I suspect that every writer has his or her own ritual, however elaborate or simple. Something the writer does to coax the muse out of hiding. Why do them at all? I think it’s all about creating habits.

I’ve said it before, but a professional writer can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. The pro sits in front of the PC, hands on keys, and writes. Writing, for the pro, is something you practice and do often.

When I was in the corporate world, I attended every productivity seminar out there. One thing stressed over and over was the idea that habits, good or bad, are created by repetition. And it takes about 21 days of doing a particular task, over and over, to make it a habit.

Rituals are a palatable way to “set” a new habit. Maybe you decide you’re going to hit the treadmill every morning, but you hate exercise. If you know you have to do it 21 days in a row to establish the habit, you will want to turn part of that daily task into a pleasant ritual—so maybe you play the theme to Rocky to make you smile before you step onto that rubber track. Maybe you create a playlist of inspirational songs to keep your feet moving for the entire 30 minutes you set as your daily goal.

Writing needs to be a habit, reinforced with repetition and maybe flavored with a ritual to make it a little more fun.

When I decided that I wanted to create “morning pages” every day like Julia Cameron suggests in The Artist’s Way, I tried it, but couldn’t keep up with the exercises. I felt like I was “wasting” my muse on getting words onto a page that no one would ever read. I think I’m a little too German for the “fruitier” creative strategies. I took her idea of “morning pages” because I could see the benefit of opening up the tap every morning, but I decided to turn it into something more productive for me. I now blog religiously every morning. It’s the thing I crawl out of bed to do before I’m fully awake and before I’ve brushed my teeth, had that first cup of coffee, or talked to another human being.

My daily “getting-ready-to-write” ritual now includes: “morning pages” blog, cup of coffee, quick update of my To Do list, then opening my page counter spreadsheet and my WIP.

I’ve shared my ritual, now I want to hear about yours. Maybe we’ll all see something we’d like to try.

I promised I’d post some things I’ve learned along the way about writing for aspiring writers. Here’s my take on POV.

I own a gazillion books about the craft of writing. Every once in a while, I’ll run my fingers over the spines and say a little incantation hoping the knowledge will seep into me by osmosis, because I haven’t read them!

So, everything I’m saying here is strictly “POV according to Delilah.” This is all I know—what I’ve picked up from listening to other writers complaining about someone else’s poor use of POV. We writers love to tear each other to shreds, don’t we? In a constructive way!

What is my impression of Point of View?
Down and dirty—it’s whose head you’re in, whose body you’re crawling around inside to describe what that character is seeing, feeling, touching, tasting.

Let’s start with the terms I learned first in high school English. This is the easy part to distinguish.
1) First Person: If you are writing a book and you have a single POV and constantly refer to him or her as “I”, you’re using first person POV.
2) Third Person: This is more commonly used in romance fiction. If you want to see inside more than one person’s head, you really need to be using third. Here you are referring to your hero and heroine as “he” and “she”.
3) Omniscient: This is trickier. You’re using “he” and “she”, but you aren’t in any one character’s head. You might be seeing something your characters can’t see. Use this sparingly, if at all. It’s a disembodied voice, not rooted in the emotions and insights of any character.

Knowing how to recognize POV is one thing. Using it well is an art.
I write mostly in third person. I write romance and love to see inside both character’s heads to know how the romance is progressing according to their separate POVs.

How do I decide whose head I want to be in?
I evaluate what I want to accomplish in a particular scene. What lesson will be learned? Who has the most to lose from the outcome of the scene? Whoever will give me the most emotional impact is who I go with.

How do I know I’m using POV well?
I pretend I’m using binoculars when I enter a scene. Once I’ve chosen the head I want to walk around in, I look at the scene through his or her eyes. What is she feeling? What is she seeing? She can’t see an emotion occurring in the hero, but she can read his facial expressions or his body language to surmise what’s happening inside him.

Take a look at this sentence and see if you get it:
“Sarah glanced at Luke. He looked embarrassed.“

Sarah can’t see embarrassment—but she can see red cheeks, a gaze that can’t quite meet hers—and guess what’s going in inside Luke. Be sure to “show, not tell”.

How often should I change POV? What’s head hopping?
When writing shorter romances (series, novellas), you will likely only use two POVs—the hero’s and the heroine’s. You won’t have the page count for other character’s POV and subplots.

Before I start writing, I decide whose book this is. Sure, I have a hero and a heroine, and they both are falling in love, but one character has more to learn, more to sacrifice. That’s the person who owns that story. I will spend more time inside her or his head. I try to balance the POVs scene by scene the best I can, but my main character needs more pages.

