Time to Write

Steve Martin's 14 years Overnight Success

BORN STANDING UP

 Steve Martin

 Pocket Books, 2007

When Steve Martin suddenly became a top stand-up comic spouting nonsense, jokes without punchlines, and doing weird visual gags, it all seemed effortless. This book reveals how much work went into that overnight success.

As Martin says, "I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success."

In a conversational, amusing style, Martin talks about his years, starting as a teen-ager, doing magic at theme parks, failing but learning and documenting what he learned as he went along. It led to huge success.

When he become so popular that he could play huge arenas he found he was losing his connection with audiences and feeling stagnant. He stopped doing stand-up and went into films, again with major success. After that career, he switched to writing novels, again with success.

This is an entertaining account of his first career, inspirational if you don't mind the prospect of hard work. I think it includes lots of embedded lessons for anybody interested in writing or performing, especially (but not only) comedy.

 (If you're writing your own book, first get mine: "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)

 

Another way to tell stories (writing meets YouTube)

I'm indebted to MentalFloss.com for pointing me to novelist John Green, who has started posting YouTube videos that reflect his goal of "finding ways to write for people that don't involve a pen and paper" and the fact that YouTube "could use  a little more writing." (He and his brother Hank have created 800+ videos since 2007 as Vlogbrothers and have about half a million subscribers on YouTube, but this is a new direction for him.)

Below is one example. Other than the fact that he always sounds like he's trying to set a new talking land-speed record, I enjoy these and see some possibilities in this format for writers who want to experiment. 

 

Novels and screenplays: what your characters don't know

Bookreporter.com ran an interview with best-selling novelist Julia Spence-Fleming ("One Was a Soldier"). She said, "One of my favorite techniques is to have a character be an unreliable narrator of his or her own life, so in the first book, we see Clare unaware of her feelings toward Russ until she's sandbagged at the end, and we see Russ maintaining he's happily married when everyone else can see the cracks in the relationship. Here [in "One Was a Soldier"], Clare is in denial, which means writing the behavior from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't see what she's actually doing to herself."

That's true of most of us most of the time. We are experts on other people's lives, but in the dark about our own.

This strategy of keeping the characters ignorant about themselves--while often quite wise about what's going on in other people's lives--is powerful. As readers we get to be smarter than the characters at least in that one aspect, and being smarter than somebody else usually feels pretty good.

It's a strategy you might want to consider using. I've playing with it in the script I'm writing at the moment. The protagonist knows he is terminally ill and that concentrates his mind enough for him finally to see his life clearly. He doesn't like what he sees, and the question is whether it's too late for him to do anything about the choices he's made.

In this context, your character's ignorance can be bliss for your novel or screenplay.

(For more on screenplay writing, see my other blog, www.ScreenWritingSuccess.com; for more on how to write three-dimensional characters, get my book, "Your Writing Coach.")

 

 

Writers: where do you draw the line?

In an interview at Collider.com The Farrelly Brothers talked about when comedy goes over the line, and gave this example:

"In There’s Something About Mary, in the snowball fight where Jeff Daniels throws a snowball at Lauren Holly, and it gets a huge laugh, originally, when she had been hit in the face, we had her come up and she had blood under her nose. We had put blood there, and she came up and there was a little blood dripping. Well, we test screened that and the audience howled when she got hit in the face with the snow, but when they saw that blood, there were no more laughs. It was not funny to them anymore. We had to go in and digitally take the blood out of the movie, and then the laughs continued."

Screenwriter William Goldman tells the story of how he wanted to keep the amputation scene from Stephen King's novel, "Misery." But director Rob Reiner felt this would gross out the audience so much that they wouldn't want to see the rest of the film. He changed the script so that the Kathy Bates character breaks the writer's ankles with a sledgehammer. It was only when the saw the completed film that Goldman admitted he'd been wrong. 

Sometimes you don't know for sure whether you're crossing the line--but if you think you might be, probably you are.

 

How writing groups can be toxic

The Christian Science Monitor ran an article recently concluding that group discussions kill creativity.

 The reason: "Even when a meeting is for the best intentions of exploring ideas and working on problems, egos clash and time is wasted as participants go off on tangents."

If you've attended a writing group that may ring a bell.

I'm not against them in principle. They can be very useful because we all need to get some feedback on material when we've grown too close to it to be objective. But the article points out the two main dangers:

EGO: This can take several forms. One is the insecure writer who feels that tearing down what you've written somehow makes his better. Another is the writer who tells you how he or she would write the story, rather than helping you see how to write it better your way. 

TANGENTS: Often there's someone who, when you share your story in which there's a cat, feels compelled to tell you about their kitty--at length. Unless there's someone running the meeting, it can be difficult to get people back on track.

