We Women Writers
Inspiring and encouraging women to write, to develop a personal writing practice through exploring the real-life writing stories of other women
We Women Writers
Karen Wright - Trusting in Who You Are
A native of Southern California, Karen grew up in Long Beach and now lives in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where she spends some of her time serving ice cream at Scoop’s Homemade Ice Cream! She did not understand her 7th-grade teacher’s advice to be a writer but now smiles at the idea of him saying. “I told you so.” Through her writing, she has seen herself, others, and the world around her and developed an ability to suspend judgment and condemnation. Through it all, with her vivid imagination, she is working on a Sci-Fi trilogy with the working title of “Alliance.”
Quote:
“Writing itself is solitary, but you need a village to keep you going.”
Takeaways:
It is essential to be confident that you are the story's writer, not anyone else.
Do what you can when you can.
It’s getting the words, the story out that matters most. You decide whether you handwrite/print it, use technology to type it, or speak it.
Resources:
Offerings from the Oasis – 2015 Volume 7 - First Edition
https://www.amazon.com/Offerings-Oasis-Lhc-Writers-Group/dp/1518825206
Scoops ice cream: https://www.scoopshomemade.com/
SLO Night Writers: https://slonightwriters.org/
Lake Havasu City Writers Group: http://www.lhcwriters.com
Jane Jones (00:00)
Hi there, I'm Jane and this podcast is designed for you. Five minutes of daily writing can change your world. Come with me as we explore the stories of women who transformed their lives through writing. Welcome to the We Women Writers Podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome to We Women Writers. Today we're going to be speaking with Karen Wright. She is a native of Southern California. She has a really vivid wild imagination and it's most comfortable in science fiction. She is currently working on a trilogy, and the working title is The Alliance.
Like everyone to know that well she has this really amazing imagination It's the grammar that holds her up so she really, she has a really good redditor that's helping her and her writing group friends that are particularly useful to her I think we're gonna find her story I think really helpful today. So welcome Karen to we women writers
Karen Wright (01:19)
Nice to be here today, Jane.
Jane Jones (01:20)
Thank you. Alrighty, so we're gonna start as we almost always do with, could you just tell us a little bit about your writing story?
Karen Wright (01:28)
It's about mankind and their ability to get themselves in trouble. And because of this superiority that we have of ourselves, we do some things that cause a whole evolution in the world, on the earth.
Jane Jones (01:47)
So, this is, you're starting your writer's journey with the actual book you're working on and that's called The Alliance, correct? Okay.
Karen Wright (01:57)
Basically, it's why am I here? What am I supposed to do?
Jane Jones (02:01)
Gotcha. Okay, so the subject of why you're here, why I'm here, what am I supposed to be doing, or why are we here, what are we supposed to be doing? And that's what this trilogy in the Alliance addresses by creating this world that you have there. Okay, so one of the things that we're particularly interested in is how you got there.
Did you use to write as a little as a child? Did you write in school? Tell us about that.
Karen Wright (02:35)
I wrote a little bit as a young child, but not much. It was not until my junior high years when life and things got to me and I didn't know what to do. My life was a little rough at that point in time. So, I would disappear into a book or into my own writing because I couldn't afford to buy a book. And when we moved, I didn't have a library. So, I started writing my own.
Jane Jones (03:03)
Okay, so we don't need to go into things we try not to you know we women writers to go into the parts that people want to keep private and I'm going to be really respectful to you and all the listeners about all of that as well is that there's some things in life that were difficult and you found it useful and helpful to you as a growing young girl to disappear as you said into a book or even and then into writing because where books were no longer available.
Karen Wright (03:40)
Basically, when I was younger, I read all the time, but as I got older, we moved and I didn't know. There wasn't one close other than maybe the school.
Jane Jones (03:53)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. Okay, so If you can cast your mind back to just the experience of writing.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Karen Wright (04:08)
I always wanted to, but it never made any sense to anybody like you said my grammar is horrible and I never did understand it even now thank God for Jordan and several different writers group people that I run around but because nobody would understand anything I was saying and now them.
Jane Jones (04:26)
Okay, when you write, this is going to be lot of fun. When you write, like when you were young, did you write with your pen and paper? Of course, you did because there were no computers at the time, correct?
Karen Wright (04:42)
Until my grandfather, when I was in the seventh grade, me a typer
Jane Jones (04:47)
Okay, and then after when you got a typewriter from your grandfather, did you start using the typewriter in writing?
Karen Wright (04:56)
Yes.
Jane Jones (04:54)
Okay, and...
Karen Wright (04:56)
And then it was like back.
Jane Jones (04:58)
What's the difference to you, if you're casting your mind back, the experience of writing relative to the experience of typing? Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Karen Wright (05:14)
For me, my handwriting was awful. I was left-handed, forced to be right-handed, and then went back to left-hand, but I used a right-hand stance, so I smeared it. So, for me, the typing was better because I could get my reports in and people could read them. I could see them. It wasn't like my scratchy notes. I'm thinking, what did I say? So, for me, typing was much better. It made things flow better. And even though my grammar was still lousy, at least I knew what words I was trying to say.