If my hero chooses to hurt my heroine to keep her away from him for her safety, I’ll be in his head. He’s fighting his emotions to give her the stoney-faced set down to drive her away. There’s more happening inside him, than her. In the next scene, I will want to know what she thinks and feels about what just happened. UNLESS, I want his motivations hidden—in which case, we will see the set down occur in her POV.

You no doubt have heard the term “head-hopping.” The simple explanation is that you swap POVs. Some purists think you should only have a single POV per chapter or scene. I go with that advice, most of the time. If I do decide to leap to the other person’s head mid-scene, I do it cleanly and I don’t go back. Changing POV mid-scene can very effective in love scene or a scene with a lot of action.

Don’t give your animals a POV unless they’re sentient aliens who think like us—I can’t think of any time I’ve seen that used effectively. Do you know what an animal thinks? I blur that rule only when I write my shape shifters, because even in animal form they retain some spark of human sentience.

If you’re a writer and have your own thoughts on how to identify whose head you should be in or how to deepen POV, I’d love the hear your thoughts. ~DD

Don’t forget! The contest described in yesterday’s blog ends tomorrow. So, there’s still time to enter!

I’ve decided to try to write a weekly blog for writers. Every Friday I’ll share a little of what I’ve learned: tips, philosophy, favorite tools. This first posting is something I wrote a long time ago, but still holds true today

Okay, now that Boy George’s song will be in your head for the rest of the day, let’s talk about karma and why you need it! I’m a huge believer that none of my successes would have happened without my creating positive karma around me.

My son’s early driving disasters taught me what karma was all about. Every time he drove somewhere he shouldn’t, he had a wreck. After the third wreck that injured his sister slightly, he finally believed that something was at work.

What does good or bad karma mean to me? Karma is the “energy” that surrounds you and helps or hurts you. It’s something you build—it can’t just happen to you. If you do good deeds—good surrounds you. If you do ill toward others, it clings to you like Pig Pen’s smutty cloud of dirt.

My sister, Elle, and I have preached “good karma” to our fellow Roses since before we formed the group. Whenever we were tempted to criticize another author’s writing or express envy for her success, we chanted the mantra—“good karma, good karma.”

But it goes farther than simply not denigrating someone else’s success. We firmly believe you have to contribute to others’ success for karma to work for you.

Even before we were published, we formed, along with Layla Chase, a critique group that served our San Antonio RWA chapter. We offered plotting retreats to our chapter members to share what we’d learned about writing along the way and encourage them to write the wonderful stories they plotted. We volunteered to serve as officers in our chapter and to help with the annual conference.

We shared our experience and knowledge with anyone who wanted it—and we didn’t wait for them to seek us out. We looked for the inexperienced or struggling authors. We recruited them.

Today, several of our “recruits” have published and placed in contests. When they have success, we’re overjoyed. We don’t want to keep all the success to ourselves, because karma must be shared to work.

So, maybe I sound a little New Age-y, but my experience has proven to me the Buddhist belief in karma. Go create some great karma of your own. Join! Volunteer! Contribute!—however much time and energy you can to other writers. The gift will come back to you tenfold.

“Karma, karma, karma, karma…” Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget the song!

Or maybe just a change of location. Yesterday, my friend Shayla Kersten asked me to meet her in Little Rock for a “Write-in”. She was having a hard time getting back into writing gear after the holiday. We settled in with our designer coffees next to a window so we could watch the weather (snow was forecast) and proceeded to slam pages of our latest Works-in-Progress. I always have my camera handy.

We set up in the far corner in the back next to an outlet.

Shayla played coy.

As always, I grimaced for the camera.

We both made terrific progress. I began a little free read for Samhain (I haven’t found the right title yet) and made it half way through the story, stopping to share snippets with Shayla when I couldn’t stop giggling.

Today, I’m back home. Kim Kaye Terry and I are supposed to sprint (slam pages as fast as you can) later this morning. I’ll do anything to make the actual work of writing more fun.

One last reminder! Sign up today!

For those who don’t know, my sister and I co-founded a website for writers called Rose’s Colored Glasses. From that site, we run a critique group and provide workshops—some free and some for pay (hey, teaching is work!). In January, we will be leading a month-long plotting bootcamp. How’s our workshop different from every other one out there? We provide feedback and brainstorming every step of the way. We are so good at it that we have many authors return again and again for help with their new Works-in-Progress.

Here’s a description of the class. January is a great time to take on a new challenge and a new book. Join us if you can!

Your DIs (Drill Instructors): Elle James and Delilah Devlin

Dates: January 4—January 30, 2010

Cost: $35.00—cheap, considering everything you get!

What you can look forward to during Plotting Bootcamp?

