Time to Write

Get them reading early...maybe not this early!

Booksellers are reporting brisk sales of a new line of board books for toddlers.

The titles? Sense and Sensibility, Les Miserables, Moby Dick...The New York Times quotes Suzanne Gibbs Taylor, publisher and creative director of one such company as saying that she realized that no one had ever “taken Jane Austen and made it for babies.”

Hmm, that’s true. No one has ever created a line of little cocktails for toddlers, either. Or how about tiny slot machines they can play with their tooth fairy money?

According to the New York Times, “Publishers of these books are catering to parents who follow the latest advice by child-development experts to read to babies early and often, and who believe that children can display aesthetic preferences even while they are crawling and eating puréed foods.”

I read the BabyLit version of Moby Dick to Tommy, a two-year-old of my acquaintance, and asked for his reaction. He said, “Gaaa goo gung gaaaaaah!” I asked his mother whether she could interpret this response for me.

“Certainly,” she said. “What he said was that he was sad that Captain Ahab’s obsession become so all-consuming that it led to the demise of almost his entire crew.”

As if to confirm her translation, Tommy spit up a little milk.

All right, I admit it, I am being a bit unfair because these books don’t try to convey the plots of the originals, they use them to expose tiny kiddies to some core concepts.

For instance, there is Anna Karenina, A Fashion Primer.  Sample page text: “Her black gown with the magnificent laces was only an accessory, was only a frame for her.” 

I read this to little Tommy. His response was, "Fabulous! And from now on, please call me Mr Tommy!" He demanded paper and crayons and started work on a line of designer diapers.

Can you say “trivialize”?

More unusual ways to get to know your novel or screenplay characters

The key to writing a great novel or screenplay is creating powerful, vivid characters. Think of your favorite film or novel from years past. What do you remember? Probabiy one or two key scenes but, above all, a character that has stayed in your memory. 

The ones that come to mind for me include Lawrence of Arabia, the Godfather, Gloria (the Gina Rowlands version), and Hannibal Lector. What did they all have in common? They were bigger than life. Sometimes they're that way going into the story, sometimes it's the events of the story that brings out something special in them. 

The better you know your characters the easier you will find it to write their dialogue and to know what they would do in any situation, which certainly helps with plotting. Here are some unusual ways to explore your characters:

The Eulogies 

Imagine one of your main characters has passed away. What would each of the others say at that person's funeral if they were honest about their feelings? Do this for each of your key characters.

The Party

Imagine you meet your character at a party. What would they be wearing? What would they talk about? What would they be trying to hide? What would they be drinking? Would they drink too much? Talk too much? Join in if people started dancing? Who would they want to talk to? Who would they want to avoid?

Time Machine

Imagine that you could send your character back in time to the most significant (good or bad) day of their life. What day would it be? What happened? What was the effect at the time? What has been the lasting effect?

Have fun getting to know your characters, I think you'll find it stimulating and it will enrich your writing.

(Would you like to find out what writing advice was given by the greatest classic and modern authors? People like Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, and Vonnegut? It's all in my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, pubilshed by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Too old to write? Ha!

Think you're too old to start writing? Here are the words of 90-year-old writer Babette Hughes, as reported in an interview in the Huffington Post:

"The creative richness and energy of the unconscious mind doesn't care how old we are. We are as young and as old as the characters we make up...Confessions Of An Unpublished Writer is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago -- namely, that it is the writing itself that gives us pleasure -- not publication. Which is why we write. And by writing how we get to be better writers. Getting published is the icing on the cake."

As to the secret of her longevity and enduring creativity:

"You know, life comes in a bundle. The good, the bad, the disappointing and even the tragedies are all of a piece. It's all or nothing. When we accept the whole bundle with a quality of moral nerve and a certain toughness, we choose life. When we choose life, it chooses us. In other words, accepting the lot instead of the chair and the TV makes us emotionally and spiritually better able to survive the hits that life can dish out, including old age."

I've met a lot of writers, from 12 years old to well into their 8os. What they have in common is a passion for telling stories. They understand what Babette Hughes does: "The truth about the human condition resides in fiction."

Maybe too scared, too lazy, too confused--but never too young or too old!

(Need some friendly support and guidance? My book, Your Writing Coach, takes you from the idea all the way through to publication. Published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Risk-taking made easy...well, easier

We are continually told we must not fear failure, we must be willing to take risks.

Easier said than done, right? But research reported in New Scientist magazine came to one key conclusion:

“Don’t fear the consequences.”

It turns out that we are very bad at judging the emotional impact of our decisions.

For instance, most people overestimate how happy it would make them to win the lottery and how unhappy it would make them to lose their jobs.

