Write What You Love

All this to say, You Be You. You Write You. It is said in Ye Olde Hallowed Annals of Writerly Bull that Thou Shalt Write The Book of Thy Heart. Truly. Do. Because life as a professional artist is HARD. You have to delight in what you’re writing and slaving away over because there are moments when that’s all you have. Take your craft deadly seriously, but not yourself, and not necessarily your genre. Wink at it, have a total blast, revel and wallow, and be only as indulgent as your editor allows. Try to be objective, and don’t be hurt if people think your cup of tea tastes like poo. With any luck, passion, love and creativity will shine through. For my part, I can only hope the wild expanse of whatever foggy moor I’m frolicking in will bring loyal readers, who don’t mind the eerie abandon, back time and again to my dark and stormy night.

via Leanna Renee Hieber: I Write What I Want! (aka: Ignoring the Haters since 1764) « terribleminds: chuck wendig.

 

Leanna has a very good point.

Are you writing what you love?

First, some questions:

  • What do you love?
  • What keeps you coming back to the desk every day?
  • Have you found your voice yet?

Obligatory StoryADay promo: writing a story every day for a month drives you to try new things, desperate measures, genres and voices you’ve never allowed to fly free before. Try it.

You might find your true voice and your true love lurking underneath all those stylized and ‘commercial’ things you think you ought to be writing.

That way lies fulfillment and riches (well, I can’t guarantee the riches, but I’m fairly certain they won’t come if you hate what you’re writing!)

Join us!

On Reading for Writing – Junot Diaz

I’m old enough and experienced enough to know when I’m reading to avoid. And then you gotta get back to work. And I also know — you get old enough, you know when you’re forcing the writing, so you need to go hit the books.

via Junot Díaz Hates Writing Short Stories – NYTimes.com.

A couple of years ago I discovered Ray Bradbury’s prescription for creativity and vowed to read more short stories. Soon I was drowning in ideas. This is the second half of what Junot Diaz is talking out here.

But Diaz makes an really interesting point in the first half of the quote.

Sometimes we ‘read to avoid’.

  • We read to avoid doing the work.
  • We read to avoid starting.
  • We read to feel like we’re being productive when really we should be writing.

How do you balance the reading and writing parts of your life? What is the most productive reading you do? The least productive? Share your thoughts in the comments, below. Let’s talk about this!

The Time You Spend Waiting To Begin

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

via Neil Gaimans Journal.

This except comes from a compendium of New Year’s Wishes from the master of modern storytelling, and champion of creatives, Neil Gaiman.

All of the New Year’s wishes are inspirational but this one struck me particularly.

  • We struggle to find time to write.
  • We make excuses for not doing the thing we love, in case we’re not good enough.
  • We say we’ll be creative another day, just as soon as we’ve cleared out plates of these urgent (but not necessarily important) tasks.

So try.

Try to do something creative today.

Then do the same tomorrow.

It’s worth it. I promise.

Need help getting started? Breaking Writers’ Block: A StoryADay.org Guideis chock-full of 60+ suggestions for ways to get started, even on the hardest day.

Plot Twists To Avoid

  • The heroine/narrator is revealed to be a cat, dog, car, possum, tree or ghost!
  • A partner’s mysterious arrangements turn out to be for a surprise party
  • The perpetrators murder plan backfires and s/he eats the poison
  • A woman meets up with a handsome “stranger” for a steamy rendezvous and it turns out to be her husband
  • Someone nervous about a first day at school turns out to be the teacher; or about a wedding, the vicar; or an interview, the interviewer.
  • A woman spots her boyfriend/man of her dreams with a beautiful blonde lady – who turns out to be his sister
  • Anything involving twinsA murder/death actually turns out to be part of a play rehearsal

via Fast Fiction Guidelines – thats life!.

 

This is a great list of plot twists to avoid, found in the Writers’ Guidelines for an Australian magazine.

(The rest of the guidelines are good, too. I like the bit where they point out that too many characters and a story gets confusing. They recommend topping out at four.)

 

Although, it has to be said, the thrawn and perverse side of me is very tempted to write a series of stories in which one or all of these things happen, just to see if I could have fun with them. (Hey, the poison one worked for The Princess Bride…)

Revisiting Morning Pages – Charlotte Rains Dixon

If you haven’t tried Morning Pages, you are likely grousing that you don’t have time for such thing. I hear you.  But I say you’ll create time by doing them.  Because you’ll have more clarity, less anxiety and more of an ability to focus on what you really want to do throughout the day.  So try it:

via Revisiting Morning Pages – Charlotte Rains Dixon.

I first heard about Morning Pages and The Artist’s Way [af] from a co-workers in 1999 — not a writer, by the way, just a guy trying to get his stuff together.

I started turning my sporadic-journalling into Morning Pages and, like Charlotte, have revisited them over the years. It sounds too simple to be any use, but seriously: write three pages of stream of consciousness stuff as close to the start of your day as you can (even if you have to write “I can’t think of anything to write” over and over until you get so sick of yourself that you DO think of something to write) and you will fine yourself more creative, more calm and ready for anything.

I highly recommend the Artist’s Dates that Cameron talks about too. More on that later.

The Top Three Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction – DIY MFA : DIY MFA

The benefits of writing flash fiction can’t be denied. In addition to testing and sharing new story ideas and formats, flash fiction can teach you, as a writer, lessons you may not otherwise learn without hours and hours of classes and hundreds or thousands of dollars.

via The Top Three Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction – DIY MFA : DIY MFA.

 

You know how you sometimes have an idea that is interesting but you’re not sure if it’s a story? Take a leaf out of Alicia’s book and write it up as a Flash Fiction story, test it on some writer/reader friends. If they are hungry for more (backstory, front story or just MORE story) think about expanding it to a short story, novella or even a novel!