Creative Spark – Cynthia Harrison

Thanksgiving with the Beatles

on November 29, 2021November 29, 2021 By Cynthia Harrison 2 Comments

Thanksgiving weekend is over! I got my Christmas shopping done and shipped, including boxes for packing, decorated a little bit…put up the tree with my angel on top, set up my little Victorian Christmas ladies, swapped out my Desert Rose dishes for the Spode Christmas Tree set, went to dinner with my mom and dad and took a jaunt to the casino before mom returns to Michigan. Al watched football and helped the crew decorate the outside of Building 9 here at Long Bayou.

We also subscribed to Disney+ and watched all eight hours of “Get Back”– the Beatles doc out now. What I found most interesting about this lovely bit of nostalgia was watching their creative process. Paul was for sure the leader, even though he said John was. Paul seemed more into it than John, who was so in love he mostly cuddled with Yoko and cut up with fake voices and accents. Paul and John did seem to get along really well, though. When they hit a groove with their guitars, they were so in sync.

The lyrics part was less polished than the music, which was improved when Billy Preston came on to play keyboards in episode 2. Billy’s work and his upbeat attitude, his obvious thrill at being a part of the Beatles, all made the documentary, not to mention the eventual album, so much better. Before Billy, it seemed clear the Beatles were running out of juice. They knew it, too, and Billy was the only person ever credited on a Lennon/McCartney record. Ever. He filled more than the musical holes. George’s eyes gave him away; he felt left out of the Lennon/McCartney collaboration. But he was the one who first mentioned getting Billy Preston in to do keyboards. Twice. Everyone ignored him. He briefly quit the band.

Then Billy dropped by the studio just to say hi and John said “We’ve been talking about how we need a piano man, if you’ve got the time…” and Billy, who was as upbeat as George was down, smiled wider than usual and said “Hell yes.” I’m paraphrasing from the body language. Billy and then George coming back after a week made things better.

The original idea, conceived by Paul, was to write an album (14 songs) in a month, hold a concert, write a book, and make a movie of the entire thing. They started rehearsing in a television studio but migrated to Apple records basement where a rough recording studio was set up. The way their creativity worked together was everyone wrote on their own, brought in their ideas, played and sang (there were more lalala bits or nonsense words than actual lyrics) and everyone kind of kicked in with their parts. Ringo did his drums just naturally coming in when needed with the right sound. Well, Paul corrected him at times. Paul corrected everyone. Paul was bringing in most of the material they worked on.

George had a new song every day and he’d say “I’ve got one” and play it and everyone would listen politely and then move on. The eventual album was called “Let It Be” — their last original album — making their output an even dozen LPs. “Something” (George’s lovely song) was on that album. At one point near the end of the eight hours, and as it turned out the end of the Beatles, George talks to John about how he might just go off after the record is done and make his own album. I recognized several of the tunes George auditioned for his bandmates later appeared on his first solo album (a double album) “All Things Must Pass.” He chose the right path and I wonder if Paul and John ever thought about how much more George could have contributed to the Beatles.

Ringo, like George, always had a token song, too, but he didn’t seem bothered. Ringo was fine being the drummer. He relished that role. He did it well. Oh and John called Billy Preston “the fifth Beatle” while nobody seemed to remember bringing in Billy had been George’s idea in the first place. George brought it up twice in the documentary. Of course I only saw a cut of many more hours of film, so that’s the story presented. A few word scribbles here and there, but I just assumed they each did their lyric polishing on their own.

It may seem as if I am championing George here, and in a strict sense, that’s true. He got shafted by Paul and John. But his life outside the band didn’t make me like him any better. He was the only Beatle who screwed another Beatles’ wife. George’s wife, Olivia, seems to have accepted that “George loved women” but John said “It’s like incest!” Patti, George’s first wife, never had a chance, what with all the Krishna’s living in the house and finding her husband in bed with Maureen, Ringo’s wife. In Patti’s book, she talks about George and Maureen running through the house naked. Running and laughing right past her. No wonder she left him for Eric Clapton! George’s take on it all was “free love.” I always thought that hippie idea was a convenient way for men to get laid in the 60s and 70s.

