Tag Archives: inspiration

The Birthday Resolutions Take Flight

12 Sunday Jan 2020

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Earlier this week, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I was flipping through a stack of old National Geographic magazines, looking for something to symbolize my goals for the new year. A friend was hosting a vision board party at a bar in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. Now, I’m not entirely sure I understand what a vision board is, so I’m sure I was doing it wrong, but as a former elementary school student, I felt pretty confident when I saw the magazines, scissors and glue sticks spread out on the table.

I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just words and images that inspired me. I slowly amassed an admirably random pile of clippings. Grabbing a poster board and a glue stick, I realized there was an unintentional, perhaps subconscious, theme in the images I’d chosen. From an advertisement, I’d lifted a man in a jet pack. An article on the redwoods yielded two scientists scaling a monolithic tree too tall to fit on the page. A feature on birds of prey offered up the image of a screaming hawk, its tawny wings spread wide.

Liftoff.

Reaching new heights.

Flight.

For most, if not all, of human history, we’ve yearned to emulate birds and soar among the clouds. However, despite our lofty aspirations, but it wasn’t until one hundred years ago that the Wright Brothers built a flying machine that could actually sustain flight. Reaching a difficult goal takes determination, repeated failure, and time. Orville and Wilbur Wright could never have achieved the world’s first powered flight without their fair share of crash landings. I think life is a lot like that.

Which brings me to my yearly tradition of making birthday resolutions instead of new year’s resolutions. No, I’m not getting my pilot’s license or going skydiving. Last year, I was not able to realize most of my resolutions. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but life took a couple of unexpected turns, as life has a tendency to do. As I set out on this new year, this new decade, and my thirtieth year of life, I’m aware that failure is the best teacher. I’ve learned a lot from what I tried and was unable to accomplish last year, and I have better ideas for how to improve my process in 2020.

This year, for my birthday resolutions, I have my sights set on taking flight — metaphorically, of course — while also taking to heart the lessons of failure. So, without further ado, here’s what I have my sights set on this year:

1. Pursue a Healthy Balance

Last year, I set myself a challenge of running a 5K. It didn’t happen. This year, I’m still focused on taking better care of myself, but I’m not limiting myself to running. I want to go for long walks, hike through the woods, kayak around Puget Sound, break a sweat working on our ongoing remodel and exercise on a regular schedule. If I do some running along the way, that would be excellent. Overall, though, I’m more interested in striking a healthier balance in my life — more physical activity, less laying on the couch — in whatever way works for me.

2. Write and Publish

Three years ago, I declared I would complete a draft of a novel by the time I turned thirty. Well, I’m thirty now and the novel isn’t done; however, I am halfway through and the story is starting to take wing. I didn’t make my arbitrary deadline, but that’s okay. I’m not giving up and will continue to chip away at my manuscript until it’s ready for its debut.

In addition to my novel, I have an itch to write more short fiction, which has taken a back seat recently. I love short stories and flash fiction and I have several ideas burning a hole in my notebook that I can’t wait to get to work on.

Finally, I’m refocusing on getting more of my work published in 2020. I have an opportunity in the next couple of months to submit to a local publication I really admire, and I hope it’s the start of getting more of my words into print (or pixels) for the world to see.

3. Indulge My Curiosity

Last fall, I embarked on a journey I could not have foreseen when I started an online program to earn a certificate in strategic communication and public relations. Going back to school, even in an incredibly limited fashion, reminded me that I don’t miss homework, but I do enjoy learning. The program is short (I’ll be finished in March), but I plan to continue stretching my brain, seeking out books, articles, podcasts, and documentaries to help me widen my worldview and challenge my preconceived ideas. The world is huge and complex and there is so much to know. As I enter my third decade, it’s obvious to me that I’m just scratching the surface.

Will I spread my wings and take flight this year? Only time will tell, and I’ll be sure to share highlights here on the blog. Thanks for reading!

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer, storyteller, and hawk fledgling nesting in Tacoma, WA. You can follow him on Twitter and join the mailing list to get exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox each month.

Wired for Story

18 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by in Rants, Writing

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Brain

I don’t know about you, but I’m always writing stories in my head. A snippet of interesting conversation, an observation on the street, a song on the radio — my brain will wheel off on a creative tangent. I hear dialogue in restaurants. I imagine plot twists on my drive to and from the office. I don’t know what causes it, but I have always been wired for story.

