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BOOK BLOG
a blog on the art of writing, |
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This is a blog about books, books that have not yet been written. They wait in the dusty shelves of my brain, pages yellowing where they have waited down through the years. Some are crisper and bright with dreams, Others have grown wealthier over the decades and decadent. All of them accumulate treasure, buried treasure. Come inside. You may find a sovereign or a jewel--mostly I'll just talk about writing. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
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| August 10, 2012 |
| Still looking at the actual writing blues? The blues are hard to beat. You sit and stare at an empty screen or hypnotize yourself with a screensaver and the hours go by.It's easy. You know how to write. you jjust don't know what to write. So try a little exercise. You're a writer. You use instruments, as I've said. One instrument is a pen. You might want to do what I do. Get a nice journal for jotting notes on a project when you don't want to stare at a glaring screen and want to sit somewhere scenic or park in front of a chattering TV and not listen to the football game. Your computer is an important tool. Don't waste time on it. Respect it, and don't just use up electricity doing nothing. That computer is for hands on work. If you use it for other things and can afford it, get a work computer. Writing only. Your brain is an instrument, as I've said. Keep it in top working condition. I believe I said that writing is about making belief. You have to make the reader believe everything you say from start to finish. The reader is in your capable hands, and you are not just a writer. Anyone can write words and say something. You are a storyteller, a tradition that goes back to our most ancient ancestors. It's primal. It meets a need, the need to tell, and the need to know. So -- have something to say. If you're like me, you want to say it with fiction. If you're like me, the fiction comes first, and the telling is there in the unconscious or subconscious mind, because I take care of my instrument. I feed my brain, and I work it out. What interests you? What digs deep into your soul? What drives you mad? What can't you live without? What's your biggest fear? Other people share these things. Still other people need to realize how big they are. Other people need to become aware of them. Some people will just enjoy the heck out of the story and give it unconscious consideration. Make-believe. It all begins with make-believe. It's your stock in trade. Make-believe is the stuff you get rich on. You can even apply it to your own life story. Here's the little exercise I recommend. Most of the time I just start with a little something and don't know where I'm going. I drive blind at first. This time, I had nothing but the glaring screen. So I thought, well -- I'll start with a title. (Sometimes I start with a character or situation.) I wrote the first thing that hit my head. Glimriel's Quest. I got lucky. I liked it. Usually I'll sit around half the day thinking stuff up. Let's start you, for this exercise with yourself. I want you to imagine the most interesting thing that has ever happened to you. Now, create a charcaer. Say, one year ago, the same thing, or something a whole lot like it, happened to that character. Now give that character the leading role in your next book --- titled ?. And You're using life as inspiration for making belief. It's a good thing to do. You can also use belie fo make inspiration for making belief. Anything that inspires or inflames or excites us can be used as inspiration. I hope this helped. Thanks for reading. |
| August 9, 2012 |
| How's the writing going, you may want to ask. I put something called The Wiggin Tree in my portfolio, but it's an old start on something I never finished. The goal this time is to make the commitment and then prove that I can keep it and actually finish the novel. It was a bit of a slow beginning. But a good one. I started out on something I'm calling Glimriel's Quest. I wanted to do something different, so I started it in 1st person. I found this to be a really intense way to write. The story bolted out of the starting gate and just took off right away. I saw real problems with first person writing, though. However, I think I hit on something, a novel way to write a novel that's going to work great for me. I'm writing the story in 1st person first. Then I transpose it into 3rd person. So I actually just tell myself the story in 1st person, being as intense and action-oriented and emotional as I can get. Then I write the novel from it in 3rd person. I write so many words a day, then later that day or first thing in the morning, I rewrite them for the novel. It's easy, and it just might work better than any other method I've tried so far. I'll put a little of Glimriel's Quest in my portfolio for you. So you might consider telling yourself the story before or as you write the novel, and 1st person writing can open up doors and avenues in your brain for just that. It can open closets and all sorts of places full of all sorts of treasure. Try it. Tell yourself a story. Then write a book as you go. Just stay well organized and practice discipline. Have fun! |
