Time to Write

Quite Write!

 

  The source of this cartoon is Jurgen Wolff's writing blog: http://www.TimeToWrite.blogs.com

 

A different approach to procrastination

 

In their book on willpower, John Tierney and Roy Baumeister suggest that one way to overcome procrastination is to commit to doing nothing if you're not doing the thing you're supposed to be doing. Nothing, as in no reading, no watching TV, no listening to the radio, certainly no surfing the web. Just nothing. 

 

Their premise is that you will soon get so bored you'll decide it would be better to do the thing you were avoiding.

Actually, sometimes displacement is quite useful; I think it was Robert Benchley who wrote that he got the most things done when he was supposed to be doing something else. 

However, if you're doing too much of that, you could try their 'do nothing' approach. I'm not convinced it would work for me. I'd still be thinking and that might be enough, although I'm sure I'd find it frustrating not to be allowed to jot down ideas as they came up. 

If that might apply to you, too, I've come up with an alternative:

Think of two other things that need doing that you would find even less appealing than the thing you're supposed to be doing. For instance, maybe cleaning the toilet or sorting out your tax receipts. 

Then commit to doing one of those three things. You can  allow yourself to switch as soon as one got too unpleasant; maybe you'd get 1/3 of all of them done the first day, the second third the next day, and finish them all the third day. 

As with every other challenge, the key is to keep trying things until you find the one that works. 

(For lots of useful, practical tips on how to make better use of your time, get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." You won't find thes same advice in it that is featured in most time management books, these are right-brain approaches for creative people. You can get it now at Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

 

Is your writing near the edge? Here's Vonnegut's take on that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tricky advice there from Kurt Vonnegut, author of "Slaughterhouse 5" and many other books. They did get edgier and stranger as he went on but he never went over. Some writers have, of course, both with their writing and in their lives. 

If you've never read "Slaughterhouse 5" you may not know that's its the story of a young American soldier, Billy Pilgrim. He's taken prisoner by the Germans in World War II and housed, along with his fellow prisoners, in a disused slaughterhouse in Dresden.

When the Allied forces destory the city with massive numbers of bombs, the resulting firestorm wipes out most of the city's population. Billy and the other captives come up to the surface to see a scene of unbelievable devastation.

All that happened to Kurt Vonnegut.

He pushed the novel version of it farther, having Billy randomly re-live parts of his life and also his death. He introduces The Tralfamadorians, aliens who kidnap Billy and put him on show in their zoo, as well as Howard W. Campbell Jr., a real-life American Nazi, and even himself when he starts the book by writing about his own experiences and why he wrote it.

In 1958, when Vonnegut was 36, his brother-in-law was killed in a rail crash two days before his wife, Vonnegut's sister, died of cancer. Vonnegut adopted three of their children.

Perhaps when you have seen, as Vonnegut described it, "carnage unfathonable," and been sorely tested even afterward, you find yourself stranded on the edge.

At any rate, it's where some of the most interesting writing comes from.

I've generally tried to avoid it but found that when you do that, it comes to you. Better to embrace it and turn it into something useful. 

Where is your edge?

Are you close enough to it?

Too close?

Or, I hope, just right?

(If you'd like to learn to write from the best, get a copy of my new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It features writing advice from more than 100 classic and modern writers, plus my guidance on how to apply that advice to you want to write. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

 

 

A reminder about a great source of story ideas

It has been a while since I wrote anything about StoryCorps, so I thought it might be a good time to remind you of this wonderful, often touching resource that is also a fantastic source of story ideas. 

StoryCorps is a non-profit organzation that, in conjunction with public radio, tapes people's life stories, or stories of important moments in their lives, and broadcasts those tales and also makes them available online. 

In honor of Valentine's Day, at the moment they are focusing on love stories and are releasing a book called All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps (published by Penguin). 

Some of the stories you'll find at www.storycorps.org are heart-breaking, some are funny, some give you pause to reflect. For instance, one of them consists of two sisters interviewing their father, who has Alzheimer's. Another one features a teacher asking a student who dropped out about what could have kept him in school. And one of the love stories is about how a long-distance romance blossomed.