I’ve heard that sculptors can see the finished piece in a hunk of raw marble and that composers can hear melodies that don’t yet exist. I think a writer’s brain must work the same way, because whether I have time to address the thought or not (more often not), these stories ricochet around in the echo chamber of my mind all day, every day. I can’t help it and even if I could turn it off, I wouldn’t want to.

It’s like having second sight. For everything that crosses my path, I can invent a backstory, a character or an entire fictional world from out of nowhere. I carry around a  notebook in a vain attempt to capture it, but 99% of the stories that flicker, unbidden, into existence escape me a moment later. Those that I do manage to hold onto for any length of time are often difficult to transcribe without losing some of their organic sheen. When I’m lucky, a story that I thought I’d lost will return and stay long enough to become tangible words on a page. Those are the ones worth waiting for.

I don’t tell you this to make myself seem like I have a special ability. I don’t. I might pay more attention to it, but I think we’re all wired this way. It’s what sets humanity apart — our imagination. We all have the power to see or hear things that never were and make them real. But you do have to slow down to give it time to work. What are the moments that cause you to ask, “What if?” What would happen if you allowed yourself room to answer that question? That’s all that writers do differently. Anyone can do it.

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Jonny Eberle is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker in Tacoma, WA who has more stories whirling around his head than he knows what to do with. Follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his monthly newsletter for exclusive content and recommended reads.

The Magic of Deadlines

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Procrastination, Rants, Writing

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Racers cross finish line in 5K run. U.S. Navy photo by Candice Villarreal.

I have heard rumors in my travels of creative people who are entirely self-motivated. They get up early, awakened by an innate drive to create, go to their computers, ignore Facebook and Google, and complete their work in a timely manner with no exterior motivator. I am not one of those people. I’m not even sure they exist.

Don’t get me wrong — I love to write. I’m bursting with stories to tell and would happily write all the time if given the chance. But after a long day at work, there’s dinner to make, chores to conquer, Netflix to be watched, and it’s hard to give up that precious downtime to the task of writing. While I’m passionate about writing, it requires a lot of energy, which is one thing I do not generally have in abundance. And so, weeks will go by without putting words to the page.

Unless, of course, there’s a deadline to meet.

Deadlines are magical things. As a writer and serial procrastinator, I honestly don’t know how I would complete anything without the pressure of a firm deadline to keep me going. It’s easy to put a story off to the next day or the next when I’m on my own timeline, but when I have to submit something for publication by a certain date, something clicks.

I have always thrived under a deadline. Some of my best work gets done with only minutes to spare. There’s no time for scrolling through Facebook, debating the exact phrasing of a passage, or starting all over again when you’re under the gun. There’s a clarity and an insanity in rushing to finish. It may not make for the most lyrical prose, but I’ve found that the immediacy of my work is heightened and the tempo of the action rises when I’m a little bit rushed.

I’m trying to teach myself to write on a set schedule, but I’ve never been that kind of person. I create in flashes and then go silent until the next unexpected strike of inspiration and inclination.

This week, I realized that I was in danger of missing the deadline for a local print anthology that I’ve appeared in twice. I didn’t want to miss out, so I dusted off a story that had been languishing in rewrite hell for years. I wrote the rough draft of this story way back in 2012 and tinkered with it off and on for five years. But it was only in the last week that I got serious about getting it ready for public view. The pressure of the deadline approaching gave me the energy to make drastic cuts and bold changes to the plot, characters, and setting. The looming deadline was perfect for a suspenseful tale that needed an infusion of new life. I’m proud of the way it turned out and thankful for the countdown that forced me to rethink a stale narrative.

Now, if only I could figure out how to get the same effect with self-imposed deadlines.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker in Tacoma, WA. Be careful what you say around him, because it’s all going in his novel.

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Writing About the Great War

15 Monday May 2017

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One hundred years ago today, millions of men in Europe were fighting and dying in trenches in a war that not only unleashed the terror of modern warfare on the world, but set the stage for nearly every conflict that would follow in the 20th century. I’m referring, of course, to the Great War, which today we know as World War I.

My fascination with WWI began in high school in a military history class, where we would reenact famous battles. It was in a shallow trench next to the football field, armed with a Super Soaker as water balloon mortars fell around me that I first gained an appreciation for what those who lived through the real thing must have faced.

