Resources for Writers of All Ages and Teachers, Too.
For a pre-Christmas promotion, Dude! is now on sale for $0.99 on Kindle until Sunday midnight, December 14th. The price is lowered at Amazon.ca, too. To find our more about Dude! and to read a couple of excerpts, please drop by here.
Links to purchase Dude! are below.
Thanks for your patience with this self-promotion. Back to my usual programming soon!
Heather
Today marks day 14 of the accountability challenge, and I’ve managed to write my early morning pages for 13 of the 14 mornings. I really do work better when I have to check in with other writers. Their short emails about their progress are inspiring and a big reason why I keep going some days.
Sometimes, the early morning pages are a place to make the to-do list or rant or get things prioritized or just let the mind wander. And all that’s helpful, too. When I get to the writing later that day, the decks are cleared of whatever I left behind on the morning pages, and the writing comes a little easier. Because of a daily writing habit, I’ve drafted two short stories for an upcoming deadline and figured out how to adapt another idea for the same project. It’s a lot easier for me to find writing time later in the day, when I’ve started the morning behaving like a writer.
I’m planning a second edition of Writing Fiction: A Hands-On Guide for Teens and am rereading The Hunger Games as a source for some examples for various writing tips in the book. It’s quite a ride, and I’m enjoying it. I love it when research turns out to be fun!
I hope you are progressing toward your writing goals and that you have a writerly week ahead.
Week One of Classes: I survived. The students survived. And I’m sure we all went home on Friday night relieved that the first week was over and feeling a lot better about next Monday morning.
And the writing, Heather? Okay. Not so good there. I completely lost track of the mindset that would have helped me do some writing last week. I forgot that, in order to get any writing done when I’m busy, I have to stop thinking about writing a story, but instead think about writing in smaller pieces. Sadly, I sit down thinking that I really need to get that story written, and then I freeze because I don’t have the time or the ability or the energy to concentrate through such a complicated process. I can type, but I certainly can’t create.
Today, I finally came in for a landing and remembered the lesson I’d learned before about all this, and now, I’m ready to face another busy week that will include writing on terms I can cope with. The lesson is in this quote from Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird:
“I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.”
I don’t have the time to write the story, but I can write a small part of it–one scene, one moment, one character description, one brainstorming page of scribbles to work through a plot point. I can research something, or journal to clear my head. All good. All doable. If I remember the one-inch picture frame.
I’m 
going to reread this blog by Kristi Holl, too. “Chop! Chop! Writing in 20 Minute Slices.” If you’re having trouble feeling like a writer when life gets crazy, you might want to read it, too.
Hope you have a great week and that you find the time you need, even if only a few minutes at a time, to feel like a writer.
Two weeks ago I had the great fun of spending three days at Ridley College, working with the Grade 11s who were writing short stories. Because I was there last year, I didn’t want to go in with exactly the same material I used on that visit, even though the focus for my workshops was basically the same. To prepare, I did more reading about writing, focusing on character and dialogue, and found some great tips that I could pass along.The students’ imaginations went into high gear when I suggested that their character should have a secret. When they were asked to think about their own secret, it was clear that we had struck a chord. We all know something about ourselves or our families that we don’t want other people to know. The students also talked about short stories that they had read previous to my visit; they had no problem defining the characters’ secrets and how they added to the conflicts in the stories.
I challenged them to complete the following sentence from their character’s point of view: “I would die if anyone found out that I ….” We played with a couple of examples and saw how adding a secret gave a character one more challenge to face before he or she reached her goal. The secret upped the conflict and involved the reader.
I wish I had thought of this idea myself, but I got my inspiration from Lee Martin in his chapter, “Subversive Details and Characterization” in Naming the World: And Other Exercise for the Creative Writer, a fabulous book edited by Bret Anthony Johnston. I offer my heartfelt thanks to my friend Heather who suggested I read it.
