Kimberly A. Cook

Military Romance Author

creativity

Tighten Your Seatbelt, Here Come The Holidays!

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by Kimberly A. Cook                         (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Chatting with a friend recently whose decided to concentrate on her quilting during the holidays. Such a great idea. Focus is a challenge for us creatives on any given day, but the holidays add a special spice of chaos to the normal distractions. Squirrel! Santa! Cookies! Icky weather! Gifts! You get my drift – pun intended.

Field trips can happen in your backyard. Dashing to work I saw this and snapped two photos. First October frost.
Field trips can happen in your backyard. Dashing to work I saw this and snapped two photos. First October frost.

At lunch with the family in August I asked us to map out the holidays – folks were a little taken aback, but I said it will be here before we know it and voila! When the Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day decorations are all crashing together in the stores right now, overwhelmed is a normal reaction for us.

I cope by surrendering in early August. Like a runaway stagecoach, holidays happen. I make my plans, try to keep things simple and pick ways to celebrate to make it fun and focus on using my off time from the day job for creative activities. Everything from baking cookies to sorting beads and egad, reading, make the list. Keeps my muse well fed and out of the Grinch cranky zone.

Add in the recent time change this past weekend and all I want to do is curl up with a book, blankie, bottle of chocolate milk and hibernate. So planning fun things to do to feed my muse and taking some time for myself is job one during the holiday season.

“Try to do one thing a day for yourself,” my sister told me recently. Actually she said two, but it’s the holidays. Simplify! These are not big things, but small tokens of time which reinvigorate our creative soul and keep us from losing balance. Lunch out with a friend, taking leaf pictures, buying a new writer magazine, actually sitting down on a weekend afternoon and reading, plus watching football or Hallmark movies all work for me.

Keep your muse in mind this holiday season and take it out for a few field trips. See how doing less means more for your creative health. Slow down and smell the leaves, cider or holiday cookies. Be a kid again. Unleash the crayons!

Are Writers Really Swashbuckling Pirates In Disguise?

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by Kimberly A. Cook            (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Waiting for new books from our favorite authors is like the night before Christmas; we hope we get what we asked for and the gift lives up to our fantasies. One of my favorite writers is Elizabeth Gilbert and her new fiction book is titled, “The Signature of All Things.”

http://youtu.be/AgungmlfYwk

Gilbert is famous for her memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” but her first love is fiction. We have that in common. In the October 2013 issue of “The Oprah Magazine,” there is a wonderful interview with her about her writing life now and how she came to write this book.

A great quote in the article from Gilbert is, “Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It’s your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak. The muses or fairies – they’re trying to get your attention.” Writer Katie Arnold-Ratliff does a very nice job of interviewing and profiling Gilbert. Pick up a copy of the magazine if you get a chance.

The scavenger hunt is such a wonderful metaphor for the creative process. It’s also how I buy clothes, shoes and houses; I know it when I see it. The same is true for my story ideas and plot lines. One small book review launched a novel idea and then a series outline. I gather random items into my memory and later a book idea or three spit out. Totally a fun scavenger hunt.

Paying attention is the hard part. With all the distractions, interruptions, noise and tech in today’s world, we have to be diligent to hear our muse speak up and point out clues on our daily journeys. Perhaps that is one of the things I love the most about being a writer, creativity feels a lot like being a pirate in search of booty – even in a grocery store line.

Can’t wait to buy my copy of Gilbert’s book this week, I always get hard copies for my keeper shelf. So climb aboard and raise the sails on the story ship. Fly the Jolly Roger high up on the mast. Let your muse sail into adventure today wherever ye are bound!

Creativity Or Knitting – Which Came First?

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by Kimberly A. Cook             (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Back at the desk. No sooner had I stuffed my second edition non-fiction book in a box and stuck it in the corner than my three other manuscripts in process started yelling from the cheap seats; “Pick me, pick me!” It’s enough to drive my creative muse around the bend and over the edge.

Deep inside my yarn drum. This is yarn drum 2, yarn drum 1 is at the day job. It's an addiction!
Deep inside my yarn drum. This is yarn drum 2, yarn drum 1 is at the day job. It’s an addiction!

Checking my options, I informed the three projects I am knitting now. Knitting! That worked for a while, but my romance fiction book is calling to me like a siren from the sea.

So, I may work on it when my hands cramp up from knitting so much. Of course, my subconscious brain and my muse are going full steam ahead with rewrites for the fiction book while I try to focus on knitting!

Now this seems a very healthy thing to me. Since my creative frontal brain part needs to be relaxed to create, obviously the knitting is just what it needed, a complete break. I must say it is also quite happy to be the cool kid in the pack now that I’ve kicked the non-fiction book to the curb. Manuscripts do get jealous that way, sibling rivalry.

While I am buying yarn on sale and stockpiling bamboo knitting needles, my muse is getting a bit too happy; this is the first book in a three book series and my muse is working on all of them! It’s like trying to direct a toddler away from sticky candy while trying to remember what brilliant prose fell out of my mind for book three.

Who knew knitting was creative crack for my exhausted muse brain? It seems the best thing to do is let it percolate and write down snatches of what I can grab and stuff those items in their correct book box. That is my goal. Stay tuned. Mama’s don’t let your writers grow up to be knitters….. or something like that.

