motivation

Writing a Book? What if HOW You Tell the Story is More Important Than The Story Itself?

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This post by Ash Ambirge originally appeared on The Middle Finger Project.

I know your dirty little secret. (Not that one. God forbid anyone on the internet finds that one out.)

You want to write a book.

This means three things:

You’re paralyzed with fear that it’ll suck.
It’ll suck so bad that the entire world will snub you and right after that, they’ll revoke your social security number and put you on display as an example of what NOT to do as a human.

You’ve gotten really good at procrastination.
“I should really potpourri that one cupboard underneath the sink in the powder room in preparation for the guests we might have over for New Year’s 2015. Better now than never!“

You worry—like 24 hours a day worry—that no one will care what you have to say.
You don’t even feel important enough to sit in the dunk tank down at the local fair, let alone write a book and have anybody care.

The good news? People look in the medicine cabinet, not in the cupboard underneath the sink. Duh.

The bad news? You will always feel this way…no matter how many things you’ve written, and how many people have loved it.

 

Read the full post on The Middle Finger Project.

 

The Creativity Myth

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This post by Kevin Ashton originally appeared on Medium on 10/29/14.

In 1815, Germany’s General Music Journal published a letter in which Mozart described his creative process:

When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer; say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. All this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost finished and complete in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. When I proceed to write down my ideas the committing to paper is done quickly enough, for everything is, as I said before, already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination.

In other words, Mozart’s greatest symphonies, concertos, and operas came to him complete when he was alone and in a good mood. He needed no tools to compose them. Once he had finished imagining his masterpieces, all he had to do was write them down.

This letter has been used to explain creation many times. Parts of it appear in The Mathematician’s Mind, written by Jacques Hadamard in 1945; in Creativity: Selected Readings, edited by Philip Vernon in 1976; in Roger Penrose’s award-winning 1989 book, The Emperor’s New Mind; and it is alluded to in Jonah Lehrer’s 2012 bestseller Imagine. It influenced the poets Pushkin and Goethe and the playwright Peter Shaffer. Directly and indirectly, it helped shape common beliefs about creating.

But there is a problem. Mozart did not write this letter. It is a forgery. This was first shown in 1856 by Mozart’s biographer Otto Jahn and has been confirmed by other scholars since.

 

Read the full post on Medium.

 

Worlds Without End – Interview With Ursula K. Le Guin

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This article by Sue Zalokar originally appeared on Real Change News on 11/5/14.

Sci-fi legend Ursula K. Le Guin discusses the limitless power of imagination

Ursula K. Le Guin started writing when she was 5 and has been publishing her work since the 1960s. Throughout her career, she has delved into some of the most insightful, political, ecological and socially important topics of our time. She has created utopian worlds and societies. She boldly challenged gender barriers by simply doing what she was born to do: Write.

Her first major work of science fiction, “The Left Hand of Darkness,” opened a new era in the field for its radical investigation of gender roles and its moral and literary complexity. At a time when women were barely represented in the writing world, specifically in the genre of science fiction, Le Guin was taking top honors for her novels. Three of Le Guin’s books have been finalists for the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and among the many honors she has earned, her writing has received a National Book Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards.

In Paris in 1953 she married Charles A. Le Guin, an historian, and since 1958 they have lived in Portland. They have three children and four grandchildren.

After some correspondence, Le Guin invited me to her home to talk. I arrived bearing fresh-picked berries from Sauvie Island. She took me into her study and showed me the view she had of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.

Urusula K. Le Guin: It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t want to see anything that big again. It was just inconceivable.

 

Read the full interview on Real Change News.

 

Trouble With Your Latest Story? 10 Ways to Reinvent Your Writing Style

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This post by Steve Aedy originally appeared on K.M. Weiland‘s Helping Writers Become Authors on 10/24/14.

Stuck in the writing doldrums? Has your prose become lackluster and stale? If so, it might be time to change up your writing style and infuse some fresh life into your words and stories.

Every writer has his own writing style–a particular combination of skills, techniques, characteristics, and practices that develops into his unique voice. But, what happens if your style becomes clichéd and predictable, tired and trite?

If it’s time to give your writing style a makeover, consider the following tips for a new approach and greater results.

 

1. Change Your Pacing, Change Your Writing Style

Enter the scene late and leave it early.