So Paul near the end is frustrated as his master multi-media idea slowly falls apart. They couldn’t even find a venue to do a final concert. Then two of the engineers came up with the idea of the roof of Abbey Road studios. John liked the idea. So did Ringo. George hated it. Paul seemed wistful as his original vision had altered beyond recognition. But as we all know, they did it and it was fab. They probably didn’t write the album in a month as planned, but they had six or so songs finished and six more ideas. They must have finished up in the studio after the one off concert on the roof. The police have a cameo in that part of the documentary.

All of which served to remind me why I’m a novelist and why I write alone.

Improv for Writers

on December 16, 2019March 6, 2020 By Cynthia Harrison 3 Comments

Writers have much in common with actors. We mine our own emotional experiences for words on the page and actors do the same with faces on the screen. Recently, I received “Improv for Writers” as a holiday gift, and the book goes even further than my analogy does.

Still slogging away deepening my character’s arc, I wanted to know more about her son. He lives in New York, he’s just married, he’s 31. But why is he living in New York? Because I wanted two adult children living on opposite coasts away from their mother. That serves my main character well.

But. Isn’t it expensive? What kind of job does he have? Oh, he works on Wall Street. Oh, he is one of those guys who writes computer programs that work so much better than humans in picking out winning stocks. Okay!

What these brilliant math coders figured out is that taking OUT the emotion is what makes an algorithm so much more accurate than a human at choosing winning stocks. Because humans have emotion. Computers don’t.

So now I have a way for Jane to interact with her son as they seek to find resolution to a complicated family tragedy. He is all about taking the emotion from the equation. Her daughter (his sister) is nothing BUT emotion. That took me maybe a half hour of improve on Saturday morning to figure out.

On Sunday I got the book, Improv for Writers, that claims to help me “generate infinite ideas” by “letting go of control as a creative person and trusting your imagination to create.” I already knew to trust my imagination, but I am not always so great at the initial letting go of control.

But. Work needs to be done. Original and creative work on Jane’s arc. And Jorjeana Marie promises that the “real power behind letting go of control as a creative person is trusting your imagination and ability to create.” Yes, please, I’ll try some of that.

The book is full of prompts both light and dark, both funny and tragic. And Chapter 14 is all about character. I didn’t count the number of prompts just for digging deeper into character, but there are many. Simply turning to that chapter made my writing juices start to flow.

It’s that kind of book. You can skip to what you need right away if you seek a specific kind of help for your story (like I do) or if you are totally blank for ideas, let’s say for a blog post (like I often am on Monday morning) you can start at the beginning or anywhere else that grabs you and says YES. THIS.

I’m beginning to suspect there is no writing occasion or situation that cannot be improved with improv. And particularly at this busy time of year, when writing hours are in short supply, I love the timed writing suggestions for freeing up creativity around character, plot and setting ~ and so much more. Even blogging. 🙂

Plans & Dreams

on January 31, 2016March 6, 2020 By Cynthia Harrison 4 Comments

I’ve been dreaming up ideas for my new position as Program Director with Detroit Working Writers. One of the things our President asked me to do was facilitate some workshops myself. Once a teacher, always a teacher, so this was an easy YES.

In addition to planning events, hiring speakers, and scouting locations for the next 18 months or so, I’m also figuring out what kind of workshops I want to teach. I’ve got two lined up, one in July and one in October. The great thing is these workshops are not just for DWW members, but for the entire local writing community. Anyone can sign up. Including you.

I’m designing a new web page that will include a registration form (with some tech help) and that should all be in place in a week or so. But you can look at what I’ve got so far on the Events & Workshops page. I did that myself, with easy-peasy Word Press. I think it looks pretty good.