| July 25,2012 |
| Sorry, got my dates wrong. So here's one for the twenty fifth, and I already wrote tomorrow's. Blank monitor getting you down? Lacking confidence? Need a boost? How about a makeover? Now, before you start the actual writing is a good time to take a look at yourself. When I was a girl, they used to say, take stock in yourself. Try it. Need to lose weight? Good time to do it. Buck up your confidence. Believe in you and take stock in yourself. If you have trouble believing, then make belief. Use your imagination. Be creative. You're lucky. You're a creative person. Don't just apply it to your chosen career or dream job. ' Apply it to your life. A writer is uniquely suited to create his or her own reality. God can lift the curtain, and you get to be the creative one, the creator. You write your stories. You finish your novels. You sell your books. Have you ever thought that your life is a story too? Why not write a scene? Better yet, write a whole act. In this act, you lose a lot of weight. All the weight you've been claiming you'd lose foro years. Or you dye your hair red or buy a wig. You buoy a froopy wardrobe and try on a new personality just for work. What do you want to do with your life? How about a mental makeover. Believing in yourself is crucial. create your life so that you can do just that. Lose the weight. Buy the hat. Have a long talk with yourself. Be your best friend. Take stock in yourself and treat yourself like the winner you know you were born to be. When you pour your soda water in the afternoon, raise your glass in a toast to yourself. And celebrate you. No matter how hard it gets, you always have you. Never take that for granted. And never let yourself down. Try it. Write your life while you're at it. Make it better, more successful, more creative, make dreams happen. Try it. A writer creates reallity and puts it between the pages of a book. I'm not saying replace God. I'm saying let's fly. You want to write a bestseller? You got to create that reality for yourself. Not even God is going to do it for you. Know you can. and enjoy yourself. But the challenge is before you. It's a big one, and it's a scary one. Turn it around and have fun! |
| July 26, 2012 contd. |
| You sit at your desk. Your monitor hums. You face the blank page. Do you ever get scared? I do. It's that awful fact that all you have between you and the page, which ultimatlely leads to you and the reader, is yourself. You are the instrument now. The book comes out of you. You make it from the stuff of creativity. If you succeed, that book will come between you and who knows how many readers? They won't feel quite like strangers. You may not realize this consciously, but some part of your mind does. Some seek fame and find it. Some pay a price for it they weren't ready to pay. Some seek success and find it. It too can come at cost. Some fail and keep trying without hope. Some fail and never lose hope. Where do you sit? Does it all depend on you/ How you perceive yourself? How you believe in yourself? Maybe anyone can learn to write. I've studied for years and feel ready to tackle the task. But this making belief I mentioned back at the start is necessary. Oh, I've dreamed. I've even picked out the floorplan of a house I'd like to build someday. And occassionally I look online to see what cars are selling. I might be in the market for one some day. But making belief in my dreams isn't enough anymore. I've got to make belief in myself. You can believe in dreams. you can believe in others. You can believe in God. I had a spiritual experience over a year ago. I practice enlightenment. God enlightened me by "leaving" The infinite left me, and I understood that it was too see how I would do now that God was leaving town. Now I understand. You can believe in dreams. You can believe in others. You can even believe in God. But sooner or later, when it comes right down to it, You have to also believe in yourself. Writing is like that. No one can write the book for you, not even God. Sooner or later we all come across something we need or have to do that God can't or even won't do for us. Then we can find our lives bereft of the Spirit, or find ourselves in trouble. Every writer needs to know how to rely on himself. How to believe in himself so firmly that sucess is a foregone conclusion. He needs to be able to sit down every day and do the work without fail and without complaint. So while you are preparing to write, prepare yourself for belief. Belief in you. You are your own dream. You build that dream every day, or you tear it down. More about this next time. |
| July 26, 2012 |
