Time to Write

Want to write? Make a deal with your spouse or partner like Michael Connelly did

In Writing Magazine, Judith Spellman reveals that best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly had a day job and wrote in his spare time and that put a strain on his relationship. But he made a deal with his wife: he would write four nights a week, usually from 10pm to 1am plus one weekend day. The other nights and weekend day he'd stay away from the writing desk.

If you're a spare-time writer, it may be worth formalizing some deal like that to avoid your writing passion from interfering with your relationships.

(If you need some help with your writing, a great starting point is my book, "Your Writing Coach," and the free materials at www.timetowrite.com )

Why Lost lost me and how will it end?

 "Lost" is coming to an end. I really liked the first season, but somewhere along the line it became frustrating that they just kept throwing in new weird stuff without any explanation about what was going on. It felt like they were just coming up with twists and strange developments to keep you interested. However, after a while that starts working against the series because if it can mean anything, it can also mean nothing. 

Naturally, that's not how the producers see it. In a New York Times interview, Carlton Cuse, one of the show runners, says, "We think it would be sort of enormously both presumptuous and frustrating for the audience to have someone say, “No, what you think is wrong because this is what Damon and Carlton said.” We think one of the things that’s been the coolest about “Lost” is that there’s a lot of intentional ambiguity, and there’s a lot of room for debate and discussion."

Of course it's a challenge to try to fashion a story when you don't know how long you have. The show runners admit that in the second and third season there was a lot of improvisation because it wasn't clear whether they were in the beginning, middle, or end of the time they'd have to complete the story. Also, one of the actors playing a central role didn't like being so far from home and quit, and that required some scrambling to adjust the story.

It'll be interesting to see how they handle all this in the movie-length finale. There are so many strands to tie up that any explanation probably will still have to be vague and ambiguous. But one thing that's sad is that, as Cuse points out, it's the end of an era for shows with such big production values:

"Here we are, we’re shooting a show, there are somewhere between 425 people who work on the show, 325 in Hawaii and 100 here in Los Angeles, we shot the show on Panavision, 35-millimeter film, we had two full crews — the scale and the scope and the size of this, this is the most expensive television series made anywhere in the world. And in this media landscape, it’s incredibly hard to capitalize something the way “Lost” has been capitalized. We have a fractured media environment, and there are many more choices, but as a result there are smaller resources for every show that gets made..."

(My "Successful Scriptwriting" book, published by Writers Digest Books, and co-written with my friend Kerry Cox, is out of print but still full of valuable tips and interviews. You can find used copies on Amazon.)

Will this make you a genius? It's all relative...

I'm not sure this book will really make you think like Einstein but it will spark some ideas of your own (just like my free monthly Brainstorm & Focus e-bulletin does--send an email request to [email protected] if you're not already getting it):

Review: How to Think Like Einstein from jurgen Wolff on Vimeo.

You won't believe how he wrote his best selling novel!

 Peter Brett wrote his fantasy novel, "The Painted Man," while on the train from Brooklyn to Times Square in New York City, using a phone (the HP Ipaq 6515, which is similar to a Blackberry). 

He did the same with the first half of the sequel, "Desert Spear." (Then he quit his day job and wrote in a more conventional way.)

Now producer Jeremy Bolt ("Resident Evil") has bought the film rights and says these two and the upcoming third in his trilogy could be the next "Lord of the Rings." The Painted Man was published in the U.K. in 2008 and in the U.S. the next year (under the title, "The Warded Man"). "The Desert Spear" was published recently and hit the best-seller list. The plan is for the film to be shot in 3D, directed by Paul WS Anderson, with a $100 million budget.

So how are YOU spending your commuting time? :-)

(Of course you could start by reading my book, "Your Writing Coach" on the train before you start writing...)

One way to handle point of view in a novel (the "spike helmet" way)

 In an article in the London Times, novelist David Mitchell says he was terrified when he realized he had to write a book in the third-person. He says, "If you're an omniscient Godlike narrator and you can see everything from every angle and into the future, too, where on earth do you stop?"

To deal with this dilemma, he developed an imaginary thought spike-helmet: "I imagined there was a helmet mounted on the head of one character per chapter. The helmet has a spike in it that can go into that person's head and read that one person's thoughts, but nobody else's."

(There is lots of useful help for both fiction and non-fiction writers in my book,"Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

Is it time to get that manuscript out of your bottom drawer?

 In a Telegraph Magazine article about crime novelist Martina Cole she revealed, "I wrote my first book, Dangerous Lady, when I was 21 but I didn't do anything with it for nine years. I came across it one day when I was moving house. I re-read it and thought, 'if it was on sale I'd buy that.'"

She sent it to an agent who championed it and that was the beginning of a stellar career comprising, so far, 16 books. 

