A lot of would be writers want to start a book, feel they have the ability to start and complete a whole manuscript, but never start. Why? Many of them feel they don’t have the talent, or they can’t make words say what they want to, or they are having trouble thinking of a plot.
The only way to get better at writing is to write. Thinking that you’re not good enough, without ever trying, already sets you up to fail. Does that mean that everyone can become a writer? In my opinion, yes. However, to prove it to yourself, you have to pick up the pen, or get your fingers on the keyboard, and start typing.
Set a word goal, so when you start you won’t stop. I’ve found at least 1,000 a day is good. Others say 500 or 2,000, but whatever you can do, do it. Now, setting a goal, you may think, limits what you can write or forces you to go longer than you can. Quite the opposite.
By setting this goal, you not only push yourself to keep writing those words, but you push yourself day after day. When you reach your goal, especially in a consistent fashion, there is a sense of pride. You finally feel like a real writer.
Also make sure that you are in a quiet place, away from distraction, and you keep yourself there until the words are finished. Tell your family or friends that you are at work now, you don’t know when it will be finished, but you cannot be disturbed.
If you have the fortitude to continue going, to push away the self doubt and keep the ideas coming, and to reach your word goal day after day, you will find yourself with a full length novel in no time.
Next post will be about going back and editing what you last wrote, and how terrible it is for your writing.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
1,000 Decibels of scorn, rage, and self-loathing
Most people suffer from this internal mechanism, but artists tend to feel it worst. Every time you sit down to write (the art I’ll obviously focus on), you hear it nagging at you. You’re not good enough, you couldn’t write a believable text with a gun pointed at your head, you think anyone will like this crap? The spiraling of thoughts, and the manifestations it can take on are infinite.
Decimating to any writing attempt, the noise grows louder and louder until you just stand up and do something to ignore it. Sometimes just the act of stopping satiates it. However, there are times when the voice spills over into life, leading from your text is shit to you are shit.
Anne Lamott in her novel, “Bird by Bird” labels this as radio KFKD (K Fucked). Drowning out thoughts with sound waves carrying messages of rage and jealousy and any other negative emotion you can imagine, it persists as little more than a roadblock.
According to her, visualizing it as a radio makes it easier to stop. No longer is the voice an invisible origin, but a radio of your choosing. In my mind, mine tends to look small and antique. Yours could be massive and metallic, fitted with subwoofers and surround sound. In either case, visualizing it now makes it a small task of simply shutting off the radio.
One click, and it’s all finished.
For many people, from what I’ve seen, this works. With me though, it either created a temporary band-aid that was easily bled through, or provided even less solace. If the radio trick helped, that’s great! If it didn’t, keep reading.
In my case, I’ve found truly thinking through the problems helps best. Why do I feel jealous? Why am I angry? It may take days, but once the problem is found and isolated, you won’t find the message carried across your mind anymore. I suggest the radio for surface problems, but those deeper need greater attention than a simple visualization.
Also, if the radio worked for you, I suggest reading Anne Lamott’s book. She includes several other helpful tips for people finding it hard to keep ideas, or those getting sidetracked by the process of writing itself. Not my favorite, but still a good read.
Decimating to any writing attempt, the noise grows louder and louder until you just stand up and do something to ignore it. Sometimes just the act of stopping satiates it. However, there are times when the voice spills over into life, leading from your text is shit to you are shit.
Anne Lamott in her novel, “Bird by Bird” labels this as radio KFKD (K Fucked). Drowning out thoughts with sound waves carrying messages of rage and jealousy and any other negative emotion you can imagine, it persists as little more than a roadblock.
According to her, visualizing it as a radio makes it easier to stop. No longer is the voice an invisible origin, but a radio of your choosing. In my mind, mine tends to look small and antique. Yours could be massive and metallic, fitted with subwoofers and surround sound. In either case, visualizing it now makes it a small task of simply shutting off the radio.
One click, and it’s all finished.
For many people, from what I’ve seen, this works. With me though, it either created a temporary band-aid that was easily bled through, or provided even less solace. If the radio trick helped, that’s great! If it didn’t, keep reading.
