Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within

by Barbara Demarco-Barrett

Overview

In her years of teaching, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett has found aspiring writers (especially women) blocked not by fear of the blank page but by the lack of time. Finding even an hour, much less a day, free of work, children, or chores can seem impossible. But you don't need an hour. Start looking for just fifteen minutes a day--minutes spent stalled in traffic, waiting for water to boil, stuck on hold--and DeMarco-Barrett will help you turn them into productive sessions that get and keep your creativity flowing. In short, inspiring chapters, she offers classroom-tested exercises and innovative techniques for generating ideas, as well as advice from well-known authors. Give her fifteen minutes: She'll ignite your pen and help you to become the writer you have always wanted to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780692127919
Publisher:	Mars Street Press
Publication date:	05/20/2018
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	635,479
Product dimensions:	5.24(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's published works include Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004; 11th printing), a Los Angeles Times bestseller and winner of the 2005 American Society of Journalists and Authors book award. Her short story, "Crazy for You," published in Orange County Noir (Akashic, 2010), was chosen for USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series (Akashic, 2013). Her short fiction has been published in the Oyez Review, The Big Click, and Radius. Essays and articles have seen print in anthologies as well as The Authors Guild Bulletin, The Writer, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poets & Writers, Writer's Digest, Toronto Sun, San Jose Mercury News, Orange Coast Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. She's a member of the Authors Guild, PEN, American Society of Journalists and Authors, and Sisters in Crime Orange County Chapter, where she's incoming president for 2018. She hosts "Writers on Writing," a public radio show on KUCI-FM (broadcasting out of UC-Irvine) and in 2009 founded the Pen on Fire Speaker Series in Corona del Mar, a bi-monthly salon featuring noted authors, editors, and literary agents. In 2011, she was named #1 Literary Magnet by Orange Coast Magazine, a glossy metropolitan regional serving Orange County, California. . DeMarco-Barrett has taught creative writing for 20-plus years. For twelve of those years she taught at UC-Irvine where she received a Distinguished Instructor award. Since 2005, she has taught at Gotham Writer's Workshop. She is a former board member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and served as the Southern California Chapter president for five years. From 2000 to 2012, she served as editor of The ASJA Monthly, the official publication for ASJA. Before that, she was travel editor for The Local Concierge, a Southern California travel magazine. For three years she wrote the "Women's Business" column for OC Metro, a business magazine distributed in Orange County, California. She lives in coastal Orange County one hour south of Los Angeles with her jazz and blues musician husband and son, and two cats.

Read an Excerpt

For me, writing something down was the only road out.-Anne Tyler, in Janet Sternburg, ed.,

THE WRITER ON HER WORK

Writing Like There's No Tomorrow
It took a while for me to get going as a writer. It wasn't until the beginning of my junior year at a private Vermont college that I knew I wanted to write, that I was desperate, actually, to be a writer. Once that knowledge took hold, there was no reconsidering my choice. I blazed along the writing path, writing hard, reading hard, making up for lost time. My advisers encouraged me. It was all good, all promising-no matter that writing was the biggest intellectual challenge of my life.

But when I graduated, the fact that I still had not transformed into Virginia Woolf or become a New Yorker writer sent me into a writer's block as big as Grand Central Station. It lasted a year. Finally the truth sank in: Not writing wasn't bringing me any closer to being like the writers I admired or to being published, and I so missed writing. I dove back in. There was no choice. I was a writer: I was miserable when I didn't write, and I wanted to write more than I wanted to do anything else. I had to write, come what may.

The deep desire to write is all you need to begin. Its power over you is bigger than the fear of rejection. Once you accept that you are a writer, you can overcome fear. I had to.

In every aspect of life, it's easy to let fear influence our decisions. We stick with jobs we hate for fear of ending up in ones that are worse. We stay in emotionally or physically abusive relationships because we are afraid to leave. And we put off writing because there's no time, we're sure we're no good, and who are we kidding, anyway? What makes me think I'll ever make it? This way, the dream of being a writer remains just that-a dream.

Putting aside fears in love, in life, and in writing is the only way to have a shot at achieving any measure of success.

When crime novelist Andrew Vachss came on my show, he talked about never giving up. "Spectators don't win fights, and the one fighting technique I have not seen fail yet is to just keep getting up. People shouldn't be discouraged, because they can go from everybody saying that they would never be published and all of a sudden, it's done. You never know. You're punching a wall, punching a wall, your hands are bloody and broken, and then all of a sudden the wall's down, not from any one punch but from the accumulated weight of all the punches. This is not a business for people who give up easily."