Jane Jones (05:44)
Gotcha, did you find it easier to communicate what you were really trying to say using the right, I'm going to use the phrase, right words, using the words that would express what you intended to say was easier for you with the typewriter than with your handwriting?
Karen Wright (06:02)
Yes.
Jane Jones (06:03)
Okay. All right. And is that something that you continue to do mostly typewriting and then into the computer?
Karen Wright (06:11)
Yes, 99 % of the time, I do very little handwriting because I can't read it. So, I write myself a note and I can't figure out what it was. So even my notes on my story, if I think of something, I type it into my phone, I put it in a list when I get on the computer because otherwise, I don't know what I said. Two days later, it's like, uh?
Jane Jones (06:33)
That's really important because I am a big, as you know, I'm a big proponent of handwriting. Yes. There's lots of reasons why.
Karen Wright (06:42)
That's the only reason I ever started to do hand writing based on you starting it
Jane Jones (06:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but having said that and then I know you've you valiantly every when we get together you guys we do handwriting in it you can it works Okay, it's not how you choose or you're comfortable in in writing down and communicating something it's using the computer is your is what you need to use
Karen Wright (07:13)
Yes, in my case, just because my handwriting doesn't. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I was left handed. They tried to force it and went back to it. I think it just never was comfortable.
Jane Jones (07:26)
Gotcha. So, if there's people that are listening to the podcast, if they've had this similar experience, and then somebody comes along and says, no, you have to learn handwriting, you have to learn cursive, it's very important, blah, blah, blah, that's not necessarily so for that person.
Karen Wright (07:45)
And now you have printing, can't do cursing because nobody knows it anymore. So when you're running a business or you're doing the type of thing I do with food service, it has to be printed. So, it was hard enough for me to write cursing. I got to learn to print.
Jane Jones (08:02)
And all of that harkens back the ability, the experience of learning how to do that is what words would you use, adjectives would you use about that experience?
Karen Wright (08:18)
Hmm, frustrating, confusing.
Jane Jones (08:21)
And at this juncture, it's just not, can I make the assumption or make the statement, it's just not useful right now to really try to shift over because you're working on something, and you want to get it done.
Karen Wright (08:40)
And like I said, when we get together and we do some handwriting, I can do that, but it has nothing to do with the story. Because why would I? Couldn't read it the week anyway. So, it didn't help.
Jane Jones (08:54)
Yeah, think what I'm trying to, in my mind, trying to communicate, what I'm hearing from you and communicate to the listeners is where you are is where you are and it's important to be there and not to feel like you have to improve on that thing in order to start writing, in order to start saying whether it's journaling or whether you want to try writing a little story or whether you're writing even like a shopping list or things like that.
Karen Wright (09:32)
My shopping list is on the phone too.
Jane Jones (09:35)
Yeah, it's on the phone too and you can put it in. Yeah, yeah.
Karen Wright (09:38)
And I don't have to write it, I can talk it.
Jane Jones (09:41)
That’s a huge benefit to people who have the idea to write or have the desire, the intention, something specific they want to write about.
Karen Wright (09:55)
Or they have written for years, which I have a good friend who wrote for years and then got one of the diseases, the neurological things where they were. So, the dragon or whatever they call it was the perfect thing for him. And it took him a while and I don’t know whether he really got into it, but at least he could tell a story again.
Jane Jones (10:17)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, the tools that a person uses to write are, there are so many different ones. So, the goal is to be, or what I’m hearing you saying is that you’re happy, you’re really comfortable, and you’re making progress in this book with the working title, The Alliance. And you have no thought or no desire to now change.
You the goal is what would you say the goal is that your goal in using the computer?. What’s the?
Karen Wright (10:56)
In using the computer, it's organizing. My brain doesn't work well without organization. So, when I'm typing along and I'm going and all of a sudden I'm thinking what color was that guy's hair? And I don't have it in the list somewhere. And I'm stumped for, you know, 20 minutes while I go hunt for it. And then I get where I want it. So, I need to have things organized so that when I'm typing along, can flip a page or flip a file.
And now, okay, Joe's hair was green.
Jane Jones (11:30)
So that's another benefit that you have with the computer is that you actually, and the way your mind works is you need that organization in order to progress.
Karen Wright (11:44)
Right. And that's why it's taken me so long to actually get this book anywhere near anything is because I couldn't organize it. I didn't know what I was doing.
Jane Jones (11:52)
That was my next question. Did you start off being all organized or is this a work in progress?
Karen Wright (11:58)
No, no, no. I had no idea how to make files organized on a computer. Now, I was a person that filed things in the regular board or put it in your AEC book. No problem. But my brain did not want to put it on that computer. And as you know, Jane, you're the one that finally got that in my head.
