A couple of weeks ago on American Idol, contestant David Cook did a video sharing his love of doing crossword puzzles. Simon, @#$%hole that he is, told David he didn’t think he’d done himself any favors with the video, implying that doing crossword puzzles was a somewhat wimpy activity at odds with David Cook’s hard-rocking […]
Where do writers get ideas? Ideas are like men or money–they always come when you already have plenty. The more you tend them, the more they multiple. Ideas beget ideas. The more ideas you have, the more you’ll get. Okay, I’ve repeated myself enough, you get the picture. In order to start the idea train […]
"Every magazine has its own policy and makes a definite appeal to a certain clientele. Study these and take them into consideration when offering your wares for any market." Sounds like sound advice for the free-lance writer, no? You’ve probably read something similar recently. But that advice was written in 1921 by Emma Gary Wallace […]
What will it take you to commit to writing? In my travels as a writer, teacher, and coach, I’ve listened to students and clients and people on the street tell me their stories about writing, or more to the point, Not Writing. What I hear is that many of these people have always had a […]
So, I’ve been playing around with the plot of my next novel. I actually had started writing it but I got stuck and realized I needed to go back to the beginning and figure some things out, such as what the story was about. Yeah, that minor little detail. While part of the joy of […]
I decided to take a break from my incessant harping on why you should be writing (don’t worry, I’ll be back at it tomorrow). Thought you might like a post on an aspect of craft for a wee change, and so today’s topic is symbolism. Yawn. I know, it sounds tres literary and very deep […]
Recently, I’ve been posting about the writing bogs. Since I coach writers in how to, well, write, this is a topic of particular interest to me. It’s not because I’ve ever struggled with the issue of getting myself to write. I always never have problems with writing. But in case you do, help is at […]
I recently wrote about how I had been stuck at the funeral of one of my characters for months, until it finally hit me that the character had not actually died and that is why I was having such a hard time with her funeral. Sigh. Sometimes writing fiction is just hard.
I’ve had another similar, though not so dramatic, experience this week.
After the funeral revelation, I dithered about for a few weeks more until it finally occurred to me that I had yet another problem: the book was set in the wrong location.
I desperately wanted it to be set in Gatlinburg, which I adore for its mix of down-home tacky, ancient nature, and lots of good old-fashioned fudge. Alas, I was trying to make this location work, when it really didn’t at all.
So away we have flown from Tennessee and back to the west coast. I have an iron-clad rule that I don’t talk specifics about any work of fiction while I’m working on it, because I think that dissipates the energy of it. Suffice it to say, however, that it is a charming location somewhere in the state of Oregon.
There’s a funny thing about me and locations–I have to fall in love with a place before I can write about it. The good news is that it doesn’t take much for me to fall in love with a place. The only place I can think of that I’ve visited and not fallen in love with is Boston. Well, and Albany, New York. Sorry to all of you who live in those cities, don’t take it personally, really. I’m just odd when it comes to places.
I want to take this opportunity to do a preview of coming attractions. (what opportunity, you ask? The fact that you are reading me!) Stayed tuned for more on goal setting, and several posts on specific ways to pull yourself out of the writing bogs. I’m also planning to talk about structure.
And while I am at I would also like to wish my Mom a happy birthday. She is 91, and she calls the internet Ebay, as in "Oh gee, you can book a flight on Ebay? That is just amazing," so she’s not going to be reading this post, but send her good thoughts anyway.
Why do you write? Has anybody ever asked you that before? It is not likely to be the topic of conversation at the next cocktail party you attend, but it is the sort of question that writing instruction books like to ask. I’m reading a good one at the moment, which is why this question […]
So far this week I’ve written two posts about where, as a writer or creative person, you get bogged down (ie, don’t write): Where Do You Get Bogged Down? and The Writing Bogs. In reading some of the comments that the posts have gotten, and in pondering the issue further, I’ve come up with some […]