 A strange fact: she collects religious items...and Betty Boop (not, as the article says, Betty Boo) memorabilia.

Anyway, some manuscript should stay in the bottom drawer, but others deserve to come out and get a chance--do you have any? Is it time to revive them--or to bury them again? 

(Want helpful writing tips? Go to www.timetowrite.com)

The strange writing habit of Don DeLillo

 A recent profile in the Sunday Times of Don DeLillo revealed one his writing quirks is to write only one paragraph per page on his typewriter (yes, that's another quirk--he still uses a typewriter). He says that this allows him to see the words almost as art: "The shapes of letters began to attract me," he said. "I began to notice the shapes and sounds of letters within words--not only the sound and the meaning it created, but the look of a particular set of words."

As an example he gives the phrase, "the raw sprawl of the city." He says, "I see the word 'raw' inside the world 'sprawl' and I like this, it seems right."

The one paragraph per page approach might be useful if you want to see your work anew, maybe after you've done the first draft and are hoping to craft it more carefully...I'd be up for trying that, but I don't think I could ever go back to a typewriter.

(for help with your writing, get my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

The power of details (and a boost for late bloomers)

 In an article in the Guardian about poet and novelist Helen Dunmore, Sarah Crown points out the power of detail:

"Dunmore's great skill as a novelist is to swoop down from the historian's eyrie from which everything looks ordered, familiar, sanitised by the passage of time, and plunge into the interior of daily lives. In one of The Betrayal's most effective and affecting scenes, we see Anna after a brutal encounter with the secret police, leaning over her sink in despair, but at the same time noting that 'the tap has a crust of dirt around the bottom. You can't see it from above . . . she must clean more thoroughly.' " 

This eye for detail extends to the sensual. For instance, she says, "I find the way a character eats their breakfast very telling. These things reveal your appetites: if you're with someone who will shovel down a bowl of soup while reading, without tasting it, that's interesting. Fiction in which people seem unaware of the sensory world which envelops them – after a while, I feel baffled by it; it's too thin. Read Updike, and you know his characters are in their bodies, with all their embarrassments and follies. Dickens, too: you're very aware of the physical essence. And Woolf, although she's so ambivalent about it."

And if you're a later bloomer, you may be encouraged to hear that she didn't publish her first novel until she was 40. She'd written a couple in her 20's but put them away because she knew they weren't good enough. The breakthrough was writing something that wasn't autobiographical--that first published novel was "Zennor in Darkness," about D. H. Lawrence.

Her most recent novel, "Betrayal" is a sequel to "The Siege," both set in Leningrad, around the time of WWII. I haven't read them yet but they've gone onto my Amazon.co.uk wish list. 

(Note to bookaholics: a good way to delay your book-buying impulse is to put the book on your Amazon wish list for a while. Eventually you may decide to buy it yourself, or that other books are higher on your priorities, or sometimes friends and family members raid the list and order books for you.)

PS: If you enjoy this blog, please pass along the word to a couple of your creative friends. Thanks!

How a weird hobby turns into a profitable venture

 The Times (London) ran an article about street artist Slinkachu, who creates tiny scenes that he photographs and then leave in place in nature to be washed away by rain, or maybe carried away by animals or stepped on by people who don't even notice them. Photos of his work now sell for up to £4000 ($6000) each. What I found interesting was how he came to do this in the first place and how it turned into a profitable way to make a living. 

The article, by Mike Wade, says that in 2006, Slinkachu (that's a made-up name he goes by) was in his late twenties, an art director for an advertising firm. He happened to notice a stag beetle on his porch in London and wondered whether there were lots of them around but we just never notice them. That led to the idea of tiny figures set up in a tableau. The article says, "Things moved fast. He started a blog, to pass his photographs to his friends, but rapidly achieved a much wider following. He gave up his day job and found a gallery."

 And now he makes a lot of money doing kind of a crazy thing that he loves to do. Result!

(If you want to make money doing what you love, you'll need to master marketing. Want help? Get my book, "Marketing for Entrepreneurs," published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers now.)

Thinkertoys - how it gets you thinking

If you want inspiration and ideas for being more creative, I hope you subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm & Focus ebulletin (if not, you can request it via email to [email protected]). This book will also give you lots of ideas:

Review: Thinkertoys from jurgen Wolff on Vimeo.

High drama in the book world! Lies! Cover-ups! Shame! Apologies (kind of)!

Orlando Figes, a professor of Russian history at Birkbeck College, London, has admitted writing anonymous reviews on Amazon that lauded his own books and trashed those of his academic rivals. 

When they were linked to him, at first he claimed his wife had written them without his knowledge.

First rule: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging! Telling one lie to cover up another seldom works out well (hello Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton).