Jane Jones (12:19)
I remember. I remember. Yeah. Yeah. You all.
Karen Wright (12:25)
I did that. Now what? Now why do you think of that?
Jane Jones (12:28)
Yeah, yeah, you have to think of the computer as a file cabinet.
Karen Wright (12:32)
Right. And it just, for some reason that file cabinet didn't, didn't connect to the computer for the longest time. Yeah. And once it did, then I had to figure out how I was going to organize it. Yeah. I can make a list, but how do I organize those lists so I can find them?
Jane Jones (12:49)
Gotcha, so, could you have started out all organized? I think you, Karen Wright, could you have started out all organized?
Karen Wright (13:02)
No, because I didn't know how. I knew how to organize stuff, by job, for my house, for that. I just didn't know the computer well enough to organize it. And my first computer person liked to do things to where if you tried to do anything on your own, you ended up having to pay him to fix it. And it took me the longest time to figure out that it was him, not me. And by then I had basically given up. So, then I tried.
Jane Jones (13:28)
Oh, okay
Karen Wright (13:31)
word or a sprinter, a couple of different things. And somewhat got organized and of course the writers conferences and whatnot, get me some ideas on organization and how to put things together and what information I really need.
Jane Jones (13:50)
So.
Karen Wright (13:50)
I still don't have it all organized, but I have at least gotten to the point where I keep a page above in the chapter and all the information about that chapter. And it may not be really organized, but it's a little bit.
Jane Jones (14:05)
But where you're at now is permitting you to move forward.
Karen Wright (14:10)
Yes.
Jane Jones (14:11)
You're making progress. And it sounds to me like that's the operational, the place you're moving from, as opposed to the organization is something that has coming alongside. It's not perfect. But you're not stopping to get organized to... now continue to write. You're continuing to write and the organization has to be trying to keep pace.
Karen Wright (14:41)
And you got things like plot and theme and if you're a pants are like me, I'm just writing and it might be the first chapter, might be 10th chapter. It might be the 20th. That's where it goes out there. But you still got to make sure that theme goes in and the plot lines work and that type of thing. And I have some lovely writing, but it didn't coordinate with itself. And if you're going to write a book you've got to kind of coordinated especially if you're going to write a trilogy because you have to make it make sense from the first three or four or whatever.
Jane Jones (15:19)
Did you know that when you started?
Karen Wright (15:22)
No, my head was just crazy. I was that vivid, crazy person that just wrote crazy stories. And after a while, some of them started coming together, but it really was not organized and not cohesive.
Jane Jones (15:38)
So one of the things that lot of writers find is that they, the ones that either won't or maybe even, you know, experienced writers, they might get some blocks because perhaps they, we think that we have to have something figured out before we have to know the end, before the beginning, or we know to know exactly everything. And there's some programs out there with absolutely all due respect because they do work for lots of people.
You get this organized and you do that and then you get all this together and then you sit down, and you write your book.
Karen Wright (16:14)
That's the difference between prancer and plotter. I can sit down and plot a book, but by the time I write two chapters, I'm way off of that plot line. Because my mind goes this way. So, you have to be kind of a combination of in my case. Because if I plan to, I can spend six months doing the plot, but it sat down right and what do you mean it went over there?
Jane Jones (16:38)
Gotcha. So, well, some people might find it really useful to have the outline and they can stick with it, they get it, they write to that outline. Other people like, and specifically yourself, find that that outline is not useful to you. Right. Really loosey-goosey maybe, but...
Karen Wright (17:04)
There's a big difference. You plot it, you have the book all written out, you spend most of your time fixing things in that plotting session where in my case, I write craziness and then I got to go back and fix it and make sure the theme is in there and the plot's like, the ups and downs and all those things are in there.
Jane Jones (17:22)
So, to this kind of crazy way of writing, this experience of writing that you have, you are writing like lots of ideas, lots of things come in and you said earlier that you've got some really good pieces of writing, they're really, really good, but they don't fit. Is there still a value to have written those really good pieces even though you find out they don't fit?
Karen Wright (17:57)
Yeah, because you're learning more and more on how to describe things or who that person is, that character, or who you are, depending on what it is you're writing.
Jane Jones (18:06)
So, what I'm hearing from you is that there's your experience of writing is this, correct me I'm incorrect, if I've got it wrong, is that it's, you're trying to put something down and it's coming from this imagination. And just like in any imagination, sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn't. Can you describe...that experience of taking what's in your head and putting on the paper and moving forward with it?
Karen Wright (18:46)
Sometimes that's really hard because I can see some really wild things, but finding the words to do that and put on paper is really something you got to think about. You've got to really work with your vocabulary. What I have found is that I will blurt out a bunch of stuff and then I go back, and I don't like that word, or I've used it five times or whatever and I fix those items. So, when I write, I have to back over and back over it.
