John Cleese: Words of Wisdom

"Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating." ~ John Cleese

John Cleese's lecture on Creativity: Watch it here

The Art of Close Reading

"Improving as a reader is something you need to do to improve as a writer."

~ Jim Shepard

Award-winning novelist Jim Shepard shares his 5-step process of analyzing work towards the improvement of your own skills and craft as a writer--direct from the 2010 Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.

Thank you to Dani Shapiro for her Twitter post!

Creative Efficiency

Take care when analyzing and editing your creative work... you may cut out its very essence.  As Aristotle once said, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

Family Matters

FAMILY MATTERS

Tuesday, April 26th @ 7 p.m.

Diesel, A Bookstore

Brentwood Country Mart - 225 26th Street
Santa Monica 90402

Join memoir authors Jennifer Lauck (Blackbird, Found), Dinah Lenney (Larger than Life) and Hope Edelman (The Possibility of Everything, Motherless Daughters) as they read from their recent work and discuss the ups and downs, ins, outs, screeching halts and gymnastics involved in writing about family.

Find full details here

Janet Fitch's Parenting Tips for Writers

For all you parents (or would-be, considering ones) out there, who are also writers and creators... Check out this post by Janet Fitch, author of best-selling White Oleander, among other titles. She offers some pointers on how parenthood and writing can successfully co-exist.

You might also happen to get hooked on Janet's blog!

SOS - kg

Pep Talk from Neil Gaiman

National Novel Writing Month  (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Each year participants begin writing November 1st. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30th. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. In 2009, NaNoWriMo had over 165,000 participants. More than 30,000 of them crossed the 50K finish line by the midnight deadline.

With this year's NaNoWriMo just behind us, I am passing along this pep talk that Neil Gaiman wrote for the participants during Week Three. They are words, however, relevant to all writers—for anyone deeply involved in the creative process of a written work. Gaiman reminds us what it is to be a writer, and how novels (or any piece of writing for that matter) get written. Just when you were about to throw in the towel!

SOS ~ kg


Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

By now you're probably ready to give up. You're past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You're not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You're in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing, your family, friends and random email acquaintances have gone from being encouraging or at least accepting to now complaining that they never see you any more---and that even when they do you're preoccupied and no fun. You don't know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you're pretty sure that even if you finish it it won't have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began---a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read---it falls so painfully short that you're pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

That's how novels get written.

You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

A dry-stone wall is a lovely thing when you see it bordering a field in the middle of nowhere but becomes more impressive when you realise that it was built without mortar, that the builder needed to choose each interlocking stone and fit it in. Writing is like building a wall. It's a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn't build it it won't be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm---or even arguing with me---she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, "Oh, you're at that part of the book, are you?"

I was shocked. "You mean I've done this before?"

"You don't remember?"

"Not really."

"Oh yes," she said. "You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients."

I didn't even get to feel unique in my despair.

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.

One word after another.

That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it.

So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

Pretty soon you'll be on the downward slide, and it's not impossible that soon you'll be at the end. Good luck...

Neil Gaiman

--
Neil Gaiman is the author of the New York Times bestselling children's book Coraline and of the picture books The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. He is also the author of award-winning novels and short stories for adults, as well as the Sandman series of graphic novels. His most recent novels include InterWorld and Anansi Boys.

[Credit: See original post on NaNoWriMo.org]

Profile of a Successful Writer

So what does it take to be a successful writer?

Jane Friedman--editor and media maven for Writer's Digest--posted a fantastic piece on Writer Unboxed (a blog about the craft and business of fiction) that outlines the defining characteristics of a writer who shows promise. Surprisingly, she often doesn't even need to read a word... for her it's more about attitude.

Read the full post here

You also may want to check out Jane's award-winning blog There Are No Rules, which covers all things writing and publishing as it is changing and evolving.

SOS ~ kg

Nathan Bransford's Literary Blog

If you don't know it already, check out Nathan Bransford's literary blog... listed as one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" by Writer's Digest in both 2008 and 2009.

Bransford is a publishing agent at Curtis Brown (and an author in his own right), who offers wide-ranging topical information--from the latest controversy surrounding e-books to current trends in the publishing industry, including a categorical breakdown of his recent author queries. He is also full of creative tips and insights!

Thank you to my dear friend Lisa Cron for the tip... a stunning writer and story expert whose "Inside Story" class at UCLA Extension Writers' Program I highly recommend!

SOS ~ kg

William Zinsser on Memoir and Truth

A thought-provoking interview with William Zinsser - author of “On Writing Well” - about writing memoir and the elusive nature of truth. He says the writer’s *intention* is perhaps the most important aspect to consider.

SOS ~ kg

Credit: NPR’s All Things Considered, April 13, 2006 

* if you cannot play the audio, be sure to refresh the page.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing:

   1.  Never open a book with weather.

   2.  Avoid prologues.

   3.  Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

   4.  Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

   5.  Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

   6.  Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

   7.  Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

   8.  Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

   9.  Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

  10.  Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

 My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

 If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Ira Glass on Story

The great Ira Glass, host of NPR’s ‘This American Life’, discusses the building blocks of storytelling.