Tag Archives: creative

Pointless

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The first two rules of writing are

1) Have a point

2) Make it

It really doesn’t matter what you are writing and the writing style can be high literary or journalistic but a reader should always leave your words knowing what you meant to say. 

A short piece such as a blog post might only have one main point or “argument “.

A longer piece of writing, an essay or a review might have several but each should be clear, complete and come together in a final paragraph or conclusion. 

You see, people need to be able to follow your train of thought in order to decide whether they agree with you or not and that requires clarity. So part of every edit should be a review of your argument. What are you trying to say? Did you say it?

Don’t let people ever decide that you are pointless.

Wiser words than Mine

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Following on from my difficult day yesterday (see previous post) I decided to take a look at what other writers say about being in the writing mood. There are some excellent quotes out there and I realise that many of them are trotted out on a regular basis,you’ve probably even got the T-shirt!

Well I have dug deepish and found a few that resonated with me and I don’t think are quite so mainstream. Bear with me while I dig them out.

Hear we are:

” Inspiration is wonderful when it happens but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time. ” – Leonard Bernstein

” Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King

” Start before you are ready ” – Stephen Pressfield

” Don’t wait for moods. You’ll accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to   get down to work. ” – Pearl S Buck

Alright, we’ve all heard the Stephen King quote but then he makes so much sense. It is sometimes difficult to keep the momentum going when you are writing.It is even harder to get the momentum started. An honest truth, ask any passing physicist. The important thing is to do it and start. Start every day. Put your mind to the matter and get words on the page. No one said they had to be good words. You don’t need to produce instant genius. You just need to produce and the genius will emerge. It can’t help it. They are kind of nosy.

So I am off now to do my bit and turn up and if inspiration strikes hallelujah! If it doesn’t I will work all the same. The more words I put down the bigger a landing strip I give it. Happy writing today and enjoy the words.

In the write mood

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Today has been a tricky day. Most of my days toddle along quietly and simply enough. I have my routines and I know them. I have my children’s schedule and I follow it. With a slim margin for error I get most people to most places most of the time. Today was different. Today I slept in.

Now most of my family are alarm clock enabled, some of them have several alarms on several electronic devices, and yet I was running from room to room this morning throwing bananas (read breakfast) at moving targets to the war cry

” You can finish dressing in the car! “

To cut a long story short everyone arrived and a frazzled me sat down at my laptop and stared at a screen as blank as my imagination. I really wasn’t in the mood. I could have just walked away and considered the day a non-starter, but I didn’t. Instead I wrote about my awful morning and how frustrated I was getting everyone to the right place. I wrote about my less than stellar waitressing ability and my lack of imagination. In fact I wrote to you.

And now my page is no longer blank and my imagination is no longer empty. I am going to sit and produce my daily word count with a happy heart. So Thank you!

I wonder if there are any bananas left.

 

 

Social Media

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Today I have been pondering the vagaries of Twitter, Facebook and social media in general.

I have come to the conclusion that targeted advertising can be a very good thing if it is targeted well. We receive so much information on a daily basis. I for one receive a huge number of requests and suggestions about what to read. I would love to read everything but I have to be honest here and say that I am very unlikely to read most of it. Heck, I’m a writer. I haven’t even managed to read all my own work.

So, why do we writers advertise to other writers? Why do we collect them?

 The answer to that question is that “Bird’s of a feather flock together” we really do. We like to see how things are going in the writing world. We like to glean ideas and to be able to judge ourselves against some imagined chart of success. We are nosy. We also want to feel part of a gang. That is a perfectly normal and wonderful thing and balm to the soul when you are sitting in a darkened room with your fifth coffee and another first draft. We simply need to remember that these are our people and not our audience. Of course we are all pretty happy to bump up each others Twitter “followship” that goes without saying.

Successful PR is targeted PR. Every so often we should check our strategy to see whether we are putting our work in front of the right people; the people before you who will buy and not just the people behind you, who will back you all the way.

The Wind blows through it

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So here you are again sitting in front of your computer screen, fingers poised for action and…

nothing.

Zip.

Nada.

What do you do when the muse has left the building and all you can hear is the breeze, wafting through the roomy emptiness of your mind? 

Easy. You write about the writers’ block. We have trained for this moment. You have powers of description to rival a literary superman. Just go to it and do it. If you are still struggling to form a sentence, and who doesn’t from time to time, then you need to break out the big guns.

Adverb Amnesty!