Then, last year, I picked up a book called To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild. In Hochschild’s careful unwrapping of the war and its complexity, I started to understand the messiness of the war and its similarity to today’s global and regional conflicts. This was the war that introduced the tank and the airplane to the arsenal of death, but it also heralded the first time women entered the workforce en mass, the collapse of two major world powers, and the rise of socialism and communism in Europe. Above all, the stories of human suffering and human triumph were deeply affecting and fired my imagination (I was also inspired by my friend, Keene Short’s blog, which frequently focuses on the events of WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution). I was scarcely a chapter into Hochschild’s book when I knew I was reading the source material for a new story.

Tonight, I’ll be reading that story, which I’ve titled the Night Watch, at Creative Colloquy. This is my first serious dive into historical fiction, which is hard to do period, let alone in short story form. But I hope I’ve captured some of the nuance of the men and women who lived through the Great War. I hope to see you there.

Creative Colloquy at 7pm
B Sharp Coffee House
706 Opera Alley
Tacoma, WA 98402

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer and history junkie in Tacoma, WA. You can find more of his wit and writing  on Twitter or subscribe to the email newsletter to receive exclusive content and zero spam.

My Solo Writing Retreat to the Island of Inspiration

05 Sunday Feb 2017

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It was a dark winter’s night when I drove onto the ferry from Point Defiance to Tahlequah. I was off to nearby Vashon Island for a day-and-a-half solo writing retreat to start my novel. On the short trip from Tacoma to Vashon, I tried not to think too much about the enormous task I was about to undertake and instead focus on the surreal sight of the ferry dock disappearing into the mist.

It may only be a fifteen-minute ferry ride away, but Vashon feels far away and remote. In contrast to the cities surrounding it, it is home to only a few thousand people, spread out over a densely wooded area about the size of Manhattan. After I told her about my goal of finally finishing a novel over the next three years, my amazing spouse bought me two nights at an Airbnb for my birthday. So, I packed up my laptop, a few books on writing, and a bag of snacks and hoped inspiration would follow.

I have often found that I need to leave behind familiar spaces to start something new. Working at home, it’s easy to get distracted by thoughts of laundry that needs washing or what to make for dinner or a thousand other domestic considerations. Even though I was only a few miles away from my house, the process of packing up, of traveling, of arriving on an isolated island, sparked my subconscious to get to work.

I woke at daybreak (not a spectacular feat at these northern latitudes), made a cup of tea and setup my laptop. My retreat was a small Frank Lloyd Wright-style cabin with wood-paneled walls and a clean, modern aesthetic. A desk was built into a wall of windows overlooking Puget Sound to the north. Nearby, I discovered a turntable and a collection of LPs. I put on a Crosby, Stills and Nash album, gently lowered the needle onto the record to set it spinning and opened a new Word document.

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I’m not sure if it was the view, the curl of steam coming off my tea, the crackle of vinyl or the fact that my brain had been secretly preparing for this trip for three weeks, but for some reason, the words started flowing. I wrote twenty pages that day — my entire first chapter — which is far more productive than I’ve been in months. To be fair, I didn’t dream up the premise then and there. This is my fourth attempt (or is it the sixth?) at a novel idea I’ve been playing with for years. But this time, my fingers moved at the speed of my ideas and the ideas themselves were significantly better. I left on the twelve o’clock ferry the next day with a good start on my manuscript, a few pages of character notes, and a severely depleted snack bag.

Retreats are amazing like that. They give you uninterrupted time to focus and the time leading up to your departure gets the gears turning in advance so that you can be creative right out of the gate. But the retreat is not what’s important. What’s important is what happens after the retreat. One day of productivity and inspired writing does not a novel make. You have to sustain it the next day, the next week, and for months on end. The retreat is the beginning, but once you arrive back home and realize that the laundry still needs to be done, the challenge is keeping the momentum and not succumbing to the inertia of the everyday.

I’ve never managed to keep up that momentum after a solo retreat. It has always evaporated. But this year will be different. Because this year, I have a deadline. My retreat was only one day, but I have 328 more days until I need to have a completed first draft. The retreat is over, but the work is just starting.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA working on his first novel. You can get first dibs on excerpts from his novel-in-progress by subscribing to his monthly email newsletter. You can also follow him on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

A Lonely Kid’s Best Friend

29 Thursday Dec 2016

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I think most writers start out as lonely kids whose best friends are books.

A little over a month ago, my wife and I were packing to visit my family for Thanksgiving. All of my clothes were neatly packed and I was frantically searching our bookshelves for some light airplane reading. Reading an engaging book on a plane is one of my favorite things, so I wanted something good. My index finger came to rest on a small paperback with a cracked spine; a book I hadn’t read in a very, very long time.

