"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Writing My Novel – A Curious Conflagration!
Where I tell you to Be like Stephen King; Write Madly, Write Often
Where I tell you to Be like Stephen King; Write Madly, Write Often
"... 10 pages a day, 7 days a week, for the next three months. Tough ..."
Like many writers before me, I assumed that I could dash off a book in a couple of months like my hero Stephen King; 10 pages a day, 7 days a week, etc etc, before I realized that there’s only ONE Stephen King, and there was no way I could hope to match the speed at which he dissipates words. The man just has drive.
So I poke and prod at this Work in Progress, my Novel, not knowing if anyone in the publishing world is even remotely interested in it. I suppose that could be construed as a good thing; toiling in absolute ignorance and wallowing in my un-awareness allows me the comfort of writing without worry. But I worry anyway, worry I’ll get to 60,000 words and find out my premise sucks, or my story smells facile, or something dreadfully wrong was happening during my absent-minded composing of the first draft and I just now noticed. Horrors.
I mean, we the writers always assume that we know what good literature is, right? We’ve read enough damn books. But something curious happens when we begin to write our own story – we start to lose the big picture; we’re too close to it. When I start re-reading the stuff (a cardinal writer sin), I get this yucky feeling, like I want to change everything! But then I remember (Insert old chestnut here): write now, edit later. Preferably 6 – 8 weeks later, when the manuscript takes on a strange and foreign feel.
10 pages a day, 7 days a week, for the next three months. Tough. I only think in these terms because I’m an impatient cuss, and I like to think the faster the book is put down, the more inspired it will be. Of course, the opposite is true too; the more time you spend on a book, the better it may be in the long run. I suppose it all depends on the individual. Doesn’t it always? I still think it’s possible to write a book in three months. Stephen King wrote one in a week (The Running Man, I think), but as we all know, he's a special case.
The Ink-Stained Wretch
But It’s always the same: A new month starts, or year (choose your time frame) - denoting a ‘fresh slate’ - and the itch begins to really put some miles on the page and get the novel underway. When this feeling overwhelms me, I usually stand up in the middle of the room, stretch, do some isometric yoga, beat my chest a little (Yes, we men do this, don’t be fooled) and affirm our intentions to the (empty) room and the cosmos call back their approbations. Sitting down in front of the stinky old manuscript, I decide to tackle it, finish it, get it done, by god, and nothing’s going to stop me, is it? Stupid blinking cursor! I … erm … curse you! “I hereby evoke the literary deities to come down and save me” I say. I beseech the spirits of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and London (And yeah, even Louis L'Amour) hoping some of their magic goes into my fingertips and brains.
So I sit down to write my ten pages …
… and wouldn’t you know, the phone rings, the dog pukes on the rug, there’s a knock at the door, 50 friends show up unannounced, or the scent of unwashed laundry assails my nostrils reminding me it’s time to do the wash. Oh and the dishes have to be done or else the ‘significant other’ will garrote me.
Life, there’s nothing like it!
I hearten myself by remembering that Stephen King shoved himself down in a boiler room of his apartment building, knowing he had two kids and a wife upstairs and barely two nickels to rub together. Somehow he tossed all this aside and wrote. He called it his ‘escape’. I call it 'Being able to zone out'.
(Stephen never had to deal with the distraction of Internet, cable TV or 24-hour news cycles, but I digress …)
Affirmation: I will keep on, because I have to, damn it, because I want my book published (And of course, I want heaps of praise lavished on me … )
I guess I’ll just have to buy ear plugs and ignore the stinky laundry, at least until I get my ten pages ...
Here's a few 'Writer Affirmations' to light a fire under your ass:
You will be dead one day, so you better get that damn book finished.
You can’t be called an ‘author’ unless you finish the damn book.
The sooner you finish the damn book, the sooner you can loiter around Chapters and see who’s flipping through your book without buying it.
You can’t talk to anyone about your writing anymore because they roll their eyes because you haven’t finished the damn book.
