Writing

Five Reasons to Share Your Writing

November 5, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

Do you know that when I first started writing poetry as an adult that it was REALLY hard to let people know I liked to write poetry much less let them read it? MAN that was so hard… and to be honest, it’s still hard but, other than at a writer’s conference I attended, no one has even dissected it and made me feel less than. It is so hard to do though, especially when you start. I want to encourage you with five reasons to share your writing.

I’ve learned to avoid writer’s groups … at least at this point because I don’t know enough about how to dissect someone’s poetry to be very comfortable about having others dissect mine.. I dunno .. does that make sense? This doesn’t mean I can’t share my poetry with others though. It’s an excellent thing to do.

Why?

SO glad you asked.

It gives us confidence to continue writing. Doesn’t it do you good when someone says “I really liked that piece”. Makes you feel like a million bucks doesn’t it? So then you want to do it again right? It’s a huge confidence booster isn’t it?
It gives our words meaning. We can’t just write for ourselves… writing is meant to be shared. Even if all you do is write back and forth to your best, longest lived friend. Or have a small blog in your corner of the universe, or have a mega blog with so many readers it boggles the mind.
It could be useful. Perhaps that poem your wrote, or article you spent time agonizing over, is just what the reader needed as an encouragement or to spur them on to better things, or was a balm to a wounded soul. Maybe that piece of non-fiction taught a 13 year old something he didn’t know before!
Feedback… Even though it’s hard and can crush your spirit.. feedback can also show you what you are doing well and how to make the rest even better. It’s a bit of a two-edged sword right? The side benefit is if you share your work with discerning writers (so not your very best friend or your mom who will probably like everything you do), you may just end up reading their work and finding your mind sharpened just a bit more. Fire feeds fire you know?
New readers, new friends, new opportunities. You never know where your writing will take you. Someone might read one piece, and then decide they need to read more, and then more and they will share it with their friends and before you know it, you might have a whole following.

What do you say? Give it a chance? Let iron sharpen iron? Find yourself encouraged? Finding readers that are encouraged or helped? Isn’t it a lovely thing? Share it!

Banish Writer’s Block

October 29, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Oh, this chapter in Pep Talks for Writers made me smile. Why did it make me smile? Oh.. it brought me back to the joy of my Five-Minute-Friday writer’s community. If you’ve visited my blog any Thursday or Friday you’ll almost always find a post written for them. I find them fun and…. more importantly, they stimulate my thinking. Stimulated thinking is what helps me to banish writer’s block.

You see Writer’s Block doesn’t have to exist. You can have moments of not knowing what to write or times when your creativity seems to lag, but if you figure out some tricks you can negate those times. Every writer needs to have a few of these ideas up their sleeve for when times get a bit ragged in the creativity department.

Ways to banish Writer’s Block:

Ray Bradbury would write out list of nouns and see how they connected to each other.
Get out in nature, look around and just be out there.
People watch in a mall or well.. anywhere.
Stop allowing yourself to be distracted.. turn off the tv, the cellphone
Allow yourself to become bored.
Become physically active.. run, garden, work out, go fishing anything…just get physically busy
Do something fun… play a game with your kids, build with lego, colour, solve sudoku puzzles etc.
Go away for a day or weekend, get out of the ordinary.
Read a book.
Join a writer’s community and talk with other writers.
Do some freewriting, either on your own or with other writers.
Listen to music, perhaps even a type you aren’t in love with.
Play with letter art, doodling or calligraphy. Have fun with words artistically.
Figure out if having a routine helps you to write.
Get together with a friend either in person or over the phone, perhaps text a good buddy and chat for a while.
Make a bullet list of ideas or places. Anything that remotely connects with a character, place or idea.
Go to an art museum and muse about what you see in the photos, or wonder about an old coin.
Walk in a cemetary…not the modern new day ones, but one with graves from the past, and let your curiousity lead you.
Read blogs, poetry, good books, bad ones (they might inspire you to do better), cartoons and cereal boxes. You never know where inspiration might start.
Have a friend challenge you to write on something. Currently I’m listening to a book where an author was challenged to write about a lost roman legion and pokemon. It’s turned out pretty good!
Use a device like story cubes and pick out three pictures to base a short story on.
Teach a class or take part in one.
Spend time with a group of children and just kick ideas around with them about what they are interested in or what questions they have about whatever.
Write a letter to yourself, or pretend that a long-lost friend is writing one to you describing their life’s explorations.
What can you think of?

Writer’s Block is only a problem if you THINK it is a problem. Don’t let your momentary lack of creativity, or fear, or needing to take a breather be what stops you from writing. Work around it and just move forward. Something will click, it always will. Just go on… stretch a little. You’ll be glad you did. You will find that you too can banish writer’s block.