Tell the world that you are quickly, happily, joyously, expeditiously, theoretically, honestly and finally breaking through the wall of wordlessness and you defy anyone to stop you. Trust me, any more than 40 adverbs in any one piece of writing and you will scare the most truculent subconscious into submission. If you keep writing the wall will dissolve and leave you breathless but working. 

Of course if you carry the adverbage into your functional piece of prose then you need to step away from the computer and take a long hard look at yourself. What’s that all about?

Lie to me

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Isn’t that the basic premise of fiction? I spend all of my days writing about people who don’t do the things I say and certainly aren’t in the places I mention. Usually they aren’t even real people. In fact I am a great big “Liar liar pants on fire” most of the time.

The funny thing is that amongst all the fibs, of which there are many, the thing I am searching for is the truth. The truth of what it means to be human. The truth and mechanics of relationships. To engage a reader in a story you have to find the spark of recognition, the place where a reader realises yes I know this, I have lived this, this man is like me.

In order to get to that place your writing has to remain true to your character.  Are you trying to make a person behave in a way they simply wouldn’t? Does it ring true? You see people really don’t step outside their normal range of behaviour unless they are placed in extreme circumstances and even then it is unusual.

So figure out what your character’s usual reactions would be and then you will know if you step outside them. If you are going there, do it with purpose and conviction. There are times when you can use this fact to advantage but it must be with a character your audience knows very well and I think possibly several books into a series just to shake up the pace. Part of the truth behind people is that we do things for certain reasons; sometimes we don’t know the reason, sometimes we have some insight. We are complicated and understanding and using complicated characters to get to the truth is just about the highest goal of literary fiction.

So Lie to me, I want to know the truth.

Crime Time

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I am writing a Thriller. The first draft of a thriller is an exciting time for me because I want to know how it ends as much as the next person. In reality I can be pretty far into the whole process before the resolution comes to me. I have my characters centre stage and I am looking them over, pondering their desires and their secrets. I’m playing out their reactions in my mind and always, always finding a way to make things even more difficult for my hero. Bless him.

Mind you, I think that a good thriller should end with the cast iron belief therapy is required. I have to point out here that we are talking about my belief. He, as he’s are wont, believes no such thing. He’s fine. It’s all fine.

” O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! “

Hamlet ( 4.4.65-6)

 

Dark Side

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” In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.”

F.Scott Fitzgerald

 

Everybody has dark days. We all have times when we question ourselves and our world. We strive for more and we feel that life is holding out on the good stuff, keeping it tantalisingly out of reach; the bunch of grapes that grace an Aesop’s fable.

It is a cruel trick of life that in finding the darkness we feel alone. We are never alone. If we could muster the strength to reach out a hand into the night we would find that we are standing shoulder to shoulder like a pottery army, facing the same questions and the same fears. The darkness is a universal experience. So is the light.

Writers have a trick for dealing with the darkness. We pick the bones. We pick them clean. You see, nothing of our experience is ever lost. Everything is learning. Everything is growing. We take experience and in the darkness we form words, restless over the surface of the waters until one day…

Let there be Light.

So, if you are standing in the darkness be assured that you are surrounded by companions and in the darkness we grow.

Column is a Funny word

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image

If you are sitting in front of your computer screen and regardless of the reassuring absence of underline a word simply looks wrong then one of two things is happening to you.

1. You are finally really looking at a word you have taken horribly for granted since you were five.

2. Brain Freeze

The correct response to either of these situations is to do the dishes. This blog post may or may not be directed to my teenage offspring.

Dead White Males

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I assume that you read. Writers read right?

I have found a surprising reluctance in many of my friends and colleagues to visit the pen-smiths of the past. I agree that many of the works written in the 19th century are so far removed from modern journalistic style that they seem to represent a different species rather than a different time. The 20th century brings long descriptive passages and worthiness doesn’t it? Don’t ever assume that you know a writer’s work on reputation alone. Dickens!

If you make assumptions about literature then you run the risk of missing out on those writers and passages of prose that sing with you. Sometimes you find literary joy in the strangest of places.

My personal discovery this year was Proust. I’m not a literary snob, I read everything including shampoo bottles and cereal packets but I had assumed that Proust was probably not for me.

( Assumptions, pah!)

I approached the first tome of “La recherche du temps perdu ” in trepidation.

I found literary description that you could bathe in. Proust sings with me.

Now, not everyone you read will click with you. That isn’t a deficiency in their writing or in your understanding, that is just the joy of difference. Go out into the world and find those writers who   ” Sing with you “. and you will gain more than you ever thought possible.

Oh, and the occasional Dead White Male will be a Woman.