Last Week’s Links

The Insidious Imps of Writing

One of my own toughest writing challenges has been to shake myself out of the impersonal aridity of academic writing and assume a more open persona. I therefore found this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Mark Edmundson, professor of English at the University of Virginia, helpful. Here’s his advice:

Slow down and make contact with a dreamier, more associative part of your mind.

People Who Write Well Do This One Simple Thing, Psych Study Finds

Forcing yourself to type slower could improve the quality of your writing, a new study finds.

Participants in the study who typed with only one hand produced higher quality essays, researchers found.

journal_writingThe same approach of writing more slowly will also help people who write with pen or pencil on paper, according to the article. However, do not slow down too much, the article warns: “When people slow to below the rate of normal handwriting, their quality gets worse, previous research suggests.”

A creative writing lesson from the ‘God of Story’

Novelist Tim Lott on

… the classic text Story by Robert McKee. The so-called “God of Story” (as Vice magazine dubbed him) has been explaining his theory of how and why dramatic narratives emerge for 35 years, to the fascination of playwrights and screenwriters – his alumni have so far mustered 60 Oscar wins, including, among many others, William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) Paul Haggis, Peter Jackson, John Cleese (who has attended the story seminar three times) and the entire writing staff of Pixar. However, McKee receives a more sceptical response from most novelists, at least, most non-genre novelists like myself.

McKee’s book is the bible among screenwriters and other folks in the movie production business. In fact, the subtitle of McKee’s book is “Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting.” But Lott says that many novelists shy away from McKee’s concept of story structure because they feel it goes against the grain of creativity and produces formulaic work.

Use your life stories to get the job

The use of storytelling in the business world has developed into a hot topic. Here Gabrielle Dolan advises job applicants on how to use personal storytelling during a job interview to move beyond their printed resume and to make themselves stand out from all the other applicants. To demonstrate during the interview that you’re the right person for the job, she writes, “you also need to demonstrate your values and create a connection. One of the most effective ways to do this is by sharing a variety of work related and relevant personal stories.”

© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown

William Zinsser on Writing

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

Garth Stein on Writing

Yesterday I attended Tacoma Community College’s Write in the Harbor regional writers conference at its Gig Harbor campus. Seattle writer Garth Stein, whose books include A Sudden Light (2014) and The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008), opened the morning with a talk on how he writes. (Stein also presented a keynote address on Friday night, which I was unable to attend.)

The title of Stein’s Saturday morning talk was “It’s All About the Rock.” As this title suggests, he’s a writer who loves metaphors, and he used several of them to explain writing to us.

Here’s my paraphrased notes on the meaning of that title:

For me, writing a book is like pushing a giant boulder up a hill. At the beginning, it’s about me, the writer. I have to start pushing that rock up the hill. But once I get the rock to the top of the hill, the rock takes over and starts rolling down the other side. That point is when the rock (the story) takes over. After that, it’s all about the rock, not about the writer.

Another metaphor Stein used to describe the writing process was his advice to “write fat, edit lean.” “Nobody loves a thin baby,” he said. When writing a first draft, fatten that baby up. Put in everything when you begin. But no one likes a fat LeBron James. The writer’s job in subsequent drafts is to put that baby on a diet, to go through the manuscript with great rigor to remove excess fat, to make it as lean as possible.

He used yet another metaphor to explain plot: Plots are not guided missiles that seek out the proper plce to land; they are ballistic missiles that are launched from a certain point and then land wherever their fixed trajectory takes them. If there’s a plot problem in chapter 46, the writer can’t fix the problem in that chapter. Instead, the writer must go back to where that plot point was launched and correct the problem there. A reader builds up a set of expectations about the story on the basis of the clues that the writer launches throughout the work. The writer must make sure that the story somehow satisfies those expectations.