Jane Jones (19:13)
So, there's no this idea about in writing circles that people have an editor in their mind and they're writing something down and then they're stopping because they're, that's not good enough. And so, it puts a cramp in their writing. Sounds like you don't do that. You just put it on the paper and then go back and look at it again later.
Karen Wright (19:36)
I forget who said it but first you throw up and then you clean it.
Jane Jones (19:42)
Yeah
Karen Wright (19:44)
That works for me perfect. I went to a writers conference, Central Coast Writers, and I don't remember which teacher I had said that, and I thought, there you go, that works.
Jane Jones (19:50)
Central Coast directors.
Karen Wright (20:01)
Sometimes I can write some really good descriptive things and other times I don't it's not describing what I see in my head. I have to go back and
Jane Jones (20:11)
Gotcha, gotcha. you, it's kind of like wherever you're at, it's okay.
Yeah, and there's a lot of freedom you have in that writing down. And then when you need some help with it, you go, and you fix it and you get other people's input. How comfortable are you in holding on to your original vision? Even though somebody else may come and try to impress their vision on your writing.
Karen Wright (20:49)
Ooh, that was a hard one. It took me a long time to learn that not everybody else is right As I would change things to the point where it just wasn't even my story anymore. And I got really upset about that many times. But I kept that if I don't do what they're saying, then I'm never gonna learn to write. Well, you've got to be confident enough to know that you're writing this story, not that one. It's not somebody else's story.
Now there are times when people give you ideas and that'll work really good with your story. There are other times when that's not where I was going. And I had people that would put my commas in different places and totally change the meaning of what I wrote. And I would think, okay, didn't realize it was changing the meaning until later. My grammar's terrible. And then once I figured out, wait a minute, that comma was not supposed to be there.
That's not what I said and I didn't learn that until I learned to listen to it. As in word, you can play it back. And it's like in a monitor voice.
But when you change the comments around, if you'll pull that up and listen to it, you'll know that that's not what you meant. Or at least I do.
Jane Jones (22:07)
Gotcha, right right and as you as the writer has the privilege and actually even the responsibility to be true to your vision the story that you want to tell and you said early at the very beginning that the book is about man's well you could you said it way better, I'm not sure I could retell it properly it was about
Karen Wright (22:35)
Man's vanity.
Jane Jones (22:37)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then where it can lead. Yeah, yeah. So, when you're writing, do you have like a set way you write, a set time, a set place? How do you handle that? Some people say…
Karen Wright (23:00)
It's on my mood, but mostly my hours are between noon and five. And that's when I write my best. Now I work so, and I work sometimes morning, sometimes evening, sometimes, you know, so don't write every day cause I can't. However, it's still in my head every day and I've got things, you know, I write down notes to myself and that kind of thing. I'm not actually sitting down to the computer. There are times when I can't get to that computer between noon and four or five.
So, I will do it at other times, but I find my best time was between noon and five.
Jane Jones (23:35)
You said something interesting there a minute ago, was that I get to the computer, my best time is between noon and five, and I can't always get to it, but I write myself notes and I have ideas and things like that. So, it's something that you're kind of consistently every day thinking about and making some note about it.
Karen Wright (23:57)
And being a writer is not just sitting down the computer and bounding out words. You have to come up with that story and that's mostly in your head. So, you know, if I'm sitting here staring at the ceiling, I might be writing three chapters. It's just not ready yet and I can't get it on paper yet.
Jane Jones (24:15)
Gotcha, gotcha, yeah. And so would you...
Is it true, would it be true to say that your confidence and your comfort in putting things on paper is always been there or is something that's grown?
Karen Wright (24:37)
No, and I didn't do it on paper. My original starting it on paper was to work out parts of my life. Just to get rid of the anger, get rid of the upset, or get rid of the pain, or whatever the problems. And then I would just like tear it up and burn it. Depending on what it was. So that was originally when I started actually writing books. The stories, of course, were always there, but...
My original sitting down and writing things by hand was to, somebody told me to write it down and burn it, get rid of the craziness. And that's what I did.
Jane Jones (25:14)
Yeah, yeah. And those are things that you wouldn't want. And the purpose of writing that is to get it out, get on paper, and then do something with it. Burning it, I think, is super thing to do. And it's not intended for anybody else to read.
Karen Wright (25:34)
No, it was just to get my mind straightened out. And at that point, that's, I got all of that off my chest. Now I can come up with the, the gorse, which is a horse and a goose with the feathers and the lady that’s riding it and those types of things.
Jane Jones (25:51)
So, how important was it to go through that process of writing things down and getting things out and then burning them and let you say, getting them off your chest?
Karen Wright (26:02)
For me personally, it took that to get my head together so that I get the creativity out in a better way. Like sometimes I do flower arrangements because it’s something creative and it’s something in my hands and I like to work in the garden, work up my hands very well in the garden and that kind of thing, which I don’t have now. So I went to making flower arrangements because it’s too hot out here to much.