In his apology Figes said "Some of the reviews now I see were small minded and ungenerous, but they were not intended to harm."

He's talking about saying his rivals' works were "dense," "pretentious" and "the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published."

Hey, how could any of those harm sales of a books? 
 

He also said his wife agreed to lie for him because she was worried about his health and he hinted that his actions could have been the result of some vague illness (is a quick stint in rehab coming up?). 

Second rule: when apologizing, apologize. "I admit I poked him in the eye with a stick but I didn't mean to hurt him and I really wasn't myself that day" doesn't really do the job, does it?

I worked briefly in academia, teaching at the University of Southern California. One of the reasons I stopped was the bickering and in-fighting between departments (I was teaching for two rival departments and therefore caught in the crossfire.) 

If you ever want to write a soap opera and can't come up with ideas for bitchiness, spend a little time in the academic world, you'll come away with loads!

How sleep helps you be more creative

Do you dream about your passion?

Not that kind of passion, I mean the passion you have for creative work. A study conducted at Harvard Medical School reveals that people who dreamed about a task performed it better than those who didn't dream about it.

Of course there's no way to guarantee you'll dream about something, but thinking about it as you start to fall asleep may help. 

 This finding also helps make the case for short naps. Ben Franklin, among many other inventors and great thinkers, swore by naps and reported having insights either in dreams or immediately upon waking. 

ABC Australia News reports that Professor Colin Sullivan, a sleep specialist at the University of Sydney, says there is now a large body of evidence showing sleep has an important role not just in learning, but in creativity and mood as well. 

He says most people get less than the idea seven to eight hours a night, and going to bed an hour earlier may be the key to boosting the creativity and productivity of the nation. (My version of this is getting up an hour later, but that's one of perks of free-lancing!).

(There are many practical methods for being more creative in my newest book, "Creativity Now!" published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

Tips for writing genre books or scripts

Scriptwriting teacher Charles Harris has a very concise way of defining how to write genre scripts (or novels, for that matter):

"Genre is about three things: emotion (the emotion you create in your audience) - expectation (giving the audience the patterns and motifs they expect from that genre) - and surprise (delivering those patterns and motifs in a surprising and fresh way)."

He adds: "One of the challenges of writing in any genre or genres is knowing what emotions and patterns are expected, and finding unusual ways to deliver them."

 This is especially true in romantic comedies, for instance, because we know that generally boy gets girl (or girl gets boy, or boy gets boy, or girl gets girl). One exception was "500 Days of Summer," which I liked and did well even though it subverted our expectations. It cost only $7.5 million to make and it took in more than $58 million worldwide, which is a very good ratio.

But it's a risk to not give audiences the ending or even the major beats (plot developments) they expect. 

Of course it's also a risk to deliver those beats in a predictable manner...unless the film compensates with the impressive special effects that big audiences for blockbusters appreciate. In that case, the mass audience generally forgives predictability ("Avatar," anyone?). 

If you love movies and see a lot of them, probably you're into mixing genres. Conventional wisdom is that this is also a big risk. At the moment, I'm writing a comedy/horror/sci-fi mix novel. Am I asking for trouble? Probably. But I'm having fun writing it...
 

By the way, it wouldn't be a bad idea when you've finished your first draft to go back over it three times, once each to see whether you have delivered the three elements Harris mentions: emotion, expectation, surprise.
 

(You'll find many more tips at www.timetowrite.com.)

Six tips on writing from George Orwell

 George Orwell ends his useful essay, "Politics and the English Language," with six pieces of advice:

1 Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
 
2 Never use a long word where a short one will do.
 
3 If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
 
4 Never use the passive where you can use the active.
 
5 Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
 
6 Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

That really hits the nail on the head, doesn't it? Ooops. 

(For help from idea through to publication, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey, and available from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline retailer.)

What to do when you run out of energy

Especially if you have to fit your creative work around a day job or lots of family obligations, it's not usual to run out of energy. Are there some simple solutions? 

 Two approaches are being tested in schools in Wales right now:

1. One class of eleven-year-old kids will work with the sound of running water and rustling of leaves in the breeze in the background. (Idle thought: how many more of them will need toilet breaks?)

2. Another classroom is having the scent of peppermint piped in. 

I've used peppermint tea bags in some of my all-day workshops--I hand them out after lunch for the participants to sniff, to raise their alertness. It works, although it also looks like we're all involved in some kind of weird drug abuse. 

I'll keep an eye open for the results. For the moment, keep a box of peppermint tea bags by your desk and sniff when you need to boost your attention level. Doing the same with vanilla essence also works for a lot of people.
  

(Another way to have energy is to manage your physical and mental state. You'll find lots of useful methods in my book, "Focus: Use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)