| Done my thinking, and I'm a little better organized. Getting ready for the first. I've been looking at what to write. I think I might just write two at the same time. They're each very different, so they'd both stay interesting to me. The writing would be a contrast. On i just a littleish 80,000 wd. book. I see me writing only 400 wds. a day on it. It's uniquely suited to that as it will be written in segments. The other will probably be around 90,000 wds and I'll write 600 a day on it. Writing this lower word count will not only help me work on two at the same time without getting confused, it'll help keep both books fresh and creative. There won't be that desperate ccanter toward the taunting finish line. Everyday, a little on one, a little on the other. That evening turn both into the best work I can do and get ready for the next day. Mark it on ,y calendar. I've never tried this before, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm starting the actual writing on August 1st for tax purposes. I can deduct from my room and board every month starting then. All else to do that I know of for now is to save receipts. I'll have to read up on it more. Suggest you do the same. I've been telling myself today that I need to try a few writing exercises before I get started on Tuesday. Something to represent each book, maybe to give me an idea for a beginning on one and excerpt on another. See how I want to handle them and the characters. I've got names to get in mind. Each book is under a different pen name and on a completely different type of genre. So it's exciting and I'm a bundle of nerves right now. I need to prepare mentally, I realize, and there's just one thing I want to say -- I may have said this before, but it bears repeating -- WRITING IS ABOUT FEAR. We'lll discuss this more next entry. |
| July 24, 2012 |
| At your desk> How'd the list go? Do your outlining? Now's the time to go over your list and take the first work you plan to do and get well acquainted with it. Got a full outline or one that gives you a good overall sketch? Okay, what's your wordage for the book? How many words a day are you going to write, come rain or shine? And how many days a week are you going to work? Are you goiing to take off on hollidays or weekends? Which holidays? Do you work three day weekends? two days? One day? I work six days a week, and I'm getting ready to start my first novel from my green career on August 1. I'll take off Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I'll write New Years. How many words are you speculating? I'm not looking at anything ambitious. 80 or 90 thousand words should do. So how long will this take? It depends on how you want to work. You can set a goal of one or two thousand words a day, then set aside six to eight weeks for a rewrite. You can write a book in eight to nine months. I'm thinking of working up a thorough outline and then writing 600 words a day. Goal: quick rewrite only. I could be done in eight months, writing 600 words a day, keeping my outline going and always updated, And doing a quick rewrite in the evening after dinner. I'll be doing preliminary work till August, when I'll start the manuscript on August first. Everyday, I'll mark my wordage down on my calendar, the fact that I did work that day, and of course the aim is to never miss a day. This is my job. I don't get paid unless I do quality work and finish the job. So we'll see how I do, When it comes to writing, I still have a lot to learn. Now to decide just what book to begin with. I'm thinking about a little book that could happen in my universe.. Or should I go ahead and just start Grymn over? Lots of notes to go on either. Grymn's on my stellar list, but I've been tinkering with it for five years, shuffling characters,, shifting the plot around, adding subplots, adding myth and religion, changing the lay of the land. Grymn's my big work. I like for things to simmer in a stewpot on a back burner as long as possible. I'm just adding a little seasoning is all when it comes to the little book.. although, theoretically, you could write two books at the same time, only writing them 500-600 wds a day. Like I said, Grymn's been stewing for years now, and has been through a number of beginnings. Maybe I'll try a cold run on the other one. So I'll be spending a few days looking at what to write when the 1st rolls around. |
| July 23, Contd. |
