The article below appeared in the The Glen Ridge Paper, October 27, 2005.
Reprinted with permission.

Author inspires crowd as part of Culture Fest 2005 celebration

	Photo by Dan Epstein

Potential writers made a pilgrimage last week to the borough's Women's Club to take part in a workshop with one of Glen Ridge's notable authors.

"Call Me Ishmael", a starter's workshop for budding litterateurs, was led by romance novelist Nancy Herkness the afternoon of October 20th. The talk was part of the massive and annual "Culture Fest" events which the Women's Club runs for the more intellectually adventurous individuals in Glen Ridge.

Herkness, author of the acclaimed novels A Bridge to Love and Shower of Stars, helped the attendees begin their own books in earnest. Some came with ideas for books. Others with just vague notions of a character they'd like to follow in a plot line. One aspiring writer wanted to publish a book interweaving tales of divorced dads with recipes that would help them in their bachelor lifestyles. And another went simply for the sole inspiration of speaking and listening to a published author.

Herkness was supportive. As a long time writer who is only relatively recently published, she had some helpful hints to offer all the writers there. Unlike many writers who are hesitant to "jinx" themselves by talking about their writing rituals, Herkness was forthcoming about what makes her characters and plots and prose metamorphose into a story.

She explained how walks with her dog through the borough's streets provide her with inspiration to finish each successive page, and how she paces the daily workload toward finishing her novels.

"One thing I've discovered is that if you're waiting for the muse, you're never going to get the book done," Herkness said. "You have to tie her down and force her to spit words onto the page!" she explained.

One of the most important points was that Herkness encouraged the writers to keep on working through an entire first draft of their books, otherwise somebody could fall into the quicksand bog of endless revisions. She said her first novel took her much longer than it should have because she kept going back and perfecting and tweaking the words on previous pages—revisions which were eventually thrown out anyway.

So Herkness explained there is a more passionate way to write than is normally considered possible. She was originally influenced by the "kamikaze" style of the "Book in a Week" program, in which authors sequester themselves in a hotel room or other isolated place and do nothing but write and breathe, taking short breaks only for the bathroom, sleeping and eating. Although she said she could never manage to write with that kind of hell-bent intensity, Herkness said it's the kind of passion which nonetheless produces worthwhile and cogent writing—and which keeps the creative process fun. So she instead writes with her inspiration, and refuses to get slowed down in premature revisions.

Such seemingly unorthodox methods as "torturing your character" were explored as exercises that can tell the writer more about the character and also inform the muse. For instance, putting characters in difficult or compromising situations—ones in which they behave in ways that run counter to their beliefs or their pasts—help to make the story more interesting and grabbing for the reader.

All the exercises represent a kind of ritual in which Herkness encouraged the authors to utilize their psyches and their experiences as building blocks for creativity.

"The subconscious is a wonderful thing for a writer. You should feed it and use it absolutely mercilessly," she enthused. Another interesting aspect of Herkness' creative process is the bulletin board collages she says many authors construct while working at their desks. Certain random images and cut-outs from books and magazines are seemingly disparate to people other than the author, but come to serve as their own form of inspiration, according to Herkness.

The author currently has two books going into a single one of those collages over her desk. To any other person, it would look like a mish-mash of classical music images and modern professional hockey scenes. But to her, those represent the two plots that she's simultaneously weaving into separate books.

Herkness' experiences and advice were considered invaluable by the people who took part in the workshop. 

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