Type faster, finish the damn book.
You will become a taxi driver, or a Gardening Talk show host in Amarillo, Texas instead, because you didn’t finish the damn book.
This concludes our broadcast day ...
Yours truly, David Hunter
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Quotes on Writing and Other Things
To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it; all my life.
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
"My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy." — F. Scott Fitzgerald
"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
"It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being." — F. Scott Fitzgerald
"If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter--as indissolubly as if they were conceived together."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
"An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional." — F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels." — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Monday, January 17, 2011
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. "
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would still go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
"A lie cannot live.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, cruelly mocked, but it an never be taken away unless it is surrendered.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝Life’s persistent and most urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝Right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝No person has the right to rain on your dreams.❞
— Martin Luther King Jr.
❝We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.❞
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 28, 1963
Washington, D. C.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
"At the center of non-violence stands the principal of love"
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
❝Good books don't give up all their secrets at once." ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book. ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar. ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud. ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephanie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good." ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. ❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair--the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.❞ ∻ Stephen King
❝If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.❞ ∻ Stephen King
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
No Comment!
A Commentary on Comments
The Mandate of the Writer’s Den was originally supposed to be ‘newsflashes, bits of info on writing, experimental stories, and general life experiences.’
It appears that lately that’s changed; I’ve become a sort of ‘writing cheerleader’ and ‘inspirational Sherpa’. Now, that’s wonderfully cathartic and spontaneous and all, but since I’m doing all this cheerleading I figured that there’d be more, um, feedback. Feedback is good; it lets a writer know they're not alone, and that they're having some sort of impact on the reader.
I mean, I thought writers (most of you are writers, aren’t you?) were big-mouthed narcissists, loud and verbose and opinionated (At least I am), and I always envisioned a blog where dialogue was open and free, where ideas and inspiration and debate were bandied about, insults hurled; in short, more opining! I’ve had 14,000 views on this blog since it went live in July 2009, and about 80 comments, so the odds are I’m probably just blowing rhetorical smoke most of the time (I’d be left speechless by my own posts too, were I you) and I probably don’t leave much to comment on, making me the actual narcissist.
I suppose I can handle tacit and quiet readers, I’m quite used to talking to myself anyhow. I’m curious though; do many of you get comments on your own blogs? Do you comment on other blogs? Cat got your tongue? Is it just me? (I fear so.)
What’s in store at the Den in 2011 … and Beyond!
I’m a tweaker; any changes I make tend to be slow and ponderous, kind of like cautiously poking an animal carcass with a stick. You may have noticed that annoying banner at the top of my posts, the one that says Wiki-Den? That’s my subtle attempt at a ‘home page’ type thingy, where I can archive all my posts, links, and all that good stuff. So far it’s been good; I don’t know how useful it is to any of my readers, since no one tells me anything (No comment!)
Also, after 2 years of blank stares, I have finally heeded some of the advice that many bloggers spout ad nauseum; CONTENT IS KING (Until it abdicates!) so I figure that if I can’t inform you all the time, I’ll entertain you, and vice versa. Don’t know if it’s working (do let me know? Leave a comment? Hmm??)
Having said that, let me comment (ahem) on this very post, called, appropriately, The Wednesday Post. I had been perusing my Blogger Stats and found that one of my most viewed posts was for a Wednesday Post I did 6 months ago. Due to my relatively slow nature I did not catch on that maybe people would want to read a newsletter type thing, posted once a week on the same day, on schedule (another good Blog tip: have a scheduled posting so people know where to find fresh words) but I would never have figured this out since no one talks to me or leaves a comment.
The ‘newsletter’ type post is one of my great loves; it allows me to post humorous bits, wordplay, and funny stuff, and also allows me to let you know what’s happening in that strange little place that is David Hunter’s universe.
Disclaimer: If you think I’m being whiny about this ‘comment’ thing, I can assure you it’s all in jest; I love each and every one of you who comes by and reads this blog, even if you don’t leave a comment (I never give up, do I?)
