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Posts by Carly Sandifer

Jun 25

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How to find writerly inspiration while eating a burrito

The minute I finally learned to read, I was hooked on words. I was like a staggering lost child who had crawled out of the Mohave desert and couldn’t stop gulping water from the first faucet I found. I checked out stacks of books at the library and read anything I could get my hands on, including the back of the Cheerios box as I sat at the breakfast table.

So it’s no surprise that when I went to Chipotle yesterday, I immediately glued my eyes to the copy written on my to-go sack as I chomped down on my burrito.

“Hope that, in future, all is well, everyone eats free, no one must work, all just sit around feeling love for one another.” George Saunders

I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Huh? What’s George Saunders, the short story writer extraordinaire, doing on my burrito sack?”

This is what: Saunders and 10 other writers are part of a Chipotle campaign called Cultivating Thought — Author Series. The campaign was the brainchild of Jonathan Safran Foer, a featured author and curator of the project.  It’s meant to spark conversation and introspection through essays that take about two minutes to read. The idea, Foer said in a video on the website, was not for the campaign to be any sort of marketing tool. He goes on to say that, “….in the scheme of corporate America, this is not a massive investment of any kind. But it might have really beautiful payoffs.”

Other authors include Toni Morrison, who wrote the essay, “Two-Minute Seduction,” comedian Sarah Silverman, Harvard professor Steven Pinker, and Michael Lewis, author of “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side.”

The essays on Chipotle’s bags and cups are meant to, “create a moment of analog pause in a digital world, provoking introspection or inspiration, and maybe a little laughter.”

Besides the essays, the paper bags and cups feature original art. For a bite of inspiration, go to cultivatingthought.com to see the artwork, author bios, Q&As with the writers, and their essays.

If the Cultivating Thought campaign has inspired you, consider writing your own mini essay. For ideas read my blog post, Cultivate conversation with a mini essay.

Jun 20

Fun and inspiring titles for your summer reading pleasure

It’s summer here in the U.S.A., so time for many of us to head out for a vacation. Wherever you’re going, it’s a perfect time to take a stack of books or your e-reader to catch up on some reading.

For your reading pleasure, here’s my list of fun and stimulating titles.

I was totally entranced by The Rosie Project, a novel about socially challenged genetics professor, Don, who tries to turn the art of love and his search for it into a science project. An unlikely relationship develops between Don and one of the candidates who responds to his search, Rosie Jarman. The Rosie Project is quirky, funny and different than any other romantic comedy I’ve ever read.

For those of us who live for writing, you’ll be inspired by Jimmy Santiago Baca’s memoir, A Place to Stand. Baca writes about how he learned his craft and found redemption in poetry while serving time in a maximum security prison. At one point, he gets into a fight with another inmate and as he hovers over him about to plunge a blade into his heart, Baca hears in his head the words of Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda, two great Spanish poets he’d been reading.

“How can you kill and still be a poet?” he asks. Baca is torn between a prison code of survival and the beauty and inspiration of words and in the end chooses poetry — and life. Read more

Jun 13

How to create memorable dialogue that becomes part of popular culture

A hallmark of a well-written script is a memorable line that could become part of popular culture.

Here are several examples:

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Gone with the Wind.

“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” The Godfather

“You had me at hello.” Jerry Maguire

“I’ll be back.” Terminator

So how can you create memorable lines in your scripts?

Hal Croasmun, president of ScreenwriterU, explained this and other tips in “21 Steps to a Professional Rewrite,” a screenwriting teleconference on June 8. For more information about ScreenwriterU classes, visit the website.

First, go to the five most emotional moments in your script where most memorable dialogue happens. Read more

Jun 10

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Energize your writing life with these three tips from other writers

Sometimes the trick to having a great writing day is just getting started. Here are three tips from other writers that inspired me and may help you too.

Write scenes out of order. Sometimes I know the end of a story before I know the beginning. So I go ahead and write the last scene. Or sometimes I have a key scene in mind that is asking to be written. I write it, and it gives me momentum to find the rest of my story.

This drives one of my writing friends crazy because she absolutely must write her novels starting from the beginning. I say, do what works. You’ll find advantages and disadvantages to every approach. But if you’re stuck about how to approach your next piece of writing, think about writing scenes in the order they come to you. Read about how Roz Morris started doing this in her post, Writing your scenes out of order on her Nail Your Novel blog. Read more

Jun 4

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Heat up your writing with these prompts

Sometimes I get into a writing funk. It’s as though I’m frozen in place.

