Branching out with my writing
from https://twitter.com/i/lists/120501776 [Writing Gurus]
https://advicetowriters.com/advice/2013/6/7/do-not-sit-and-mope.html
Seven Methods to Inspire Your Next Book
from Writing Routines
Three of the methods:
Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments of Writing
Thanks to Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings for this excellent page that includes Miller’s ‘daily program’.
My favorites:
Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone else’s advice about changing it. They just don’t know.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
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Write for fifteen minutes every day. Set a time in advance, set a timer. Try to write at the same time every day. Your subconscious will get used to the idea and will start to work like a reliable water spout.
NAOMI ALDERMAN
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The terror of the white page never goes away, no matter how much you publish. Do you know how terrified I was this morning, as I woke up and walked into my latest novel? And it doesn’t get any better. Every time I finish a piece of work, I am completely terrified that I’m going to be found out, that I’m a charlatan, that I have nothing left anymore. That I can’t do it anymore. It’s no good; I’ve lost touch. Through all of that, you find another block of stone. You just continue to carve and chip away.
COLUM McCANN
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Thanks to Jon Winokur–via his Twitter feed– and his Advice to Writers for these first three quotes.
From the ‘Do as I share, not as I do’ department:
When you write – explode – fly apart – disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.
RAY BRADBURY
From the ‘Cripes, I hate it when people make me feel responsible for my own life’ department…
Sometimes people say to me, “I want to write, but I have five kids, a full-time job, a wife who beats me, a tremendous debt to my parents,” and so on.
I say to them, “There is no excuse. If you want to write, write. This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don’t wait. Make the time now, even if it is ten minutes once a week.’
NATALIE GOLDBERG
From the ‘Benefits of setting the bar low’ department:
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
A recent item from Jon Winokur’s Advice to Writers…
Sometimes you really have to shove and grunt and sweat. Some days you go to your office and you’re the only one who shows up, none of the characters show up, and you sit there by yourself, feeling like an idiot. And some days everybody shows up ready to work. You have to show up at your office every day. If an idea comes by, you want to be there to get it in.
—THOMAS HARRIS
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My take: For me, there is something magical about getting in that first 100 words. They don’t have to be quality words, of course, but just getting me to notice that I ‘showed up’ is a forward step.
I start the day in my notebook quite simply: “Showing up–the date–First 100 words” and I take it from there. The total often stretches to 150+ words. Interesting, though: There are times when I enter the list-making ‘zone’, so even if I don’t reach the century mark, I know those are quality words that are giving my work some added focus.
**Photo by Jesus Hilario H. on Unsplash
Four key points from Diana’s citiesatdawn.com post.
This quote from William Zinsser [On Writing Well is his best-known work.] takes an opposite tack to yesterday’s Writing With No Direction post.
Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
WILLIAM ZINSSER
Curated from my daily email from Jon Winokur’s https://advicetowriters.com/
The ordinary writer is bound to be assailed by insecurities as he writes. Is the sentence he has just created a sensible one? Is it expressed as well as it might be? Would it sound better if it were written differently? The ordinary writer is therefore always revising, always chopping and changing, always trying on different ways of expressing himself, and, for all I know, never being entirely satisfied.
–ISAAC ASIMOV
Visitors: Share other writing website suggestions.
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I recently signed up for daily delivery of Jon Winokur’s Advice to Writers, so I’m essentially curating his own curation. Today’s advice comes from Australian writer [and then some] Clive James.
“The only thing I’ve got better at as the years have gone by is I’ve grown more resigned to the fact that it comes hard. You realize that hesitation and frustration and waiting are part of the process, and you don’t panic. I get a lot better at not panicking. I get up every morning early if it’s a writing day and I will do nothing else but write that day. But the secret is not to panic if it doesn’t come.”
And whoa, what a wealth of resources you will find at advicetowriters.com.
and much more under the ‘Resources’ tab.
Enjoy.
Chime in below with your own favorite writing website.
Word Inventions