Random Samplings for your Consideration:
Words you think are nice but wouldn’t use in a sentence
(or maybe you would, who knows?)
USURY: an exorbitant or unlawful rate of interest
USURP: assume: seize and take control without authority and possibly with force; take as one's right or possession
ZUGZWANG: (German for "compulsion to move", ) A situation in a chess game in which a player is forced to make an undesirable or disadvantageous move.
OPPUGN: To assail with argument
KNEESIES: To press one’s knees against another person's knees.
BUGBEAR: An object or source of fear
BUNGHOLE: A hole in a barrel or keg
UNCTUOUS: (of a person) Excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily: "anxious to please in an unctuous way".
PLAUDIT: An expression of praise
PLENUM: A space considered as fully occupied by matter
PLEONASM: The use of needless words.
PLICA: A fold of skin
SAPID: Pleasant to the taste
GESTALT: A unified whole
GEWGAW: A showy trinket
FLATUS: Intestinal gas
PLOSION: A release of breathe after the articulation of certain consonants.
DISPORT: To amuse oneself
Odious Phrase of the Week
"Results-Oriented Business"
Comment: Is there a business that is not 'results-oriented'? Duh.
(I'm guilty of using this phrase too.)
❝ Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞
༺༻ William Faulkner
T w i t t e r - C e n t r i c
I'd like to thank a few people for inspiring me this week ...
@LaynaPimentel - Who is always writing, and inspires me to get off my ass and get something done.
@LornaSuzuki - Talented 'Imago' writer who heaps praise on me (And thus, inspires greatly)
@Auteur_Geek - Who seems to always have my back, even when I'm being accused of politicizing tragedy, as one Twitter follower did this week.
Okay, that's all for now folks, I'm outta here; got some more writing to do. Stay tuned for the Writer's Den Weekend Edish (Possibly) and keep scribbling. Also, please leave a comment if you so desire, it's free, and I don't bite (maybe)
"It's like the Penguin said, we gotta make that move towards redemption"
~ Elwood Blues
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Time to Whoop Ass and Write
Well, we're into January, a new year, so time to make a few resolutions. One of them being to actually get something done this year. So I present to you, in hopes of motivating the both of us, the Official Shut Up and Write User Manual. Sections and sub-sections are subject to change in future versions. Have fun, take heart, and Shut Up and Write, will'ya?
At first glance the term ‘Shut up and Write’ may come off as rather crude and low-brow terminology; after all, our language is filled with plenty of subtle and elegant ways to communicate ideas. Seeing as how writers can be a little thick, sometimes we need to cut right through the bullshit and get right to the heart of the matter.
To wit: You talk too much. Shut up and write!
Shut Up And Write is a rather broad statement, of course, and is not meant to be rude, or mean, or insulting. It’s really just a humorous nudge, a reminder, that you’re wasting valuable oxygen yapping away or Tweeting to friends instead of writing. It also applies to people who talk a lot about writing, but don’t actually write. This is a problem, and must be corrected. Here then is a compendium of things you do that are stunting your writing, so you’ll know when to Shut Up And Write:
Staring at your computer screen – Do not do this. Type anything. Type your name, what you had for dinner, what color your socks are, but do not stare at that screen for longer than 5 minutes. Headaches ensue, and your soul turns to mush. Shut Up And Write.
Itchy Bum Syndrome: You type a sentence, and then go to the refrigerator for some Oreo Cookie Ice Cream, leaving your sentence hanging and your flow disrupted. Please do not do this. You could spill ice cream all over your computer, or get sticky fingers, or grow lethargic and apathetic and not want to write anymore. Oreo Cookie ice cream is great for the synapses, but bad for writing. Plus, this is not really about ice cream, it’s about not wanting to write, or being afraid to write. This is characterized by constant shifting of the ass in your chair and thoughts other than writing begin invading your skull (IE did I pay the phone bill? Should I take the dog for a walk? Why is there a mushroom cloud on the horizon, and should it concern me?)