| Thanks for staying organized. If you feel good, go ahead and organize your files. You can keep a file on each book, if you want to use a filing system. You can store problem chapters in an accordian file. Make a file for anything you need, a file for queries and contracts, for rejections. Save information for taxes.. What you spend on your writing is important, including your electricity that's used for it, coffee and cigarettes. All sorts of things. Read up about it. Save every penny. Keep every receipt and accounting. All your stubs. You want everything. You're more likely to get audited than other people. So set up your business office before you start writing. Get everything ready to go. You don't want to write a word until you're ready to be accountable for your taxes. Writing is not only an art, a trade, a craft. It's a business. Take care of business. How well you organize will effect your success. Make it easy and simple for yourself, and impossible to forget. You can take care of business every day you write. Never miss a day of writing. Business every work day. I don't write on Sundays is my schedule. Keep a business calendar. Mark down your business on each work day on the calendar. You can do this with a computer calendar or one on your desk or wall. When you're done with this, organize and pretty up your work area. Create a nice environment, one that stimulates your creativity as much as possible. Buy some work clothes. Something about dressing for work like other people helps. Give yourself a uniform or work clothes. Or be outrageously creative. I once bought a cap, t-shirts, jeans, purple sneakers and peacock feather earrings. I felt very creative. So have fun and buy a wardrobe. Get your coffee mug. Your ink pens and journals. Any paraphenalia you can think of. Fix up your office. And lastly, try a little marketing. /Get your feet weight. How about a sweatshirt or sweatshirts. On the back it could say WORK IN PROGRESS. On the front, it could have the title of your manuscript you're writing and the date it was started, dash question mark. Put writing over the title in smaller letters. Why not do a little bragging and keep your expectations running high. Keep a little pressure on yourself. Make it real. Keep it urgent. Set a deadling to go with that sweatshirt and mark it on your second calendar, the one you'll mark off each workday on with how many words written. How many worrds in the book? 80,000? 100,000? How many words a day will you write? 500? 1,000? 1500? 2000? Figure out how long this will take. Ad a month sitting it out to let the manuscript cool, then a month to rewrite, and you're done. Or just keep going some of you and rewrite right away, if you can't afford to wait. 6-8 weeks is more reasonable on a rewrite. Once your deadline is set, you're ready to celebrate with a bottle of fruit juice. Thanks for reading. |
| july 23, 2012 |
| Okay, I might need to rethink my eleven books, considering today's market. Some of my ideas are a little dated. I love them but of few of these might be over the hill or just not quite on the right edge. So my next step in career planning is to consider each idea and give it serious thought. Do I want to go out on a limb for it or not. Do I want to devote my reputation to it? Do I want it to uphold my integrity? Do I want to live with possibly worldwide reader reaction to it? Do I want to be the failure that wrote it? Do I want to be the average so and so that eeked it out and let it sit there til it got kicked off the shelf. Do I want to hear, Oh you wrote it at parties and see people roll their eyes at it's meager success? Or if it makes it to top seller, will I be proud of it? Is it something that I want to represent me for the rest of my existence? Anywhere I go, even a public restroom or serve in the white house. Before you make a real commitment to your career plan, spend some time to go over what you've done and decide whether or not you really want to commit to each book or not. You can always come up with something new.. You've done preliminary outlines if you're a real go getter, so you know what you're looking at and how well you're likely to write each of them. So take a look. Are they good enough for you? Or are you coping out? Still biting off more than you can chew? Or are you being lazy? Too controversial? Too bland to be interesting? Now's the time to do something about it. Now's the time to tune your instrument. Go at it diligently. Fine tune your career. Get the kinks out and make it sing. Put some characters together for each book, if it helps. You've probably already done this while outlining, though not necessarily. They're going to be on the shelf. Will they look good, will the titles sing? Will you love them forever? If not, keep working out your career. Once you've got your career worked out, take a breather. Have some fun. While you do, decide what you're going to write first. Second. Third. Etc. |
| July 22, 2012 |