Writers always want to know the details of how other writers work, and the conference participants had some typical questions for Stein:

  1. Does he write in long hand or on a computer? He writes on a computer with the program Scrivener. He also has a sit-to-stand desk and does much of his writing barefoot, standing up.
  2. Does he have a fixed writing routine? He usually spends mornings attending to business matters, then writes in the afternoon.
  3. What writing books does he recommend? These:
    • Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster
    • Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
    • The Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler
    • Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Stein concluded his talk with the reminder that writers must take the ego out of the writing process: it’s all about the book, not the writer. He also stressed that writers must be readers. After finishing a work of literary fiction, he told us, go back and reread the first chapter. If it’s a good book, the writer will have let you know by the end of that first chapter how the book will end.

Garth Stein is an interesting guy and an engaging speaker. If you ever have the opportunity to hear him in person, I encourage you to take advantage of it.

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I also love Scrivener, as do many writers. You can read how I use Scrivener to manage three blogs here.

Right now the folks at Literature and Latte are offering specials in observance of National Novel Writing Month. And you can always get a free trial version of the software to experiment with.

End of 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge

Related Posts:

In my Midway Check-In for the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge, I reported that I was going to try digital journaling at home, first thing in the morning, then continue to journal by hand later when I got to the office.

30-day-challenge-682x1024One question I wanted to look at was whether the early digital journaling would prevent me from having anything to write by hand about a while later. I’m pleased to report that it did not. Many days I didn’t write as much by hand as I often do when not journaling digitally, but I still had more to write about when I had started by typing earlier. Usually what I wrote about by hand was some kind of amplification of what I had typed.

Another question I’ve been thinking about during this whole month-long challenge is whether the input method (typing vs. writing) would make a difference in my journaling. When I focused on journaling digitally for the last 15 days, I initially found that working on the computer made a big difference. When typing, it’s too easy to constantly use the backspace or delete key and correct typing mistakes rather than continuing to write uncensored and unedited. Also, since most of my daily work involves writing, which I do on the computer, journaling looked and felt too much like a work project, which needed to be edited and polished, rather than a spontaneous outpouring of my unconscious mind.

But early on in this second-half experiment, I tried closing my eyes when I typed. I originally tried this approach as a way to avoid constantly editing and correcting, but I soon discovered that it freed up my writing in other ways as well. Closing eyes causes the brain to transition into producing alpha waves, a state of relaxation similar to meditation and that dreamy feeling between wakefulness and sleep. The alpha state forms a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, thereby tapping into our creativity and intuition. Poised on that bridge is where we do our most penetrating and revealing journal work.

As I result of my experiences during this challenge, I have concluded that digital and hand-written journaling are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. This is something I will continue to experiment with on my own.

I’d like to thank all the sponsors, organizers, and participants for making this challenge so meaningful to me. As I concluded in my midway check-in post:

I want to thank all the challenge participants for being willing to share their experiences with each other. That has certainly been the most important result of my experiment with the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge.

© 2014 by Mary Daniels Brown

Writing Resources

The Psychology of Writing: 5 Ways to make your Characters “Click” with Readers using Vulnerability, Proximity, Resonance, Similarity, and Shared Adversity

For those of you who write fiction, Casey Lynn Covel at Meek-Geek has some advice for crafting compelling characters:

In this article, I’ll be discussing a unique, psychological-based approach to creating this connection, built on collected research from noted organizational expert and psychologist Ori & Rom Brafman. Read on to learn five ways in which you can make your book and characters “click” with your readers.

Think about her information in relation to my recent post Literary Life Stories: The Character Biography over on my literature blog.

Ghosts in the machine: how AI research is bringing game characters to life

The ambition to create “real”, believable characters has been a cornerstone of literature since the 19th century. The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin praised Fyodor Dostoyevsky for his ability to give each of his protagonists their own sets of beliefs, “as if the character were not an object of authorial discourse, but rather a fully valid, autonomous carrier of his own individual word”.

Fast forward a hundred years and writers such as Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf were even more enthralled with the idea of character autonomy.

