24 replies to this topic

[Isaac]

I came across this useful article today by Merlin Mann with tips on getting past writer's block.

http://www.43folders.com/2004/11/18/hack-y...f-writers-block

Gems:
* Write crap - Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.
* Write the middle - Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.
* Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.

What I like most about that "Write crap" rule is that it goes completely against my beliefs as a software engineer. I sometimes forget that writing is a different sport.

Enjoy.

IF

[Thoth]

Isaac, on Apr 11 2008, 06:49 PM, said:

I came across this useful article today by Merlin Mann with tips on getting past writer's block.
* Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.

I got one: No e's. How many pages can you type without a single "e"?

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-Thoth

P.S. I like "Talk to a monkey". Do muffins count?

[Marguerite]

Thoth, on Apr 11 2008, 07:46 PM, said:

I got one: No e's. How many pages can you type without a single "e"?

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-Thoth

P.S. I like "Talk to a monkey". Do muffins count?

On NPR News Saturday Edition this morning, Scott Simon was interviewing a guy who spent 30 years in paper mills before quitting to write stories at 45 (is he a member of this board?). I've already forgotten his name, although if you desperately need to know you can go to the NPR website and click on Saturday Edition; it was the last story to air before signoff. In any case, Scott Simon asked him how he created a new story, and he said, "All I need is a first line and a voice [in my head]," plus lots of revision.

A true member of the Pantsers League, obviously, but true, nonetheless.
Best,
Marguerite

[Thoth]

Marguerite, on Apr 12 2008, 07:07 PM, said:

... In any case, Scott Simon asked him how he created a new story, and he said, "All I need is a first line and a voice [in my head]," plus lots of revision. ...A true member of the Pantsers League, obviously, but true, nonetheless.

It was Harlan Ellison, I think, and no doubt many others, who said "Writing is rewriting."
-Thoth.

[Callista]

If writing is rewriting, and we all (intellectually at least) know this, why is it so hard?

[Thoth]

Callista, on Apr 23 2008, 01:43 PM, said:

If writing is rewriting, and we all (intellectually at least) know this, why is it so hard?

Quote

"And some days it don't come easy/Some days it don't come hard/
Some days it don't come at all and these are the days that never end."
-- Meatloaf, "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"

Yeah, I'm a fan.
-Thoth

[Marguerite]

Callista, on Apr 23 2008, 01:43 PM, said:

If writing is rewriting, and we all (intellectually at least) know this, why is it so hard?

The writing? Or the rewriting?

I actually don't find writing hard. I've done it for enough years in enough different venues that I know the first draft will be crummy, so I just sit down and free associate, basically.

Correcting that first draft usually helps me get back into the book the next day, but serious revision is hard. For me, that's because everything gets tied together, so when I decide to change one thing, all of a sudden whole chunks are thrown off, so I fix those and boom, something else goes. After a while, I'm tearing my hair out and can't bear to look at the book one more time.

Then I set it aside for a while until a "what if?" shows up that I want to answer and I'm off again.

But I'm still in learning-curve mode with fiction. It's so different from what I've done before that I don't take it too seriously, until those rare moments when I decide it's ready to show to others—all of whom disagree on what would improve it (another reason rewriting is hard!). I guess it will get there someday, but I may be too long in the tooth and creaky by then to appreciate my triumph.

I'll have had fun, though, and met all you great folks!
M

[Thoth]

I have to agree with M about how writing fiction is very different from writing non-fiction. With non-fiction I research thoroughly, organize and write. The only real choices are about style (friendly vs cold) and format (visually plain vs visually fancy). I've needed to do little non-fiction re-writing. (No brag, m'am. Just fact.)

First drafts are always fun for me but (as you say, M) the serious re-writing can be hard. So what do you do when you get sick of even looking at the book? Look at another book. I know this sounds a little nuts but I find it easiest to work on two manuscripts at the same time, with one in serious re-write mode and the other in fun first-write mode. Well, it works for me.

A two-fisted typist,
-Thoth.

[Callista]

Marguerite, on Apr 23 2008, 11:09 AM, said:

After a while, I'm tearing my hair out and can't bear to look at the book one more time.

That would be where I'm at now. The first draft is pure fun. After that, it's just drudgery.

[Thoth]

Callista, on Apr 23 2008, 06:14 PM, said:

That would be where I'm at now. The first draft is pure fun. After that, it's just drudgery.

Quote

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
- Winston Churchill (British Orator, Author and Prime Minister during World War II. 1874-1965)

This always makes me feel better about writing.
-Thoth.

[Isaac]

Marguerite, on Apr 23 2008, 12:09 PM, said:

But I'm still in learning-curve mode with fiction. It's so different from what I've done before that I don't take it too seriously, until those rare moments when I decide it's ready to show to others—all of whom disagree on what would improve it (another reason rewriting is hard!). I guess it will get there someday, but I may be too long in the tooth and creaky by then to appreciate my triumph.

This sounds daunting. I have no major writing projects under my belt, and reading what you experienced writers go through makes me feel a bit sick. And then when you add the whole job of finding a publisher to the mix, well...

