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Posts by Carol Despeaux Fawcett

Jun 10

Story inspiration from Neil Gaiman: write a story for a friend or loved one

Stories come into being in all kinds of ways. They may start from a dream we’ve had, an overheard conversation, an image we see driving down the road, a newspaper story, or from hearing an author read their work aloud. Many of my poems or stories have come from these inspirations.

Author Neil Gaiman said his most recent book, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” started out as a story for his wife, musician Amanda Palmer. In an interview with Tim Martin for The Telegraph, Gaiman says that while she was away recording an album, he thought he’d write her a story because he missed her.

“She doesn’t like fantasy very much, but she really likes honesty, and she really likes me. Writing it was like going, look, this was me. You’re always interested in me. The family isn’t really mine, the things that happened aren’t really mine, but the landscape, the place it happens, is me, and the eyes out of which this kid looks are those of seven-year-old me.” Read more

Jun 6

“Books on wheels” spread the joy of reading

Since the printed word came into being, people have been promoting literacy one way or another. An early way of doing so was via bookmobile. The first “books on wheels” were developed in the 1800’s in England as a way to get books to rural areas far away from city or town libraries.

I remember waiting with barely-contained excitement each week for our local bookmobile “Little Chief” to drive up to my parents’ grocery story. Being the only business in our small bayside community, we were a natural location for the bookmobile to offer its weighty words and bright, shiny covers to patrons.

I’m sure Little Chief was one of the reasons I became an avid reader. I devoured my books each week so I could experience the joy of choosing new ones the next week.

Despite the internet and the e-book revolution, the bookmobile still exists in our county. I passed the big, purple behemoth the other day and had an instant flashback to those early days of learning to love to read. The adventures of Huck Finn, the Swiss Family Robinson, and the Lone Ranger echoed my own adventures as I discovered the ample forests of my childhood. The bookmobile was my bat mobile where all kinds of adventures awaited me each week.

Bookmobiles are still used in many countries and some are run without a vehicle. Examples include:

Jun 5

Write with a body double for courage

Recently, I was at the local hospital while a family member was having surgery. Though I was keeping other family and friends updated via email, text, and phone on our loved-one’s progress, I owe a debt of gratitude to my cousin who came to the hospital and sat with me.

Having somebody physically by my side made me feel less alone and made this event feel “doable.” It reminded me of the earlier posts Carly and I wrote about having a “body double” while writing. Having another person physically present next to you while you write gives you a wonderful feeling of community and kinship. We all have doubts at some point during our writing and having a body double can give you the confidence and courage you need to continue on.

If you haven’t tried writing with a body double yet, I highly recommend it.

To read more about writing with a body double, read Carly’s post: Find writing success with a buddy.

Jun 3

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Build a Little Free Library to promote literacy

Little Free Libraries is an organization looking for help to build and place Little Free Libraries where kids and adults need good books.

Their mission is to:

  • Promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide.
  • Build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity, and wisdom across generations. 

Their goal is to build 2,510 Libraries–as many as Andrew Carnegie–and keep going!

To find out how you can help promote literacy and spread the word, please visit their website.

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.” – Andrew Carnegie

May 28

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Two reasons to delete adverbs from your writing

Readers are smart and smart people don’t need to be told how to feel when they read your story.

The best way to get your readers to feel is, of course, to evoke those emotions within them. As a writer, you do that by using strong nouns and verbs and creating meaningful images and scenes. You don’t do that by using adverbs.

According to author and poet Jack Remick, relying on adverbs to tell our readers how to feel is a lazy way to get to emotion.

In his insightful interview with Joel Chafetz, Remick gives an example of a poorly used adverb—“Get out of here, she said sternly,”—and says it can easily be replaced with something stronger such as, “Get your butt out of here,” she growled.

Another reason Remick says he hates adverbs is because they hide images. Read more

May 24

Write a scene in 30 minutes

In a recent interview by Joel Chafetz, author Jack Remick, talked about how learning Natalie Goldberg’s timed writing technique totally changed his writing.

Remick who is a poet and author of the novel Blood, among other works, said he learned to use timed writing to craft his scenes. He breaks it down as follows for a 30-minute timed writing session:

  • 5 minutes on setting, place, time, season, temperature
  • 5 minutes on character description and problem
  • 5 minutes on action and dialogue
  • 5 minutes on Intruder
  • 5 minutes on Climax and Resolution
  • 5 minutes on Hook to the next scene down the line Read more

May 22

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Banish writer’s block with this tip from poet William Stafford

“There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers whose standards are low enough.” –American poet William Stafford

Poet William Stafford wrote every day, rising early in the mornings before the rest of his family. This discipline resulted in about 20,000 completed or attempted poems over his lifetime—of which only 6,000 or so have been published. Occasionally accused of being “too prolific,” Stafford would say, “if you get stuck, lower your standards and keep going.”

I needed this advice this week. Stuck on the same chapter for two weeks now, I realized that something needed to give. It’s not that I don’t know where this chapter is going—I do and I’ve even scratched out an outline of the scene. My problem is that I’ve been too hard on myself. I’ve been tired and stressed lately and beating myself up for not getting further in my story AND I’ve been expecting my prose to be at top-notch level during all this. Rubbish.

Taking Stafford’s advice, I realized that I just need to lighten up and get on with it. Write the crappy chapter. Let my prose suck. I can go back and fix it later when I’m not so stressed and fatigued. After all, this is a first draft. And, as my poetry mentor says, “First drafts are meant to be sucky.” Read more

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