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Nov 12

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Are you intoxicated with every word you write?

If you’re a writer, you no doubt love to play with words. Words are the basic building blocks we work with to make our prose fly. And, one wild word may turn a pedestrian sentence or paragraph into one that dances the tango all over your reader’s imagination.

Screenwriter and producer Joss Whedon recently spoke at the event “Make Equality Reality” about his hate-on for the word “feminist.” He says that part of being a writer is living inside the smallest part of every word…the sounds, the syllables, the meaning…as if you’re intoxicated with the word.

Watch his hilarious take-down of the word “feminist.” Whether you agree with him or not, it’s the word that counts in the end. Always the word.

Nov 11

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The Bad Sex Scene Award: how NOT to get nominated

London’s “Literary Review” has just announced its winners for the 2013 Bad Sex Award—Britain’s most dreaded literary prize.

The prize is meant to “draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel and to discourage it.”

This year the nominees included author Amy Tan’s, “The Valley of Amazement,” for this line: “He flayed against me, until our bodies were slapping, and he took me into the typhoon and geologic disaster.”  Read more

Nov 7

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See how these famous writers outlined their work

As I experiment with outlining my novel, I’m learning that there are as many ways to outline as there are writers and types of writing.

For the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling made a hand-written table that contained the outline of her entire series.

Joseph Keller’s outline for “Catch 22” was meticulously ordered like an Excel spreadsheet.

Dylan Thomas’s outline for one poem contained a list of words.

William Faulkner wrote the outline for his short story “A Fable” on his office wall.

To see more famous authors’ outlining methods check out the Daily Mail’s article by Tara Brady here.

If you’re a writer who outlines, how do you go about organizing your thoughts?

Nov 6

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How to be a prolific writer like Walter Dean Myers: A three-step process

The mark of a successful writer is finishing the manuscript. Walter Dean Myers, an award-winning children’s and YA writer, should know. He’s written 110 books.

“People fail as writers not because they write badly,” Myers says. “They fail because they don’t finish the book they started.”

Myers, who is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, spoke Nov. 2 at the Vegas Valley Book Festival.

Like most writers, Myers is often asked about his process. It never varies, he says. First, he wakes up at 4:30 or 5 a.m., every day.

“I come downstairs with the cat, feed the cat, read newspapers, and start my five pages.”

Depending on what stage he’s at in his current project — whether he’s writing a first draft or rewriting — he works for 2 ½ to 3 hours. On a recent trip to London, he said his routine didn’t change. Except for the cat, which had to stay at home.

“By 9 a.m. my wife wakes up and I can aggravate her for the rest of the day,” Myers says.

Myers has created a process that helps him think through his ideas into successful stories that sell. “I do every book the exact same way in three steps,” he says. Read more

Nov 5

What is your writing style? Part one

I recently decided to take a break from writing scenes in my current manuscript until I get a better feeling for where my story is going.

While I continue to brainstorm scenes, there is one thing I’m working on—my style.

For a writer, style is how we put words together on the page. Style is syntax—the order of our words. Style is poetry—choosing just the right word. Style is the underlying foundation of everything we write. Style is being conscious of what words we choose, how we order our sentences and paragraphs and pages, and why. Read more

Nov 4

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Create a chaos board to capture your writing ideas

When I’m working on a new project, my mind spins. I make connections from all the whirling ideas and even think of totally unrelated ideas that I might turn into a story or poem. I capture these images and ideas on whatever I have at hand. If I don’t have a notebook nearby, I write on an index card, envelope, or a sticky note.

It feels chaotic to have all this creative flotsam floating around. So when I read about something that author Debra Marquart did to corral her bits and pieces of ideas, I knew I had to try it.

When she was working on her memoir during an artist’s residency at the Ragdale Foundation, she created a chaos board. Read more

Oct 31

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What stops an agent from wanting to read more of your story?

One of the most popular events each year at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference is a workshop called SIWC Idol.  Think American Idol except for writers. Anybody who’s brave enough can submit the first page of their manuscript to be read in front of a panel of judges—four literary agents.

Author Jack Whyte, in his deep and resonant voice, reads a random selection of first pages in front of the 200 or so writers. He reads until at least two of the agents raise their hand indicating this is where they’d stop reading if they were reading the submission in their office. The agents then explain why they stopped where they did.

I was lucky enough to be one of the few submissions where a hand wasn’t raised. But what exactly stops an agent from wanting to read further?

  1. Too much description up front that’s not interwoven into the action and dialogue. A long paragraph of description. Read more
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