Stephen King || In His Own Words

Quotes on Writing and Other Things

❝Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.❞ ~  Stephen King

❝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

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?)

USUFRUCT: a legal right to use and derive profit from property belonging to someone else provided that the property itself is not injured in any way

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.)

William Faulkner || In His Own Words

 ❝ 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)

PS: Will someone please click 'follow' and become the 200th member of the Live Writer's Society? That 199 is unnerving! You get no prize, and you get no praise; all you get is me! Take care now ...

"It's like the Penguin said, we gotta make that move towards redemption" 

~ Elwood Blues

Shut Up and Write: The Official Manual

 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: 

ShutUpAndWrite: A Master's thesis

Bare Bones Writing – Dig It!

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 ...

The Last Blog Post || 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’ve been growing rather static on the blog front, so I decided to try and improve the Writer’s Den with a few changes. Mostly, the changes consist of writing more content (and more writing is always a good thing …) and adding more features. One of those features is a new Dashboard called Wiki-Den, intended as a hub for all my activity: links to stories, articles, Writing Resources and other things. It’s a ‘Wiki’ because it’s short and quick information for the time-challenged peruser. And lord knows we’re all a little time-challenged …

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.

 Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction || How to Write with Style

 "... 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

Vonnegut's Eight Rules of Writing Fiction, from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), p. 9-10:

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

The Definition of a Writer, and Writing 
or "We Gonna Get all Metaphysical on Y'all"

"...It's possible to have a writing career, but you must first ask yourself if, in fact, you are a writer ..."






Yes, I know, It’s been too long between posts, but life has a way of wedging itself between me and my writing, like a fat guy (Horizontally Challenged) blocking my view at the movie theater because he had to go get some Goobers and is trying to get back to his seat.

First of all, I flamed out on that NaNo thing (National Novel Writing Month) and I felt like such a failure (There’s no shame in it, it happens) but I was nearing exhaustion from work, and time had become my enemy (is Time not always the enemy?)

And then there was Christmas. Ugh. Family, friends, constant drop-ins, get-togethers; it was like one giant unending cocktail party. I marvel at ANYone who can write during the chaos of the holidays.

The festive season tends to shake writers out of their natural state (brooding anti-socialism) and into a kind of gregarious drunken happy-state, which is not conducive to a writer’s constitution - at least not mine.  Also, trying to find an hour of peace to get something down onto paper can be a struggle; during the holidays people tend to stick around till the wee hours of the night, drunkenly talking your ear off.

Finally, After all the folks have gone home or have crashed for the night, around 3 AM, say,  I'd get all excited to write. I'd quietly sit behind the computer and open a Word Doc, the booze still coursing through my brain, and we sit there, the Doc and I, with only that cursor flashing between us, and …

Nothing. Sleep just overwhelms me. This is the usual occurrence.

Slowly I come out of this happy-ass state, usually takes a few days, because every time I look at my blog it gets stinkier and stinkier and I start hoping that the last post from a month ago changes magically on its own (alas, it won’t) …

Happy New Year! Start Writing, sucker!

A new year is upon us, and as usual writers make confirmations anew; resolutions are made, promises sworn, ideas hatched, and we can forget all about our perceived failures (Read: Self-Loathing) because the slate is clean, and we can plan that book (or plan to finish it) because there’s a whole shiny new year ahead, and anything is possible.

It always helps to define what a writer is, and what writing is, to aid us in our lonely struggle, to get some sorta perspective on things, because all that info on writing we've been absorbing must have clogged up our fragile brains over the long year. I mean, haven’t you heard millions of words pertaining to writing in the past 12 months? Time to etch-a-sketch it. I perused the web and came up with some definitions of writing and writers; call it a "Drastic Renewal of Purpose", if you will.

Keep it Simple Stupid

Definition of a writer? Isn’t it “One who writes?” … yeah, it is, but as usual I need to go deeper, because I like to confuse the issue. I like to throw some Metaphysical Mojo into the conversation just for good measure. Sure, a writer can be defined as 'One who Writes' but, does that include shopping lists?

One who writes, or has written; a scribe; a clerk.

One who is engaged in literary composition as a profession; an author; as, a writer of novels.