I've been working on my book since 2004. I still have a long way to go, but I've been doing a lot of rewriting of the first few chapters. Chapter 1 has experienced around a dozen rewrites. When I get stuck on what should happen next, I go back and start rewriting. One of the easiest things to do is to add a running joke throughout the story. Someday, I hope to find out if my approach was worth the effort.

IF

[Isaac]

As another tip along the line of the original topic in this thread, I've gotten unstuck by approaching a random acquaintance and asking them to give me three random words without telling them what I'm using them for. Then I try to write a paragraph around the words and stuff just starts flowing.

IF

[Thoth]

1) Honorificabilitudinitatibus - the state of being able to achieve honors.
2) Floccinaucinihilipilification - the act of describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation.
3) Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu - the Māori name for a hill in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. It translates as, "the summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one". At 85 letters, it is one of the longest placenames in the world.

E.g., Bob suffered floccinaucinihilipilification until he became honorificabilitudinitatibus by climbing Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu.

Sounds like fun,
-Thoth.

[Isaac]

Thoth, on Apr 23 2008, 10:21 PM, said:

1) Honorificabilitudinitatibus - the state of being able to achieve honors.
2) Floccinaucinihilipilification - the act of describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation.
3) Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu - the Māori name for a hill in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. It translates as, "the summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one". At 85 letters, it is one of the longest placenames in the world.

I'd like to modify my previous suggestion to add that you should never ask Thoth for the three words.

IF

[Marguerite]

Isaac, on Apr 23 2008, 11:22 PM, said:

This sounds daunting. I have no major writing projects under my belt, and reading what you experienced writers go through makes me feel a bit sick. And then when you add the whole job of finding a publisher to the mix, well...

I've been working on my book since 2004. I still have a long way to go, but I've been doing a lot of rewriting of the first few chapters. Chapter 1 has experienced around a dozen rewrites. When I get stuck on what should happen next, I go back and start rewriting. One of the easiest things to do is to add a running joke throughout the story. Someday, I hope to find out if my approach was worth the effort.

IF

I'm no more experienced than you. Not in fiction, anyway. I wrote my first novel in 1998, more or less as a lark (I wrote down a scene I'd imagined many times so I wouldn't forget the one version I'd developed that I liked, began filling in the background, and next thing I knew I had 15,000 words, so I thought, "let's see what happens if I write it all out"). I showed it to a friend, who had suggestions, so I rewrote it about a dozen times and eventually split it into a pair of novels, which I sent around to agents, generating massive storms of disinterest.

Undaunted, I started another novel—something I'd always wanted to write. At this point, I had no clue what distinguished fiction from any other kind of writing. I sent that one to a few agents, too, generating another round of yawns. Eventually I decided that project wouldn't work, and I didn't write any more fiction for almost six years.

In May 2006 I got the idea for the novel I'm currently working on. Wrote it up, showed it to my now-critique partner, who made suggestions. I still had no idea what I was doing, but after reworking the book a few times I decided that there was a skill here that I really wanted to master. And that's where I am now. Every so often, almost as a check to see how far I've come, I send it around. Most of the time it continues to elicit massive yawns, but once in a while now I get high-quality rejection letters that spell out exactly what that person didn't like. Unfortunately, as I said earlier in this thread, I can't take those criticisms too seriously because everyone disagrees, but recognizing that was part of the learning process.

Do I know what I'm doing yet? Probably not. But I've read a ton of books and implemented as many of the criticisms as I can, and I've learned a huge amount along the way. One of the hardest things for me has been understanding the difference between recording an experience and re-creating it. As a historian, I'm a natural storyteller and I know how to write in mechanical terms, but historical sources don't often lend themselves to portraying someone's inner life (not in my area of specialization, anyway). That's why my first novels are, shall we say, incomplete.

If I ever figure out the secret, I'll go back and rewrite them. Meanwhile, I'm chugging along. As long as I can see it as an experiment, it's fun and I don't take it too seriously.

That said, trying to find a publisher is indeed the pits. And annoying, when you read so much junk that somehow seeps through the barriers. But as much as I'd like to see my books in print, I still enjoy the writing (most of the time).
Best,
Marguerite

[Thoth]

Isaac, on Apr 24 2008, 12:34 PM, said:

I'd like to modify my previous suggestion to add that you should never ask Thoth for the three words.

What's the matter, Isaac? Not random enough for you?

Piffle,
Daft,
Thoth.

[Thoth]

When I'm blocked, really blocked, I make popcorn and watch a movie. Typically something from the '50s or '60s.

[Isaac]

Thoth, on Apr 24 2008, 02:43 PM, said:

What's the matter, Isaac? Not random enough for you?

Thoth, that daft piffle could not possibly have been random.

IF

[Thoth]

Isaac, on Apr 24 2008, 06:26 PM, said:

Thoth, that daft piffle could not possibly have been random.

Actually, it was free association. I was thinking about your comment that I should be excluded from your three-word game. Meanie!

[Isaac]

Thoth, on Apr 24 2008, 05:30 PM, said:

Actually, it was free association. I was thinking about your comment that I should be excluded from your three-word game. Meanie!

Alright. Alright. We'll revise the rules to let you play too, but we'll say three words of no more than three syllables each. Okay?

IF