What’s Your Favorite Word Game?

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by Kimberly A. Cook           (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Back from a quick mini-vacation to one of my favorite places, Sisters, Oregon. While hunting in a resale shop my friend dragged me into, I came across this treasure – a Yahtzee Word game. Now, my family is a big fan of Yahtzee, we always played it at the beach for New Year’s Eve while stuffing our faces with Chinese take out food.

My big score for $2, complete with all the parts!
My big score for $2, complete with all the parts!

But, I had no idea there was a Yahtzee word game. In these days of plug-in everything, it was fun to find a new old game with a familiar name. After we frisked the box to make sure it had all the parts, I ended up the big buyer with several other treasures added to the game purchase.

We got to talking about the games we played as kids and with family; like Chinese checkers and Go Fish, Tiddly Winks and fifty-two pick up stix. Ah, the good old days of a zillion parts to every game.

While I own three Scrabble sets, it’s never seemed all that fun to me, not sure why. I’m still a complete chess rookie, but ever hopeful. Heard about the Words with Friends app on folks phones, but I like the tactile sensation of moving pieces around – call me old school game girl.

With summer approaching and hopefully some fun down time for all, imagine what it would be like to unleash your inner old school gamer and replay some favorite games to treat your brain. It just might unleash fun and happy memories of the games you played and may want to share with new friends and family.

I remember the wicked Crazy 8 card games we used to get into while out camping with friends – too fun. Maybe you can stumble across an old favorite in a resale shop or online; there is a big market in collectible games now. (You can buy Tiddly Winks at www.fatbraintoys.com) But I’m good to go, I’ve got my Yahtzee Word game! What was your favorite game?

How Much Bad News Can Our Creativity Handle?

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by Kimberly A. Cook           (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

(UPDATE: This post was written before the tragedy outside Oklahoma City. All the people of that great state are in our thoughts and prayers. We’ve got your back. Donate at www.redcross.org Today every American is Oklahoma Strong.)

When I’m going through a stressful time, I tend to be very careful about what I read, which music I listen to and what I watch on tv. We writers are influenced by everything in our world and sometimes the planet gets too pushy and freaks out our creative muse. That’s when it’s time for a crap curfew.

Very scary movie, as you can tell from the poster.
Very scary movie, as you can tell from the poster.

Don’t ask me how horror writers keep sane, or if they even are sane, but when the going gets tough I head for funny romance fiction, HGTV, the Food Network and my cable easy listening music channel without any commercials.  My muse needs good input to stay happy and creative. Positive brain food it might be called.

For folks who think it’s fun to get scared, more power to you. I still haven’t recovered from seeing the movie “Jaws” in the 1970s – amazing what I would do for a date. The Walt Disney movie “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” scared me as a kid. Maybe it still does today. Those of us with active imaginations do not need any help conjuring up weird things that go bump in the night; we’ve got a full-time freak-out factory in our heads with tons of odd characters running amok.

So how do we tame our internal jitters and not venture into the dark basement? Why do they always do that in the movies, by the way? Nothing good ever happens down there – where is Darwin’s theory of adapting when it comes to dark basements? But I digress. Give your muse a break when times get tense. Take your brain over to Animal Planet’s “Too Cute” show with kittens and puppies for recess.

The muse you save may be your own!

P.S. Link to first ten minutes of said scary movie below, don’t say I didn’t warn you! (You can actually watch the entire movie on YouTube. How odd.)

http://youtu.be/-VffXZ44_LQ

Would You Make A Good Writer Spy?

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by Kimberly A. Cook            (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

One of the pieces of craft a writer needs to practice is the art of observation. By people and pet watching we get ideas, insights and entertainment, all for free. With the weather starting to get warmer, we are on the cusp of prime people watching season.

Stealth ducks hiding in plain sight next to my day job building.
Stealth ducks hiding in plain sight next to my day job building.

Walking into my day job building, there is a swale which holds run off rain water. Week before last a pair of ducks were swimming around in the pond six feet from the building. Day in and out I noticed most people didn’t realize the ducks were even there, hiding in plain sight every morning.

Outside my house the other day, a friend noticed a key was hanging from a tree branch. We figured out someone dropped their house key and with no identification and a Good Samaritan tied the lanyard around the tree to serve as a signal. How many great story ideas, characters or dialogue clips have we lost in the trees by not using our writer “Spidey” sense?

Eavesdropping dialogue gold mines for me are mass transit, lines at the grocery store, anyone on a cell phone in public, movie theaters before the movie starts and any sporting event. Malls are great too because not only do you see all kinds of people and outfits, you can snack and drink cocoa at the free viewing tables in the food court.

As a fiction writer I like to make up stories about the people I see, imagine what their “back stories” are and what their current mission might be. It’s a great way to exercise your mind and let your subconscious get some new input.

A piece on the radio recently talked about how doing chores or repetitive tasks can unleash your inner creativity. Great ideas come to me when gardening, washing dishes, in the shower and taking out the trash. Seems our grey matter needs a muse break too.

So it’s time for writer Spring training. Get ready to do chores and people watch. You too may discover some hidden drone ducks on a secret mission or a new mystery book series idea, hiding in plain sight. Get in shape now for writer summer RECON!