We also tend to be risk-averse, fearing the consequences of a poor decision. Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert points out, “We’re very good at finding new ways to see the world that make it a better place to live in.”

The implication is that rather than guessing about the impact of a decision, we should find someone who has made a similar decision and see how it worked out for them.

It's unlikely that we’re taking as big a risk as it may seem, that the effect (good or bad) will probably not be as strong as it may seem, and even if it is, we will be better at adapting then we think we will.

 

Related articles

Why you shouldn't use the top writers (or top anythings) as a model

Forbes: Take a Risk the Odds are Better than you Think

Change Your Life: a one-minute book review

The book: “Do One Thing Different: Ten Simple Ways to Change Your Life”

The author:

Bill O’Hanlon

Publisher:

HarperCollins, 2000

The Premise: Small changes in your behaviour can make big changes in your life.

Three Key Ideas from the Book:

1. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
2. An effective way to solve a problem is not to analyze why the problem arose, but to change what you are doing to respond to it.
3. The secret of getting better results is a two-step process: One, pay attention to repetitive patterns you are caught up in or that others are caught up in with you, and change anything you can about those patterns. Two, notice what you are doing when things are going better, and do more of that.

The Verdict: This is a great little book that has stood the test of time for practical techniques for improving any part of your life. 

(If managing your time better is one of the changes you'd like to make, get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favortie bookseller.)

Why to do it now (whatever your "it" is)

In the book Conversations With Millionaires Mike Litman quotes personal development expert Jim Rohn on time management. Rohn’s take on it expanded my mind, so I want to pass it along. He says, “In ninety years you have ninety spring times.  If some guy says, you know, "I got twenty more years."  You say, "No. You got twenty more times."

“If you go fishing once a year you only have twenty more times to go fishing.  Now that starts to make it a bit more critical.  Not that I have a whole twenty more years, but just twenty more times.  How valuable do I want to make these twenty times? It doesn't matter whether it's going to the concert or sitting down with your family, or taking a vacation.  There are only so many.”

It's quite a sobering thought. There are a couple of close friends I now see only once or twice a year because we live on opposite sides of the globe. How many more times will I see them? 

This also applies to how many books we can write, how many pictures we can paint, and how many other projects can create. Keeping that in mind, are we choosing the ones that mean the most to us and the people we hope to affect?

When you think about your life in this way, what ‘times’ are the most valuable to you? Are those the ones to which you're giving your time and energy? How can you make them the best possible?

(You'll find innovative time and life management techniques in my book, "Focus: Use the Power of Targeted Thinking to Get More Done," published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Write it right: Lowering the bar or raising it?

Today I came across this in a financial newsletter:

The French government doesn't care about this. So they've recently LOWERED the bar for reporting obligations, requiring a businesses with top-line revenue of just 80,000 euros to submit time consuming and onerous VAT reports to the tax authorities. 

Actually, it soundsl iike they RAISED the bar. If people change the standards to make things easier, they lower the bar. If they change the standards that make things harder, they raise the bar.

A classic read: The Loved One

Some friends recently visited the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, resting place of notables including Cecil B. DeMille, Tyrone Power, Bugsy Siegel, and Peter Lorre. Their site describes it as "the cemetery of choice for most of the founders of Hollywood's great studios, as well as writers, directors, and performers." Paramount Studios was built on the back section of the original cemetery, which was established in 1899 and named Hollywood Memorial Park. 

The web site includes potted biographies of some of the more famous people buried there: http://www.hollywoodforever.com/stories.

Strangely, you can post messages for them. One for Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. starts, "Why are there so few messages left for this incredible man?"

Well, that would be because he's dead.

It vies with a place I visited when I lived in Los Angeles, the original Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale. Spread over 300 acres, it attracts a million visitors a year. It boasts the remains of Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Humphrey Bogart, among many others.

Their web site says, "No other cemetery can match the sheer number of stars buried here." I sense a rivalry. 

Another recent death-related incident was getting a letter promoting a contest in which the first prize was a free cremation. I assume the winner doesn't have to use it right away. This could be a valuable prize. The Forest Lawn cremation packages start at just over $5000. If you choose to be buried instead and prefer a view, a spot on the Inspiration Slope starts at $14,000. 

These are the kinds of details that inspired a book I enjoyed reading many years ago, The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh. Here's the publisher's description:

 

Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday-and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.

Of course it's full of Waugh's caustic observations. One I particularly like, probably because I lived in Los Angeles for a decade: "They are a very generous decent lot of people out here and they don't expect you to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It's the secret of social ease in this country. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard."

If you're looking for an amusing light read, I recommend The Loved One.