In my case, I’ve found truly thinking through the problems helps best. Why do I feel jealous? Why am I angry? It may take days, but once the problem is found and isolated, you won’t find the message carried across your mind anymore. I suggest the radio for surface problems, but those deeper need greater attention than a simple visualization.
Also, if the radio worked for you, I suggest reading Anne Lamott’s book. She includes several other helpful tips for people finding it hard to keep ideas, or those getting sidetracked by the process of writing itself. Not my favorite, but still a good read.
Monday, May 18, 2009
SEO Writing
Today’s article will be more on the technical side than the creative. Our topic, SEO writing.
This type of writing is great for blogs, content sites, online articles, etc. It stands for Search Engine Optimization, and helps get you noticed on Google and other search engines, and also focuses your Adsense (if you have that) to coordinate with your topic.
To begin, we pick one or two keywords. Since this is a writing site, let’s use writing. Derivatives, such as write and writer, or writings, are included in this one key word.
Now, while writing, make sure to mention the keyword as much as you can. However, and here comes the hard part, don’t make it sound redundant or ridiculous.
For example, let’s take a sentence and pump it up with SEO.
“While creating your novel, make sure that each sentence is packed with drama and builds character.”
Here is a good way to SEO it: “While writing your novel, write each sentence with drama and ensure it builds character.”
It sounds organic and focused. However, there is a terrible way of doing this, thus a bad example:
“While writing your novel, write each written sentence with writer’s drama and write them to build the character.”
To those who know SEO tactics it looks horrible, and to those casual readers it also looks horrendous. Make sure the writing sounds good, while still pumping up your keyword. While the bad example will get you higher relevancy searches, there are two bad consequences (if not more).
-You may get more initial hits, but with poor content your readers will quickly leave.
-Google, and other search engines, send out spiders, and if they find sites with this type of content, it tends to be dropped in rank.
So make sure that your writing is effective, as you always should, and that you focus more on content than simply promoting a keyword.
This type of writing is great for blogs, content sites, online articles, etc. It stands for Search Engine Optimization, and helps get you noticed on Google and other search engines, and also focuses your Adsense (if you have that) to coordinate with your topic.
To begin, we pick one or two keywords. Since this is a writing site, let’s use writing. Derivatives, such as write and writer, or writings, are included in this one key word.
Now, while writing, make sure to mention the keyword as much as you can. However, and here comes the hard part, don’t make it sound redundant or ridiculous.
For example, let’s take a sentence and pump it up with SEO.
“While creating your novel, make sure that each sentence is packed with drama and builds character.”
Here is a good way to SEO it: “While writing your novel, write each sentence with drama and ensure it builds character.”
It sounds organic and focused. However, there is a terrible way of doing this, thus a bad example:
“While writing your novel, write each written sentence with writer’s drama and write them to build the character.”
To those who know SEO tactics it looks horrible, and to those casual readers it also looks horrendous. Make sure the writing sounds good, while still pumping up your keyword. While the bad example will get you higher relevancy searches, there are two bad consequences (if not more).
-You may get more initial hits, but with poor content your readers will quickly leave.
-Google, and other search engines, send out spiders, and if they find sites with this type of content, it tends to be dropped in rank.
So make sure that your writing is effective, as you always should, and that you focus more on content than simply promoting a keyword.
Spontaneous Plot
Many writers like to focus on the creation of plot. Planning it out, brainstorming, prewriting, all the other terms you can think of. I, however, have found planning to be mostly a waste of time.
When starting out, I begin by visualizing a scene. This tends to happen while out walking, and just generally thinking. From this scene, I look at the character(s), the emotions and tone, possible plots leading to and from this scene, and I expand.
Writing for me is a mostly spontaneous act. I see the entire act as having islands and bridges. Islands are the parts I have seen before starting the novel or story. Bridges is leading the story to these islands. Some islands we will not get to, because the story shapes itself differently, and some islands were not seen until we began construction.