Naturally I'm not suggesting that you use any of these stories outright as the basis of your book or screenplay , but rather that you use them for inspiration, as a way to listen to how people speak, to catch subtext, and to notice what kinds of stories have the greatest impact on you. 

The site also has animated versions of some of the stories. I love animation, but I'm not 100% convinced that they add much here to just listening to the voices in the case of the dramatic stories, but they do serve the funnier ones. Below is an example, "Miss Divine," in which two cousins remember their stern Sunday School teacher. And if you know anybody who is hooked on (so-called) reality shows, introduce them to StoryCorps where they will find true reality--and without commercials.

 

 

 

Writing prompt: A stamp a dent, a nag

Do you want to keep your writing brain active, even if you’re not working on a project at the moment? Once a week I’ll give you writing prompts in three different forms: a person, object or place; a starting point, and an image.

I suggest you use one, two, or all three of these together as prompts for a micro-story (250 words or fewer). On the go? Write it on your smartphone or in a little notebook.

If you are working on a longer project, notice whether any of these gives you a new idea about some aspect of that. 

Don’t worry about making it perfect or whether it’ll get published-–although if you like it, why not publish it on your blog or send it to a friend?

The person, object or place: A post office

The starting point: A secondary character dents your protagonist's car

The image:  

 

(Want to learn how to write from the best--Dickens, Austen, Chekhov and also top modern writers? Get a copy of my new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Writing a powerful query letter: learning by example what (not) to do

Authorbuzz is a service that promotes books for a fee (I don't have any personal knowledge of their service or how well it works). On their site they give their authors a chance to pitch their books directly to readers who sign up to the site. I thought it might be useful to you to read two pitches and compare them, to discover what works and what doesn't.

 

First up: HELPLESS, by Daniel Palmer. Here's what he wrote about his book:

 

"Nine years after he left Shilo, New Hampshire, former Navy Seal Tom Hawkins has returned to raise his teenage daughter, Jill, following the murder of his ex-wife, Kelly. Despite Tom’s efforts to stay close to Jill by coaching her high school soccer team, Kelly’s bitterness fractured their relationship. But life in Shilo is gradually shaping up into something approaching normal. Normal doesn’t last long. Shilo’s police sergeant makes it clear that Tom is his chief suspect in Kelly’s death. Then an anonymous blog post alleges that Coach Hawkins is sleeping with one of his players. Internet rumors escalate, and incriminating evidence surfaces on Tom’s own computer and cell phone. To prove his innocence, Tom must unravel a tangle of lies about his past. For deep amid the secrets he’s been keeping—from a troubled tour of duty to the reason for his ex-wife’s death—is the truth that someone will gladly kill to protect."

In my opinion that's a pretty good pitch. It sets up the relationships nicely--the father-daughter conflict suggests that this story isn't just a by-the-numbers crime thriller. It doesn't give away the ending, but the last sentence adds another element of conflict and danger, and suggests that the secrets might have several levels.

 

Let's look at the next one, BLUE MOON BAY, by Lisa Wingate. This is how she described her book:

 

"When Seattle architect, Heather Hampton returns to Moses Lake, Texas, family secrets and a small-town mystery blow her plans completely off course. Heather wants to sell the family farmland to giant Proxica Foods, so she can design Proxica's new flagship facility. But when local banker, Blaine Underhill, and Heather's crazy family get involved, all bets are off. Suddenly, Heather's quick trip to Texas leads to Valentine's Week in the family funeral home, and a revelation that could change Heather's life forever.

What do you think?

 To be fair, it's quite a bit shorter, which works against it, but I think there are other problems.

It refers to Heather Hampton's plans being blown off course. When, in the next sentence, I hear what those plans are (to sell the family farmland to a big food company), I don't care about that one way or another--there's not the kind of emotional appeal that you get from the store of a father trying to protect his daughter.

If Heather had an urgent need for the money, for something we can identify with, we might care.