This screenwriting tip from author and screenwriter William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade applies as much to novels as to scripts. But what does it mean “to enter the scene late and leave it early”? It means preventing the pace of your setup from bogging down in unnecessary introductions that establish how the characters arrived in the scene.

Try changing the pace by cutting the first paragraph in each chapter and reworking the second one. This will help compact your information into fewer words and thrust the storyline forward.

Similarly, if the last paragraph is mostly filler, cut it and reword the one before it to tighten up the delivery of information critical to the scene’s conclusion.

 

2. Don’t Edit While You Write

 

Read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors.

 

Bad Advice for Writers! NaNoWriMo Edition

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This post by G. Doucette originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 10/28/14.

We at Bad Advice for Writers have thus far only concentrated on the act of writing, ignoring important things to like how to behave like a writer and the importance of not understanding how social media works.

Today, on the eve of NaNoWriMo*, we will focus on bad advice for the novelist. We feel we should make this distinction insofar as some of this advice might actually not be bad advice if you are planning on a work of non-fiction.

(*NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It takes place in November because that is a month that everyone celebrates for the fact that it is indeed a month long.)

 

Advice #1: Start notifying people about it before you’ve written it

Before writing a great novel, it’s always a good idea to alert important people in the publishing industry, so they’re prepared to read it when it’s finished. You may receive requests to see it before it’s even done!

Our advice is to craft an email blast and send it to everyone involved in publishing, even if that someone is the security guard at the Time/Life building. Remember: selling is all about networking! And networking is something we read about somewhere!

 

Read the full post on The Huffington Post.

 

5 Tips for NaNoWriMo: Getting Started

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This post by Nathan Bransford originally appeared on NaNoWriMo.

Nathan Bransford is an author and former publishing professional. Today, he offers five tips to getting your novel started. (This post is adapted from How to Write a Novel: 47 Rules for Writing a Stupendously Awesome Novel That You Will Love Forever.)

Writing a novel is hard. So hard, in fact, that some people are intimidated by how large the task looms. But do not fear! You can do this. Here are 5 tips for getting started:

 

NUMBER ONE: Think of an idea you love enough to neglect everything else you enjoy in life.

When you’re choosing an idea for a novel, you’re choosing something you are going to be spending more time with than many of your best friends and your most demanding family members. You’re choosing an idea that will render your bathing habits irregular and your sanity patchy.

In other words, it can’t be an idea you merely like. Liking an idea will get you to page fifty. It will give you an initial burst of enthusiasm—a dawning feeling of “Hemingway’s daiquiri, I can do this!”—before you inevitably lose interest, your attention wanders, and you find yourself with an unfinished novel that you feel vaguely embarrassed about.

Open yourself up to the world so that the right plot hook or character will flow into you. Prime yourself for inspiration.

 

NUMBER TWO: Flesh out a vague idea.

 

Read the full post on NaNoWriMo.

 

10 of Literature’s Greatest Comeback Books

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This post by Emily Temple originally appeared on Flavorwire on 10/24/13.

Though Tom Wolfe’s last novel, 2004’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, fell flat for many readers and reviewers — Michiko Kakutani called it “disappointingly empty” — some critics are heralding his new effort, Back to Blood, which hit bookstores this week, as his comeback book. Only time will tell, of course, but the idea got us thinking about a few other important books that have pulled some of our favorite authors back from the brink of oblivion (or worse, bad reviews). After the jump, read about the many ways authors have dusted off and recharged their careers with a well-placed tome, and as always, add any we’ve missed in the comments [on the original post, here].

 

1. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

The 1940s were not good for Hemingway. He described himself as being “out of business as a writer” from 1942 to 1945, and fell into a depression fueled by physical problems and the fact that many of his friends — Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Max Perkins — were dying around him. In 1950, he published Across the River and Into the Trees, which was roundly panned. The following year, as if in furious revenge, he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, which was to be his last book, and some say his best — in any event, it won a Pulitzer and firmly re-established his literary reputation.

 

Read the full post on Flavorwire.

 

Where Do I Write? All Over The Damn Place

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This post by Elisa Albert originally appeared on Guernica on 10/30/14.

On community, urban sprawl, infant mortality, and the Albany food co-op.

1. Office at home

Set up your office and get to work, a friend instructed a few years back, when I complained about the novel, which had plateaued at halfway done and was now just sitting there. I half-heartedly poked at it a few times a week, but the momentum was gone. So I put down an old Ikea kilim, cleared out clutter per the Feng Shui guru, hung pink string lights and cute scrap flags someone sewed me as a gift and a photograph of a feral house in Detroit (which has a thing or two in common with downtown Albany). Suspended some tillasandia with twine. Now I had a nice quiet little room to sit in and contemplate the stalled novel.