Do your characters have secrets? Does the threat of revealing them motivate their actions or motivate their reactions to situations and other characters? Think about your favourite books. What secrets motivate those characters? Drop by the comment box and don’t keep your answers a secret! 🙂
My love affair with Sherlock Holmes began with tv and a series in the 1950s starring Ronald Howard (son of actor Leslie Howard). That series hatched the idea of the mystery story in my brain and I’ve been indulging a love of it ever since. Thanks to tv I also thoroughly enjoyed Jeremy Brett’s amazing portrayal, and I absolutely love Benedict Cumberbatch’s quirky 21st century creation..
Thanks to that introduction to the mystery, I found Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie and Lillian Jackson Braun and Louise Penny and PD James and Jacqueline Winspear and more authors than I can count whose books are filed under ‘mystery’ at my local library–my favourite shelves! Fortunately too, there are always writers who keep bringing Holmes back to life, sometimes in short story collections, and sometimes in novels. One of my favourite of these writers is Laurie R. King, whose novel The Beekeeper’s Apprentice launched a series of books featuring Holmes and his wife Mary Russell. What more could a Holmes fan ask for? And do I own copies of all of the original Holmes novels and stories? Yes. Three copies actually. One is a set of paperbacks nearly falling apart. One is a large edition with Strand Magazine illustrations that a student gave to me, and the third is the ebook verion on my Kobo.
The first stories I ever wrote were mystery stories, too. One title that I remember is “Castle Mort.” I have no idea what happened in the story, but I do remember looking up the word for “death” in my French/English dictionary and thinking I was being awfully clever. My love affair with Holmes led to another place, too. I’ve published two stories featuring the great detective. One was published many years ago in THEMA Magazine. Along with solving “The Case of the Cumberland Barrister,” Holmes and Watson met their old friend Henry Higgins, whom I borrowed from George Bernard Shaw for a couple of pages. Just lately I sold a Holmes story for children to JLS Storybook Project, featuring two children who help Holmes solve a crime. I couldn’t have been happier doing the research, because I read many of the stories again to help me get the back into that special time of fog and gas lamps, horse-drawn carriages and meerschaum pipes. All research should be that much fun!
So, for the writing and the watching and the reading–Thank you, Sherlock Holmes!
Are there literary characters or authors that you “met” at an early age that still influence what you read or write? How do they work their way into your writing or reading life today?
The Elora Writers’ Festival Competition 2012 is a great opportunity for you to challenge your writing skills. See the information below and get contest applications at http://elorawritersfestival.blogspot.com/
I’m starting to write a short story that, I hope, will be one of several. I haven’t read any short stories for a long time, except for mystery stories in The Strand Magazine and some Sherlock Holmes stories on my Kobo. I think I should do something about that.
Do you have a favourite short story? What is it? A favourite author? What makes this writer’s stories exceptional?
I look forward to hearing your suggestions.
Well, the eggs have hatched and there are a lot of worm deliveries being made to my front porch. Fortunately for the robins, the weather has been very wet here for weeks, so the soil is perfect for finding good things to eat for their young ones. The hatchlings have grown so fast. I took this photo yesterday. Last Thursday, they hardly had any feathers and seemed about half this size. Boy did they change quickly!
Things have been changing for me, too, recently. I’ve got my joywriting back and am finally in a place where part of my mind is always occupied with stories and projects. This has been a long time coming, and I had missed it.
I had the pleasure of going to a book signing and reading on the weekend by Susanna Kearsley at her home town library in Port Elgin. She took part in an interview followed by the 10 questions that James Lipton always asks on The Actor’s Studio. It was a great afternoon. She talked about how lucky she was that she got to work in her “happy place’ every day. I’m feel like I’m finally doing the same. My brain is full of writerly things and I can’t wait to get in front of a blank screen or an empty piece of paper.
One reason for this is that I’ve gone back to thinking about and reading good old fashioned romance. It has been the most fabulous escape and a great bringer down of shoulders. I found books by Debbie Macomber that centre around a yarn store, so I’ve been able to add my love of knitting into the mix, too. I reread a historical romance that I completed years ago and am in the process of editing that for an ebook. I’m also writing short stories that I will add to some I have already written for an anthology; they will also become an ebook. I’ve designed a book cover, I’m working on a website, and seeing story ideas everywhere.
Yes, the joywriting is back.