It has to be organic, and grow from itself. Planning, I found, constraints thought and forces you to allow only the ideas that had been planned. Yet, while going by this organic style, it requires new thoughts to be generated, and allows a large amount of breathing room for you to create.
Stephen King’s “On Writing,” is a great book on how to write. I normally don’t like Stephen King books, only finding about two enjoyable, but his advice is very useful. His writing style, in terms of story, is that we have a fossil with dirt around it. We start with the dirt and rock, and as we write we are excavating and getting closer to the beauty underneath.
I tried planning, and could never get a novel done. I didn’t like writing by a plan, and hated feeling constrained and led around by ideas that could have been better. Organically though, thinking day to day, not only helped me create my first two novels, but also helped me continue generating ideas. You train yourself to think more as well, which helps from becoming dry and used up.
When starting out, I begin by visualizing a scene. This tends to happen while out walking, and just generally thinking. From this scene, I look at the character(s), the emotions and tone, possible plots leading to and from this scene, and I expand.
Writing for me is a mostly spontaneous act. I see the entire act as having islands and bridges. Islands are the parts I have seen before starting the novel or story. Bridges is leading the story to these islands. Some islands we will not get to, because the story shapes itself differently, and some islands were not seen until we began construction.
It has to be organic, and grow from itself. Planning, I found, constraints thought and forces you to allow only the ideas that had been planned. Yet, while going by this organic style, it requires new thoughts to be generated, and allows a large amount of breathing room for you to create.
Stephen King’s “On Writing,” is a great book on how to write. I normally don’t like Stephen King books, only finding about two enjoyable, but his advice is very useful. His writing style, in terms of story, is that we have a fossil with dirt around it. We start with the dirt and rock, and as we write we are excavating and getting closer to the beauty underneath.
I tried planning, and could never get a novel done. I didn’t like writing by a plan, and hated feeling constrained and led around by ideas that could have been better. Organically though, thinking day to day, not only helped me create my first two novels, but also helped me continue generating ideas. You train yourself to think more as well, which helps from becoming dry and used up.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Contradiction When Writing Characters
Among all the traits, features, and appearances you give your character when writing your story or novel, one of the things you have to worry about is contradiction. You want them to seem real, unless you are writing intentionally against this (an artistic stance we will discuss later). Yet, believe it or not, characters without a little sense of contradiction seems absurd in and of itself.
Take a step away from writing and look at your own life, or the lives of people you know. I know for myself there are times when I feel one way, and when presented with the same situation by another person, or in another place, I act completely different. We, as people, have a sense of contradiction within all of us.
For example, let’s look at someone you meet at a party. He’s real nice, entertaining and funny, and seems full of energy. Look at his home life, and the sparkle may fade quickly. You could find there he is ill-attentive, boring, talks monotonously, and ignores both wife and kids.
Seemingly these contradict, yet we have all heard of situations just like this (or similar ones). While writing, remember that some, not all, people do act in ways that go completely against themselves.
For a literary example, we could talk about Edith Wharton’s, “House of Mirth.” Her main character, Lily Bart, wants to marry a rich husband. With all her grace, charm, beauty, and ability to attain the limelight of parties, this seems less than simple and more like inevitable. However, whenever she becomes close to a rich and eligible bachelor, she does something to shatter the relationship.
But, also keep in mind there are blatant contradictions that should not be written. Don’t have an accountant who cannot do math, yet we see a scene where they clearly are doing math. This writing will not go far, and unless for comedic purposes will drive your readers away (or unless you can build up extraordinary circumstances where this can work both ways).
So remember, the big C word is not a bad thing to implement when writing characters, it often leads to someone more real and less contrived.
Take a step away from writing and look at your own life, or the lives of people you know. I know for myself there are times when I feel one way, and when presented with the same situation by another person, or in another place, I act completely different. We, as people, have a sense of contradiction within all of us.
For example, let’s look at someone you meet at a party. He’s real nice, entertaining and funny, and seems full of energy. Look at his home life, and the sparkle may fade quickly. You could find there he is ill-attentive, boring, talks monotonously, and ignores both wife and kids.