 

A little treat for Mark Twain fans (film of the great man in 1909)

If you're a fan of Mark Twain, here's a little treat for you: I believe it's the only film ever made of him, shot by Thomas Edison in 1909, the year before Twain died. It shows him walking around his estate and playing cards with his daughters. 

For Twain's advice on writing, and that of many other classic and modern writers, see my book, 'Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.

Related articles

Mark Twain Plays With Electricity in Nikola Tesla's Lab (Photo, 1894)

Write it right: cues vs. queues

From a description of an illustration course:

"First, we'll look at old illustrations to take queues from the old masters."

Well, if we're going to borrow lines of people waiting for something, then that's right. Otherwise, we'll take cues, not queues.

From the Free Dictionary: CUE

1. A signal, such as a word or action, used to prompt another event in a performance, such as an actor's speech or entrance, a change in lighting, or a sound effect.

2.

a. A reminder or prompting.

b. A hint or suggestion.

3. Music

a. An extract from the music for another part printed, usually in smaller notes, within a performer's part as a signal to enter after a long rest.

b. A gesture by a conductor signaling the entrance of a performer or part.

4. Psychology A stimulus, either consciously or unconsciously perceived, that elicits or signals a type of behavior.

5. Archaic One's assigned role or function.

6. Archaic A mood; a disposition.

Write it right: memoirs, novels, and "fiction novels"

Here's part of a brief review of a book called Fisheye: A Memoir: "In her debut novel "Fisheye," Trish Thorpe tells of her childhood, rocked by familial discord, and of her coming-of-age, which happened all too soon...

It's not a memoir of a fictional character, it's a memoir of the author...which means it's not a novel.

I've spotted this confusion more often lately, with people referring to "a fiction novel." If it's a novel, it's fiction. If it's a memoir it's non-fiction (we'll leave aside the fact that many memoirs stray from the truth).

 

Writers (and others): Can you say "no" to this person?

Writers, like other creative people, have to learn to say "no" when others make too many demands on our time. If we try to please everybody or cram 48 hours worth of work into 24, our creative output suffers (or disappears). 

HOW TO SAY NO TO OTHERS

Quite a lot has been written about how to say no, including these useful tips:

* Give a reason, even if the reason is just "Sorry, I'm too busy." The terrific book Influence by Robert Cialdini, cited examples of how giving even non-specific reasons helped pursuade others to go along with you.

* Suggest an alternative. Maybe you know that somebody else isn't so busy right now and could help.

* If you tend to say "yes" too quickly, insert a cooling-off period. Tell the other person you're not sure whether you have time but will get back to them in a couple of hours (or the next day, if it's not urgent). This gives you the chance to remind yourself of your other commitments.

* Negotiate. If the request (or demand) comes from someone to whom you can't say  no, try negotiating either for more time or to take on part of the requested task and have someone else take on another part of it.

THE HARDEST PERSON TO WHOM TO SAY NO

Comparatively little has been written about how to say no to the one person who tends to sabotage you the most: you.

Most of us, me included, often struggle to stay on the path we've set for ourselves when in a rational, planning state of mind. "

WHAT WE PLAN 

The rational plan:  "I'll take care of sorting out those invoices first thing the morning, then I'll have the rest of the day free to do the tasks I find more enjoyable!"

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS

The typical process the next morning: "I'll just check my email quickly to make sure there's nothing urgent that requires my intention, then I'll do those invoices

...Hmm, George has posted something on my Facebook wall, won't take more than a minute to check it...

Ha ha, great video!...This one looks good, too, let's see...

Is that the time already? I'll just take my coffee break now, then I'll have the energy to tackle those invoices...

(Let's jump forward in time to the end of the day:)

"I'll take care of sorting out those invoices first thing in the morning..."

HOW TO SAY NO TO YOURSELF

I haven't found a foolproof way to say no to myself all the times I should, but here are a few strategies I've found helpful:

* When you succumb to Facebook or Twitter or surfing the web (my weakness is the Zite article aggregator), set a timer for five or ten minutes so that you don't lost track of the time.

* Attach a reward to getting done a task you'd rather avoid and put control of the reward into someone else's hands to avoid rationalising that you deserve it even though you didn't do the task

* Instead of following up fun things (like videos someone is recommending or reading the New York Times online) in a row--a chain of distractions--make a note of the next one you'd like to pursue and use that as the reward for getting a task done.

* Start doing a task you dislike even more than the one you are avoiding. If I start cleaning the shower, I have no trouble talking myself into the idea that sending out invoices would be more enjoyable. Of course, sooner or later, the shower has to be cleaned (where's the number of that cleaning person again?).

