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Nov 14

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Four ways to write about your life

There’s more than one way to craft a personal or family story. Consider how you could create a form that fits your personal style and passion.

If a memoir is a slice of life, you might want to write one based on your recipes, gardens you’ve grown, or cars you’ve owned. Find more ideas about structuring your life story in the examples below.

A life in lists. In a workshop I attended, Patricia Charpentier, author of Eating an Elephant: Write Your Life One Bite at a Time, shared different approaches to writing a life story, including one made up of lists. She once worked with a man who never wrote a complete sentence. He processed his life by making daily lists. Charpentier said the man had been making a list every day for 30 years. Topics included, “What I like about so and so,” the headlines of the day, and what movie was showing.

If you’re interested in writing a life story in lists, check out Listography Journal: Your Life in Lists by Lisa Nola. Read more

Nov 13

Draw on all five senses when you write a sex scene

In my previous post, I wrote about the “Bad Sex Scene Award” and how NOT to get one.

In Elissa Wald’s article “The Do’s and Dont’s of Writing Erotic Fiction,” one “do” is to draw on all five senses when you write a sex scene.

One way to do this is to break down the scene as follows:

First, make a list of the senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Then, think of the characters involved in the scene and your scene’s setting—where is the scene taking place? Bedroom? Living room? Tree house? Dining room table? Middle of the forest? Read more

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

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