Here’s another take on how writers create compelling characters. This article looks at how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may foster character-building in computer games:

For authors who’ve fantasised about their characters leading a life of their own, could the situation of AI avatars roaming a fictional world, interacting based on their own individual drives, offer greater freedom of expression? Or is it likely to result in hundreds of dead-eyed puppets walking repeatedly into the sides of houses? Don’t stories require direction?

“I don’t see AI replacing human authors in the creation of existing forms of literature — novels, short stories, poetry and the like,” says artificial intelligence expert Malcolm Ryan from Macquarie University. “Rather I envision new literary forms that will be enabled by narrative AI.”

The best way for students to become writers

Common knowledge holds that the best way to become proficient at any skill is to practice, practice, practice.

But here Joanne Yatvin, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, offers a different slant on how students can best become writers:

Now, as a writer myself, I still believe that the best way for students to become writers is by reading as much good writing as possible and internalizing the various structures and techniques they encounter. For extras, the habit of reading will also increase their vocabulary, improve their spelling, and help them grasp the fact that many of the conventions of written language are different from those of spoken language.

Passive Resistance: The active voice isn’t always the best choice

Yes, all those writing-advice books tell us to avoid the passive.

But, as Steven Pinker points out here, sometimes the passive voice is exactly what the writer needs:

The passive is the voice of choice, then, when the done-to is in the spotlight. In recounting the climax of Oedipus Rex, in which a messenger explains the backstory, it is more natural to say The messenger had been given a baby to get rid of by a shepherd from the Laius household than A shepherd from the Laius household had given the messenger a baby to get rid of. All eyes are on the messenger, so the sentence should begin with him.

Also, the passive’s ability to hide the doer, though abused by mistake-makers, is handy when the doer’s identity is irrelevant. In the news item The suspect was arrested in connection with the killing of three Israelis, we don’t need to know that a guy named Shlomo made the arrest.

Books for Daily Writing

Sometimes the unconscious knows what it wants to write about and sends the words bubbling to the surface and onto the page. At other times we find ourselves staring at a blank page or computer screen and wondering what we have worth writing about. At times like those, we might need a bit of prompting in our writing.

I had reached one of those times last month. One reason why I signed up for the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge is that it promised a daily writing prompt.

But once this challenge is over, there are some books to fill the gap. On my bookshelf are the following books that I have collected over the years:

A Daily Dose of Sanity: A Five-Minute Soul Recharge for Every Day of the Year by Andy Cohen (Hay House, 2010)

sanityThis book has a spiritual emphasis, though Cohen uses the word spiritual in its broadest sense: “This book is not associated with any particular religion, organization, or spiritual path” (introduction). Each entry comprises a general discussion of some topic, with illustrative anecdotes, a pertinent question or two, and an affirmation. The focus on general affirmations would allow for reuse in subsequent years. Entries are dated and printed one to a page.

The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations to Cultivate a Productive and Meaningful Writing Life by Fred White (Writer’s Digest Books, 2008)

daily-writerAccording to the introduction, “The Daily Writer is designed to help awaken and nurture the spiritual side of writing through daily meditation and practice throughout the calendar year.” Like Cohen (above), White uses the word spiritual in its broadest sense. Each entry discusses a broad topic (e.g., daydreaming with a purpose, discouragement as inspiration) and ends with a “try this” writing exercise. Because the entries are so broad, this book could be used many times, with each run-through bringing up new possibilities for writing. Entries are dated and printed one to a page.

The Write-Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate your Writing by Bonnie Neubauer (Writer’s Digest Books, 2006)

write-brainNeubauer’s book addresses a writer’s worst nightmare, the dreaded blank page. She encourages users to write for 10 minutes every day on one of her colorful, graphically intense pages: “At the end of the year you will have written at least 365 pages … And not once during the year will you have faced a blank page.” The entries are numbered (Day 129) rather than dated, so you can jump in any time during the year. At the bottom of each page is a box labeled “take the next step” that includes suggestions for expanding on that day’s writing exercise or for thinking about the writing life in general (e.g., “What is keeping you from asking for help?”). I don’t plan on actually writing on the workbook pages, however, as these exercises could be reused in subsequent years.