Tweeting, Facebooking, Foursquaring, etc etc Blah blah blah – This is the bane of writers: Tweeting too much. I know it’s fun, and that guy named @ShitMyDadsays is endlessly hilarious, but come on! You gotta pull it together! Only you can prevent a book not being written! Unless you can get your pet Shitzu to write your book for you, it’s probably best to get a move on and start writing. I suggest curbing your 12 hours of Twitter down to, say, 2. There! Then you’ll have lots of time to write!
That stupid Television – Yeah, Jersey Shore is filled with entertaining idiots who make us feel exponentially more intelligent when we watch their antics, but Mike ‘The Situation” and "Snooki" already have book deals. If that doesn’t motivate you, nothing will!
The Stupid Blog hasn't been updated for 12 hours! Oh No! – The land of the damned! The blog is what I turn to when I’m not feeling the prose flow on my novel, but the problem is the blog is too easy, we could write posts in our sleep because it’s largely plotless and free association. If you find that you’re using your blog as a crutch for not writing, then rectify it immediately. Only blog after you have made a significant contribution to your novel.
Section 2, Article A: You Know You're In trouble as A Writer If ...
You start talking about your book, again, and your friend's eyes begin to roll upwards in exasperation and you hear these sentences all the time:
"God, just shut up and write a book already!"
"I'll take you seriously when you've written something."
"How can you be a writer? You haven't written anything!"
"Is that the little book you been working on? For 10 years? Are you gonna finish it sometime this century?"
Section 2, Article B: Looking mournful while walking through a Chapters book store because your book isn't even finished, much less stacked in a display alongside Stephenie Meyers and Stephen King and Tom Clancy in a giant retail bookstore.
Okay this one is self-explanatory.
Section 3, Article A: Doubt fills your soul, so you just ... stop.
Common causes:
You think you suck.
The guy you got to Beta Read your manuscript has the IQ of a piece of wood and he only reads the backs of cereal boxes anyway. Yet you are devastated when he tells you there isn't enough sex or death in the book and he fell asleep after the first chapter.
Your friend looks at the manuscript in your hand and asks you dubiously how many pages they have to read because the longest thing they ever read was a Newspaper and they are unsure of it and are too lazy to actually do you a favor and read it for you (Friendship may be on rocky ground after this little encounter.) So you take it the only way a writer ever takes it: you suck.
Every word you type, every sentence you mangle, every phrase you torture, it's like being forced to listen to a John Denver greatest hits CD on repeat - Torture! Torture! But neither your writing, or John Denver, are that bad. Stop the soul sucking doubt! Just shut up, keep writing, it'll all work out.
Section 3, Article B: It's not you, it's them.
In conclusion it, it's wise to remember that nobody cares about you until you've written something, which is not to say you suck or you're useless, but merely talking about writing amounts to just that: talk. And, it's not you, it's them. People are results oriented; it is the rare human being (usually an elderly person, or an extremely positive and enlightened and inebriated Uncle) who will take you at your word that you are writing a book, will finish the book, will become rich and famous because of that book. The human race is wary by nature; so you must prove to the sneering jerk at your office that one day you too will wear elbow patches and smoke a pipe and do the lecture circuit talking about your book. This is the only way! You must Shut Up and Write!
Related Madness:
Saturday, January 1, 2011
The Lost Blog Post
This was a post I was supposed to put up at the Writer's Den in late November, explaining my futile and strange writing process while attempting National Novel Writing Month. At the time it sounded rather whiny and excuse-laden (typical David!) but upon re-reading it I find that it's quite interesting: it illustrates the inner workings of a writer In Media Res; in the midst of the chaos we call 'Writing'. So enjoy my first blog post of 2011, a little thing called ... Bare Bones Writing.
