as a fragile work that will fall apart if I’m too rough with it. Ernest Hemingway rewrote the end of Farewell to Arms 39 times before he got the words right. Based on that standard, my weary novel needs a few more revisions.

Kurt Loder urges writers to give their work stronger treatment: “The most important thing you can to is learn to edit yourself. Then go back and rewrite.” I blog on this often because I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that writing, like any meaningful endeavour, is full of repetition and hard work until it’s finally right. We have to turn up the heat and pummel it hard if we’re going to produce something that is shiny and appealing. 

What is your old blue raincoat? Is there a neglected manuscript sitting on your shelf? Would throwing it into a heavy duty cycle bring it back to life?

 ***

 Photo by: Elana Elisseeva