One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer’s Art and Craft by Susan M. Tiberghien (Da Capo Press, 2007)

one-yearIn this book Tiberghien combines two components of the writing life: inspiration and instruction. Each of the 12 lessons contains several writing exercises. In the introduction Tiberghien lays out her logic for the order of the lessons, but she also says that writers can use the lessons in whatever order works best for them. And although the number of lessons corresponds to the number of months in a year, she gives writers permission to spend whatever amount of time they feel is appropriate for each lesson. The use of lessons rather than dated entries allows users to pick up the program at any time.

Starting Points: A Year of Writing Prompts by Susan Wittig Albert (Story Circle Network, 2007, 2013)

starting-pointsLike many writing gurus, Albert advocates writing every day. “I’ve chosen the one-prompt-a-week format (rather than a daily prompt) because I believe it results in longer and deeper thoughts, as you explore the question or issue from different directions during your daily writing sessions.” Albert organizes the book by month, but she says writers can start at any time during the year and then cycle through the book until they come back round to where they started. She also wants writers to work on each month’s four prompts in whatever order appeals to them. The book concludes with several short sections of writing advice.

A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life, by Judy Reeves (New World Library, 1999)

writers-bk-days-849x1024There is a revised edition (2010) available, but my comments pertain to the original version, which I have.

“The book is divided into months, with each of the twelve months containing a profusion of writerly counsel and advice, words of inspiration, and literary lore and legend” (p. 6). Each month begins with a Guideline for Writing Practice. Reeves intersperses dated prompts for the month within a wealth of informative nuggets about writers and the writing life. Because the prompts are suggestive enough to evoke many different responses, the book can be used repeatedly.

Of the books listed here, this is the one I return to most often.

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These are just a few books that I happen to have. If you search for “writing prompts,” you’ll find many, many more. If you have used others, please post to the comments.

Journal Writing Resources

8 ways a simple notebook can change your life

A lot of research shows your brain sees writing differently than thinking or talking.

Writing forces you to organize and clarify your thoughts. You learn better when you write things down and are more likely to follow through.

So what should you be writing in this notebook?

Eric Barker has eight answers to this question, along with references to some scientific research to back up his claims.

How to Keep a Journal – Two Methods You Should Try

Lawyer and entrepreneur Marelisa Fabrega explains these two methods:

  1. Proprioceptive writing, originally espoused by Linda Trichter Metcalf in 1976 and updated by Metcalf and Tobin Simon in their 2002 book Writing the Mind Alive: The Proprioceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice.
  2. Morning pages, a concept discussed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.

Appeal of Writing Memoirs Grows, as Do Publishing Options

All right, this article is technically not about journal writing. It’s about writing memoir. But a journal or diary can often be the source for the material necessary to craft a compelling memoir:

“It’s the age of memoirs,” Ms. Salinger said, as self-publishing has made it easier and more accessible to plumb an individual’s past and share it widely. And many do so because they believe memoir writing is therapeutic and revelatory.

The article has information on classes, offered both online and in person at writing centers, adult education programs, and bookstores. It also touches on publication options, whether for commercial success or for smaller distribution to family and friends.

You won’t find here everything you’ll need to get started on memoir writing, but you will find some good starting points, particularly encouragement.

Writing Resources

Writing Rules We Break!

Five debut novelists have fun:

Rules schmules! Call us rebellious, but when it comes to writing, we think some rules were made to be broken.

19 Websites and Magazines That Want to Publish Your Personal Essays

“Writing nonfiction is not about telling your story,” says Ashley C. Ford, an essayist and BuzzFeed staff writer who emphasized the importance of creating a clear connection between your personal experience and universal topics. “It’s about telling interesting and worthy stories about the human condition using examples from your life.”