Three weeks ago I was cajoled into taking part in National Novel Writing Month, not because I was shamed into it, but because I saw how much fun everyone was having in the grand attempt to get a book written in 30 days.
Did I say fun? Ha!
Sure, the word count starts off at a manageable clip: 1666 words a day. But when you miss a day, that total climbs by 58 words, then 118, and so on. There’s really no time to mess around. When you start missing two or three days, well, it gets ugly, but the prospect of a marathon session of 10,000 words always seems to soothe the blasted soul and scuppers the guilt for a while.
Until you miss another day, and another. And, who wants to slug out 10,000 words under such pressure?
This is what happens when you start to ponder the incoherent mess being dictated on the pages of your novel. You get afraid to look at the jumbled words and tortured prose! Lord, it hurts your head! And quite frankly you just can’t get past the fact that it’ll all get fixed in the editing, so you start avoiding the stinky old thing (okay, I’m really talking about me, here).
I’ve been experimenting with a kind of hurly-burly, helter skelter, willy-nilly type of writing which involves putting thoughts down as fast as my hunt and peck style typing allows, and ignoring any and all major editing/rewrite urges. And it gets worse; in lieu of fast-dwindling plotlines and story arcs, I’ve been introducing seemingly endless and ridiculous plot twists of the daytime soap opera variety (any port in a storm), I figure that any superfluous plotlines can be edited out later and any extraneous characters can meet a hasty demise by falling off a cliff in a sudden flash of contrivance. There’s also lots of conversations between characters, mostly because I can write them quickly (yes, I cheat in this manner).
Due to this harried method of writing, there are a plethora of notes to myself between paragraphs, like “extend scene at later date” or “Kill this character, he’s annoying!” - mostly because I’m just getting the bare bones of the story down, exhuming that skeleton, and putting off the major restructuring until later (even though it kills me).
Half the time I’m only describing scenarios in half-baked and stunted prose in a kind of Hemingway/Dr. Seuss prose meld:
Danny walked into the room, plopped onto the couch, and pulled out a cigarette.
Further description only takes time and time is of the essence!
This is what I call bare bones writing.
Of course, when I do this I tend to undercut the real reason for doing NaNo in the first place: to get 50K done in 30 days. You’d figure that being more verbose only helps the narrative and fills pages faster, but that’s secondary; once I get the damn story down I figure I can expand scenes and get the numbers up. But boy is it ever hard not editing while the whole mess lies on the page! The urge to go back and sort out the disaster is almost palpable.
But still I keep writing, leaving a trail of badly composed (or decomposed) phrases and half realized scenes.
The chase for 50,000 words can get crazy, the mad scramble, fingers tripping over each other; words aren’t flowing like endless rain into a paper cup! There’s no time, ideas and scenes are drying up, characters start to drift, reasons for certain characters existing become dubious! Emergency! My story is going down the tubes!
But I take a deep breath and say to myself, 'I’ll sort the disaster out later.'
I suppose “Bare Bones Writing” can be summed up like this: get the damn skeleton of the story down before you forget it, and having a good ending and writing towards it helps. So does a few gallons of coffee.
Curiously, I’ve avoided a stagnant story by hopping from one scene to another, back and forth in the time-line of the book, kind of like that Pulp Fiction movie. I figure this happens because a scene stops working and it's easier and more conducive to my lazy nature to just switch to something else, another scene or setting. Of course, that other scene you abandoned is still there, waiting like an old container of food you forgot to throw out last month. So there are bugs in this particular system; it is what it is (A phrase that is quickly gaining vogue, and fast becoming an annoyance).
Anyway, how has National Writing Month affected me? Well, I have a lot more respect for the work that goes into a long form story. While it’s all well and good to pile through a manuscript at light speed to get it done in 30 days I must admit that I suffer the age old problem of not having enough of a story to stretch out to 50,000 words. Also, my own deficiency – typing at 25 words a minute, tends to slow the process down.
