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Posts by Carly Sandifer

Oct 23

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Find good story material by being an observer

If you’ve been reading this blog awhile, you may have seen me mention the term, “good material.” Good material is how I describe any incident, detail, or drama I’ve observed or experienced that might find its way into my writing.

Stories that ring true contain happy and sad events, as well as the mundane and terrifying, because compelling stories are distinguished by conflict and drama.

We’re surrounded by good material but it doesn’t do any good if we don’t recognize and note it.

How do you know what good material is? I like to say you know it when you see it. It might be as simple as an interesting bumper sticker that could later turn up on the car of a character. Read more

Oct 19

Ready to revise? Move forward with these two posts

If you’ve written a draft and are now ready to jump into revisions, Wise Ink (@Wiseink) reveals a road map in At First Draft: The 6 (Minimum) Steps to Revising Your Manuscript before Submission.

At the blog YA Stands, Rachel Russell (@RachelxRussell) wrote Fisticuffing Revisions Into Submissions, about her process for revising her manuscript.

What’s your approach to revisions?

Oct 17

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See how these successful authors write

I’m always intrigued by how other writers write. I like to see their routines and quirks. Not only is it entertaining and informative, just maybe, I think, I’ll find something in their process I can adopt to improve my own.

Here are a few tidbits from The Daily Beast’s feature, How I Write.

Michelle Gagnon, mystery writer and author of the young adult thriller, Don’t Turn Around, is a big believer in writing a complete draft before starting any editing. Read more

Oct 15

Productivity tips that will help you find your writer’s path

If you’re like me, making time to write is a juggling act. Last week was one of those weeks that knocked me out of my writing groove in a big way. Changing work schedules, tasks that took longer than planned, and other people’s priorities threw me off.

Sometimes it’s easy to throw ourselves off with tasks we put off doing. These tasks that take on a life of their own can divert us from our writing, take away our energy, and steal productivity from other creative projects. Read more

Oct 11

How do you know when your poem or story is done?

How do you know when your novel, short story, or poem is finished?

I tend to work on a poem over a series of days or months. I’ll come back to a poem in progress days or weeks later and see a word or phrase that didn’t work because I was too close to it the first time I wrote it.

I listen as I read the lines to myself aloud to decide if something doesn’t sound right. If something doesn’t ring true or feels awkward, or if the poem just doesn’t feel complete or whole, I know I’m not done.  Read more

Oct 9

Daydream your way to creativity

My mother tells me that when my brother was in elementary school, she would come home from teacher conferences in tears because she didn’t get a good report from my brother’s teacher. Apparently, my brother wasn’t paying attention in class. He was staring out the window. He was daydreaming.

As it turns out, daydreaming can be a creativity tool. And it has other benefits too. It can relieve stress and lower blood pressure.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re trying really hard to think of how to fix something or move forward in your writing, you just get more stuck and stressed out? Then when you give up and go on to something else, just let your mind drift, the solution pops into your brain? (This works when you’ve lost something too and are trying too hard to remember where you left it). Read more

Oct 5

Discover your art as you go along

Write something truly awful to find the good stuff. That’s what poet Brendan Constantine promotes in his post “Idle Hands are the Poet’s Playground: Brendan Constantine on Taking a Chance.”

“Furthermore, it will always be true that our poorest work lies ahead of us. We’re going to write something truly awful in the future. We have to. Why do we have to? It’s often the only way to uncover the good writing. Like going through a kitchen drawer, sometimes we have to take out things we don’t need in order to get at the things we do.” Read more

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