Tag Archive for ‘Writing’
Moving Day
Welcome to the new home for my blog, next door to my website. After today, I won’t post to my old ‘wordpress.com’ site anymore. I know this site looks a little different. I’d love to hear what you think. I have an exciting line-up of guest writers in the next month, including literary agent Molly Lyons on how to have the best relationship possible with your agent, Martin Kihn on writing “yet another non-fiction book proposal for a memoir about (yawn) a [...]
Thirteen Tips for Actually Getting Some Writing Done
Gretchen Rubin is the guru behind the phenomenally successful blog (and soon-to-be book) The Happiness Project. In this post she shares an inside glimpse at her process. One of the challenges of writing is … writing. Here are some tips that I’ve found most useful for myself, for actually getting words onto the page. 1. Write something every work-day, and preferably, every day; don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Staying inside a project keeps you engaged, keeps your mind working, [...]
Fear of the Blank White Page
“The blankness of a new page never fails to intrigue and terrify me. Sometimes, in fact, I think my habit of writing on long yellow sheets comes from an atavistic fear of the writer’s stereotypic “blank white page.” At least when I begin writing, my page isn’t utterly blank; at least it has a wash of color on it, even if the absence of words must finally be faced on a yellow sheet as truly as on a blank white [...]
Guest Blog: Jennie Nash on 10 Do's and Don'ts for Writers Seeking Feedback
Some handy rules for when, why and how to ask readers to respond to a work-in-progress: 1. Don’t Ask Too Early in the Process Work that is still incubating is too fragile for critique. Wait until you have a clear vision of your project so that you don’t get swayed by what other people think. I usually ask for feedback when I’ve stopped wondering if people will like my story and start wondering about the way a specific part of [...]
On Not Knowing What the Hell You're Doing
Some words of encouragement from two writers who seem to know exactly what they’re doing: “In beginning a story I know nothing at all: surely not where I am going, and hardly at all how to get there.” — Cynthia Ozick “Writing a novel is like driving across country at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” — E. L. Doctorow
Guest Blog: Lisa Romeo on Dealing with Rejection
Literary essayist, editor, and writing coach Lisa Romeo writes: Writers tend to think of rejection as something done to us by outsiders. We paint it as something we cannot control, as something to be feared and avoided, when in reality, rejection begins with ourselves. Early on. Even before we start writing, we reject our own creativity. We dismiss our ideas, our skills, our imagination before we give them a chance to work themselves out on the page. We squash the [...]
Breath on the Glass
When I’m working on a novel, ideas rise up at random times from the murk of my subconscious like pronouncements in a Magic 8 ball. If I don’t write them down right away, these ephemeral thoughts can fade and disappear. Driving my 14-year-old son, Hayden, to summer camp in Maine on Sunday, I put him to work as both a DJ and a scribe. (After all, I was the chauffeur.) He selected a Green Day song from his new i-Pod [...]
Deny the Accident
Jackson Pollock once said, in answer to an interviewer’s question about how he composed his paintings out of “accidental” splatterings, “I don’t use the accident. I deny the accident.” The sheer bravado of this is thrilling, and as a writer I find it a useful way to think about my work-in-progress. When I’m putting words on the page it’s easy to second guess, to question the often unconscious choices I make as I go: the trajectories of characters’ lives, shifts [...]