But here’s what I’ve learned by attempting NaNo; writing at a 2000 word a day pace requires a strong story, a strong story arc, and strong characters. It also requires a free-form attitude; a story has to go somewhere, and if a scenario pops into my head I have to go with it, because there’s no time to hedge, and because I can always edit it all later.
Also, I’ve learned that the prospect of having a book written in 30 days is quite a thrill, an instant gratification if you will. It’s become a kind of obsession; I wanna see the damn thing written, and I wanna have people read it, and I can find no better reason for writing a book and being a writer.
Huzzah, and happy scribbling …
(David, presently): As of this this posting, I have actually managed to get my 50,000 words down. I have a book written, albeit it's quite a mess. Editing!
Thanks for dropping by the Den, and keep scribbling. Happy New Year, and let's make 2011 the best writing year ever ...
Friday, December 31, 2010
Year End Address || David Hunter
Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go. ~ Brooks Atkinson
At the end of my first decade on this planet, when 1979 turned over to 1980, I remember being frightened by the number. It represented the unknown, and for a little kid the unknown was awfully scary. When the 80’s ended I was more concerned at how strange the number 1990 looked. And in 1999 …
Well, you get the picture.
I’m nostalgic by nature; I used to get sentimental watching final episodes of old TV shows (The best was M*A*S*H, but the saddest was The Wonder Years …) and watching a new year turn over always gave me that weird feeling, that sensation of being hurled into unknown territory, after all, the New Year is unscripted, an unknown quality. What lies beyond December 31st, 2010? Who knows.
It’s all in the mind of course; there’s no cataclysmic changes set to occur on January 1st, 2011, but the very date suggests change, catharsis, new meanings, new resolves, new feelings, new directions; and when the winds of change take hold people tend to go with the flow. In other words, people will change things, not a date on a calendar. But oh what those changes bring!
Because it’s not just a new year, but a new decade, and if you look back, you’ll find that the turn of a decade brings about great changes (See 1950: Rock ‘n Roll, 1960: Hippies, long hair, Psychedelia, 1970: Disco, Earth-tones and Heavy Metal, 1980: New Wave, MTV, Rap …etc, etc ... and with that in mind, I guess there's nothing we can do but ride the wave of this coming decade, and see where it takes us.
“No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.” ~ Charles Lamb
So here’s to the people we left behind, the old ideas, the old ideologies, the old words, the old fads, crazes and trends, the old clothes, the old music, the old movies, the old TV shows, the old books, the old tragedies, calamities and disasters ... but not the old friends: those we keep, along with our hope for a better world.
It’s a new decade; let’s make something new of it, okay?
Happy New Year, from David Hunter and the Writer’s Den.
Le Buzz on David Hunter
I want to thank all of the Den’s readers, you made this blog possible; I know it’s been wildly inconsistent and there have been long stretches between posts, but I hope to rectify that in the New Year (Hope!) and I wish you all the best. Be blessed, and take care. May we meet again soon.
Time to go: It’s almost 2011, and there’s a party waiting.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
"... Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia ..."
I posted 'Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing' a while ago, but I recently stumbled across another article he wrote on writing called 'How to Write with Style', so I decided to pair the two for your reading pleasure. Check out the Video of Kurt Vonnegut reciting his 'eight rules', posted below.
Happy New Year, and thanks for stopping by!
Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. -- Kurt Vonnegut
How to Write With Style
by
Kurt Vonnegut
Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.
These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful --- ? And on and on.
Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead --- or, worse, they will stop reading you.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.
So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.
1. Find a subject you care about
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way --- although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
2. Do not ramble, though
I won't ramble on about that.
3. Keep it simple
As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
4. Have guts to cut
It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
5. Sound like yourself
The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.
In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
6. Say what you mean
I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable --- and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.
Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.
7. Pity the readers
They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years.
So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify --- whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.
That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.
8. For really detailed advice
For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.
You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.
In Sum:
1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers
from: How to Use the Power of the Printed Word, Doubleday
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