And when the pitch mentions the deal, I think, Oh no, not another tale of the ordinary folks vs. the big bad company that wants to build on land and do terrible things, like provide jobs for the local young people.

Furthermore, phrases like "Heather's crazy family" remind me of sitcoms with stereotypical characters.  Phrases like "all bets are off" are so general that, again, I don't get a connection with the story.

Sorry, Lisa Wingate, for all I know the book is far better than the pitch. 

Writing this kind of blurb, whether in a query letter to an agent or publisher or for the back of tbe book, is very difficult. Looking at how others have done it, whether really well or not so well, is a great way to get better yourself. 

(Marketing what you write is an important section of the new edition of Your Writing Coach, just out from NIcholas Brealey Publishing and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)

 

He wrote more than 300 children's books: here's how!

Bill Martin Jr. wrote or co-wrote more than 300 children's books. He wrote his first book while serving in the Army in World War II. It was published in 1945, illustrated by his brother, Bernard. It was praised by Eleanor Roosevelt and sold more than a million copies. Of his other books, probably the most famous was "Brown Bear, Brown Bear," which he wrote in 1967. In the following excerpts of a transcript of an interview I found at readingrocket.com, he talks about how he came to be a writer even though he left high school not being able to read much, and what it takes to be a writer. He passed away in 2004, at the age of 88. 

 

"I wasn't the best in the class, but I was a bright kid. But that was through the ears, not through the eyes. I listened, and I enjoyed being able to put things together in my own way.

I never learned to read. I faked it. I went all the way to college and couldn't read. Now, I could read – pour over a title of a book and maybe read the initial sentence, but I had no staying power. I was so hyperactive that it was difficult for me to concentrate. If you can't concentrate, you can't read.

And it became exceedingly difficult when I got to college; sort of like walking around with a bird egg in your pants pocket, hoping not to break it. I went to college in order to probably learn to read – that was my number-one goal – and secondly, to change the odds in my life that I would remain locked to a garden in Hiawatha, Kansas.

I had a professor who one day came to me carrying six books – adult novels. And he said, "Bill, I want you to read these books. If you're going to be a writer, you've got to be a reader."

And, first of all, I was very excited – number one, that he cared that much about me as a person; and, number two, that he didn't realize I couldn't read. He brought me adult fare. One of the books was Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts. And I figured if Mr. Rowan thought enough of me to bring me six of his books, if he really wanted me to be a writer – which had never occurred to me – that I would read one book. So, I started on Northwest Passage and read week after week after week after week after week. And one night, I was reading, still, at midnight. I was getting near the end of the book. Maybe it wasn't so much the story that I was trying to ingest; it was the fact that I was about to complete my first book.

At four o'clock in the morning, I remember, I finished reading the book. I was so overjoyed, I couldn't sleep and was up early. I went to school to tell Mr. Rowan that I had read the book.

From that time on, reading books became easier. I knew it could be done. I still am a very slow reader, but I'm an avid reader. I'm reading all the time.

HOW HE GETS IDEAS FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Ideas for books come in many ways. Most of them are just sudden insights. I remember when I wrote Brown Bear, I was riding on a train. I heard, "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?" And I grabbed my pen. I didn't have anything to write on, but I did have a newspaper. I folded the newspaper and wrote crosswise, "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?" I thought for a minute, and I either heard or imagined, "I see a red bird looking at me. Red bird, red bird, what do you see? I see a yellow duck looking at me." The pattern is there. The book was broken. All I had to do was write it out. It was finished in 15 minutes.

IT'S ALL WRITING (AND JAZZ)

I think there isn't any difference at all between stories and songs and poetry. A poem, a song, and a story all have a structure.

I don't know whether I told you or not, but I always imagine that someday I'm going to write something, and somebody says, "That's a great piece of jazz!"

WHY HE WRITES

I suppose the satisfaction of writing is that it deals with the chaos of the world and gives it order. And that's all a paragraph does. That's all a story does. The reason that I keep writing year after year after year is because I believe in children. It's a wonderful thing to observe how children cope, how children deal with the realities, how children develop selfhood. I would like to think that these books help kids know who they are. That's a pretty big order, but that's what I hope for."