When I was eleven years old, my family moved out of state. I changed schools and, in that cruel pre-social media world, lost touch with nearly all of my friends. For two years, I went to a small charter school (there were less than 15 students in my entire grade). I struggled to fit in and when I couldn’t seem to make any friends, I turned inward.

There was a small, white bookcase in my classroom and students were encouraged to borrow books. Being in middle school and being lonely, I naturally gravitated to escapist fiction and picked up a slight book with a dragon on the cover — A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin.

LeGuin’s book came to me at the perfect time, as great books often do. Set in an Iron Age world of islands and magic, the story follows the journey of Sparrowhawk, an arrogant young sorcerer who breaks the barrier between life and death and unleashes a malevolent shadow into the world. As he seeks to defeat it, he comes to understand the balance of the universe.

It completely captivated me. It wasn’t an epic fantasy, like The Lord of the Rings, but a personal fantasy; a coming-of-age story about one man learning to master his demons (both figurative and literal).

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Of even more interest to me as a budding writer was the nature of magic in LeGuin’s imagined world. In Earthsea, the key to magic lies in knowing the names of things. To know the true name of a person or a force of nature gives you power over it. In my own life, I was also learning that words were powerful.

A Wizard of Earthsea  was my gateway drug. LeGuin’s trilogy led me to other works of fantasy and science fiction. It also inspired me to write my own stories. If writing were a superpower, those books of fantasy would feature prominently in my origin story. Throughout middle school (and especially in those two years before I transferred to a larger public school), I started to write consistently for the first time in my life.

I had nearly forgotten about A Wizard of Earthsea until I happened upon it while packing my bag. I had nearly forgotten why it was so important to my development as a writer and how it had kept me company when I was a lonely kid in a new town. I don’t intend to forget again.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. His most recent short story, the Evidence for Coal, was published this month by Creative Colloquy in their Christmas update. He can be found on Twitter or on his couch rereading the books that he loved when he was younger. What books inspired you when you were young? Sound off in the comments!

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An Ear for Good Writing

10 Friday Jul 2015

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There are some writers who can work in total silence. I have never been one of them. I don’t understand them and I don’t associate with their kind. I’ve always been at my most creative when my auditory senses are engaged.

Not just any sound will do. I’m a well-known eavesdropper — it’s where I get all my best dialogue — so if there’s a conversation within earshot, my attention jumps right to it. It drags my focus from what I’m supposed to be doing, so I try to avoid places where people talk too loudly. I prefer a quiet background hum of activity. Indistinct talking happening too far away to be discerned. Coffee shops are ideal for this kind of experience, unless you get that one person in line who has no volume control. That’s when I switch to Coffitivity, a website that streams perfect coffee shop chatter.

Coffivity is great for when I just need to shut things out, but when I need inspiration, I need music. Again, not just any music. I have to stay away from anything with words or lyrics, because I’m easily distracted and tend to start typing the words I’m hearing. So, when I need to get serious writing done, I go instrumental.

Bluegrass is my go-to for light background music. It’s great for writing descriptions of scenery and tactile observations and I’ve found the back and forth of banjos and mandolins has always suggested witty dialogue.

When things take a turn for the dramatic, I put on the Film Soundtracks station on my Pandora app or find a particular soundtrack on YouTube. Strangely, I find that it works best when I don’t know the film the music is from and have no preconceived idea of what story is driving the music. The soundtrack to Last of the Mohicans has saved me from countess spells of writer’s block and I have yet to watch it. The only exceptions are the Star Trek movie soundtracks because they are awesome.

When it comes to writing to music, the mood has to be just right. Your subconscious picks it up and translates the sounds and emotions into plots and characters. If you’re writing a tense scene, you want to have high intensity music blaring in your headphones. If a scene is romantic, you can’t be writing to heavy metal (in less that’s the kind of mood you want to convey in which case more power to you). With the right melody, the words just flow.

What music do you use when you’re writing? Or does music totally throw off your creative groove? Let me know in the comments.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer and air fiddler in Tacoma, WA. You can find his unfiltered rambling on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

How It’s Made

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

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“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” – John Godfrey Saxe

We are on the eve of a hallowed time in the writer’s calendar. At the stroke of midnight on November 1, thousands of people around the world will start the long and arduous process of writing a novel in 30 days. That’s right, National Novel Writing Month — or NaNoWriMo for the truly hip — is upon us. And most people are tired of hearing about it.

