Time to Write

The book pirates who aren't (but you still don't want to deal with them)

As reported on GalleyCat, best-selling author Tess Gerritsen looked around the web to see how many instances she could find of her books being pirated.

She said she discovered more than 90 files in a variety of languages. On one site the indication was that the books had been downloaded 4000 times, which she equates with 4000 lost sales (which isn’t necessarily so, but she is right to be concerned).

Someone with the comments name of dmargulis made this observation:

“Some (most? all?) of the "pirate" sites are nothing of the sort. They are phishing sites, pretending to offer all manner of things for download, including every book in print, that they don't actually have and that they have never furnished to anyone. The goal is to get the site visitor to provide credit card information or other personal data. The problem for the author is that, in avoiding victimization by the phishing scam, you can't verify that any given site in fact provides a pirated copy of anything at all.”

Well, I know from my own experience in trying to track down and stop unauthorized files of my “Your Writing Coach” book that not ALL pirate sites are phishing sites, but this does explain a lot. I did encounter sites that asked you to pay, via credit card, a small registration fee before you were eligible to download anything (naturally I didn’t). I can’t say I have too much sympathy for anybody who is suckered that way in hopes of being able to download pirated files. But it does blur the picture of just how much print piracy is going on.

(It's easy to buy a legal copy of my book, "Your Writing Coach" from Amazon or other online and offline retailers if you want friendly support for writing your own book.)

The strange methods of genius film-maker Stanley Kubrick

Eccentric genius film-maker Stanley Kubrick is the subject of a long profile written by Rob Sharp for The Independent. The occasion is the publication of "Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made."

It didn't happen because it was considered too expensive: "In the late 1960s, the studio MGM pulled the plug on what could have been Kubrick's finest work, in part spooked by spiralling budgets (it would have cost $5.2m, around $100m in modern terms)." (How's that for a sharp shock about inflation?)

You won't be picking up this book on a whim (given the fact that it weighs 22 pounds, you may not be picking it up at all). It costs £450 (about $730). It's actually a hollowed-out book with ten volumes within it. It's a limited edition--you can find it at taschen.com.

Some of the revelations about Kubrick's obsession are startling, too: "he took 15,000 photographs of potential locations for Napoleon. His index-card system, which he used to coordinate all his characters' movements so that he knew where each of them was at any one time, ran to 25,000 entries."

Writing for children - a success story

In Publisher's Weekly there is an account of how Rebecca Stead won the top honor you can get for a children's book, the Newbery Medal for "When You Reach Me, and also how she got her start writing for kids. People often make the mistake of thinking a children's book is easy to write, that you just dash one off (after all, there are not many words, right?). As you'll read, it's not that quick or easy a process:

"Stead said she did several interviews that day, and her mother “swung into action,” planning an open house for that evening so that family and friends could come by and celebrate. Tuesday morning, she said, “I made my kids lunch and put my eight-year-old on the school bus and got in a car that took me to the Today Show.”

She met Jerry Pinkney, her fellow medalist, in the green room, and they exchanged books. And then it was time to go on the air. “We were told we would each be asked one question, and that the segment would be two minutes. I was thinking ‘talk short,’ and trying not to look scared. They said it will feel really fast, but it was just right from my point of view.”

Stead said she’s gotten “a ton” of phone calls and e-mail and notes on Facebook. “It’s been this constant love shower. I haven’t even begun to figure out how to answer them.”

Here's how she describes the process of writing the book:

"Stead credits her editor for much of her success, saying she’d never have written a children’s book if it weren’t for [Wendy] Lamb. When You Reach Me is Stead’s second novel; she began the first one, First Light, while in between law jobs. “I was full of doubt,” she said. When she finished her first draft (“it was unwieldy and too complicated”), she contacted Lamb, whom she had met at a short story workshop several years before. “I told her I had this big mess of a draft, what do I do? She said, ‘Send it to me.’ She read it and really encouraged me. She told me, ‘This is not ready but there is a lot here. You need to find a writing community to help you.’ ”

Through connections made on a listserv, she and others founded a critique group, where she reworked the draft for two years. Then she sent it back to Lamb, and they revised the book further, for another year. “If she hadn’t done all that,” Stead said, “I would have taken a different path.”