Just doing the work is the whole battle, we always say: making contact. Sit with the novel, be in it. Turn off the internet so you have nowhere else to go. Only rarely is it satisfying. Rarely is there a great chunk you can point to at the end of a day and say, here is what I did today! More often there’s the vague fear you’ve made no progress at all. Where did those hours go? Where is your work? What is this adding up to? You have paid someone else to be with your child while you did this bullshit? The thing continues and continues to feel like a wreck. But it’s your wreck. And you are working on it, even when it seems like bullshit, eating your time and appearing none the better. No effort is wasted, says the Bhagavad Gita on a post-it I stuck to the bottom of the giant computer monitor. But God, some days are a slog.

 

2. Leaning against doorjamb while boy plays in the bath

 

Read the full post on Guernica.

 

10 Things Every Writer Should Do

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This post by Karen Ball originally appeared on the Steve Laube Agency site on 4/16/14.

I’m a list person. In part, that’s because said lists serve to bump my memory when it gets…um…lost. But I also just love lists—especially lists of things you should (or shouldn’t) do. So here, for your perusal, are my top ten things every writer should do every day:

1. Stretch your word muscles. Learn a new word. Read a new writer. Do a crossword puzzle. Flip through the dictionary. Do the Reader’s Digest Word Power test. Something to test and strengthen your word skills.

2. Spend at least 15 minutes in silence. No words, no music. Just…be still. It’s hard to hear the Master’s voice in all the chaos that fills our days. Purpose to spend at least a little bit of time—other than when you’re asleep—in silence.

3. Read Scripture. Now, I’m not talking about your devotions. I’m talking reading them as a writer. See how the stories are told. Savor the beauty of the songs. Study the heroes and villains. There’s a wealth of gold to be gleaned in them thar pages.

 

Read the full post on the Steve Laube Agency site.

 

Writer’s Block – Getting Unstuck

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This post by Kemari Howell originally appeared on Kbuuk on 10/13/14.

As a writer, there’s nothing worse than getting stuck, or dealing with writer’s block. Yes, rejection and the like is awful, but at least at that point on the writing timeline, you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.

There probably isn’t a writer that hasn’t suffered the unpleasant ailment of writer’s block—whether it is as small as figuring out the POV for your story, or as big as hitting the middle-of-the-novel slump. And getting unstuck can be incredibly difficult.

Imagine that you can’t even get to the finish line…that someone has glued your feet to the ground just before you reach your goal. You can see it—the end—you know it’s there, but you are unable to move, paralyzed by some unseen force (often it’s your own self-doubt). You’re stuck and you don’t know how to go about getting unstuck.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath

 

Read the full post on Kbuuk.

 

NaNo Prep

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This post originally appeared on the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) site. With NaNoWriMo kicking off on November 1, now is the time to start clearing your decks and preparing for a very intense month of writing if you intend to participate.

Ready to start planning your November novel? Our NaNo Prep resources are for you.

From now until NaNo, we’ll provide resources to inspire, challenge, and prepare you to write that novel. Look to our blog, forums, Facebook, and Twitter for updates on new stuff, or bookmark this page (we say put it right on your browser bar so you remember your noble noveling intentions).

Let’s start by addressing some of the burning questions you might have:

You’ll find the answers sprinkled along the prep route below. Read on!

 

1. Make a commitment.

Intention is everything. Decide right now that you’re going to write a novel in November, then tell everyone you can. We’ve prepared a few ready-made social media messages for sharing:

 

Read the full post on NaNoWriMo.

 

Want to Successfully Publish? First, Are You a “Real” Writer?

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 9/15/14.

For many writers (me included), we don’t start off with the confidence to yell to the world, “I’m going to be a professional author!” Heck, I wrote a 178,000 word “novel” and still didn’t believe I was a writer. Later, I had over a year and a half of consistent blogging under my belt, multiple short stories, and newbie novels that had been at least good enough to win prestigious contests and yet….

I was not a “real writer.”

Schrödinger Writer? If you put a writer in an office at a keyboard, is the writer alive or dead (real or fake) until the book is published?

