Why write?

Consider today's blog as a first cousin to the Quick Hits writing tips. In previous posts, I said that all writing can be boiled down into Who What When Where and Why. Today I'd like to talk about Why.

As in Why write? Why write about _____________? Why do you spend all your free time neglecting friends and family and having a life so you can scribble a few sentences on a notepad or stay up all night pounding out sentences as if you life depended on it.

Why indeed.

Anyone can give you a reason for writing: convey and idea. Tell a story. Spread the news.
Writers suffer a more debilitating affliction, they write as if their soul will expire if the don't.

See, people who write do it whether they like it or not. They cannot help themselves. They pick up a pencil and write a story as soon as they've read their first book. They see how it's done and want to to do. Some hear a poem and know they've heard something that touches their soul, and just know they have to do the same thing in order to live. Some hear the stories of their ancestors and are convinced that recording them is an act of precious preservation.

Quick Hits No 8

To recap: Quick Hits writing tips was born from conversations I have had with editors, writers, and wanna-be writers and about writing a story, any story: how to start, how to follow through,  and what it takes to get the idea on paper in a way that others understand.

I know for most writers it's all very elementary, but who among us has had a an idea waiting to be hatched, a story to be told, and then, wham! We act like we've never written our name?

Thanks today goes to Mary O Paddock's tweet (@MaryOPaddock) about writing advice given by Christopher Moore, via her blog Jumping Off Cliffs. Moore is the author of Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. I have never read it, nor have I ever heard of Christopher Moore. But upon reading his advice to writer's, that's all going to change.
Here's a link:

http://tinyurl.com/9avzk7a


If anyone would like to comment on this or any other posting in the blog, please feel free. I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say.
See you next time!

Quick Hits No. 6

In my posts about writing, I have been focusing on getting started: think about it and get it on paper. Ask yourself some questions, answer them in your head, then get the words on paper. Today I'd like to share this with you:

“When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.” ― Stephen King, On Writing

At my first writer's conference, I heard "writing is rewriting." It has stayed with me to this day. Trained as a journalist, I am used to the notion of get it out, get it right, but get it out. Writers without daily deadlines, once they get whatever it is they want on paper, treat those words as if they belong in a museum. That's a good way to never get anything done. The next step is just what King says: "(take) out all the things that are not the story."

Every word you write won't be a part of the final product. That's OK. It's not the words you start with, but the words you end with that count.

See you next week.

Quick Hits No. 3

Sometimes writing begins with the smallest of details. Describing something, however small, exercises the engine of your imagination, and frees the words trapped there. Consider: How a fried egg's yolk runs as if it seems to want to escape its fate. How a fastidious man refuses to allow smoking in his car, he so loves its new car fragrance.
Getting started on a story may be as simple as a small, insignificant observation. At the end of Chapter 3 in "Rosie," Anne Lamott writes "... she lifted a bottle of nail polish and, with a forlorn look on her face and a gaping, heavy hole in her chest, spent the next half hour slowly tipping the bottle back and forth, watching the swaths cut in the polish by the silver stir beads, the silvery etchings in crimson."   
If the devil is in the details, heaven is there, too.


And don't forget to check out Joss Whedon's Top 10 Writing Tips


http://www.whedon.info/Joss-Whedon-s-Top-10-Writing-Tips.html

See ya next week!

Quick Hits No. 2

A continuation of last week’s post:

Another topic in the conversations I had focusing on writing centered on how the essence of stories are lost in the verbiage the writer wants to use when stringing sentences together.  In other words, the writer knows what he or she wants to write, and the sentences come out beautifully, but the story is hard to find among the finely turned phrases. I think what happens is the writer knows what he or she wants to say but gets caught up "in the moment" of writing and the words get in the way.

 For example, find any recent college or high school graduation story, print or viral, and see if the story includes basic information: name and location of school,  the guest speaker, valedictorian, salutatorian, what was said, how many students graduated -- you name it. Is it a speech story? Depending on the guest speaker, maybe it is. But far too much time was spent trying to come up with different adjectives and adverbs to describe a run-of-the-mill graduation story without getting in the facts, takes far too much time to write, and for the editor, takes far too much to edit.

How does this apply to writing fiction? Ideas tend to grow from the inside out, like dropping a pebble in a pond, and watching the ripples grow larger and larger. But writing is rewriting. It’s like that unruly shrub that needs to be trimmed back. So get some sharp clippers and have it.

Writers love to stand in shade and drop pebbles into ponds. Who doesn’t? But the work of the writer is standing in the sun, hot and thirsty, clipping back the shrubs to make them look like something. It isn’t easy. In fact, a lot of times it just plain sucks. But in the end it’s worth it.

See you next week!