Branching out with my writing
It’s called ‘authorial laryngitis’.
A loss of your writer’s voice.
You’re able to spit out words on your screen, but they don’t accurately reflect ‘you’.
Let’s cut to Allen Ginsberg for a solution:
“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
In your desperate search for tantalizing bits of dialogue, you saunter into a coffee shop and slither into eavesdropping mode.
A few tips:
And if you’re too busy to intrude, there are probably a few non-virtual assistants willing to help out.
Consider the debilitating carpal tunnel syndrome.
Cut back on flipping through pages of writer magazines, clicking through cat videos, and flinging your pencils across the room during those inevitable struggles with mushy middles.
Another species perhaps?
This one’s unequivocal apathy to your ‘read-backs’ should steel you in the face of future unappreciative audiences.
Your work eschews profanity.
No reason to start that &*^%! now, right?
You don’t need %$#! or ^*@#@! or ^@#&! to verbidextrously [don’t bother looking it up] weave your way through that tense showdown between the mallwalking retirees.
Someone will advise you to ‘niche down’.
Say what? You might be tempted to find that ‘son of a niche’ who came up with the term.
Calm yourself and stick to your strength writing.
That part-time job sounds good. But will it feed your search for new characters?
Or will it feed your need to dine on more than chicken[ish] ramen with taco seasoning? [Talk about Asian fusion…]
You bored yourself silly while outlining your memoir.
Wisely, you will pull the plug.
[No one deserves to see your prom photos. Really? Powder blue with ruffles?]
Your self-published ‘Anonymity is for Nobodies’ will vault you to popular acclaim and raise you out of a comfortable obscurity.
I’m sharing three highlights from openculture.com, a leading provider of open educational resources. More to come in the future.
1. http://www.openculture.com/ Scroll to Writing Tips in the inner right column. Guidance from the list of fair-to-middlin’ writers [;->] below is available.
2. http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
There is a section on journalism and writing, including this iTunes-based creative writing master class. I figure even if you drop in at your leisure, mug of coffee in hand…
3. http://www.openculture.com/free_ebooks
Ebooks from Neil Gaiman, Phillip Dick, David Foster Wallace, and John Muir, as well as some struggling amateurs ;-> like Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Shakespeare. Also, consider scrolling down to the bottom to the ‘Assorted Texts’ section.
Word Inventions