Big ideas for 2016 don’t stop with teaching workshops. The other idea is something a bit more outside my comfort zone, but I’ve decided to do it, because it will be good for me and for my books. I’m taking my Blue Lake series on a long dreamed about tour of Lake Huron bookstores this spring/summer.

What stirred this idea up again was a phone call. The folks running the Alpena Book Festival (Alpena is a little town on Lake Huron that has a passing resemblance my fictional town of Blue Lake) emailed asking me to participate in the festival this fall. And I thought, wow, I should get my books in stores around there.

So I ran the idea by my road manager, ah, my husband Al, and he said sure, let’s do it.

When your publisher doesn’t have brick and mortar distribution, you can still get your books into stores. Simply order from your publisher and distribute the books yourself. Author friends of mine have done this two ways: one is to set a price and sell stock outright to the bookstores. The other is to take a commission when the books are sold.

Not sure what method I’ll try yet, just sure that I’m going to do something about getting my Blue Lake series in stores this spring.

Fishing for Creativity

on October 27, 2015March 6, 2020 By Cynthia Harrison 13 Comments

I have been searching for something in my writing, even in my life, since they inform each other to an absurd degree only other obsessed writers can understand. And yet, focusing just on writing at the expense of a larger life is limiting. As Julia Cameron says, you can’t spend your entire life fishing in the same pond or eventually it will empty. Creativity needs to be replenished and sometimes that happens in unexpected ways.

Yesterday I did something I always dread. I went into the marketplace and sold my books to real people. This was not a safe writerly enclave of a conference or a workshop but a retail store that sells furniture, candy, and candles. Also gloves and purses and paintings. It used to be a roller skating rink. Something about the charm of Leon & Lulu’s (the young woman who served the writers coffee came to collect our mugs on roller skates) inspired me in ways I was not expecting. It really had nothing to do with selling my books, although I did that too.

There is a sort of electricity in the air when a group of writers comes together, especially when we are placed in an unfamiliar setting. For once, our animation comes off the page and greets other people face to face. We exchange stories and snap photos and, perhaps inadvertently, reveal secrets. Insatiable curiosity about people and the meaning of life is what keeps me writing, and while someone once said a writer has all the experiences she needs by the time she graduates high school, it’s just not true for me. I need to replenish that fishing hole.

And that’s what unexpectedly happened yesterday. Maybe it was the way the shop scattered the writers over the vignettes that make up the store. I was against a wall with a large abstract painting above a sofa, a nicely upholstered chair to the side, and a huge coffee table full of my books. Other writers were just as creativity enfolded into the setting as I was. The store fed us hot dogs and popcorn from the original machines used in the old rink and later came around offering wine for a job well done.

In fact, it was less than work and more like a social occasion as so many of my friends came to see me. Some of them even bought my book. I struck up a friendship with the guy across the aisle and he introduced me to his friend, the star of the show who sold probably as many books as the rest of us put together. His was the fertile story that grabbed me and started an avalanche of ideas bubbling up from my suddenly overflowing imagination.

This star-of-the-day author wrote four books before he hit upon the idea to set one of his mystery novels in Detroit…in Greektown, a popular destination for metro Detroiters. The books prior to the Greektown series didn’t sell like the new books. Not even close. One smart marketing move was using the word Greektown in the titles. I lost count of how many people I saw carrying those books around. Maybe it helped that his was the first display as you entered the front door, but I have a feeling people just gravitate to the familiar and fun.

Which got me thinking about my own books, sales, marketing and more. I started thinking about my life in general, about how I have been coasting as if on roller skates since I retired. I still write, but after a lifetime of fitting writing in I’m finding it hard to transition into just writing, only writing. I need to do more with my life. I wasn’t sure what that could be until this morning when I woke up brimming with ideas like a freshly stocked fish pond. It will take me some time to sort out all of this stuff. I want to carefully consider my next move before I plunge into it, and plus, the holidays are coming!