Isn't it great to hear there are still editors around who will go that extra mile?

(Whatever kind of book you want to write, you'll get help in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online and offline retailers. You might also want to sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm ebulletin--it contains tips for being more creative and productive.)

IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHAT'S IN "YOUR WRITING COACH", WATCH THIS:

Want to Write? This is the book for you. from jurgen Wolff on Vimeo.

Creativity according to Brian Eno

Thanks to Will Jennings for calling to my attention a long interview with music pioneer Brian Eno in the Guardian. Here are a couple of quotes about Eno's creative process:

"Instead of shooting arrows at someone else's target, which I've never been very good at, I make my own target around wherever my arrow happens to have landed. You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bulls eye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre."

"In my house in Oxfordshire, we have this big, beautiful Andrew Logan sculpture of a lovely Pegasus with blue glass wings. When I get a taxi from the station, a driver will always comment on it because it is so striking. What they often say is, 'What does that stand for then?' Or, 'What does that mean?', based on the idea that something exists because it has to tell you something, or it refers to something else, and I realise that this notion is foreign to me. The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn't refer to anything else. They stood alone and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else."

(for creative inspiration, sign up now for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to [email protected])

Writing, sitting--and your health

from The Independent's Health Editor, a story that probably impacts most writers:

Office workers beware: long periods of sitting at your desk may be a killer. Scientists have identified a new threat from our sedentary lifestyles that they call "muscular inactivity".

Sitting still for long periods of time leads to the build up of substances in the blood that are harmful to health. And exercise alone won’t shift them.

Millions of people lead sedentary lives, spending their days between car, office desk and the couch in front of the TV. While the ill effects are well recognised it has conventionally been thought that they can be offset by frequent trips to the gym, swimming pool or jogging track.

Now researchers say that that is not enough. In addition to regular exercise, office workers need to keep moving while they work, by making regular trips to the printer, coffee machine or to chat with colleagues."

One expert recommends an active five minute break from desk work every 45 minutes. This fits well with my method of "timepods"--setting a goal for what you will achieve in the next 45 minutes, writing it down, turning on a timer for that period, and when the timer buzzes, getting up and moving around a bit, if only to get a drink of water.

(Using timepods is one of many techniques you'll learn in my Breakthrough Strategy online coaching program. For full details, see www.jurgenwolff.com)

Marketing Your Writing: good example from J.K. Rowling, bad example from President Obama

Writing in the New Yorker, Juno Diaz points out that President Obama is not doing a very good job of story telling:

"Tolkien could have been talking about the power of stories when he described his One Ring: stories rule us, they find us, they bring us together, they bind us, and, yes, they can pull us apart as well. If a President is to have any success, if his policies are going to gain any kind of traction among the electorate, he first has to tell us a story."

Diaz says so far Obama has not told a bad story, he's told no story: "I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing."

Of course as writers we are aware that we need to tell a good story in our scripts or novels or non-fiction books, or whatever we write. What we are only starting to recognize more now is that OUR story is as important at least in terms of marketing. For instance, although "Harry Potter" took off without this, it sure didn't hurt that J. K. Rowling was a single mother who wrote the book while huddling in a coffee shop with her baby's pram nearby because her unheated flat was too cold.

Later it came out that the coffee shop was owned by her brother-in-law and she wasn't actually in great danger of hypothermia, but the semi-mythical story was established by then.

Publishers love it when the writer has his or her own story, as well as the story they've written. If you don't have one, it might be time to find one!

(My book, Your Writing Coach (Nicholas Brealey Publishing), has two chapters on marketing your writing; another one, Marketing for Entrepreneurs (Pearson) goes into much more detail, including how to come up with a marketing plan in sixty minutes.)

