Julia Cameron advocates “morning pages.” Three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. Every morning. The Artist’s Way. Natalie Goldberg recommends writing daily for at least twenty minutes. Free the writer within. Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don’t think. Writing Down the Bones. Stephen King prescribes the writing routine of butt-in-chair habitually. Set writing goals and write 500, or 1,000, or 2000 words a day. Stephen King: On Writing. Anne Lamott suggests you write whether you feel like it or not, even when you think the writing isn’t any good. When Anne Lamott’s brother had a report on birds due the next day which he’d had a month to prepare without having written a word, he became immobilized by the task at hand. Their father offered the sage writing advice: Bird by Bird. What if you can’t make time to write every day? What if those morning pages really are nothing but navel gazing and lead nowhere? Does the daily discipline demanded by writing gurus make you feel like a failure as a writer? Does making a “job” of writing take all the joy out of the creative writing experience? Historical fiction author Tracy Chevalier described her writing practice in a recent essay for The Guardian. “Part of me wishes it were easy to describe my typical writing day. I have heard about them, those smug productive hours when a writer – usually male, it has to be said – sits down…
“Every first draft is perfect,” wrote Jane Smiley, “because all a first draft has to do is exist.” Her words soothe like balm on a writer’s spirit. This simple truth about the process of writing a book is that every author starts with a first draft. Smiley’s words carry the weight of wisdom since her best-selling A Thousand Acres received the Pulitizer Prize for Fiction in… [Read More]
Filed Under: 7-step self-editing, A Thousand Acres, Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, Constance Hale, First draft, Jane Smiley
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Although not all WordPress templates support profile images in the comments, when a profile image is allowed, wouldn’t you rather have another chance to show off your online identity’s ‘look’? Putting a face to your brand helps an author reach readers. To see if you have an associated image, log in to your WP dashboard and look at the upper right hand corner in the… [Read More]
As a book development editor, I help writers’ books take flight. In order to do that, I ask potential author clients to answer a list of questions that an agent or publisher wants to know about a book project before they read one word of a manuscript. The questions are about your book, about your audience, and about you. Your answers to these questions provide… [Read More]
Writing is primarily a solitary activity. But, as Stephen King wrote in On Writing, “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open”. At some point you will share your work with someone for editing – and that’s where the art of writing gets technologically tricky. Microsoft Word has a well-documented compatibility issue between versions of the software; Google Docs doesn’t have an easy… [Read More]
Horst Woit, a young boy, snatched his uncle’s jack knife from the kitchen table as he and his mother walked out the door of their home. They trudged through the snow and freezing weather toward the Baltic harbor where they boarded a ship named the Wilhelm Gustloff to flee from Nazi Germany while Stalin’s soldiers advanced on the Eastern Front in January 1945. When Alexander… [Read More]