#NaNoWriMo2015–Get to the Heart of Your Story (writing tip #18)

Seven inspiring quotes from the masters: #1) “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Mark Twain#2) “The first draft of anything is shit.” Earnest Hemingway#3)  “Literature–creative literature–unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.” Gertrude Stein#4) “James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.” Samuel Beckett#5) “Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?” Kurt …

Continue Reading

#NaNoWriMo2015–Get to the Heart of Your Story (writing tip #15)

If you are participating in NaNoWriMo, you are halfway through your month and you might be wondering if you’re going to make it all the way through your draft by November 30th. If you’re flagging, take a deep breath (and perhaps a nap) and give yourself the credit you deserve: you’ve taken on a big challenge and that’s a victory all its own! Did you take a selfie on Day #1? If yes, look it over, put it away, and take another selfie now, on Day #15. If you didn’t take an actual photo, picture what you looked like two …

Continue Reading

#NaNoWriMo2015–Get to the Heart of Your Story (writing tip #7)

When you’re writing fast, tapping out your shitty first draft, you need to have several markers on your imagination’s roadmap. You want an X on your starting point (this marks your hero’s life at your story’s opening and her “want”). You also need an X for the inciting incident that pulls your hero out of her ordinary life and changes or intensifies her “want” (and at this point that X will also mark your antagonist’s intentions, whether your antagonist is a middle school bully or a mafia assassin). It’s good to have an X in the general vicinity of your …

Continue Reading

#NaNoWriMo2015–Get to the Heart of Your Story (writing tip #6)

Action is vital in fiction. But the action must fit the story. If you are writing a gentle love story you will probably not include car chases and IEDs. However you might include a hero who obsesses over a “potential” or “lost” love to the point of stalking. “Really, I was just picking up my dry-cleaning and can I help it if you work next door?” Details are also a vital part of bringing a fictional world and its inhabitants to life–however a wise writer chooses dynamic details, meaning those details that reveal something about the inner and outer life …

Continue Reading

Always End With a Smile~and Other Writing Lessons from Puppy Class

Last week my daughter and I and our 10-month old recently rescued puppy, Jazz, all graduated from ‘Puppy Basics’. Jazz, who is 13.5 pounds of clever terrier-plus-guess-what, and my daughter, who is wise and a few days shy of her 11th birthday, breezed through the lessons: relax, sit, stay, off, down, lineup, come, and leave it. I did fine, too, as I am fascinated by animal behavior and what it teaches us about ourselves and others. At the end of the class, as is her custom, our instructor Judy reminded us to generously praise our dogs and ourselves because the …

Continue Reading