Category Archives: Inspiration

Curation Wednesday: Risk-taking and Writing

risk-1945683_640

http://ingridsundberg.com/2010/04/02/write-with-reckless-abandon/

Back in 2010, Ingrid Sundberg attended a writing conference and posted her notes from a session Four Rules on Risk Taking and Writing by author Libba Bray.

Some of the highlights:

  1. Explore what we don’t know! We write to open up a whole new conversation with ourselves and the world.
  2. Sit at the kitchen table with your characters. See what they would say.
  3. Beware the thought “Should I….” Follow yourself and not what you think others may want you to be doing.
  4. There is no sure thing other than writing the thing you want to write the most.
  5. If it is not scary then there are no stakes. And if there are no stakes then it is not worth writing.

Thanks to Ingrid Sundberg for sharing this.

 

 

 

 

 

I love this book…

Show Your Work

Folks who have followed this blog know of my admiration of Austin Kleon’s work.

My favorite of his works is  Show Your Work.

Here is the relevant Goodreads page.  Its Kindle price is currently just $1.13. I nabbed it right away.

Here’s the Amazon link. [Honest, not an affiliate link! Just thought you might be interested.]

 

Twitter Gems May 13

Here’s a nice tweet I just ran across from 
 
Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish it.
 
We writers can apply all these emotions to our work.
Even if all we’re doing is establishing some warmup momentum, these can definitely pay off.
**
from Jordan Rosenfeld  @Jordanrosenfeld
Your writing projects are like children that don’t always get along. Attend to them separately. #fightoverwhelm #AWritersGuide2Persistence
Good advice, but not always applicable in my case. There are times when it occurs to me that some of my project need to be, if not merged, at least juggled simultaneously. [Juggling, of course, implies that sometimes creative gravity takes over and objects are dropped. But hey! At least I got them up in the air.]
**
Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. –PABLO PICASSO
Geez, I hate it when a well-targeted Tweet or nugget of advice arrives at the very moment I’m lip-diddling or ‘organizing’ my iTunes collections or god-knows-what. This is one of those Tweets.

Curation Thursday: Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write

More excerpts from Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write

In her chapter on specificity…

“For me, part of the ability to be specific has to do with writing to a specific someone, someone who ‘gets you’. I know that writers are often told not to think about their audience, but I think that advice can be difficult to use. The audience then becomes something vague and amorphous. How do you communicate with that?”

“Choose someone on whom nothing will be wasted, someone with an appetite for life in all its messy glory. That someone will enjoy your writing specifically. Write specifically to that someone.”  [This is helping me with a current middle-grade fiction project. TH]

“It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.”

Curation Thursday: Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write

More excerpts from Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write

In her chapter on specificity…

“For me, part of the ability to be specific has to do with writing to a specific someone, someone who ‘gets you’. I know that writers are often told not to think about their audience, but I think that advice can be difficult to use. The audience then becomes something vague and amorphous. How do you communicate with that?”

“Choose someone on whom nothing will be wasted, someone with an appetite for life in all its messy glory. That someone will enjoy your writing specifically. Write specifically to that someone.”  [This is helping me with a current middle-grade fiction project. TH]

“It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.”

Curation Friday: Austin Kleon gems…

inbox internet overload

I confess to allowing my inboxes to be overloaded with quality resources that I don’t consistently pursue. Not so with Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletters…

Here are two Austin Kleon items that I vouch for:

1. Working On It [5 Quick Thoughts on Writing]

2. How to Keep Going [Take time to watch his 26-minute talk OR, if you’re pressed for time, lock in his list of ten tips and bookmark the page for a later viewing.

Two of my favorites:
—The ordinary + extra attention = extraordinary.
—Build a ‘bliss station’. [borrowed from Joseph Campbell]
Quote from Austin: “Airplane mode is not just a setting on your phone; it can be a way of life.”

Another of his tips: You are allowed to change your mind. Well, here goes…I was going to add a third A. Kleon gem, but other commitments arose and I just plain wanted this out in the world, so I’m changing my mind and sharing only two. Thanks, Austin, for the license to do so!

And believe me, these two items are value-packed. So, turn on Airplane Mode and enjoy.

Curation Monday: If You Can Talk, You Can Write [more gems]

More worthwhile points from If You Can Talk, You Can Write by Joel Saltzman. [Not an affiliate link. I just couldn’t easily find his own website.]

  • ” ‘Who needs another book on writing?’ ”
    I did.
    I needed to write this book for myself–to see if I could take what I had learned over the years and write about it my way, with my particular slant on things.”
  • “Remember: There’s nothing new under the sun. So don’t let an old idea stand in your way, not for a second. Don’t sit around waiting for the Big Idea; start with a small idea (like “two women go on a road trip”) and make it big.”
  • A quote from John Cougar Mellencamp: “All I can really do is entertain myself, and hope along the way I can entertain somebody else.”

 

Curation Saturday: If You Can Talk, You Can Write

One of my favorite recent purchases [August 2017 is recent for me] is the book, If You Can Talk, You Can Write by Joel Saltzman. [Not an affiliate link. I just couldn’t easily find how own website.]

Here are a few points I’ve revisited today in my reading session:

  • “Whether you’re struggling with a single sentence or polishing a book-length manuscript, let progress be your guide, not perfection your nemesis.”
  • “Along the way, you’ll develop technique, stamina and—if you’re lucky—the ability to make your next effort better than the last.”
  • “Conquer your worry about not writing by writing every day—either by counting the minutes or counting the pages.” In my case, I’ve been counting the words. I’ve done so ever since the January 500 Word Challenge.

Curation Saturday–Tweets About Writing

A few favorites from Jon Winokur’s recent Tweets…

@AdviceToWriters

Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.
ESTHER FREUD #amwriting #writing #writinglife

**

Write what you want. People rarely recognize themselves on the page. And if they do, they’re often flattered that a writer has paid attention.
FRANCINE PROSE

**

“Most people have no concept of writing, or what’s involved with the process…”
David Sedaris