But don’t worry if your life doesn’t seem exciting or heart-wrenching enough to expound upon; think of it as writing through yourself, instead of about yourself. “There are few heroes and even fewer villains in real life,” she said. “If you’re going to write about your human experience, write the truth. It’s worth it to write what’s real.”

What’s especially helpful about this list is the links to representative sample articles for each listed site to give you an idea of the kinds of submissions the publication is looking for.

10 tips to help writers stay focused

In this world where we can click away and change our minds instantly, be distracted by cellular devices, multitask and attend to a wide variety of our needs almost simultaneously, how do we stay on the path of quality writing and be proud of our accomplishments, our creations, and inspire others through our words?

These tips are in no particular order, except the first one, which is absolutely essential! And along the way, here are a few online tools that can aid in your process.

Writing Resources

The Writer: Advice and Inspiration for today’s writer

The Writer is not only the oldest continuously published magazine for authors in the country, it is also one of the oldest continuously published magazines in America, period. First established in April 1887, the periodical has seen the comings and goings of editors and staff, slogans and themes. It has won the Folio magazine Editorial Excellence Award nine times. Although full content is only available to subscribers, there is plenty on the web page for the rest of us. From the homepage, click on Articles. From there, browse by Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Freelance Writing, and half a dozen other freely accessible topics. There are also loads of Writing Resources and Writing Prompts that are free, open, and available to any writer.

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994–2014. https://www.scout.wisc.edu

I’ve been researching writing prompts lately, so I checked out those on The Writer. My random look at three of the five pages given suggests that these prompts are geared toward fiction rather than nonfiction writers. But if you’re writing fiction, they look pretty good. There’s an emphasis on creating characters, imagining plot situations, and experimenting with different points of view.

5 Writing Tips: Jane Smiley

Lots of writers and writing instructors offer advice on specific aspects of writing or editing. But I like this list from Jane Smiley precisely because it’s more general. Her advice—or encouragement, really—describes building a writing life, or a writer’s mindset.

30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge Begins Today!

Related Post:

I’m excited to begin the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge today.

Since the essence of the challenge is on digital (rather than writing with pen on paper) journaling, much of the discussion on the web site and the Facebook page has been about what apps and programs people use.

30-day-challenge-682x1024One of the most frequent questions has been about the need for a separate journaling program. Many people say they’re planning to use a word processing (e.g., Microsoft Word) document for their digital journaling and divide the document into separate entries with headings. A lot of writers I know use another program, Scrivener, for their writing projects. Although I have not done this myself, I can see how Scrivener could be easily adapted for digital journaling. You could have a top-level folder for the year, with a subfolder for each month. Each monthly subfolder would then contain separate documents for each dated entry. Scrivener allows users to assign key words and to color code sections, which would make organization and retrieval of specific material fairly easy. (Scrivener was originally developed for Macs, but there is now a Windows version available.)

For my digital journaling, I have used a journaling program, MacJournal by Mariner Software, for several years. (This is a Mac-only program.) I like it for a lot of reasons:

  • You can protect your journal with a password
  • You can create different journals for different purposes
  • You can create new journals and new entries easily
  • You can format text with different fonts and colors
  • You can create categories of entries and color code them
  • You can assign key words to entries
  • You can add images, even videos, to entries

MacJournal undoubtedly has more features than these, but these are the ones I use consistently.

Some people like to keep separate journals for different purposes—a dream journal, a gratitude journal, a gardening journal, a wine journal. With MacJournal you can do that. But I like to throw everything into one journal, then pull out what I need when I need it. With MacJournal I can do this. I like, for example, that I can color code entries—purple for dreams, red for health—and then easily isolate only those entries when I want to look at them.

I will be using MacJournal for the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge. I’m looking forward to hearing from other participants what program or approach they use and how they like it.

Disclaimer:

I have no financial interest in any of the programs mentioned here. I purchased my copies of Microsoft Word, Scrivener, and MacJournal.