Jane Jones (26:29)
Yes, yes.
Karen Wright (26:32)
I needed to release and then I the creative. And between the reading stuff and getting out of myself and the writing stuff to get out of myself, I had other things that I tried to do and it was all creative stuff. I worked with clay and I worked with flowers and I painted some, I was not an artist, sorry, I’m just not.
Jane Jones (26:51)
Mmmm.
Karen Wright (27:00)
I'm pretty good with the flower arranging, most people don't get into flower arranging.
Jane Jones (27:06)
Take a good cross-section of artists and one of the things that is, for me and personally, is whether the person doing the artwork, the painting, the sketching, the sculpting or whatever, is did that person communicate what was in there at the time.
Karen Wright (27:27)
Same thing, know, is an art form.
Jane Jones (27:31)
Yes, uh-huh.
Karen Wright (27:32)
It's just not with paint or clay or whatever. It's with words and it's with the way you describe things and the order of how you say it and things like that.
Jane Jones (27:46)
It would be true to say that your comfort level in communicating what's in your head is closer with words or flowers and stuff and not necessarily. As an artist and are you meaning artists as a. A sculptor or a painter or a sketch.
Karen Wright (28:06)
We're all creative. A form of creativity that you can do. I'm better with words and maybe color and stuff because I do the flowers. But I'm not a clay person. I can't look at a piece of wood and tell you that's a lizard. You know, just, but there are people out there that can do that. I can come up with a dozen words for what would describe that weird thing on the mountain in Planet Zeldler.
Jane Jones (28:08)
Did you find it particularly helpful to explore the other kinds of arts like. Like sculpting or like painting or like sketching or like flower ranging.
Karen Wright (28:49)
Whatever I did. They help a lot.
Jane Jones (28:52)
They help, one is to be able to process through your imagination and make your life work, but also supporting your growth as a writer.
Karen Wright (29:07)
Yeah, if I hadn’t learned how to play with the clay, wouldn’t know how to mold the words.
Jane Jones (29:16)
Ohh, because of the experience of molding the clay is as clumsy as you might feel it was. But that physical experience of molding the clay and then holding a pen and finding the words and then going that's a very similar experience in your... Yeah, I'm using the wrong word.
Karen Wright (29:39)
I don't feel like it's, most people like, they look at the clay and they can't make something out of it, and so they just throw it away. But when it wasn't working, that's when I knew to look for other things. So, with the clay, you look for a different way to put it, but with the words, you look for a different way to say it. So, I taught you how to do that kind of thing.
Jane Jones (30:05)
Gotcha, so when you would do clay work, it wasn't working. So, you would try to find and play with different ways to see if you could make it work.
That not being your forte, that not being as successful as quickly as you can already, that experience in looking for something another way, looking for it, that in, that's the word I'm looking for, that informed your mind's ability to look for new words.
Karen Wright (30:37)
Yeah, because I can see this world that I'm putting together in my head. I can see it. I can see the color. can see all of that stuff. The same thing happens with clay. I can see that as what I want it to be. But making it get there is the same as trying to get the right words.
Jane Jones (30:59)
Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So, I think what I'm sort of in my mind playing with for the listeners is that when the listener is trying something and it's not working, then perhaps you try a different medium and a different way of expressing something that may not be successfully you might not be the way but that experience will come back and inform when you come back to this other thing it might provide the minds an exercise in the mind or connectivity in the mind to be able to make that first thing that you're trying to say, let's say writing, to make that writing work.
Karen Wright (31:48)
It doesn't matter what medium you're working with, whether it's clay or paint or whatever, you don't have to be, it's not working like I'd forget it, it down. Okay, so you play with, didn't work there, it didn't work there, okay, let's change from clay to paint. Does it work here? You know? Right. It's just like changing the words or rearranging the words.
Jane Jones (32:11)
Okay, in terms of the podcast, We Women Writers, it's about when the writing isn't happening, finding another way. And it could be sculpting, could be flower arranging, it could be whatever. It also could be...
Karen Wright (32:31)
And also, could be you're making a character do something that that character wouldn't do. Think about
Jane Jones (32:35)
That’s interesting, yeah.
Karen Wright (32:42)
That's where I find that I get stuck, is when I've made a character do something that's out of their norm. Something they probably wouldn't do or wouldn't do, and that's why plotting didn't work for me.
Jane Jones (33:01)
Okay, how so?
Karen Wright (33:03)
Because you’ve brought these things out and then you’re going along and you’re creating this character and they wouldn’t do that.
Jane Jones (33:11)
Gotcha, so in the course of your writing, there's a something has happened to a character has developed in some way that no longer fits it for what's in the next chapter.
Karen Wright (33:25)
We listen to something about plotting panzers and planters or something. And that really works for me because I need to be organized, but I need the character to be who the character is.