 What you're looking for is a writing group with supportive members and a leader who keeps things going at a good clip; otherwise you may be wasting valuable writing time.

(For supportive help with your writing, get "Your Writing Coach" from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline book seller.)

 

Time to write: When to get started writing

This is the first of a special weekly series on time management for writers. These tips will appear every Monday.

Maybe you’ve heard the saying: “The best time to start writing was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.”

 If there’s a writing project that you’ve been meaning to start, do it as soon as you finish reading this.

 I don’t care if you have only two minutes. Use those two minutes to get a folder and write the name of the project on it and stick some empty sheets of paper into the folder.

 Tomorrow you may have five minutes, so you can use those to jot down as many thoughts as you have in your head about the project. Maybe all you know if you want to call it “Fishing With No Worm” (presumably you have a better title in mind…). That’s fine. Or you may know how it ends. Or starts. Or some bit in the middle. Jot it down.

 Keep going that way. Don’t let the kids or the job or the anything else get in the way. You have ten minutes a day, I know that much. You can sleep ten minutes less or pretend to go to the toilet and work on the project instead.

 One it’s rolling you’ll get more excited and you’ll find bigger chunks of time to work on it.

 And one day you’ll realize you have a first draft. Congratulations—it all starts NOW.

(When I couldn't find a good right-brain oriented book about time management I wrote one. You can geti it from Amazon and other online and offline book sellers. It's called "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done.")

What are you assuming about writing?

You've probably heard of the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophesies. What happens is that you expect a certain thing and because you behave as though that outcome is inevitable, it does happen.

For instance, if you believe that someone doesn't like you, you may interpret even neutral comments as negative or critical and respond with defensiveness or aggressiveness. That, in turn, may make them not like you. Here's a slightly exaggerated example:

Other person: "Hey, have you finished writing that screenplay yet?"

You: "No, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to. I happen to have a lot of things going on right now. We don't all have the same cushy situation you do."

Other person thinks 'what a jerk.'

If you assume they do like you, it might play out like this:

Other person: "Hey, have you finished writing that screenplay yet?"

You: "No, still working on it. There's a lot of stuff going on right now."

Other person: "Yeah, it's hard to juggle everything, isn't it?"

You think, 'what an understanding friend.'

We come to many experiences with some kind of assumption or presupposition. It may seem difficult to change them, but you can. 

What assumptions do you have about writing a novel or a screenplay, for instance? Complete this sentence as quickly as possible with the first thing that comes to mind:

Writing a novel is...

or 

Writing a screenplay is...

How would things be different if you believed, or even just pretended to believe, that writing a novel or screenplay is enjoyable? Or that it's something that's easy to do one bit at a time? 

If your assumption is negative, experiment with turning it around and notice what happens.

(There's lots of practical advice in my book, 'Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other online and offline book sellers.)

 

William Trevor on curiosity, why something always happens, and writing.

William Trevor is a brilliant short story writer and novelist, but has escaped celebrity status. In an interview in the Irish Times the 83-year-old hared some of his thoughts about writing:

"“Writers really shouldn’t feel obliged to explain. Things should be left to the reader. I think the bond between the writer and the reader is very important. One writes the story; that is the writer’s part done. Then the reader gets to work; reading is his job. I have always enjoyed that connection with the reader I haven’t met but feel I know because of having shared an experience: the story.” 

“I am very interested in people; I am curious. I want to know why, how they live. If I see that woman over there, I want to know why she has ended up like this; what happened to her? I am also very suspicious. I think that is a Protestant thing; I listen to something and then I begin to think, Now, that doesn’t quite add up. I have always been told I have beady eyes. It’s probably because I am always looking.”

“There has to be a point; a story needs a point. Even if nothing happens, and I like a story in which nothing happens, but something is happening, all the time. There has to be a point, and sometimes that doesn’t become clear until the last few sentences, the final words. If you come to the end of writing a story and you don’t seem to have a point, you must ask yourself why there isn’t one. It’s because the story simply isn’t finished.”

(For friendly guidance on writing your short story or book, get my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other booksellers.You can also get free 'getting started' guides at www.timetowrite.com)

Does stress help or hinder creativity?

Unhappy? (But not to the point where it's crushing you). Could that help your creativity instead of hindering it? 

On PsychCentral, Joe Wilner writes: There are certain states of mind that prevent us from being open to our creative nature. One research finding reports that being scared, nervous, and anxious is related to decreases in creativity.

Interestingly, though, negative emotions have also been show to be a source of creative inspiration through sublimation, such as artistic expression as an outlet for distressing emotions.

Surprisingly, pessimism has been shown to relate to enhancement in creativity, whereas optimism was actually neutral.Other positive emotional states, such as interest, curiosity, and happiness, were all related to increases in creativity."

