Painting attributed to Valentin de Boulogne: ‘Saint Paul Writing His Epistles’
Earlier this week we talked about devotions to help you start and finish the day well, so that you can be more creative. Today is all about what time of day you spend creating, whether that means writing or painting or sketching or crocheting.
Image source: Lynette Noni via Meme Generator
The editing business is on hiatus while I’m working so much – but never fear, the writing continues! Today’s writing exercise for you is the eavesdropping exercise, which will help you write infinitely more realistic and believable dialogue.
I first did this exercise in uni under the tutelage of Grace Dugan, author of The Silver Road, and I really enjoyed it. (I think you will, too, or I wouldn’t be writing this whole thing about it.)
At Starbucks, or sitting near the group study rooms at the library, you can hear so much you never expected to – things that are so hilarious or shocking or sweet that you have to include them in your story.
“The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see—every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.” Graham Greene
Terry Pratchett.
Image source: Robin Matthews, Camera Press, via Daily Mail UK
One of my favourite authors of all time, prolific and gifted fantasy satire author Terry Pratchett, passed away last week. It hit me suddenly; I realised I had missed my chance. I wished I could have written to him before he moved on, to thank him for how he changed my writing, my life.
“You are a wonderful writer. Your books live in two and a half whole shelves of my largest bookcase because I enjoy rereading them so much. Thank you for your clever characters who made me think about the world differently. Thank you for your involving plots and your hilarious sense of humour, which gave me another world to live in on grey days.”
I know I’m just one fangirl of many. He’s such a famous author that I know he must get stacks of fan mail every day, from emails to postcards (“Terry, here I am at the edge of the Disc!”). By the time he died at 66 years old, he’d written 70 novels, including the 40-novel Discworld series that I loved so much.
But I still wish that I’d been able to express my gratitude to him in some small way – for me, not for him.
That day I made sure I didn’t miss out on other opportunities. I wrote two letters to authors at the publishing house where I work, whose novels are currently being copy-edited (an arduous process in which you question every word choice). I’d read the first or second drafts of their manuscripts in preparation for promoting their work and loved – simply loved – the writing and the characters. I’m not a crier, but I cried over the happy ending of one of them, sitting there at my desk in the marketing office.
So I wrote and told them, “I loved your book. It moved me greatly and I feel inspired to go out and do something about it. Your theme is one I’ve seen in real life and it thrilled me to see someone put it into words so accurately and with such real emotion.”
And I learned a big lesson.
Your encouragement is the best gift you can give a fellow writer.
I wrote this email to a client last month and they said it had to be shared, so here is an edited version of that note. I hope it encourages you as it did them.
Image source: Tamika Christy
Dear doubting writer,
No worries, don’t stress. Panic is a normal part of the writing (and a vital part of the editing) process; no doubt you know that already.
I wouldn’t have quoted on your book if I didn’t see in it the potential to be a truly worthy book. I’m not saying the book is perfect; that’s why editing is a good idea. But you’ve already got my vote of confidence.
There’s no one with a gun to your head to get this book out ASAP. No matter when it arrives, people will be thrilled ecstatically to read it.
But you know what, even if you look at your book and think “eh, it’s still not perfect”, I was reading another book today and came across this quote:
“the woods would be very silent
if no birds sang there
except those that sang best”
– Henry van Dyke
So this week has been full-on!, and NaNoWriMo is taking all my writing energy (!!!! 😀 ), so this post will be super short – cheers! But today’s “tip link” is something I know you’ll enjoy and find useful:
TIPS FOR BREAKING THROUGH the writer’s block wall.
Tamora Pierce
Image source: NNMW
In this great post in ‘NaNoWriMo pep talks’, Tamora Pierce talks about trying two super simple things to get your character moving again.
As for Tamora’s credentials, she is one of my favourite authors, and her writing is legitimately incredible! Her characters are believable and her plots are fantastic examples of medieval fantasy written for a younger audience that doesn’t dumb it down. I discovered her when I was ten and I’ve read almost every book she’s ever penned – which is a LOOOOOT of books.
Her idea #1 is my favourite:
Trip them up.
On the sidewalk. In a forest. Getting out of a swimming pool.