How Neil Gaiman writes--and get the Coraline script free

In the New Yorker, Dana Goodyear has a lengthy article about Neil Gaiman:

"In addition to horror, he writes fantasy, fairy tales, science fiction, and apocalyptic romps, in the form of novels, comics, picture books, short stories, poems, and screenplays. Now and then, he writes a song."

At the moment he's getting a lot of attention for "Coraline," the book on which the wonderful 3-D film was based, and his 2008 children's book, "The Graveyard Book" (Kipling's "The Jungle Book" retold set in a graveyard) debuted in the number one spot on the New York Times best-seller list and won the 2009 Newbery medal.

The article reveals that when Gaiman showed an early draft of "Coraline" to an editor he was told it was too scary for children. Gaiman says adults find it scarier than kids--that could be true, I got the chills a couple of times watching the film.

Gaiman is very active on social media; the article says he uses Twitter sometimes a dozen or more times a day. "He attributes his recent No. 1 débuts to his ability to communicate directly with his fans: he tells them to buy a book on a certain day, and they do."

The article has a few interesting insights into his writing process. For instance, when he was writing the "Sandman" series of comics:

'The whole is a chaotic collage, composed at the dizzying pace of one issue a month—a rate, Gaiman says, that forced him to access and transcribe his unconscious thoughts without much analysis. Many of the episodes reveal a vexed relationship to the idea of authorship. In “Calliope,” Richard Madoc, a blocked writer, makes a sex slave of the Muse. After he becomes rich and famous for his new work, Dream punishes him with a never-ending stream of ideas: 'A man who falls in love with a paper doll. . . . An old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar in the dusty cupboard under his stairs. . . . A sestina about silence using the key words dark, ragged, never, screaming, fire, kiss.'"

PS: here's the site where you can get a free download of the "Coraline" script as well as an interview with director Henry Sellick (see the black strip at the bottom of the page to find where to click to download the script): www.focusawards2009.com/#/coraline/craft

(Want to write your own book? Helpful guidance is available in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online and offline retailers around the world.)

Three reasons you're not writing--and how to overcome them

The About.com exercise site featured a post about the top ten reasons you don't exercise. What struck me is how many of these also come up as reasons why people who say they want to write don't actually do it. Here are three of the reasons (with the word "writing" substituted for "exercising", along with my suggestions for how to overcome them:

You've tried to write but you keep quitting. Maybe you take on too much too soon or are confused about how to get started.

Solutions: set modest goals at the start; get my book, "Your Writing Coach" (sorry, I couldn't resist--but it IS a good orientation to the whole process); join writing forums on the web.

You want to write but you have to take care of kids and family.

Solutions: Swap baby-sitting with someone who also needs time to do something important to them; make notes about your writing project as ideas occur to you throughout the day; write while other family members watch TV or play video games.

You can't seem to stay motivated to continue writing.

Solutions: Don't start judging your writing until you've finished a first draft; keep track of your word count, so you can see that you're making progress.

Writing HURTS!

Solutions: If by "hurts" you mean that sometimes the difference between what you hope to create and how it turns out is depressing, or that the writing you do gets rejected... welcome to the writing world. Get used to it. If the pain is too much, find another outlet for your creativity. If you try to give it up and can't...you're a writer!

(If the added motivation of a supportive online coaching program to help you reach your writing--or other--goals would help you, check out my Breakthrough Strategy 60-day program. It's explained fully at www.jurgenwolff.com)

The three day writing method: a solution for blocks

On the plot cafe blog Bobby Owsinki suggested a three day writing method.

Day 1 is a brain dump--you write a stream-of-consciousnes very rough first draft, with no stops for editing or changing.

Day 2 is refinement--you organize the ideas, you check the spelling and grammar, etc.

Day 3 is polishing.

