May 18
Celebrate Friday with these tidbits of writing advice.
In Revealing Character through Details, Julie Eshbaugh at Publishing Crawl explains her philosophy about expressing character details in fiction and includes several examples.
Then, head over to writer and editor Jane Friedman’s blog to read Perfecting Your First Page: Three Tasks or Exercises.
Sometimes my brain seizes up when I sit down at the computer to write. It’s as if the glare of the screen and the cold, hard keys have drained all the energy out of my ideas. But since I rely on the keyboard and computer to put sentences down on the page, I have to work around it.
So I was intrigued when I read about doodling as a way to boost creativity. Roisin Markham writes about how doodling brings an unconscious clarity to her thinking process.
I’m planning to try it. For all the details, check out Roisin’s post at CreativeDynamix.
Besides being a newspaper reporter early in my career, I’ve worked in the corporate trenches writing everything from news and feature stories for customer magazines and newsletters, to sales and fundraising letters. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time as a ghostwriter.
After all these years, my work style is second nature, from how I prepare for an assignment to how I interview sources and get into the writing itself.
But I often run into people who are eager to break into copywriting or freelance writing and they want to know how to go about it, so I decided to analyze and share some of my personal best practices.
Does starting a story scare you? Maybe you put off putting pen to paper because of fear. John Steinbeck felt the same way.
In a letter to writers, Steinbeck wrote:
“It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.” Read more
As someone who is fascinated by the subject of creativity, I’m always looking for other perspectives. Here are a few articles I read this week on the subject.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in or that you’re, “a little weird?” Then you may be interested in this article, Being sensitive, moody and strange may be signs you’re a creative by Susan Biali, M.D. You’ll also see how important it is to follow your creative inclinations.
If you’d like to increase your creative production, check out Seven steps to take now to increase your creative output by Amy Neumann and Eliza Wing.
And in case you missed my post on Monday, you’ll find another idea for enhancing your creativity with the “What if?” exercise.
A couple years ago, a friend told me that when her 90-year-old mother got hearing aids, she found out she would have an adjustment period as she began to notice things that over time she had stopped hearing.
Once she began to wear the hearing aids, she heard the hum of refrigerators, sounds of cars going by outside, and other background sounds we all take for granted. This reminded me of staying in houses where I’d lie in bed in the quiet of the night and hear the creaking of the house, the wheezing of the furnace, and the clanging of radiators.
I’ve thought about how I should show this sensory part of the world in my scenes and settings. It’s a way to add realism, and I imagine it makes it easier for readers to immerse themselves in the story world I’m trying to create. Read more
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