Sounds contradictory, doesn't it?

I suspect that there are two ways that such emotions lead to creative activity: one is when you're in the middle of the emotion and doing something creative is an escape. The other is when you have at least a little bit of distance from it and are able to see how to transform it into your medium of choice, like a short story, screenplay or painting.

Singer/songwriter James Taylor puts it this way: "Being entirely satisfied and comfortable makes for a nice potato. Stress, as long as it doesn't beat you down and defeat you, is good. And finding a way out of a confusing and baffling life situation gives you something to offer other people."

 

A book made up of missing words

Similar to the guy who makes poetry by blacking out most of the words on a page of the New York Times, Jonathan Safran Foer created his "Tree of Codes" by starting with a copy of "The Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schultz, and cutting out all the words he didn't need. And that's what your copy of the book will look like. How'd they do that? This video shows you the last three months of a year of work compressed into three minutes (nice music, too):

 

How a creative brief can help you write a book or screenplay

I like the concept of a "creativity brief" that Josh Linkner introduces in his book, "Disciplined Dreaming." At first look, it may not seem congruent with the spontaneity of creativity, but I think it can complement the other aspects of the creative process.

To write a creativity brief you define, in detail, the major components of your project. My version of the topics you could cover include:

* Your desired outcome (as concisely as possible) - I suggest you express this in terms of what you will be able to see and hear that will be different from what you see and hear today.

* An assessment of where you are now, relative to the desired outcome

* A description of what has to happen to span that gulf

* What obstacles you anticipate and your strategy for overcoming them (including, if you've gone for this outcome before and failed, exactly what you'll do differently this time)

* Who is doing something successfully in another field (that part is important) and how can you adapt their methods to yours. (If you copy what people are doing in your field, you'll just come across as a copycat).

* Who can help you and how you'll get their support and what they will get in return

* How you will market the resulting product or service (if applicable)

* What resources you'll need (including budget, time, etc.) and where you'll get them.

* A timeline for all the steps you plan to take.

Of course a plan will be out of date almost immediately because many things will happen, both positive and negative, that you didn't foresee. Therefore you'll be changing the plan constantly to take advantage of what is the case, not trying to steer by what you wish were the case.

(Get lot of tips and a strategy for achieving your goal in my book, "Focus: Use the power of targeted thinking to get more done" published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other booksellers.)

How the fallacy of the great idea applies to writers

Felix Dennis has made a lot of money as a publisher and has written a book called "The Narrow Road,"about the getting of money. Here, from Entrepreneur.com,  is one of his key thoughts. He calls it "the fallacy of the Great Idea."

"Having a great idea is not enough. It is the manner in which ideas are executed that counts. Implementation will always trump ideas, however good those ideas are.

I have lost count of the number of men and women who have approached me with their "great idea," as if this, in and of itself, was their passport to instant wealth. The idea is not a passport. At most, it is the means of obtaining one. In some instances, a fixation on a great idea can prove hazardous, distracting your attention from the perils and pitfalls you will inevitably encounter."

I wanted to share that with you because I've had the same experience at my talks and workshops. Don't get me wrong, you do need a great idea, but so many of the people who think they have one come up to me and ask me who they can sell it to (for instance, their great idea for a movie). When I tell them they should write it they say, no, that's too much work or they don't want to learn how to write a screenplay, they just want someone else to do it--maybe me? And they add, generously, that they'd be willing to let me have half of the fortune it would bring in.

Nope, as Dennis says, it doesn't work that way. No idea is great until it turns into a great execution of that idea.

Let me illustrate: a movie about a young space pilot who has to rescue a princess from a nasty empire represented by a guy dressed in black plastic. What do you think--great idea? It certainly turned into a great movie but George Lucas could have started with any of a dozen other fairy tale-inspired plotlines and made magic. And a million other people could have taken that idea and turned it into a ho-hum screenplay.

By all means, enjoy having ideas--it's one of my favorite activities in all the world. But then also sit down and make some of them happen. THAT could be great.

(My newest book,"Creativity Now!" covers not only how to have fresh ideas but also ways to help you bring them to fruition. You can get it from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)

What "The War Horse" teaches about patience with writing

If your book isn't a success at first, should you give up?

The play "War Horse" has opened in New York recently and it was fascinating to read the play's background in the New York Times:

The source material was a shortish children's book written by Michael Morpurgo and published in 1982. It good OK reviews but not great sales. It was nominated for a national prize, but lost. The article says that a limo took the author to the ceremony but he had to catch the Underground home. "If sales ever reached 1500 copies a year, I would be surprised," he said.

He kept on writing, often two or three books per year, and become more and more recognized. In 2300 he became the Children's Laureate and many of his other books were selling extremely well. 