Of course this is pretty much the standard approach, but I think anybody who has trouble getting started will benefit from consciously separating these stages from each other day by day. By putting that time barrier between each of the three phases, you lose the pressure to get it right immediately.

Depending on the size of the project, naturally it may take longer than one day for each of these phases but if you feel blocked, try this approach.

(If you want to get an injection of inspiration for how to be more creative and productive, sign up now for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to [email protected])

How a mistake led to a best-seller

I wasn’t aware until I read it in the Wall Street Journal that the success of the “Twilight” series of books came about because of a mistake. Here’s how WSJ’s Katherine Rosman tells the story:

“In 2003, an unknown writer named Stephenie Meyer sent a letter to the Writers House agency asking if someone might be interested in reading a 130,000-word manuscript about teenage vampires. The letter should have been thrown out: an assistant whose job, in part, was to weed through the more than 100 such letters each month, didn't realize that agents mostly expected young adult fiction to weigh in at 40,000 to 60,000 words. She contacted Ms. Meyer and ultimately asked that she send her manuscript.
The manuscript was passed on to an agent, Jodi Reamer. She liked what she read, a novel called "Twilight." She signed Ms. Meyer, and sold the book to Little, Brown. The most recent sequel in the series, "Breaking Dawn," sold 1.3 million copies the day it went on sale in August 2008.”

The article actually is about the death of the slush pile—the fact that many publishers and most producers now will not consider work that is not submitted to them by an agent. As publishing continues to suffer economically, an easy place to cut back is readers who considered unsolicited material.

However, some writers are still discovered that way and others have found new approaches. The article suggests some tips for overcoming the slush pile problem—you can read it in its entirety here.

(These days it helps to use unconventional methods to market yourself and your work. In my book, "Do Something Different" (Virgin books) you'll find 100 case studies of people who did just that--not just in writing but in many different fields--and from whom you can take inspiration. For a fuller version of how to create a marketing plan in just one hour, see my book, "Marketing for Entrepreneurs" (Pearson Publishing). Both from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

If you're stuck, let the character guide out of your stuckness

One of my coaching clients is writing a novel based on a screenplay he’d written and we were talking about the differences between these forms of writing. He said that in the process of writing the novel has made him think more about what that person would actually do in a given situation. I think in that observation there’s a great tip for anytime you get stuck in plotting a story. All too often we spend effort trying to get the characters to plausibly do what the plot calls for rather than letting the story evolve from the reality of the characters (and I do think this is more true of screenplays than novels).

One of the mantras of my old comedy writing mentor, Danny Simon was “Never sacrifice the reality of a character for a joke.”

In other words, if it would be funny—even REALLY funny—for your character to stand up to mugger but he’s not the kind of person who would do that, don’t have him do it. Either find humor in his genuine response, or change the set-up so that there’s a reason why this time he stands up to a mugger even though he normally wouldn’t.

Of course some genres depend on people doing what no sane person would do—for example, horror pictures in which a lone woman ventures down into a dark cellar when she hears alarming noises down there. But even in those, the ones that work best create a reason why she must go down there.

And if you are stuck because you don’t know what the character would do, that’s a sign you don’t know the character well enough. Go back and daydream about that person—where did they grow up, what were their parents like, what was their dream, what has hurt them in life, what do they want more than anything else? When you can answer a hundred questions like that, you’ll know what they’d do next.

(There are lots more tips on writing, from idea through to publication, in my "Your Writing Coach" book and you can get it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online and offline stores.)

What Fellini said about fear

" From boscutti.com on which storyteller Stefano Boscutti muses about movies, Don Simpson, The Great Gatsby and Fellini:

Federico reflects that “doubt” is also a vital part of the creative process.

'Fear is a feeling you have to cultivate. A man cannot do without being afraid. A fearless man is, I think, a fool. Fear is inseparable from being human.'"

A good thing to remember those times that fear of failure—or success—rears an ugly head.

(The seven fears around writing and how to overcome them is the topic of the first chapter of my book, “Your Writing Coach,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online and offline retailers.)