Still, I’m very happy I ignored my introverted dread of the marketplace and just went ahead and splashed right into the middle of it.

How To Find Writing Ideas

on April 12, 2015March 6, 2020 By Cynthia Harrison 5 Comments

Where do you get your ideas? For writers, that is the most frequently asked question. It seems to vex many of my writer friends, but I’m not sure why. Maybe they don’t want to admit that they do nothing to produce ideas, that ideas simply float into their heads. Well, anyway, that’s what happens to me.

It starts with one little thought and builds from there. Does that sound difficult? It is.

For example, Sister Issues. I got the idea for my first published novel, an indie, while driving down a charming, winding river road in my town. I noted, not for the first time, that the quaint old Victorian houses were being torn down and cheap chain restaurants, strip mall drugstores, and branded coffee shops were replacing them.

I noticed this with some dismay because the house I was passing, one of the few actual homes left on that road, had always been a favorite. The lawn in back sloped down to the river, where the delicate leaves of an ancient willow tree trailed in the stream. What would happen to that house, it’s gingerbread architecture and flower gardens so lovingly painted and trimmed?

I felt a pang in my chest. Not for the first time. But what to do? People have to shop and eat and so forth. It’s progress. Which I cannot stop. But I can, in my head, put a young woman in that house and have her open a coffee shop on the main floor. She lives upstairs. Cher’s place is called the Sugar Shack because that song, from the early 1960s, floated into my head once the woman was up there getting comfortable.

An early cover from Sugar Shack

Sugar Shack eventually became Sister Issues

And so on. From the first idea comes setting or character and before I get too far down the page I start thinking about conflict. Which also comes out of the character and setting. I’d just been feeling conflicted about suburban sprawl, so that’s the larger issue, or the theme, as we former English teachers like to say. So the original idea bursts and flowers and then I pick it apart and arrange it in a vase…I mean a novel. I arrange it all into a novel. And there will be lovers because there just always is—I like to see people happy together. Well, first they have to suffer a little bit. That’s conflict, too. Then maybe they’ll be happy together. At least some of them.

So much of my novels come from my life. Not one word or deed in any of them is taken from my own experiences, but every single emotion of all the primary characters is something I’ve felt. This is not alarming, I’m just telling you the real answer to the question. Happily, I have never written from the point of view of a psycho-killer, at least not yet.

But I have had evil characters. Just like there is evil in life, and I have observed it, so too do my flawed, imperfect (but not psycho-killer) characters observe the evil around them. Frankly, they’re as baffled and dismayed as I am by all the hate and mayhem. Sometimes there are unexpected grace notes, too. You need them in life and in fiction. For example, soon after I self-published Sister Issues, The Wild Rose Press offered me a contract for my second novel, The Paris Notebook.

Library at USC where my son matriculated from grad school

At the time I came up with the idea for novel number two, I was teaching, it was my very first day, at a university. Before that I taught at a community college and before that I taught high school. So climbing the rungs of academia was a bit daunting for me, but I was a good enough teacher of English to muddle through. Except in my very first class on my very first day we heard The Simpsons coming through the wall. And another class laughing and laughing. I was teaching these young people how to write a college essay, and writing is not easy, and nobody was laughing.

My students looked at me like “Why aren’t you showing us cartoons and making jokes?” I did apologize for our rather dry subject matter, but I was curious. What was that other professor teaching? So being the questioner that I am, after class, I went over, introduced myself, and asked him. Turns out he was teaching the same exact course as me. He just did it different. We became friends, despite the fact that he was younger than I was and single to boot. And we still see each other once a year or so. He’s a Shakespeare scholar now.

And I write novels. That little story of meeting John set the first scene (later cut, alas) for The Paris Notebook. Two English teachers, with wildly different lives and at-odds ambitions, share an office. Sparks ensue. Also mayhem and evil. You know, I have to take my former comment back. I did delve a bit into the mind of a would-be psycho-killer in that novel. Just a bit, but the way I did it was to take that Super Ego “it’s all about me” part that is in all of us (but perhaps larger in myself than in you) and enlarged it to Big Box store size.

