Are you one of those people who says ‘I’d love to write a book one day, but I don’t have the time’?
by Rhoda Baxter
Source: http://www.beverleyguardian.co.uk/news/local/opinion-tips-for-getting-it-write-1-7503688
Good writing advice can be like pennies from heaven. Just don’t get rained on by too many at once.
First, let’s break down the task. Most novels are about 70,000 words long. That’s a lot of words.
It would be almost impossible to write that in one day. You could dedicate a week to it and get it done, but we’ve already established that time is a limiting factor. So, let’s spread it over more days. 70,000 is 70 days of writing 1,000 words a day.
Or 140 days of 500 words a day. Or even 280 days writing 250 words a day. Two hundred and fifty words is easy, right?
After all, I’ve written over 100 just to get to this point. So you can write 250 words a day. Now that we’ve agreed on 250 words, we need to find an hour or so to get those words down.
The good news is that you can easily write more 250 words in an hour. The bad news is that you’ll probably have to write about 1,500 words to make sure you have 250 usable ones.
So what next? Well, just make sure you do you 250 words every day. If you can’t manage every day, try four days a week. Any less than that, and you risk straying off and not finishing the book. You don’t have an hour each day? Here are 10 ways how to make time:
1. Make writing a priority
When you say you don’t have time to write – you actually mean ‘I have other things I’d rather do with my time than write’. Making the mental shift to believe that writing is important is a major step towards finding more time.
2. Stop watching TV
I don’t mean stop watching it entirely. There are, after all, essentials – The Big Bang Theory and Dr Who for me. Everything else will have to wait until it comes out on DVD.
If you have young children who distract you, wait until they’re watching something and use that time to write. You know you won’t be disturbed for 30 minutes. That’s gold dust.
3. Get up earlier
This is a trick that emerged out of creativity research, and that I first heard about from another I’m told this works. I’ve never tried it because I have trouble with anything earlier than 6am. Early morning people also claim that creativity flows better early in the morning.
4. Go to bed later
As above, but at the other end of the day. I do this. If you fall asleep, just delete all the bits that say fffow;elklrkje;lja before you start writing the next day!
5) Turn off the internet
Wait, wait. Calm down. Breathe. I don’t mean permanently. Just for an hour or so during you “writing time.” It’s amazing how much you can get done if you don’t have the excuse of ”research” or “just quickly checking my email.”
6) Make up an hour, 15 minutes at a time
This is something I was taught by my old Physics teacher. He suggested that a full hour was hard to find, but four lots of 15 minutes wasn’t. This is also a good way of getting pesky things that you have been putting off done. Set a timer for 15 minutes, then get that editing done.
Other tips:
7) Steal time from your social life
8) Do your preparation beforehand
9) Put your phone on answerphone
10) This one’s my dream – go on a writing retreat (cue inspirational music).
Source: http://www.beverleyguardian.co.uk/news/local/opinion-tips-for-getting-it-write-1-7503688
Brief Bio: Rhoda writes smart contemporary romantic comedy for Choc Lit Ltd. She likes to write about people who make her laugh.
Her latest book Please Release Me was published by Choc Lit in September. Rhoda will donate 50% of the royalties from Please Release Me to Martin House Children’s Hospice.
Find out more on www.rhodabaxter.com or get in touch via Twitter @rhodabaxter
Filed under 2015, Writers on writing, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
Why crime fiction is leftwing and thrillers are rightwing
Today’s crime novels are overtly critical of the status quo, while the thriller explores the danger of the world turned upside down. And with trust in politicians nonexistent, writers are being listened to as rarely before
by Val McDermid
I spent the weekend in Lyon, at a crime writing festival that feted writers from all over the world in exchange for us engaging in panel discussions about thought-provoking and wide-ranging topics. They take crime fiction seriously in France – I was asked questions about geopolitics, and the function of fear. I found myself saying things like “escaping the hegemony of the metropolis” in relation to British crime writing in the 1980s.
What they are also deeply interested in is the place of politics in literature. Over the weekend, there were local elections in France, and a thin murmur of unease ran through many of the off-stage conversations with my French friends and colleagues. They were anxious about the renaissance of the right, of the return of Nicolas Sarkozy, the failure of the left and the creeping rise of the Front National.
As my compatriot Ian Rankin pointed out, the current preoccupations of the crime novel, the roman noir, the krimi lean to the left. It’s critical of the status quo, sometimes overtly, sometimes more subtly. It often gives a voice to characters who are not comfortably established in the world – immigrants, sex workers, the poor, the old. The dispossessed and the people who don’t vote.
The thriller, on the other hand, tends towards the conservative, probably because the threat implicit in the thriller is the world turned upside down, the idea of being stripped of what matters to you. And as Bob Dylan reminds us, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
Of course, these positions don’t usually hit the reader over the head like a party political broadcast. If it is not subtle, all you succeed in doing is turning off readers in their droves. Our views generally slip into our work precisely because they are our views, because they inform our perspective and because they’re how we interpret the world, not because we have any desire to convert our readership to our perspective.