* Write down the task you intend to do next just before you do it (or just before you typically would decide not to do it). If you decide not to do it, write down why. Then take a moment to ask yourself, "Really?" Given that your email probably hasn't contained any news or information or requests that couldn't have waited an hour, how true is it that "I'd better check my email first because there could be something in there that can't wait until I've caught up with paying the bills"?

If you have discovered any good ways to say no to yourself, feel free to share them my clicking on "comments" below and let us know.

(There are lots of useful right-brain time management techniques in my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done. You can get it from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

Write it right: Chalked full? Throws of ecstasy? Under or overestimate?

I'm always on the lookout for, shall we say, 'creative' spellings of words and phrases.

Today I found this one:

This Edition is Chalked Full...

Actually, it's chock-full, meaning full to the limit. 

The origin at Merrium-Webster isn't all that helpful: "Middle English chokkefull, probably from choken to choke +full" Then again, it dates back to the 15h century and probably it made more sense then.  

Another one I spotted recently:

...in the throws of ecstasy.

No, it wasn't about an excited baseball pitcher, so they meant "throes of ecastasy." They weren't talking about the drug, either, by the way.

Throe is defined as a pang or spasm. Throes is defined as a hard or painful struggle, which suggest being in the throes of ecstacy isn't much fun. That's confirmed by the medical definition of ecstasy: "A trance state in which intense absorption (as in religious ideation) is accompanied by loss of sense perception and voluntary control."

Finally, we have this:

"It's hard to underestimate how fantastic this performance is."

Since this was referring to great box office results for "Despicable Me," no, it's not. I could easily say, "These results? Meh." That would be underestimating how fantastic the results were. 

What they meant was it's hard to overestimate how fantastic it is. Even if I said it was super fantastic that might not be an overestimation.

 

Pitching your idea or script: eye contact is good (except when it's not)

When writers are pitching a screenplay or novel or anything else to someone in person, should they maintain eye contact in order to be more persuasive?

Certainly we’ve been taught that eye contact and a firm handshake are our best tools for winning someone over (other than the content, of course).

However, researchers at the University of Freiburg say eye contact may make people more resistant, not less, especially when they are already skeptical. 

Science Daily put it this way: “While eye contact may be a sign of connection or trust in friendly situations, it's more likely to be associated with dominance or intimidation in adversarial situations.”

In pitching, the moral may be to increase eye contact if you sense the person is hooked, decrease if they are skeptical.

 

Why you shouldn't use the top writers (or top anythings) as a model

If you want to find out how to make it to the top as a writer or in any other profession, who should be your model--the most successful writer or the ones only near the top? 

Society and common sense say you should choose the one who is at the absolute pinnacle, but research suggests that may be wrong.

The reason, according to researchers at Oxford and the Warwick Business School, is that extreme success relies a lot on luck and the ability to call on initial advantages as well as talent. 

Science Daily summarizes it this way: “A rational learner should realise that it is more useful to draw lessons from the less exceptional performers, the second best, because their circumstances are likely to be less extreme, implying their performances are more informative and offer more evidence for skill.”

The writing world bears this out. Without taking anything away from J. K. Rowling’s ability as an author, is she ten times more talented than authors who make one-tenth of her income (still a very substantial amount)? I don’t think so.

The Disney Mistake

Another issue is whether you are copying the right thing. When Walt Disney passed away, for a long time the people who ran his organization selected projects based on “what Walt would do.” They overlooked the fact that when he was alive, what Walt did changed all the time. He was constantly taking risks (and had the advantage of a brother who put on the brakes when Walt went too far). Rather than continuing on the path he was on before he died, they should have been imitating his openness to new ideas and his pioneering spirit. That mistake nearly killed the company until control was handed to different people. 

Copying risk-takers

In the business world often the most successful people are also risk-takers who fail more often than they succeed, but when they do succeed hit it big.  

This was not mentioned in the study, but in the world of big business (but not in the arts) there’s an unwritten code that they will protect each other from the usual consequences of massive failure. That’s why the top people behind the calamitous financial transgressions of the last decade are still running companies, and why executives fired after leading their companies into huge losses get a pay-off of millions of dollars or pounds and soon another chance at another company.

Despite all the books lauding the practices of top businesspeople, using them as a model could be dangerous if you’re not part of their golden circle.

Perhaps the closest analogy to this in the writing world is that if an author is already successful, publishers will spend a lot of money publicizing their latest book, a version of “the rich get richer.” Although self-publishing offers a way in, it takes luck as well as talent and perseverance to break out in that crowded marketplace in a big way.

(You won't go wrong following the best practices suggested in my book, "Your Writing Coach." It takes you from the original idea all the way through to publication. You can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)