That’s how you find your way into a psycho-killer. Ha! Also, I read a couple of books for research. One was called The Psychopath Next Door. Evil becomes much less bewildering when you understand that most murderers and bad people simply have no empathy. They are born without a conscience. And they learn to hide this fact very early in life. They are charming and you probably love some of them, at least the ones who are not evil psychopaths. The gentler form of folk who lack empathy are simple sociopaths. Most sociopaths are not murderers or evil. They just don’t have the “I care” gene. Or, they only care about themselves. There’s more, and it’s fascinating and creepy, but I read that book a long time ago so I don’t want to muck up the authors’ research any more than I might have already done.

I love research. Usually non-fiction books. I like social science a lot, neuroscience and psychology, but I’ll read anything if it makes my story better. I’m a reader after all; most writers are. All writers should be. I read everything, including every genre of fiction. I like strong female characters in fiction. I also like strong females in real life. I once knew a strong woman who invited me to her place on Lake Huron up north.

She and her husband had bought these beat up hunting cabins. There were six of them. Together, they renovated these places, just as they had their historic home in our town. Then, the strong woman, who could plaster walls and refinish wood and hammer nails, also decorated these now sturdy cottages in the most adorable shabby chic style.

I’m from Michigan, so I love big water.

I spent the day in awe of her and a few years later I wrote the novel that would become the first in my Blue Lake series for The Wild Rose Press, Blue Heaven. My husband gave me the idea for Luke’s #1 Rule, the second book in that series. We’ve literally been married half our lives, but back when we were still newlyweds he said “I only had one rule when I was dating.” He kind of chuckled ruefully when he said this. But I was intrigued. “What?” I wanted to know. “No single moms.” He looked at me with his big blue eyes and we had a good long laugh because he’d married me, a single mom, and we were both pretty happy about it.

Our wedding almost didn’t happen. We broke up for a minute after we were engaged. But then we got back together and it was quite romantic and we went on in this fashion for more than twenty years before I remembered that remark and asked him if I could use his “one rule” idea to write a book. He wasn’t thrilled with that plan. But I begged and he said yes as long as absolutely nothing in the book resembled our real lives in any way. I promised. Then I asked my sons, who were little boys when we married but were now grown up men. “It won’t really be you and it’s not about us.” They didn’t mind, so I went ahead and wrote that book.

Husbands aren’t the only givers of ideas. Writers sometimes have critique groups that help. My critique partner gave me the final scene of Luke’s #1 Rule. She read my final scene and said, oh no, you don’t want to do that, do this instead. So I did. And then I had to turn in my next novel and I didn’t have the right title because hate and mayhem had ensued and it wasn’t the sweet little love story I thought it would be.

The largest writing group I belong to is Detroit Working Writers.

They’ve been around for more than 100 years.

I emailed my partner and said “Any ideas?” I listed all my bad ones. She felt so sorry for my broken brain that she sent a list, and down that list a bit was the perfect title. That is the name of my next book: Love and Death in Blue Lake. I hope it comes out sometime this summer, but you never know. I’ve had lots of writing partners through the years. Really, I can’t get by without them. And then there is my editor. She’s lovely. Having an editor is one of the best things about working for a publisher instead of going indie.

I have a couple of indie novels too. Sister Issues of course, with my daughter-in-law and her real life sister as cover models. Then I wrote a couple of indie paranormals and one of them, Sweet Melissa, actually does have a segment that is from my real life when I was a young hitchhiking hippie. Everything in that one section where Melissa’s friend talks her into hitching to Colorado really happened; I just moved it from a short story I’d written years ago. So writing is also about being willing to break your own rules for a story idea’s sake. And just following thse ideas wherever they lead you.