The reading rocket site also has the video of this interview. 

http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/martin/

(The best writers of all time are ready with advice on how to write well. It's in my latest book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Should you write about what you know? Yes, but this way...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That statement by Eudora Welty, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for her novel, "The Optimist's Daughter," may sound rather zen-like at first. I think what she's getting at is that there are plenty of mysteries to be unravelled by going deeper into the reality of our lives.

As I have gotten older I've been surprised at how many secrets surround the people we consider ordinary. For example, my beloved uncle, who had an affair that resulted in the birth of a child he supported financially for the first 18 years of her life, and his wife who stayed with him even though she never trusted him totally again, not for the remaining forty years of their marriage before he passed away.

If we are really brave we can dive into our own lives, the parts we'd rather not look at, but that we can redeem a little, perhaps, by turning them into stories that may mean something to someone else someday. 

(If you'd like to learn to write from the best, get a copy of my very new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It features writing advice from more than 100 classic and modern writers, plus my guidance on how to apply that advice to you want to write. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Why men (and women) create - a Saul Bass film

 

 

Saul Bass is a legend in the world of design. The public knows him best for his movie posters, including the one for "The Man With the Golden Arm."

Here I present one of the earlier examples of this work, “Why Men Create,” a 1968 animated documentary that Bass co-wrote with Mayo Simon. Each of the two parts below is about 12 minutes long,

Part one features an animated speedy trip from cave people to more or less modern times for the first six minutes, then some sketch-like live action sequences with a big dash of the surreal.

Appropriately, it uses a right-brain structure to explore the nature of right-brain thinking. It also features quotes from Edison, Hemingway, and Einstein on various aspects of the creative process.

Part 2 winks at the typical public reactions to anything new, follows a runaway ping pong ball (make up your own metaphor), gets serious for a look at scientific research on world hunger, and ends exploring the overall question of why humans create. This film won an Oscar in the documentaries category.

And for a taste of Bass himself, the third video below is him talking briefly about making money vs. doing quality work.

 

 

 

Romance writers are doing this--are you?

I was doing a bit of research on the top romance novelists, and something stood out to me. Here, from Wikipeida, are a few lines about five of the top writers in this field—see if the same thing catches your attention:

Diana J. Gabaldon'd books contain elements of romantic ficiton, historic fiction, mystery, adventure, and science fiction. 

Linda S. Howington is a best-selling romance/suspense author under her pseudonym Linda Howard.

Jude Deveraux has written stories set in post-Revolutionary America, nineteenth century Colorado, and nineteenth century New Mexico. She has written several time-travel romances, and her latest novels have had a contemporary setting. Many of her more recent books feature paranormal storylines.

Julie Garwood is the writerof over twenty-five romance novels in both the historical and suspense sub-genres.

What I noticed is that they’re not writing straight romance novels, they’ve taken this genre into lots of other areas: the hottest one at the moment still is vampires and the paranormal, but also suspense, mystery, adventure, science fiction and more.

Laura Kinsale, another top writer in the romance field, says it this way on her site: “A romance novel can be more.  More fascinating characters than you ever anticipated.  More unexpected depth.  Emotion to engage your heart and your mind.  Stories that keep you awake and words you will remember long after you close the book.”

You can see this happening in other genres, too. The old rule that you should avoid this because the bookshops won’t know where to shelve your book is disappearing as fast as the bookshops themselves.

It’s still a benefit to be known for writing in one genre, but within that you have much more leeway these days, and that has to be good news for writers as well as for readers. 

(The things that make for a good story apply to every genre, and the people who knew how to create a great story spilled the beans. I've assembled those beans, er, that writing advice, in Your Creative Writing Masterclass, published by Nicholas Brealeay. You can get it from Amazon and other booksellers right now.)

How to Write Funny

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a link to a one-minute animation and an article I wrote for the Raindance Film Festival site on how to write funny:

http://www.raindance.org/site/how-to-write-funny

Writing Prompt: Publish my book, you clown or else--gaack! gaack!

