Quote of the day from Alan Watt, The 90-Day Novel: “Our job as artists is to build a body of work. When we drop our preconceptions about what good writing is and we give ourselves permission to write poorly, everything changes. Permission to write poorly does not produce poor writing, but its opposite. We become a channel for the story that wants to be told through us. Rather than impressing our reader with our important writing, we can impress with our willingness to be truthful on the page.”
Sarah’s & Cynde’s Blog
I am just back from straddling two worlds–the fictional realm and what appears to be daily reality. I met a major book deadline on Tuesday. Today is Sunday. I still find myself inhabiting an altered state as I come down from the writer’s most seductive high–total immersion in a ‘living’ creative work–and a fiercely demanding and exhausting work schedule. Over the years, I’ve met my share of deadlines for 5 other published novels and many published nonfiction books. This time, over the course of the project, I thought a lot about pacing, psyching up, intervals, training, recovery–terms often used in …
“Make them earn their victories, because we do not care about characters who are saved. We care about characters who save themselves and each other.” Holly Lisle, author, writing teacher
On Being Human…
Last week I heard writer Brian Christian give a lecture for the Santa Fe Institute. Christian, an entertaining storyteller, is the author of The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive. Many points stand out from his talk, but one basic insight stayed with me: complexities are easy for computers to conquer; simplicity is something else again. A computer can’t always recognize that a dog is a dog. But the machines are making headway. The annual Turing Test honors the “Most Human Computer”–the computer that is best able to persuade judges in a ‘blind” test that it …
While We Dream: Creative Process Often Misunderstood
In the midst of a creative life and after countless conversations with other Creatives, I’ve come to believe that many people understand very little about their creative process and the creative process in general. Expectations–defined and reinforced by social mores–often have to do with achieving goals based on tangible production. For a writer, that means word counts and page counts. But, really, creative process does not bow to our everyday expectations. Writers often talk about “productive days” versus “next to nothing” days. And our idea of what is productive and what is not…well, our conscious, every day, practical minds usually …
Transformation–the Stuff of Life and Fiction
“ALL CHANGES, EVEN THE MOST LONGED FOR, HAVE THEIR MELANCHOLY; FOR WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND US IS A PART OF OURSELVES; WE MUST DIE TO ONE LIFE BEFORE WE CAN ENTER ANOTHER.” —ANATOLE FRANCE
The Loose Novelist
This advice from Alan Watt’s wise how-two, THE 90-DAY NOVEL: “I didn’t try to figure out the ending, but rather, imagined a sense of my hero at the end of the story. How was he relating differently to his father? What had he come to understand as a result of his journey? How was the dilemma resolved? What was the visual metaphor, the image that captured the essence of my story at the end? As I pondered these questions, ideas came to me, and I realized that they were a goldmine of images for what preceded the ending. Imagining our …
WRITING RULES
One of my favorite writing rules comes from Dwight V. Swain from his wise and practical book TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER (University of Oklahoma Press): ” 1) Separate creative impulse from critical judgement. The first a most essential step is to recognize the human tendency to mix the two. Then, walk wise around it. To that end, adopt a working rule of “Create now….correct later.” Promise yourself the privilege of being as critical as you like, as soon as the first draft of a scene or story is completed. Until the draft is done, however, stick with impulse. Let …
WORD PLAY
Every writer knows word play is addicting. And, happily, readers flock to those writers who express themselves with originality and authenticity. By that I mean, the images evoked are vivid and often surprising, and the words feel “right” for the narrative world they bring to life. My seven-year-old daughter and I are currently enjoying the series, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. We look forward to our nightly installment, and always we end up laughing out loud. Today’s playful description comes courtesy of Cressida Cowell, the series author, and Toothless, Hiccup’s tiny and sleep-deprived dragon: “Toothless crawled up from his place …
THE WARRIOR WHO WIELDS THE MIGHTY PEN
WRITING MEMOIR IS NOT FOR WIMPS.