Jane Jones (33:39)
Yes, yeah. You need to be able to stay with that character. Yeah, yeah. All right, so When you were younger and you were writing down all this stuff to get off your chest, were there ever any roadblocks, any... times were you stopped or you know is there.
Karen Wright (33:59)
I couldn't do it at home. I couldn't do it at school.
Jane Jones (34:04)
And so those roadblocks, you found that you had to be somewhere else.
Karen Wright (34:09)
Well, I couldn't do it at home because that person read it. I couldn't do it at school because the teacher read it. So, it had to be. And that's another reason why I burned it.
Jane Jones (34:16)
Gotcha. you found a way. If you were to talk to your younger self, what would you now, as your older self, what would you encourage that younger self to do?
Karen Wright (34:38)
Listen to her seventh grade teacher that told her she should be an artist or an author. And she thought he was crazy. I'll get out because she had a D in English.
Jane Jones (34:49)
Right, so if that seventh grade teacher could talk to you now, Karen now, what would that seventh grade teacher say to you?
Karen Wright (35:01)
I told you so.
Jane Jones (35:08)
That's free, buddy. And you would feel pretty good about where you were, where you are
Karen Wright (35:14)
Even though I really haven't got a book out or anything. I do have a few things published. I'm not really an author yet. Yeah, I've thought many times that yeah, I could just see it standing like I thought it's all
Jane Jones (35:30)
Yeah. Just really quickly to talk a little bit about the other kinds of writing you do. Tell us a little bit about that.
Karen Wright (35:41)
Well, sometimes I'll do poetry. Sometimes I do short stories. Sometimes just descriptive. I sit down and describe the sky or the sun or the sunset or the mountain behind and the shadows on it that kind of thing. I like to do descriptive writing because it helps me with my writing. So, if I see something, a visual of some sort, I try to write those sometimes. Last time I went camping, I shared the story with you about the rock lizard.
Jane Jones (36:11)
Yes.
Karen Wright (36:11)
And that was just a visual that I saw. It was the mountain across the river. And I just sat down and started writing a story. I may someday finish that one just because it was fun.
Jane Jones (36:22)
Yes, yeah, yeah, I would encourage you to do that. That would be fun to put and have put out there for everybody. So, your other pieces you write poetry or short stories or just descriptive things, How would you rank those in value to you as a person if you know not the contribution, right? The wrong word, wasn't it?
Karen Wright (36:44)
Any form of writing is a value.
Jane Jones (36:50)
The contribution to you as a person.
Karen Wright (36:54)
And it's anything, anything I write, whether it's used or not, is a lesson, something learned. God, I could have used this word, I've learned word, you know, because you can read back on it too and think, wow, why did I say that? I should have said this.
Jane Jones (37:12)
Okay, so now what advice would you give someone who was feeling just hesitancy within themselves to write?
Karen Wright (37:24)
Trust, trust yourself.
Jane Jones (37:26)
Okay, then.
Karen Wright (37:28)
I didn't for a long time and it made for some really bad times because I almost stopped writing and you know that because I confided in you basically because of all that we went to a different place. went to a different place but trust yourself. And I was told that three or four times and didn't and part of my first real edit was because I didn't trust myself.
Part of the problems on it was because I didn't trust myself. I took things out that I shouldn't have taken out.
You've got to trust yourself.
Jane Jones (38:07)
Okay, so then what would you say to a person who was meeting resistance from outside relative to time, space, people's demands being made on them, things like that? What would you suggest?
Karen Wright (38:24)
Jobs are important. You got to a roof over your head, that kind of stuff. However, if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else.
Jane Jones (38:33)
Gotcha, and does it take hours a day to do that?
Karen Wright (38:37)
No, no, I can do 10 minutes if I need to.
Jane Jones (38:42)
So, what's a reasonable minimum ballparky time to spend thinking about writing or actually writing something a day?
Karen Wright (38:56)
With a cup of coffee in the morning with your sandwich at noon. You know, instead of watching that movie, you'll turn it on, have the noise, but think about your book. I turn my TV on for noise a lot because I live in a house where there's three TVs gone. So, I will turn mine on to cut those out so that I can think. And I may sit there with four or five programs, but a lot of times I'm not paying any attention.
I may be flipping through Facebook, but my story's in my head and I'm just glancing at pictures.
Jane Jones (39:29)
So, you're finding that it sounds like that one of the another way to say it might be just feel your way through it.
Karen Wright (39:40)
Yeah.
Jane Jones (39:42)
Do what you need to do to find a few minutes?
Karen Wright (39:44)
When you think about it, you'll come up with some thoughts, you make sure you write it down on your phone or write your next sticky note or however you do that type of thing. You know, once I write a note down, even if I'm still flipping through Facebook, that's going through my head and I think, oh, okay, I'm writing another note. And I'm through Facebook at all. Maybe this can happen, you know? And you don't, you know, maybe an hour a day sometimes is all you're going to get, maybe 10 minutes.