Except, of course, that sometimes we do.
Rest of the article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/apr/01/why-crime-fiction-is-leftwing-and-thrillers-are-rightwing?CMP=share_btn_fb
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A counterpoint:
Thrillers are politically conservative? That’s not right
Val McDermid says that while crime fiction is naturally of the left, thrillers are on the side of the status quo. Jonathan Freedland votes against this reading
by Jonathan Freedland
Quickfire quiz. Identify the following as left or right. Big business? On the right, obviously. Trade unions? Left, of course. The one per cent? That’d be the right. Nicola Sturgeon? Clearly, on the left. If those are too easy, try this literary variant. Crime novels: right or left? And what about thrillers: where on the political spectrum do those belong?
Val McDermid, undisputed maestro of crime, reckons she knows the answer. Writing earlier this week, she argued that her own genre was rooted firmly on the left: “It’s critical of the status quo, sometimes overtly, sometimes more subtly. It often gives a voice to characters who are not comfortably established in the world – immigrants, sex workers, the poor, the old. The dispossessed and the people who don’t vote.”. Thrillers, by contrast, are inherently conservative, “probably because the threat implicit in the thriller is the world turned upside down, the idea of being stripped of what matters to you.”
I understand the logic. You can see how McDermid’s own novels, like those of, say, Ian Rankin – another giant in the field, whom she cited as an ally in this new left/right branding exercise – do indeed offer a glimpse into the lives of those too often consigned to the margins, those power would prefer to ignore. But does that really go for all crime writing, always? If it does, someone forgot to tell Miss Marple.
Still, my quibble is not really with McDermid’s claim that the crime novel leans leftward. I want to object to the other half of her case: that the thriller tilts inevitably towards the right. As someone who is both a card-carrying Guardian columnist and a writer of political thrillers, I feel compelled to denounce the very idea.
Sure, there are individual stars of the genre who sit on the right. Tom Clancy was an outspoken Republican (though even his most famous creation, Jack Ryan, was ready to rebel against a bellicose US president for meddling in Latin America). But Clancy’s conservatism is more the exception than the rule.
Consider the supreme master of the spy thriller, John le Carré. His cold war novels stood against the mindless jingoism of the period, resisting the Manichean equation of east-west with evil-good. In the last decade, Le Carré has mercilessly exposed the follies of the war on terror, probing deep into the web of connections that ties together finance, politics and the deep state. The older he gets, the more Le Carré seems to be tearing away at the establishment and its secret, complacently amoral ways.
Rest of the article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/apr/03/thrillers-politically-conservative-val-mcdermid-crime-fiction-jonathan-freedland
Filed under 2015, writers on politics, Writers on writing
Writers Can Learn A Lot From Writing Tips Offered By Stephen King
Source: http://www.learnu.org/writers-can-learn-a-lot-from-writing-tips-offered-by-stephen-king/
Author offers advice.
There are a ton of invaluable tips and tid bits of advice for writers and it was nearly impossible to pick just a select few to cover today. After much consideration we were able to narrow down what we found to be incredibly useful information for our writer readers.
In his book, King said “I can’t lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.” Well, he has a point…a blunt point, but a point all the same. So, with that in mind, here are some of our favorite tips from the “King of Horror”:
1. Put down the remote and pick up a book.
King calls television the “poison to creativity” and he’s pretty much spot on. TV is known to suck out the imagination and dull the senses, which are two very important things to writers. He suggests doing away with the TV and picking up a book instead.Reading allows you to constantly learn and challenge your brain.
2. Don’t shy away from editing.
Cutting out bits and pieces of your writing is a rather hard part of the job, but an unavoidable one. King tells writers to, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” You heard him, folks! Don’t be afraid of the delete and backspace keys.
3. Cut yourself off from external distractions when writing.
“Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open,” King says. That sounds about right to us, too. Nothing can jam a writers creative flow quite like a heap of distractions. Writing is an internal activity that often requires the writer to sink into a zone that needs to be maintained.The best way to stay in the zone is to tuck yourself away in a corner without your phone, access to any social media sites and a note on your door asking for privacy.
4. Adverbs and long paragraphs should be avoided like the plague.
And, by the way, so should cliches.
5. Perfect the art of description, but don’t give away too much.
Read more: http://www.learnu.org/writers-can-learn-a-lot-from-writing-tips-offered-by-stephen-king/
Filed under 2015, Writers on writing, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
Read and write and do both regularly
by Joe R. Lansdale
Source: https://www.facebook.com/JoeRLansdale/posts/753873058055046
Joe R. Lansdale
A major rule of writing. Stop making excuses. You do have time if you want to do it. Sure, there are those rare exceptions. But nearly everyone has time. I worked two jobs and had time. Not a lot of time, but enough to get something done daily. If you have time to plop down in front of the TV to watch a Star Trek rerun, or what have you, you have time. If you can go to a job you hate, or at best tolerate, be on time and do it right, you should be able to find a few minutes a day to do something you really want to do. Even if you love your job and want to write, you can find time.