Do you want to keep your writing brain active, even if you’re not working on a project at the moment? Once a week I’ll give you writing prompts in three different forms: a person, object or place; a starting point, and an image.

I suggest you use one, two, or all three of these together as prompts for a micro-story (250 words or fewer). On the go? Write it on your smartphone or in a little notebook.

If you are working on a longer project, notice whether any of these gives you a new idea about some aspect of that. 

Don’t worry about making it perfect or whether it’ll get published-–although if you like it, why not publish it on your blog or send it to a friend?

The person, object or place: publisher's office

The starting point: Your protagonist thinks he's having a heart attack.

The image: 

 

 

 

(Another way to stimulate your mind is to read what some of the greatest writers have said about how to write well. They include Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edna Ferber, F. Scott Fitzgerald and 100 more--all in Your Creative Writing Masterclass, my newest book from Nicholas Brealey Publishing. You can get it now from Amazon and other booksellers.)

 

 

How to conquer your fear of writing the first page (& Hemingway gets mad)

You may know that Hemingway was a macho kind of guy—shooting large animals, climbing mountains, etc., but apparently when asked what was the most frightening thing he’d ever encountered, he said, “A blank sheet of paper.”

If you’ve been down on yourself for feeling anxiety about getting started on your writing project, just remember Hemingway felt the same way.

How to overcome the fear:

1: Write any first sentence that comes to mind, fully intending to change it later.

2: Don’t start at the beginning. Make a note of what you think should happen in the first chapter, and then start writing chapter two. You can go back later and write chapter one.

3: Warm up by writing a few pages about what happens before the point at which you intend to start your story. You won’t used them, but they will ease you into the story with much less pressure.

There are tips from the great writers (like Twain, Chekhov, Austen, Poe) on how to write well, in my newest book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass. You can get it from Amazon or other booksellers. Practical help from the greats? What better writing coaches could you ask for? (Oh yeah, my bit of the book is showing you how to apply this advice to your own projects.)

PS: the drawing above showed up in the image gallery to which I subscribe but I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be going on. The image tags included the name Max Eastman so I was able to track down the story. Here it is, in part, as reported in the New York Times on August 14, 1937:

Hemingway Slaps Eastman In Face

rnest Hemingway says he slapped Max Eastman's face with a book in the offices of Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers, and Max Eastman says he then threw Hemingway over a desk and stood him on his head in a corner.

They both tell of the face-slapping, but Mr. Hemingway denies Mr. Eastman threw him anywhere or stood him on his head in any place, and says that he will donate $1,000 to any charity Mr. Eastman may name--or even to Mr. Eastman himself--for the pleasure of Mr. Eastman's company in a locked room with all legal rights waived.

Mr. Eastman's most recent book was "The Enjoyment of Laughter," published by Simon & Schuster.

He was sitting in Max Perkins's office at Scribner's Wednesday--Mr. Perkins is editor for that firm--discussing a new book called "The Enjoyment of Poetry," when Mr. Hemingway walked in, he said yesterday.

Using a few "Death in the Afternoon" phrases in what he describes as a "kidding manner," Mr. Hemingway commented on an essay by Mr. Eastman that had been entitled "Bull in the Afternoon."

Mr. Eastman had written:

"Come out from behind that false hair on your chest, Ernest. We all know you."

The volume containing this essay happened to be on Mr. Perkins's crowded desk, "and when I saw that," says Mr. Hemingway, "I began to get sore."

Writers Compare Chests

In what he hoped was a playful manner, he said, he bared his chest to Mr. Eastman and asked him to look at the hair and say whether it was false.

He persuaded Mr. Eastman to bare his chest and commented on its comparatively hairless condition.

"We were just fooling around, in a way," Mr. Hemingway said yesterday. "But when I looked at him and I thought about the book, I got sore. I tried to get him to read to me, in person, some of the stuff he had written about me. He wouldn't do it. So that's when I socked him with the book."