But as long as you're thinking about it, you know, actually sitting down and writing, don't know many people. I know there are people that sit down and they, they work from eight in morning until four in the afternoon or whatever. I couldn't do that. I have to work. You know, I have to work. have my husband, I have my mom that I'm taking care of. I have to go to grocery store. I take her to the doctors, all of those things. So I don't, I don't have that ability to sit down and write for seven or eight or four hours or whatever. So I get a few days I'll get that four hours that I like between eight and four. And other than that, get in my hour here, minutes there.
Jane Jones (40:53)
Yeah, so you're finding there's priorities and you have to, like you say, you have to pay your rent, you have to buy your food, you have people in your life that you need to be interacting with. But it's this idea that there's an awareness that you've got to take care of yourself. And somebody that's at the stage of journaling and not necessarily writing a book. It's important to find that time
Karen Wright (41:21)
Whether it's five minutes or an hour, whatever it is, you need to take it every day. If that's all of it.
Jane Jones (41:28)
How did you come to going somewhere away from home and away from school? How did you find yourself through that to a quiet place to write, get it out, and then burn it? Tell me about that.
Karen Wright (41:48)
Mostly I ripped it apart because I couldn't burn it not until I was open up to have cigarettes.
Jane Jones (41:53)
Gotcha, okay. All right, so, how did you, did you,
Karen Wright (41:56)
I would go to the park.
Jane Jones (41:59)
go to the park with a pen and a piece of paper and write it all down and then throw it away, rip it up and throw it away.
Karen Wright (42:05)
Yep, I've got tiny pieces so nobody could put it back together.
Jane Jones (42:10)
The original, you know, crisscross shredder.
Yeah. And then you go home.
Karen Wright (42:20)
OK, well, I'm ending down on the way home. got something better to think about. Yeah.
Jane Jones (42:25)
Yeah, because you feel you have a new different perspective once you have put that or is it true? should say, presumptuous.
Karen Wright (42:33)
I didn't always have a better perspective, but I got that pain or that problem out of the way. So, on my way home, I could create a story and I'd be happy for a while.
Jane Jones (42:48)
Yeah. And that's laying the foundation for your life moving forward. Yeah. Well, I think there's that, if it's okay with you, I'd like to when the book comes along and it gets better, I would love to have you back to talk about the actual writing of the book and how all of that went and then how your writing journey up until now has contributes to that end result that you've got.
And the goal is to be inspired by you and inspired by your journey and people that can think, well, the goal is to have people thinking, maybe me too, I can do that. Right? Yeah.
Karen Wright (43:34)
Yeah. It takes a village, even in writing. You have to have the mentors and the ones you trust to talk to and whatever around you.
Jane Jones (43:46)
Yeah, that's interesting you say that because I've heard a lot of people say that writing is a very solitary thing that they these writers they spent, you know, from noon and they got ready.
Karen Wright (43:59)
But writing itself is solitary.
Jane Jones (44:01)
The writing itself is solitary, but
Karen Wright (44:03)
The self, what do call it? You still need the village to keep you going to give you the inspiration to, you still need to get out there and listen to people and know how they talk to each other and what reactions they have to things. And you still need that village to make that, to create that character. Every character you created, somebody you met, saw or created in your mind, it created in your mind just because they did this out of the other thing that you saw somewhere.
Jane Jones (44:40)
Yeah, that's important because for me I’ve heard that and writing very solitary is very well yeah, but and so it paints a picture of loneliness or if trial and people talk about bleeding on the page and.
Karen Wright (44:58)
I can't think of the name of the author, but he made a... heaven. That moved. He could move it around to the sun and see a different view every time, just because he needed something besides loneliness.
Jane Jones (45:12)
Yeah, that was, I can't remember who that is either. There's like a little, he has a room and he would room…
Karen Wright (45:17)
I'd love that. Yeah, I could put that in my yard. If I had any of you.
Jane Jones (45:23)
There's something to lose the work for words, right?
Karen Wright (45:25)
There you go. Good. And you know, I'm get a second story and put this building that goes
Jane Jones (45:31)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Karen Wright (45:32)
You know, he gave himself a different point of view. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Every day, every hour. I don't know how he did it. Different times of the day. But you've got to have different points of view because otherwise your characters would all be the same.
Jane Jones (45:42)
Yeah, yeah. Yes, and not all of us have a room like that, but all of us can go out into public to a coffee shop or walking on the beach or walking down the boulevard. We can put ourselves in a spot where we can see something different from our…
Karen Wright (46:05)
And that's something fun to do as a writer. You can just sit and close your eyes and say, okay, I'm on the corner. What kind of a corner am I on? Is it a dirt road section? Is it the intersection on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere? Or are you standing downtown Manhattan? And if so, what do you see?
Jane Jones (46:22)
Yeah, yeah, and if you to go though for walking through those places, you can come back and recreate them and embellish them and create your own little space.