Okay, not bad, better than 'One who Writes', ya know?

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system).

Well Duh!

Here's a more involved definition:

What is A Writer?

I heard one person suggest that defining a writer is as simple as asking, "What makes an electrician an electrician?" In this line of thinking, an electrician is someone who installs electrical devices and wiring. A writer then is someone who writes.


If this definition is true then you are not a writer if...

1) You have a major in journalism, but do not use your skills.

2) You only wait to write if there is a reason to write. In effect you will only write if a publisher asks for an article.

3) You dream of writing someday, just not today.

I don't know if this if an absolutely perfect definition of a writer, but the truth that 'writers write' is sometimes lost on individuals who have the skills to write, but rarely do.

Around the world there are individuals today who will sit down and map out a story, they will craft a sentence, they will dangle a few participles and some may finish a story they've been working on for months.

These tenacious individuals sit down each day to write. They may not be published yet, but they have already accepted the mantle of 'writer' simply because they have given themselves to the art of writing.

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner

It's possible to have a writing career, but you must first ask yourself if, in fact, you are a writer.

I don't want to belabor the point, but if you have the skills to write and refuse to use them you may not be a writer. This point is made by looking at a person who has gone to electrical engineering school yet refuses to actually work with electricity.
 
I am well aware that the notion of defining a writer is broad and often vague. It is also a point that can be argued ad infinitum, but the purpose of this article is to encourage those who are dedicating themselves to the craft of writing. Each day you are learning more about yourself and how you define the world around you. With each pen stroke you are creating new worlds or explaining old ones. With each stoke of the key you are answering questions or creating new ones to consider.

If you simply must write today, as you did yesterday, last week and last year - you are a writer.

"If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor." - Edgar Rice Burroughs
 
Okay then, have we sufficiently clouded the issue? Here's a more humorous take on the whole thing, by none-other than Matt Groening:

Your Guide to Artistic Types || Matt Groening

Writer:
 
Dominant Personality Type: Self-Absorption.

Secondary Personality Traits: Pomposity, Irritability, Whining.

Distinguishing Features: Nervous Twitching, Bad Posture.

Haunting Question: "Am I Just A Hack?"

How to Annoy Them: Ask "But How do you make a living?"

(Yes, all of the above describes me.)

Writing can also be defined as a magical thing, a communication thing, an expression thing, or anything you want it to be.  Let us not say that a writer is merely 'one who writes' ...

What Is Writing?

 
The act of writing seems akin to transmutation of elements. Sherman Alexie, in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, advises “Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.” In this case, the writer is like a magician, conjuring a story that creates a way to provide a home with the most elemental of home necessities: the fire in the hearth. - Suite101



 Or how about Stephen King? He thinks it's Magic ...

Stephen King believes that writing is telepathy. “All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation” (p. 95, On Writing).


He acknowledges that writing is a learned skill, but continues by asking, “…do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style…but as we move along, you’d do well to remember that we are also talking about magic” (p. 131).


Alchemy?

Jim Carroll, Writing as Alchemy

Some writers evoke the imagery of writing being akin to alchemy. Speaking of Jim Carroll’s writing, Cassie Carter titled her master’s thesis “Shit into Gold: Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries and Forced Entries.” Carter discusses how writers, specifically Jim Carroll, can reinvent themselves through writing. The Medieval allusions throughout Carroll’s writing support this image of the writer as an alchemist.

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, writing is Gold:

“At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page.”

 So what is Writing? What is a Writer? I couldn't tell you, but it might be Alchemy, it might be Gold, it might be Magic, and yes, it could be simply what it is: A writer writes, and writing is writing.  But If I accepted that answer than what the hell am I writing this post for?  (Because I'm a writer, and I have now come full-circle somehow ...)

Thanks for sticking around.  Let's have a productive year and fill the world with words, okay? 

Your Friend, David Hunter (Happy New Year!)

Psst: Sorry about some of the links, have to fix em: It's late here, and I'm a bit groggy =)

Related Madness: 

 Suite101: What is Writing?: Writing Can be a Magical Process http://www.suite101.com/content/what-is-writing-a117152#ixzz19NFWlpi1