In 2007 a play version of "War Horse" was done at the National Theatre using amazing life-size puppet/figures of horses and was a massive hit. It transferred to the West End and now is a hit on Broadway. 

Oh yeah, a guy named Spielburg directed a film version that opens at the end of the year. 

Morpurgo is now 67. He said, "All this should have happened 30 years ago. It's all come completely at the wrong time. But better late than never--although I don't think my wife thinks so, sometimes."

And there we have one of the morals of the story: better late than never. Another one might be never give up. And maybe the most generally applicable one: You never know!

PS: here is the first part of a video diary about the production of the play (3 minutes long):

 

 

 

There are three stages--are you stuck in one of them? (In writing? In life?)

Bre Pettis and Kio Stark came up with what they call "The Cult of Done" manifesto. One of the statements in it is:

There are three states of being. Not knowing, action, and completion.

This statement really hit home for me. I believe that most people never achieve their potential because they get stuck in one of these states. This is how I see it:

The "not knowing" people have ideas but they don't know how to get started, they don't know if anybody will want what they would offer, they don't know whether it will be worth the effort, they don't know if they'll enjoy doing it... and on and on. They remain people with lots of ideas. They may talk about these ideas a lot, or they may just write about them in their private journals. But they don't DO them. 

The "action" people take it one step further. They get started. They have drawings or blueprints or half-finished stuff. But most of them stop. They abandon the half-finished projects because they get distracted by something else. Or because they begin to doubt the value of what they're doing. Or because somebody tells them they're wasting their time. Or because it gets difficult. 

The "completion" people finish what they start. That includes sending it out into the world for others to experience when that's appropriate (unless you've done it just for the experience, which is perfectly valid, finishing something and then not having the guts to send it out into the world doesn't count as completion). Even if the world doesn't accept it at first, they keep the faith and they don't give up. They also don't let it stop them from moving on to new things as well.

The people who make the most difference in the world are the "completion" people. The rest may be charming, intelligent, nice (or nasty) but they don't have much of an impact because their masterwork--which could be a great book or an outstanding brownie recipe--will not be experience by anyone.

We have to pass through the first two states to get to the third.

The first--having ideas--is most fun. Some people say it's better than sex (I guess that depends on how good your ideas and the sex are...).

The second--getting started--is harder but often happens with a surge of energy.

The third--finishing and not abandoning what you've done--is by far the hardest. I've failed at it many times. I'm pretty good at completing the project itself, but hanging in there for the hard, continuous marketing effort is where I tend to fall down, even though I know quite a bit about marketing. It's more exciting to go on to the next thing, but a lot of good things are lost that way. 

Today, on my birthday, I declare myself to be in "completion recovery". Maybe I should start Completers Anonymous. Would you be a candidate?

 

Four thoughts on writing: feeling stale, a myth, a child and a hippo

Publisher's Weekly ran interviews with several authors regarding their latest work for youngsters. There were a few that prompted some thoughts. 

For instance, Chris Van Allsburg explained why he decided to switch from fantasies to a biography of the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel--a 62 year old woman! He said, "A year and a half ago, in an effort to keep my work interesting to myself, I decided to explore another genre."

Thought: They say a change is a good as a rest. If you're starting to feel stale in your usual genre, what other one might refresh you?

 Meg Cabot told why she decided to write "Abandon," a new series loosely based on the Greek myth of Persephone: "My mom, the English major, had an Edith Hamilton mythology book lying around and you know how mothers are always saying, ‘Go read a book!’ so I picked that up and fell in love with Persephone. It might have been the illustration of Hades dragging her into his realm that did it."

Thought: Is there a story from your childhood that inspires you and that you might want to use as the basis of something you write? (I wasn't into mythology as a kid--unless you consider "The Lone Ranger" a myth, which I guess it is...hmmm...watch this space...)

With John Flanagan it wasn't a quote but how his "Rangers Apprentice" series came into being: he wrote a set of short stories, one each week for five months, that he wrote to encourage his son to read.

Thought: Would doing this for a child in your life--or even an imaginary child--help you to have the discipline to write regularly? What kind of series would yours be?

Brandon Mull, the author of "Beyonders," tells where he found his inspiration for how to have his protagonist enter another world: "I was at the Hogle Zoo [in Salt Lake City, Utah], and I saw a hippo yawn and its mouth was so wide I thought, ‘You could fit a dude in there,’ so I had my character fall into the hippo tank at the zoo. In fact, he falls not only into the enclosure, but into the gaping mouth of the hippo himself—and he crosses into Lyria that way."

Thought: What are you going out to do in the world, like going to the zoo, that can give you fresh ideas?

(For 75 fresh ideas about how to be more creative, get my book, "Creativity Now!" published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offlne retailers.)