Tripping, no matter when or where it happens, is by nature an unexpected event. Depending on how tired they are, how many resources they have left, it’s something that can make your character overreact completely, do something crazy and uncharacteristic, or make them realise their newfound strength and rise to the challenge.
e.g. Whoops, my character broke their leg. Now they can either react by punching in the face the person who tripped them over, or my character can react by using the time off to do something they’ve always wanted to, accomplish a dream. Like painting a beautiful sunset. Or watching a Firefly marathon interrupted.
‘The slip horse falling off a cliff’ by Sidney Nolan
This horse (painted by the odd-but-amazing Sidney Nolan) fell off a cliff, poor fellow. Now that’s a bad day!
What’s a memorable time you tripped? Can you work it into your story somehow?
This post was written by TJ Withers-Ryan © 2014. Reblogging is highly encouraged as long as you credit me as the author.
Image source: Resource Freak
“I’m a very promiscuous reader; I believe we should take all kinds of genres to bed with us.” ― Lauren Beukes
Lauren Beukes
(pronounced something like “Beeyohkes”)
Image source: The Audio Bookstore
Today I went to my first Brisbane Writers Festival session and thoroughly enjoyed it! Lauren Beukes, South African author of science fiction and crime noir novels, says we should read everything we can get our hands on, no matter what genre we write for ourselves. Here’s why…
In March, Sting gave a TED talk called ‘How I started writing songs again’ (http://www.ted.com/talks/sting_how_i_started_writing_songs_again).
As a youth, he lived by a shipyard, and constantly thought of getting free. As we all know, he did, selling more than 100 million albums and earning 16 Grammy Awards.
But something changed – he got writer’s block, stretching on for years. To overcome this, he recently found himself writing new songs by returning to the stories of the shipyard workers he knew as a boy.
I found his talk incredibly moving, as a creator and as someone who remembers a difficult childhood. In his talk, Sting sings songs from his upcoming musical, as well as my favourite of his songs, ‘Message in a Bottle’.
This ties back to my posts about incubation and writer’s block. I’ve written about how incubation of years has helped me to rewrite stories that I first imagined in high school now, as an adult. In Sting’s case, an unwanted incubation period that stretched for years (the writer’s block preventing creation) was solved by returning to childhood stories that had been incubating from even longer ago, bringing new creation.
Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? How did you get past it?
This post was written by TJ Withers-Ryan © 2014. Reblogging is highly encouraged as long as you credit me as the author.
Weird Al just released a parody of ‘Blurred Lines’ (uh-huh, that catchy song that gets stuck in your head so easily) called ‘Word Crimes’. In this beautiful video – using beautifully-animated flowing word graphics, I might add – he explains the basic rules of grammar that, like, everyone, like, gets wrong these days?
All I can say is:
Woohoo!
I laughed so hard I cried. And it’s all correct, as far as I can see!
Oh, Al. I’m so proud.
Teachin’ y’all how to conjugate…
If you can’t view this video, visit TIME Magazine’s link to it:
http://time.com/2988041/let-weird-al-teach-you-about-grammar-in-his-new-blurred-lines-parody/
This post was written by TJ Withers-Ryan © 2014. Reblogging is highly encouraged as long as you credit me as the author.
“You can fail at what you don’t want. So you may as well take a chance at doing what you love.”
Inspired words from an unlikely source!
Jim Carrey’s words in this commencement address to Maharishi University were inspired by his father’s life, but they ring true for so many of us.
Obviously we all have constraints on our time and resources, but we also have great ability to try to go after what we really want to do with our lives. And I want to write.
So today I entered a story, The Empress Road, in the State Library of Queensland’s Young Writers Award 2014 competition!
Fellow young writers! Will you join me?
Enter here:
For a sneak peek at The Empress Road, shoot me an email!
This post was written by TJ Withers-Ryan © 2014. Reblogging is highly encouraged as long as you credit me as the author.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the best-selling book / movie Eat Pray Love, has always been a fascinating speaker to me.
For Elizabeth Gilbert, the success of Eat Pray Love meant a form of failure. Her next book completely bombed because everyone who wanted a sequel to Eat Pray Love didn’t get it, and everyone who hated Eat Pray Love was annoyed that she had written another book.
But what could she do about that? Nothing.
So she says she had a choice – to retire and move to some gorgeous villa, or to keep writing and see if she couldn’t succeed/fail again. If she was going to avoid being paralysed as a writer and a human being, she had to get up and get started on her next book.
TJ Withers 