Three ways to jump-start your creativity

I'm in the process of proofreading the galleys of the second edition of my book, "Focus: the power of targeted thinking," which will come out in the Spring. One of the chapters is about having balance in your life and jump-starting your creativity if it's starting to feel neglected. In that chapter I offer 30 methods, and I thought I'd share three of my favorites with you here:

If you were a famous brand, what would your slogan be? What would you like it to be? What do you have to do to justify the one you’d like?

Take a walk and imagine you are your favourite character from a book or film. How would they see this world? What would this person’s feelings be about the things they encounter? If you’re feeling brave, have a chat with someone while staying in character (in other words, talk like your character, too).

Watch a TV station that broadcasts in a language you don’t understand. Make up your own translations of the dialogue. Start with the assumption it’s a science fiction show, then that it’s a comedy, then that it’s a soap opera.

(There are lots of methods for getting into a creative state, generating ideas, and turning ideas into products or services in my newest book, "Creativity Now!" You can find it at Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

What writers can learn from an inventor (& Walt Disney)

In The Salt Lake Tribune, John Keahey writes about inventor Stephen C. Jacobson, the president of Raytheon Sarcos. This company came up with robots for industry and the military, high-tech medical devices, and robotic dinosaurs, as well as the amazing ‘dancing’ fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. What I found interesting was his discussion of how they work, and how this parallels the creative act of writing. Jacobson says,

“We constantly learn new things simply by doing it… We're always selling, developing opportunities…We are an unusual group of creative people -- people who are 'obsessible,' who lose track of time, who sometimes don't know whether it's day or night… We're results-oriented; we have a lot of meetings to talk out problems. And when something is designed, built and it works, we're eager to move on to the next project… Some people are good at theory, some are good at common sense. We want those who are good at both.”

I think this captures what makes a writer successful as well—a blend of the dreamer and the realist, and a touch of the critic as well—these are the three elements that Walt Disney used in developing his ideas (and, importantly, he stressed that it’s important not to mix them together at the same time). 

It can be a good exercise to assess whether you have the right mix or need to add a dash of one or the other. Here's a mini-quiz that can help:

Dreamer: Do you give yourself time to daydream? Do you capture the ideas that come up? Or do you have a harsh inner critic that says daydreaming is a waste of time, or let the ideas escape and forget about them?

Realist: Do you select the most promising idea and focus your time and attention to it--and finish it? Or do you leap from idea to idea, never quite finishing one before abandoning it and starting a new one? And, assuming you wish to profit from your writing, do you think in advance about who will want to buy what you write and how you can make it more appealing to them? Finally, do you embrace the idea that marketing yourself and what you write is your responsibility?

Critic: Do you shut up your inner critic until you have a first draft or do you start to critique in the middle of the writing process? Are your critiques of your own work as constructive as those you'd do for a friend? And are you open to changing what is weak or are you defensive about what you've written?

(The writing and marketing process is explained in my book, “Your Writing Coach,” a friendly guide that takes you from idea through to publication. You can get it now at Amazon and other online and offline book sellers.)

Too old to write? I don't think so (look to Gillian)

There was a profile recently in "Artists & Illustrators" magazine of painter Gillian Ayres--80 this year and looking forward to an exhibition of her new work. She says:

"Old age is a bastard, really. I don't feel any different inside to how I did when I was 15. I hobble about and look old in the mirror, but inside I feel exactly the same as I always did." She adds: "Creativity increases all one's life and you can never have enough...I know that I won't be here in another 78 years and that does increase the pressure, but I just carry on."

She has a supremely healthy attitude to what she does: "It is really for other people to decide what they think about the new work. I just want to paint."

The next time some 40, 50 or 60 year old asks whether they're too old to start writing, I'm going to point them in Gillian's direction!

(If you lack the confidence to get started writing, you'll find my book, "Your Writing Coach," a supportive guide. You can find it at Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)