Karen Wright (46:32)
Right. But when you're sitting, once you've done all that, when you're to write or you're sitting thinking about your book, you close your eyes and see that corner. And that guy over there that had the fire burning in the trash can and this guy's playing the guitar and that one's doing the spoons or whatever, you know, I don't know what it is, but you can visualize that and then sit down and write.
Jane Jones (46:56)
Yeah, yeah, point of view is really important experience of it. It's really important and the village.
Karen Wright (47:02)
And it's also undescriptive. If you haven't seen it, you can't describe it. And that's not so actually too much in science fiction. But you have to somebody with a crazy wild mind that can come up with a spast that's a wasp that actually makes honey in a cave.
Jane Jones (47:23)
Yeah, you have to that and then you have to be able to take that thought and put it into words so that you can create that in the mind of the reader. okay. So, we know, there's that, you've talked a little bit about all the way from just journaling to be able to heal and to get past things, get things off your chest to now creating a whole new world in a science fiction book. is there...a gift or an idea thought you would give yourself moving forward.
Karen Wright (47:59)
Put together my toolbox sooner
Jane Jones (48:02)
Pardon?
Karen Wright (48:03)
Put together by toolbox sooner.
Jane Jones (48:05)
Sooner. Okay. All right. So, if you're going to start on another project, do you have a toolbox already put together? you have?
Karen Wright (48:16)
I have put in the basics, and I have some things that people have said that, you know, you want to write a book and get the information, you throw it in a box until you get enough information, that type of thing. But what I'm thinking is if I would have, when the seventh grade teacher said, you should be a writer, I should have went and got the books I have now and looked into it, but I didn't because I thought he was crazy.
I can't even pass my English class. You want me to write a book?
Jane Jones (48:48)
But you can't, but where you are now is, and perhaps it's a little bit like recalling all of the things that you have pulled together. And if you could just kind of jot them down and there's going to be, you know, a top five or a top, tools, one of them is perhaps remembering what your seventh grade teacher said. That's one of the things in your toolbox that you keep because it's one of the first things in your writing journey.
Karen Wright (49:21)
Read more. Read more about writing. Read more about anything. Read more science fiction. And my problem is science fiction isn't really something I'm all that interested in, even though my mind goes there. So.
Jane Jones (49:39)
Yeah, just any kind of writing and any kind of reading and any kind of writing like you said, whether it's descriptive or whether it's a poem or whether it's a short story or...
Karen Wright (49:51)
I could do a free-form poem, but you give me a set of instructions that you have to have, know, so many lines and so many words and so many syllables. I don't play with those. My brain doesn't want to play with that. But I'll write a free-form about the way the clouds looked in the sky that night or whatever.
Jane Jones (50:14)
Yeah, yeah, it's very, it's very individual, isn't it?
Karen Wright (50:18)
Everybody has their own. Everybody sees everything their own way. You and I can look at the same thing and see something completely different in that room. You have to remember the characters are the same. This guy walks in to the bar and he's going to see the gal sitting there and what she's wearing and the girl walks in, she's going to see the bottles on the floor, the colorful painting or whatever. So everybody's going to see something different in same room.
Jane Jones (50:47)
And what they see tells you a little bit about who they are. So in terms of self-reflection, what we see, what we write tells us a little bit about who we are, where we are, and perhaps what we need to be doing like right then.
Karen Wright (50:50)
Mm-hmm. And that's something you have to watch out for, as you know, I wrote a lot about myself.
Not realizing it was all about me.
Jane Jones (51:12)
Yeah, it's a journey for sure and one that you learn to suspend judgment and condemnation and to be able to look at something and just like the handwriting or I am more comfortable working on the computer and that's just the way it is, it's okay. And I'm not going to judge myself because I'm not going to judge because I can hardly read my handwriting. I'm going to find and do the best thing that I can do.
And then of course there's some really deep things that we learn and those are very personal. But the understanding of the experience of that growth is kind of consistent across humans. And it's not something you can put a lot of words to, but you know it when you see it and you know it internally when it's going on.
Well, Karen, I'm going to wrap up, but thank you very much for your time. This has been really lovely. thank you for your time. We really appreciate you. And the listeners, thank you for being here. And we'll look forward to picking up with Karen as her book progresses, her trilogy progresses.
And in the interim, we like to encourage everybody to write something every day that works for you, that's useful to you, that helps your life. All righty, thanks very much, and everybody take care and goodbye.
Karen Wright (52:49)
Thank you,
Jane Jones (52:50)
Bye-bye now.
Thank you for joining the We Women Writers podcast today. I appreciate you taking your time to listen in. I do hope that you've been inspired by this conversation, and I'd like to encourage you to pick up your pen today and write for five minutes. I would love to hear from you.
Please subscribe and leave a review. Until next time, take good care and have a perfectly lovely day.