| Planning ahead. I don't have time to write an eloquent journal, so I hope you're not looking for anything stylish here. I'm just slapping thoughts on the page. I'm working out a career and have writing itself to get to, but this scribbling helps to. It helps me clarify the mess that's upstairs flying around in the breezy attic where I sometimes find magical lessons have blown in through an open window. It's those white thunderheads that go passing by, the ones you knew as a child and thought someone lived in. Some benign professor sends lessons still. You don't see those thunderheads like you used to. At least, I don't. But I used to stride around on and in them in my imaginings and could play with cloud giants. All the cloud giants seem to be gone now. They've sailed off across that clear sea, their ships fading, their islands sinking. If you pause to think about it, and you're as old as me, you could miss the big rumbling booms of their voices and the lightning bolts they three from cloud to cloud. Their roadways through the sky rumbled and boomed and could glow with electricity. Their voices echoed along the byways of the sky, and even as a child, I knew they were packing up and leaving. They were thoughtful of us, a little hushed, and quietly excited, those booming voices merely whispers. I've formulated eleven books and put them, tentatively, in the order I plan to write them. For me that, after priming my imagination and getting it capable of performing to this xapacity, was the next big step. While practicing make-believe, I had to learn the basics of writing, good writing. I have a library of books on that subject-all of them good. I've written and written, though not as much as I should have, due to my illness. I'm behind on my writing skills, and my other skills are ahead of that. So I'll start with something simple and write away and practice finishing manuscripts in a matter of months, until I get something good enough to submit. And I'll keep going. My next step, having formulated these seven book ideas for my green career, is to do preliminary outlines on all seven books. I want a general grasp of each story from beginning to end, including the middle yoke. Each preliminary outline should be full enough to capture the true spirit of the story, to keep the heart of it in mind so that water can be drawn from the well. Then keep available a notepad, notebook, a place on your wordprocessor to access it and dabble with it at pleasure. Don't ignore those middle of the night brainstorms. Keep these outlines in a safe place. If you're green, just write up a condensed synopsis of the professional career list and tuck it away in a safe place. No need to start on outlines there yet. Once you've put the synopses away, it's time to just concentrate on your green career. Have fun. Pick an identity -- a pen name. Try more than one, if you like. Who are you as you autograph these books? Spark your imagination. Feed it. Fun is fuel. If you do this, you have organized your office. carpet has been laid. The pictures are hung on the wall. the new desk arrived. You've put books in the bookshelves, and you're autographed book covers on the walls. Now, you're ready to get behind your desk. |
| July 22, 2012 |
| What to write? What to write? There's a lot to do when planning a writing career, and I am a firm believer that one should go ahead and plan one's career before one publishes. Why be a messy risk-taker, a lackadaisical slob who dosn't plan ahead? A good writer should be well organized, and yes, a hyper-creative person can be a very well organized person, even a hyper-organized person. Great writers can be perfectionists. Get to it right now. See to your instrument. It's your brain. What does it have that you need? Imagination? Play it. Work it out. Use it daily. Don't forget your daily exercises. What to write, what to write. Fill out that outline. Name some characters. Character sketches. Fun titles. Silly titles. And big dreams. You're at the opera. You see King Henry the eighth in the balcony across the air from you. It's 1980. He's in full regalia. Is it really him or just an actor? You've taken a time trip. Or Henry has. You're a filthy rich writer and you buy the mansion of your dreams and live alone with two great danes and a billion dollar ferret. You find a mink coat in the attic and wear it around the house, eating celery and peanut butter. I'm sure yours are better than mine. Imagine your first book tour. Signing autograph. Being recognized at the supermarket. The fun thing is, no dream is too big or too small. Bring back the tv shows from your childhood. Write like that. Imagine your favorite actors portraying your characters. It's your brain. Play it anyway you like. Just keep it in good working order and treat it with integrity. Keep it well nourished and well nurtured. So as you plan ahead, you dream. Keep notes as you go. I buy a nice looking journal to keep my notes in, something leather-bound might do you. Or something whimsical. You can even get two. One for organization and one for scribbling. Or a big pad for scribbling. How about an artist's sketchbook for scribbles. Be creative. You can doodle too. Sketch your characters. Draw your titles and ink them. Put your pen name in big letters. Make up more than one pen name. Let your brain run wild. Set it free. Writing should be fun. Love your career.. Wrap up all the fringe benefits and have fun. Give yourself plenty of fun. And always love your career. More about planing next time. Thanks for reading. |
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