Set Your Timer
Imagine a friend has come to you for help. She dreams of becoming a writer but is burdened by fears. She worries she has no talent and has nothing to say. Perhaps she worries she's taking precious time away from her family to pursue her selfish desire to write.

For fifteen minutes, write to that friend and give her hope. Dispel each of her fears, one by one, so that when she is through talking with you and revealing her heart, she will be willing to try giving the writing life her best effort. Your words need to inspire her and help her through this difficult time.

Now, can you comfort yourself this way?

Imagine you are this person. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and, using your newfound outlook, write a letter to yourself about your plans and projects as a writer.

Be as specific as possible. What sorts of projects are you interested in? What would you like to write today? What is your ultimate goal? What is your most extravagant dream? Let what you jot down run the gamut from the most realistic project to the most outrageous imaginings. It's okay to dream on paper. In fact, writing down your goals can be a vital step toward accomplishing them.

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	xi
	Before you begin
	Writing Like There's No Tomorrow	2
	Late Bloomers	5
	Hang a Partition	9
	Getting started
	Stolen Moments	14
	Freewriting Shall Set You Free	19
	Load the Basket, Fill the Jug	25
	Harvesting Words	31
	First Lines	34
	Create a Written Snapshot	38
	Through a Child's Eyes and Ears	42
	Making Lists	45
	Start Small	48
	Regarding Research	52
	Tools & rituals
	Leave Your Shoes at the Door	58
	Writers' Utensils	61
	Where Writers Work	65
	Walk! Refresh! Have Fun!	70
	Motel Motivation	76
	Napkins, Notebooks, and Journals	80
	Teaching Your Pen to Listen	86
	Writers Groups	90
	Mining your life
	Expose Yourself	96
	Celebrate Your Otherness	101
	Using the Ones You Love	105
	Breaking the Chains	111
	Words Can Be So Powerful	114
	Life Imitating Art	117
	Beads of Sweat ... or Pleasure	119
	Craft
	Form	126
	Plot or Not	130
	Creating Tension	135
	Voice and Style	139
	Play to Your Strength	144
	Point of View	147
	Titles: The Port of Entry	152
	Character Building	156
	Compassion 101	160
	Say What? Writing Dialogue	164
	Set the Stage	169
	Poetry: The Beautiful Stepchild	171
	Obsessed with Detail	174
	Revision	178
	You Are What You Read	182
	Overcoming the obstacles
	That Black Hole: TV	188
	Housework	193
	Eddiction.com	196
	Fickle Minds	200
	Rejection	203
	Green with Envy	210
	Trusting Fear	214
	Mentors	221
	Keep Your Lips Sealed	225
	Significant Others	228
	Living the life
	Marketplace Madness	236
	Sacrifice	240
	Literary Agents	244
	Set Your Pen on Fire	251
	Acknowledgments	257
	Suggested Reading	259

Editorial Reviews

DeMarco-Barrett knows the writerly type. Her book perfectly combines inspiration and practical advice.

Library Journal

"What a little gem! Gulp down this cocktail of compassion, inspiration, and wizard limbering-up exercises."

poisonedpen.com

"The simple tips and easy lessons herein will provide inspiration to beginning and seasoned writers alike. I recommend it highly."

Jo-Ann Mapson

"PEN ON FIRE is a fitness gym for writers with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, who teaches, coaxes, and cheers us on."

Diane Leslie

"PEN ON FIRE is a beginning writer's dream cocktail of fortitude: equal parts compassion, inspiration, and fabulous limbering exercises. "

Jodi Picoult

"Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's wonderful, practical guide teaches us to value our craft and, thus, ourselves."

Ayelet Waldman

"PEN ON FIRE has got a wonderful mix of the practical and the inspirational."

T. Jefferson Parker

"A creative dynamo, a true writer's writer."

Pages Magazine

"Soars with inspiration and crackles with joy. It's a blessing for anyone going crazy trying to find time to write."

Carolyn See

"With an encouraging attitude and inspirational approach…everything writer-wannabes want to know, from finding an agent to finding your voice."

Booklist

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR PEN ON FIRE
"Pen on Fire is a gym for writers with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, who teaches, coaxes, and cheers us on." -Diane Leslie, author of Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime

"A wonderful mix of the practical and the inspirational." -T. Jefferson Parker, author of Cold Pursuit

From the Publisher