Seemingly these contradict, yet we have all heard of situations just like this (or similar ones). While writing, remember that some, not all, people do act in ways that go completely against themselves.
For a literary example, we could talk about Edith Wharton’s, “House of Mirth.” Her main character, Lily Bart, wants to marry a rich husband. With all her grace, charm, beauty, and ability to attain the limelight of parties, this seems less than simple and more like inevitable. However, whenever she becomes close to a rich and eligible bachelor, she does something to shatter the relationship.
But, also keep in mind there are blatant contradictions that should not be written. Don’t have an accountant who cannot do math, yet we see a scene where they clearly are doing math. This writing will not go far, and unless for comedic purposes will drive your readers away (or unless you can build up extraordinary circumstances where this can work both ways).
So remember, the big C word is not a bad thing to implement when writing characters, it often leads to someone more real and less contrived.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Genre fiction versus Literary
What is the difference between the two? While there are many answers, hardly any really combat the entire issue. Genre has more guidelines, the characters are thin, literary is real, and so on.
To some extent those claims are true, genre tends to have guidelines and parameters that literary fiction does not. However, at the same time, they are a facilitator of imagination and can enhance your fiction higher than the more realistic terms imposed by literary stories.
The characters are thin is another true claim, for the most part. However, it’s more than poor writing, but a loss of focus. Writing should appeal and feature the characters as fully formed and interesting people. However, genre tends rather to steer its focus on the magical or scientific wonders spun from the writer’s imagination.
No one is saying to get rid of your gizmotron (coined by the best writing teacher I’ve ever had), because it probably has a lot going for it. But, instead of long expositions and a story entirely about the machine or magic, with characters simply as thin plot ciphers speaking dialogue that sounds choked from a cadaver’s throat, show the gizmotron and it’s glory so you can allow the characters to wander and develop.
Genre fiction seems to always get stuck on this concept, leaving the reader with an incredibly substantial and well thought out world, and at the same time a sense of being cheated with poor characters that can barely be considered realistic or consistent.
What many people do not recognize is genre fiction that can transcend these problems is regularly considered literary. “Lord of the Rings” is regarded more as a literary piece than pure fantasy. “Dante’s Inferno,” another canonical piece of fantasy called literary. Look at “Brave New World” and “1984,” both are light SF novels.
THEY HAVE BREATHING PEOPLE
So continue writing genre, and don’t be scared or ashamed to admit the fact. They are legitimate writing styles and should be regarded as such. However, don’t put all the proverbial eggs in your gizmotron, spread them around the magic/machine and your characters as well.
To some extent those claims are true, genre tends to have guidelines and parameters that literary fiction does not. However, at the same time, they are a facilitator of imagination and can enhance your fiction higher than the more realistic terms imposed by literary stories.
The characters are thin is another true claim, for the most part. However, it’s more than poor writing, but a loss of focus. Writing should appeal and feature the characters as fully formed and interesting people. However, genre tends rather to steer its focus on the magical or scientific wonders spun from the writer’s imagination.
No one is saying to get rid of your gizmotron (coined by the best writing teacher I’ve ever had), because it probably has a lot going for it. But, instead of long expositions and a story entirely about the machine or magic, with characters simply as thin plot ciphers speaking dialogue that sounds choked from a cadaver’s throat, show the gizmotron and it’s glory so you can allow the characters to wander and develop.
Genre fiction seems to always get stuck on this concept, leaving the reader with an incredibly substantial and well thought out world, and at the same time a sense of being cheated with poor characters that can barely be considered realistic or consistent.
What many people do not recognize is genre fiction that can transcend these problems is regularly considered literary. “Lord of the Rings” is regarded more as a literary piece than pure fantasy. “Dante’s Inferno,” another canonical piece of fantasy called literary. Look at “Brave New World” and “1984,” both are light SF novels.
THEY HAVE BREATHING PEOPLE
So continue writing genre, and don’t be scared or ashamed to admit the fact. They are legitimate writing styles and should be regarded as such. However, don’t put all the proverbial eggs in your gizmotron, spread them around the magic/machine and your characters as well.
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