“Pretty much everyone you know and love thinks they have a book in them,” Hayley Campbell writes in a piece for The New Statesman. “And pretty much everyone you know and love has roughly 3,000 words of it written in a dead file in the back corner of a hard drive three computers ago that they won’t tell you about. You are not special.”

You see, not everyone wants to know how books are made. Like laws and sausages, it takes some of the mystique out of it for some. For others, like Campbell, they are simply tired of seeing their social media feeds clogged with insights into the creative processes of fair-weather writers.

Campbell and her compatriots have a point — there is nothing glamorous about writing. For all of our tweets and blog posts about where we find our inspiration and how we overcome the turbulent seas of plot and character, it all boils down to periods of typing interspersed with long silences. So much of the writer’s work is inner monologue that there isn’t all that much you can say to impress an outsider.

And yet, the blogs exist for a reason and readers flood the inboxes of their favorite authors asking for a glimpse into the psyche of someone who creates stories. Hundreds of books have been written about writing books. Despite the trivial, self-absorbed status updates that will spew forth during the next month, there is something in all of us that is fascinated by the process and wishes we had thought of it.

Yes, there will be a lot of talk about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, coffee, and crushed dreams in the coming weeks, when NaNo-ers should probably just put their heads down and work. But whether NaNoWriMo gets you fired up or makes you roll your eyes, we still all have that story inside of us and we secretly hope to discover a scrap of writerly wisdom that makes sense of the mystery — and I think we should encourage the searchers.

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Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. He’s still on the edge about whether or not to write a novel this month, but you can always find him on Twitter.

Writing Is The Best Therapy

06 Monday Oct 2014

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I haven’t written a word since before Labor Day. It’s been more than four weeks since I’ve made the time to create amid the chaos of wedding planning, learning a new job and moving into a new house. For a writer to go a prolonged period without writing is like an athlete not training for a month. I feel like my words are dull; out of shape.

I also think my absence from creative work is taking a toll on me physically and psychologically. I’m stressed, moody, irritable, exhausted. I’m drained and feeling depressed.

I truly believe that not writing contributed to my foul mood and maybe even the nasty cold I got a few weeks ago. A 2005 study found a link between writing for 15-20 minutes a day a few times a month and decreased levels of stress and illness — even improved blood pressure.

Without my usual release through writing, my emotions and frustrations are bottled up, dammed like a river and threatening to overflow. It was making me morose and physically sick. I need the safety valve of my writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog, a short story, a play; I need to exercise my creative muscles. I need to vent the stress of life onto pages.

Just like an athlete needs to make time to hit the treadmill, I need time to devote my mind to the practice of fiction. The muscles of my subconscious need to recover from a long month of atrophy before I start to feel like myself again. It will take time to build up the discipline I once had, but I will get there, one sentence at a time, to a place where both my stories and I can thrive.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. How do you schedule time in the day for your passions. Leave you comments below or tweet him at @jonnyeberle. Thanks for reading!

The Inspiration Trap

28 Thursday Aug 2014

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For centuries — maybe longer — an insidious lie has spread through the creative community; whispered from one generation to the next. A lie that has kept promising writers, painters, photographers and filmmakers from achieving their potential. It is a simple idea that buries itself deep in the mind of the beginning artist like a parasite and slowly eats away their will to create.

We’ve all heard some variation of it: “You must wait for inspiration.”

This idea is so pervasive. Inspiration will come to you. Inspiration will strike out of the blue. Great ideas only come in flashes; in divine revelation to an artist worthy of the vision. And so we sit around waiting when we should be writing.

It’s a trap.

Some writers might make a living on intermittent bursts of creativity, but the rest of us can’t afford to wait. I suspect the majority of published authors sit down to write every day regardless of whether or not their muse bothers to show up.

All of my best work has come from the act of sitting down in front of my computer, often without a clue about what I was going to write and forcing myself to do the work. And yet, I’m in the trap right now.

When I started my new job and changed my whole schedule, I neglected to set aside a dedicated time to write. I thought, in spite of years of evidence to the contrary, that inspiration would strike at a convenient time and I would fire off several pieces ready for publication.

I’ve barely written a word.

I know I’ve been trapped in the quicksands of inspiration. I have to free myself. Only after I get back into the habit of writing each and every day will I find what I thought was going to find me. Inspiration isn’t going to tap me on the shoulder and start whispering lines of dialogue and prose into my ear. A set routine will draw out the stories already percolating in my subconscious.

I’m tired of waiting for inspiration. I’m going to find it myself.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. His short story, The Observable Universe, was published on Creative Colloquy in July.