Quick Hits No. 5

When I began tuning into Social Media one of the first names to jump out at me was Chuck Wendig. I  realized that if there was someone this cool swimming in the deep of the socmed pool then I wanted to jump in, too.
And one of the first things I read was 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing Right now.

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/01/03/25-things-writers-should-stop-doing/

I want to focus on No. 6

"I said “stop hurrying,” not “stand still and fall asleep.” Life rewards action, not inertia. What the fuck are you waiting for? To reap the rewards of the future, you must take action in the present. Do so now."

Take action. 

A friend of mine is trying to get started on a project but did not know where to begin. "Just write something!" I shouted. "Write you name. Draw a line down the middle of the page and write what a boy would say on one side and what a girl would say on the other. Describe the awfulness of your apartment. Tell me how you hate to walk to the grocery store. But just write it down!"

He thought it had to be creative. It doesn't. It has to be something. The creative part comes later. First comes the writing.

Take action.

If you can write a tweet, an email, or text a message, you can write. The creative part comes later. Just write. Write and write some more. What you want to say will rise up from the words on the page. You'll see them reaching out to you, begging to be set free. 

But no such emancipation will take place if you don't take action.

Rosie by Anne Lamott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this to introduce myself to Anne Lamott's work. I am glad I did. Despite its title, at first the story seemed to be about Elizabeth Ferguson, Rosie's mother, and the people who populate her life: Andrew, Rosie, Rae and James. The story seems to unfold as a tiny family saga, from Elizabeth's mother to Elizabeth to Rosie. But there is an imperceptible shift, from Elizabeth's tumultuous inner life to Rosie's life of becoming herself in a world where her one constant is her flawed, beautiful, patient-despite-herself mother. Lamott's gift is her ability to simultaneously describe Elizabeth's reckoning of her own faults, Rosie's adventures with her best friend Sharon, and Rosie's awareness of the mysterious world of grownups, one populated with kindness and understanding alongside cruelty and abuse. I was sad to come to the end of the book.


View all my reviews

Quick Hits No. 4

In his tribute to Nora Ephron in The New Yorker, Nathan Englander shares some observations on the art and craft of writing I'd like to share with you.


He wrote: "It’s that the goal of the true craftsperson is simply to put story out into the universe—to find the tales that really count and to tell them in the form they demand."

Isn't that really what a writer tries to do? Send a story "out into the universe." I know I'm guilty of of keeping my stories hidden from the universe for any number of reasons, most often because I am not satisfied with them. But what writer is?


I have just finished editing a story that began life 20 years ago. The original idea has morphed into something that can only be appreciated if one applies the six degrees of separation rule. The story is now ready to be launched into the universe, but 20 years?


That's ridiculous. But what's worse is I have a story that's been written in some form for 30 years that has yet to see the light of day. 


So you can see, I've been on this journey through the writing life for some time. And I admit it has existed in my head, for the most part. But now I'm ready to go "out into the universe."


This is why I think his conclusion seems to timely for me right now:


"You set out to do something, and to do it right. And if it doesn’t come out exactly as planned—you don’t just live with it, you find a way to make it even better than it would have been before." 

Check out the article here:


http://tinyurl.com/7fsj4g8


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!

Writing something you can put your name to

Perusing through some short films on the PBS website I found this Mike Wallace interview with  Rod Serling from 1959, just after Serling wrote several terrific television programs during TV's 'Golden Age' and before launching "The Twilight Zone." What Serling has to say about writing a story, standing up for what you believe, appreciating good writing as art even if it is a television program is all as relevant now 53 years later as it was then.

The program lasts 21 minutes. It is time well spent.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2251283302