Maybe this has happened to you. You’ve gone through a stressful event, you’re not sleeping well, or you’ve been consumed by work deadlines. Stress and fatigue are known to affect creativity and inhibit the brain from generating creative ideas.

I find that the harder I think when I’m in my slump, the more I blank out. I’ve learned that I need to think differently. I need to activate the part of my brain that comes up with new ideas, instead of the part that is sparked by stress.

One of the things I do to re-energize myself is read good works of literature. I also find that doing a few writing exercises helps me out of my rut.

One of my favorite books for this is The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano. If you’re in a slump, try this prompt from The Daily Poet.

Choose a color. Now write a poem only using images of that color. For example, if you chose white, your poem might include clouds, snow, yogurt, angels, paper, ping-pong balls, or plastic bags. The poem may or may not evoke an emotion associated with your chosen color.

Here are two more prompts from another of my favorite writing books, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg. This book is geared towards writing memoir but the prompts are equally good for writing essays and poems and even coming up with the seed of an idea for a short story or character. Here are two sample prompts from the book:

Knew. What did you know that you didn’t want to know? Go. Ten minutes.

Repair. What have you tried to repair? Write for 10 minutes.

Jun 2

Act out to create vivid scenes

When my cousin Gayle and I were kids, our idea of a good time was making up stories and acting them out. Sometimes we were spies and we had to slink around her house. We’d crawl under the coffee table and around the couch pretending that none of the adults who were sitting there could see us. I think we actually believed it at the time. Maybe it was true. Or just the adults ignoring us.

Since then, as a writer, I’ve often thought about the idea of acting out a scene to make it more real and vivid when I put the words down on the page. It worked to draw a scene out, so why not act it out? (See my post, How drawing can help you become a better writer).

I’d never heard anyone else suggest acting out a scene until now. I was reading an article in “Native Peoples” magazine last week about the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) MFA program in which Sherman Alexie is a faculty member. Alexie is author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and numerous other stories, novels, and poem.

In the article, the writer relates how Alexie instructs the class about the value of acting out scenes and advises a student to stand behind a door while another student tries to drag him out. Alexie says that simulating the events and trauma a character experiences allows descriptions to become much more accurate and vivid. I could also imagine that acting out a scene could help a writer map out logistics and order in which actions take place.

Do you ever have a scene that feels stiff or flat on the page? Try stepping away from your computer and into the world of your characters. Speak the dialogue, imagine the action, and see what happens next.

For another take on how to write vivid scenes, read Carol’s post, Use images in a scene to ground your readers.

May 29

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Waste a notebook with your random ideas

One day when I was in the fourth grade, I got in trouble for not paying attention in class. I was scribbling away on my tablet, writing notes that had nothing to do with what my teacher was talking about. She said I was daydreaming. She said I had to go sit in the hallway. I narrowly avoided a visit to the principal’s office.

Writing in a notebook has been part of me for as long as I can remember. In my notebooks, I write interesting words or phrases, the title of a good book recommendation, the date of the next book club meeting, words of a song that sound like poetry.

At some point, I type the notes from my notebooks into my computer so they’re easy to search. I know that in this electronic age, many people type everything on their digital devices, but I don’t enjoy typing with one finger. Mostly I just enjoy the act of writing with pen in hand. And it gives me a good excuse to buy more notebooks.

Little did I know, with all my scribblings, I was creating a “waste book” in the tradition of 18th century German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who had a habit of collecting aphoristic notes, ideas, and lists. According to a Scientific American review on Amazon.com, in his student days, Lichtenberg began the lifelong practice of recording his observations and reminders in notebooks that he called “Sudelbücher” after the waste books that English businesses used to enter transactions temporarily until they could be recorded in formal account books.

This is one of my favorite of Lichtenberg’s aphorisms: “The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.” Lichtenberg’s writings have been translated in The Waste Books.

My waste books might seem a morass of random scribblings to some people, but when I look back at them, I find a gem here and there — an idea that may find it’s way into a story, the root of an essay, or a character waiting to be born.

For another take on keeping a notebook, read my previous post, A twist on the writer’s journal: The commonplace book.

 

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