Learn a methodical approach to harness your creativity in order to produce an in-depth plot for your next novel! Sound scary? It is-when you’re staring at an empty page without a compass and a map to guide you through the novelistic jungle. Your DIs will lead you through four weeks of activities that will help strengthen your abilities to: capture the conflicts, the major plot line and subplots; deepen your knowledge of your characters; and conceive of and develop an in-depth, by-chapter description of your book. Elle and Delilah will accomplish this with weekly lessons, bi-weekly chats and daily online communication. Be ready for bivouac!

Interested? Follow this link to sign up: Rose’s Plotting Bootcamp

Okay, that’s the end of my promo. The bootcamp is intense and fun. And you will learn something new or reinforce knowledge you already have! Guaranteed!

Our mom drew the picture for our site, morphing my sister and I into “Rose”.

No, I’m not back. I preposted this before I left! ~DD 😎

For those who don’t know, my sister and I co-founded a website for writers called Rose’s Colored Glasses. From that site, we run a critique group and provide workshops—some free and some for pay (hey, teaching is work!). In January, we will be leading a month-long plotting bootcamp. How’s our workshop different from every other one out there? We provide feedback and brainstorming every step of the way. We are so good at it that we have many authors return again and again for help with their new Works-in-Progress.

Here’s a description of the class. January is a great time to take on a new challenge and a new book. Join us if you can!

Your DIs (Drill Instructors): Elle James and Delilah Devlin

Dates: January 4—January 30, 2010

Cost: $35.00—cheap, considering everything you get!

What you can look forward to during Plotting Bootcamp?

Learn a methodical approach to harness your creativity in order to produce an in-depth plot for your next novel! Sound scary? It is-when you’re staring at an empty page without a compass and a map to guide you through the novelistic jungle. Your DIs will lead you through four weeks of activities that will help strengthen your abilities to: capture the conflicts, the major plot line and subplots; deepen your knowledge of your characters; and conceive of and develop an in-depth, by-chapter description of your book. Elle and Delilah will accomplish this with weekly lessons, bi-weekly chats and daily online communication. Be ready for bivouac!

Interested? Follow this link to sign up: Rose’s Plotting Bootcamp

Okay, that’s the end of my promo. The bootcamp is intense and fun. And you will learn something new or reinforce knowledge you already have! Guaranteed!

Our mom drew the picture for our site, morphing my sister and I into “Rose”.

Welcome Bonnie Dodge, whom I’ve just met! ~DD

When I worked for a commercial bank, I thought writing would be the perfect job for me. I loved words. I loved to write. Doing something I loved to do had to be easier than driving to a job I dreaded every day, right? Then I left my (paying) job to write full time and discovered that I had a lot to learn about writing. I have been writing professionally for several years now and here are a few of the things I have learned.

1) Like all jobs, there is a learning curve. Just because my English teacher gave me A’s and said I showed promise doesn’t mean I am the next Ernest Hemingway. In order to become a successful writer, I still have to do the time. I have to read voraciously. I have to attend seminars, workshops, and conferences and hone my craft. I have to network. I have to study people and be alert. I have to write, write, write until my fingers ache. I have to read, read, read until the words on the pages blur. Then I have to work and work and work until my story starts to resemble something someone besides my grandmother is willing to read.

2) Even when I have been over a draft a zillion times, I will still miss an error. It doesn’t matter how many times I or my critique partners have read my manuscript, the minute I submit it the errors will pop out like zits.

3) Perfection belongs in the dictionary, not in my office. Yes, I would like my copy to be perfect. Yes, I want every query letter and synopsis to shine. But striving for the perfect query letter or the perfect story blocks my progress. It’s admirable to strive for perfection, but it isn’t realistic. On good days my words sing. On bad days my work sucks. In the name of progress, it is better that I have an attainable goal—I will write 300 words today. Tomorrow I can worry about making them perfect.

4) I’d better love the story I’m telling because it creeps into my bedroom and becomes more intimate than my lover. It follows me to the grocery store and into the bathroom. It talks back to me while I’m waiting in line at the Post Office, and in some very real ways drives me crazy. So the time I spend with it better be worth it.

5) It never gets any easier. No matter how many stories I have finished, won contests with or had published, the process is still the same. When it comes time to create something new, all the same doubts are there to great me—this idea sucks, there isn’t enough conflict. My characters won’t do what I tell them to do. My hero is wimpy. The only way to climb the hill is to just start writing the story. I can always revise tomorrow.

6) The pay sucks, but there is joy in the journey.

Submitted by Bonnie Dodge, author of Miracles in the Desert: Essays celebrating Twin Falls, Idaho, and 100 years on a high desert plain, and co-author of Voices from the Snake River Plain