 

We’ve Come a LONG Way, Baby

The literary landscape has shifted dramatically. More avenues of publishing have opened and become appealing, thus this silly question of, “Are we a real writer?” holds far less power. Believe it or not, when I began blogging, I dedicated countless posts to answering this very question. In retrospect, I did it for me as much as for others.

I’ve always asserted that we are what we do. What is our primary career focus (beyond a necessary day job)? The second we sit at a keyboard and write, we are writers. Yet, as my first “novel” glaringly illustrates, we might not yet be a “good writer.”

 

Click here to read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

On Death and Writing

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This post by Ksenia Anske originally appeared on her blog on 9/6/14.

I have blogged about death before. When Philip Seymour Hoffman died (here is that post), and when I came across a man on the highway who was hit by a truck minutes ago and died (here is that post), and when I was hit by a truck and didn’t die but woke up in the hospital with a bloody face and half of my body bruised black (here is THAT post).

Joan Rivers died 2 days ago, and multiple tweets about it made me look her up. Yes, I have heard her name. No, I didn’t really know who she was. It took for her to die, for me to discover her. Her biting wit, which I immediately fell in love with, and her heritage. Turns out, she was born to Russian parents. I was wondering what was so appealing to me in her humor. It’s the sharp unapologetic truth and the stabbing hilariousness and the bitter charm that I have in my blood, yet am still afraid to let go. Thank you, Joan, for showing me that I can. You told me that I can say what I think, through comedy. What would I have done without you dying? You can punch me in the face from comedic heaven for saying this, because you must be the queen of it now. I’m convinced of it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Ksenia Anske’s blog.

 

Creativity Creep

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This editorial by Joshua Rothman originally appeared on The New Yorker on 9/2/14.

Every culture elects some central virtues, and creativity is one of ours. In fact, right now, we’re living through a creativity boom. Few qualities are more sought after, few skills more envied. Everyone wants to be more creative—how else, we think, can we become fully realized people?

Creativity is now a literary genre unto itself: every year, more and more creativity books promise to teach creativity to the uncreative. A tower of them has risen on my desk—Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace’s “Creativity, Inc.”; Philip Petit’s “Creativity: The Perfect Crime”—each aiming to “unleash,” “unblock,” or “start the flow” of creativity at home, in the arts, or at work. Work-based creativity, especially, is a growth area. In “Creativity on Demand,” one of the business-minded books, the creativity guru Michael Gelb reports on a 2010 survey conducted by I.B.M.’s Institute for Business Values, which asked fifteen hundred chief executives what they valued in their employees. “Although ‘execution’ and ‘engagement’ continue to be highly valued,” Gelb reports, “the CEOs had a new number-one priority: creativity,” which is now seen as “the key to successful leadership in an increasingly complex world.” Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Julia Cameron’s best-selling “The Artist’s Way” proposes creativity as a path to personal, even spiritual fulfillment: “The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union,” Cameron writes. “The heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.” It’s a measure of creativity’s appeal that we look to it to solve such a wide range of problems. Creativity has become, for many of us, the missing piece in a life that seems routinized, claustrophobic, and frivolous.

How did we come to care so much about creativity? The language surrounding it, of unleashing, unlocking, awakening, developing, flowing, and so on, makes it sound like an organic and primordial part of ourselves which we must set free—something with which it’s natural to be preoccupied. But it wasn’t always so; people didn’t always care so much about, or even think in terms of, creativity.

 

Click here to read the full editorial on The New Yorker.

 

Stephen King, the Threat That Hangs Over All Writers

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This post by Jessica Aspen originally appeared on her site on 8/21/14.

I’ve started writing ghost stories. Gothic romances of vulnerable heroines, desperate heroes, and scary haunted ghosts. I have an extensive reading background in Gothic romance and I love it, so it’s easy for me to create the spooky house, the dark and stormy night, and the hero who might be a threat.

What isn’t so easy for me was writing the ghost. But luckily I have my own ghost lurking behind me, Stephen King. Not that my little haunted holiday romance is anything like Stephen King’s writing. It’s not. Not at all. Don’t pick it up thinking it is. But more to the point, Stephen King is what scares me.

I’m so terrified of him that I’ve never even read one of his fiction books. Just the idea of reading Cujo or Pet Cemetery makes my palms tingle and my knees weak. I know I won’t sleep. I know I’ll be afraid to even turn off the light.

 

Click here to read the full post on Jessica Aspen’s site.