If you are going to take time off, read. That’s the most important tool to a writer. If you read you put fuel in the tank and you begin to better understand how stories are constructed. Once you lean how it works, or as best as anyone can learn how it works, then you can lose the rule book and do it anyway you like. You can make something new best when you understand something old. In other words, don’t mess with the structure of storytelling until you understand how it works, then you can successfully subvert it if you need to. A hard thing to grasp, but it’s true.
Put your ass in a chair in front of the world processor, typewriter, writing tablet, papyrus pages, what have you, and write.
Finish what you start. Sure, you can switch over and work on other things from time to time, but don’t end up with partials of this and pieces of that. Have a major project and finish it. When that’s done, start something new. While you’re marketing a novel, or if you’re far enough along to have an agent do it for you, start a new project to keep you from waiting by the telephone, mail box, email, for a response.
Work daily and at the same time if possible. If not, work when you can, but make it a habit. It takes a lot of hours before something kicks in as a habit. Set a time each day when you can work, and do it. It can be for whatever length of time you have available. If you can’t work every day of the week, try and work as many days as possible. Plan on four or five days at the least, seven if you can. Get up early on holidays and write a bit as a gift to yourself. Don’t let holidays spoil your momentum. Okay, you can take holidays off if you must, but be careful to stay in the zone.
Having a word count or page count can be useful.
Read the rest at: https://www.facebook.com/JoeRLansdale/posts/753873058055046
Filed under Writers on writing, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
Flannery O'Connor: Friends Don't Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960) | Open Culture.
In a letter dated May 31, 1960, Flannery O’Connor, the author best known for her classic story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (listen to her read the story here) penned a letter to her friend, the playwright Maryat Lee. It begins rather abruptly, likely because it’s responding to something Maryat said in a previous letter:
I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.
The letter, which you can read online or find in the book The Habit of Being, then turns to other matters.
Details at: http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/flannery-oconnor-friends-dont-let-friends-read-ayn-rand-1960.html
Filed under writers on writers, Writers on writing
Rough Stuff: In Which I Discuss Being Accused of Having a Sordid Mind.
This is probably one of those blogs I shouldn’t write, but impulsivity and I are old, old friends. (Remember that time I decided to wear only clothes from Wal-Mart for a year? Yeah.)
I get a lot of very generous feedback about my writing. Some of it in the form of reviews, some of it direct to my inbox. It’s the kind of feedback that keeps me going, writing the next book or story. It helps me put out the flames of self-doubt when they come shooting out of my brain, obliterating the words before they can take shape on the page. I won’t say that I can’t live without it, but it surely makes my work easier to put out there. You know. Welcoming arms and all.
I’ve never addressed a reviewer directly, and I won’t do it now. But there’s a thread that runs through some of the uglier criticism of my novels and stories that I think is worth mentioning and examining.
Vulgar is a word that’s commonly used. Lurid as well (though it was used in conjunction with entertainingly, which I rather liked). My favorite and most recent hint that all is not hunky dory in my world is the observation that I must have a sordid mind.
It does make me think. It makes me wonder if,
To read the rest of the essay: http://www.laurabenedict.com/rough-stuff-in-which-i-discuss-being-accused-of-having-a-sordid-mind/
Filed under Writers on writing
“…talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it.”
–Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
(1928 – 2014)
Filed under writer, Writers on writing
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.”
— Cicero, 43 BCE
Since I am working on a book or two, I guess I am adding to the bad times. And you?
Filed under Writers on writing
Crime Writer Michael Connelly Shares Secrets With Students | TheLedger.com.
Sample:
Bestselling crime novelist Michael Connelly had just returned from two weeks in New York, where he met with writers planning scripts for a new TV series adapted from his books about the Los Angeles Detective Harry Bosch.
He planned to take part in a conference call Thursday evening to help determine who would direct each episode for the first season of “Bosch.”
In between, Connelly stood in the Mini Theater at Harrison School for the Arts on Thursday afternoon, handing out copies of the script for the first episode of “Bosch” to a group of teenagers. Connelly, also author of “The Lincoln Lawyer,” spent nearly two hours talking to some 30 students in the Motion Picture Arts program at the Lakeland school.
Connelly, who lives in Tampa, talked about the writing process, the creation of characters and the challenges of adapting novels for TV and movies. He also treated Motion Pictures Arts instructor Rick Jansen’s class to the opening scene of the pilot for “Bosch,” which is still in production will be available for streaming on Amazon as early as next fall.
“I think that’s really nifty,” senior Eric Moots said afterward about Connelly’s visit to the school. “I don’t think this could happen anywhere besides Harrison.”
Continued at: http://www.theledger.com/article/20140419/NEWS/140419149/1002/sports?p=1&tc=pg
Filed under Writers on writing
Booker's Blog 