Use Boredom For Good

October 22, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

You know how letting kids be bored isn’t a bad thing?

It’s the same thing for writers. We need to learn to use boredom for good.

Just as a child who is bored, who doesn’t have their time or brain filled with things to do, finds something to do, usually something with a creative bent. A writer who is bored will find something to think about and eventually to do or at least write about. I know when I have nothing to do my mind immediately fills with a storyline.

So utilize boredom. Don’t treat it like an enemy but rather is a friend and helpmeet.

Shut off the devices. Close the doors. Don’t read a book, or chat with friends. Perhaps you need to get outside and just be alone in your own space. Let your mind have the freedom to roam unimpended or distracted. Let your body be busy if necessary but let your thoughts be free to mull around and come up with their own ideas.

Next time you are sitting at a doctor’s office mindlessly waiting don’t pull out your cell phone. Pay attention to your boredom, what is it teaching you? So many stories and ideas might be surrounding you. The elderly fellow using a cane with a pin in the lapel of his vest. The youngster hanging off his momma’s leg. The lady in the business suit tapping her fingers impatiently. What are their stories? That interesting fabric, could it be important? Who designed that purse? Could there be a world ruled by spiders? What thoughts are inspired? Any interesting worlds that might be imagined? What research could be spurred on?

Writer Revise

October 15, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

You have written a story, a poem, a non-fiction piece. It’s a fine piece of work for a blog, book or magazine article. It’s done. OR… is it?

Have you stopped to read it over? Or to change the odd word here or there? Have you double-checked your spelling? What about that sentence there, is it reading the way you want it to? Have it all tidied up? EXCELLENT!

But is it really the way you want it to read? Is it the best you can make it be?

For anything

Ask yourself these questions

Am I clear about what I am writing about?
Have I written with my audience in mind, answering their questions?
Am I writing in a manner appropriate for the topic at hand?
Did I make sure I included supporting examples and details??

For Poetry

Ask yourself the following

Have I removed excess clichés? Can my images stand for themselves?
Have I channeled emotions through the five senses? for instance…how can you show love or hatred through your senses?
Have I used strong verbs and concrete nouns? Making your words seem more in the moment.
Have I cut, compressed and condensed everything I can? The more tighter you make your words, the more pungent your words will be.
What have you risked? What has inspired you from recent reads? Can you emulate what you like?

Revision is merely the act of making what you have to say better. It’s not taking away your voice or the natural feel of what you write. All revision is, is answering questions to make what you say more clear to those reading your words. That’s worth the time don’t you think?

Fear Not the Long Sentence

September 24, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

All my life I’ve been told to be mindful of long sentences, that it’s important to keep them short. Imagine my shock when in Writing Tools I’m told the following:

“Write what you fear. Until the writer tries to master the long sentence, she is no writer at all, for while length makes a bad sentence worse, it can make a good sentence better.” (p.36)

The author then proceeded to quote a few passages from Tom Wolfe which showcased the beauty of a long sentence. I have to admit, if I had read it for myself I wouldn’t have thought it was all one sentence, but OH what a glorious sentence! Very much showcased the beauty of a well-written of a long sentence.

Long Sentence Attributes:

What helps make a long sentence good?

a. makes sure the subject and verb of the main clause come early in the sentence
b. use the long sentence to describe something long. Let form follow function
c. Chronological order, use it.
d. use the long sentence in a mix with short and medium length sentences.
e. use the long sentence as a list, or catalogue of products, names, images etc
f. Edit carefully, long sentences need to make every word matter.

Using long sentences go against the grain, the best writers aren’t afraid of them, so learn how to use them well. Sometimes you just have to take the chance, after all, writing is an act of faith, not just a matter of grammar.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. E.B.White. Click To Tweet

Break out of the trap of thinking that all sentences must have 18 words or less. Mix up your sentences, have some short, have others long. Consider that Elizabethan sentences often ran to 45 words, Victorian to 29, and today we average 20 or less. It’s not a bad thing to use a long sentence, word it well, use it well and become a better writer.

How to improve:

How can you become better?

You can become better at writer longer sentences by keeping an eye out for them, examine them, see if they meet the criteria listed above.

You can also practice. Take some shorter sentences and see if you can put them together to make a well-crafted longer sentence.

You don’t have to make a complex sentence, even a simple sentence can be long. Try describing your table top, contents of your garbage can, or a painting on the wall. Take whatever you have and practice. It’s the practice that will help you improve.

Embracing Time Constraints

September 17, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

One of the things I hear in the blogging and writing community is “I don’t have enough time”. Children, work and other obligations get in the way of being able to express oneself in the written form. Do you resent those interruptions or do you embrace the time constraints you are under? How does embracing time constraints help us?

It’s the weekend and you have the kids in sports, yard work to complete, family to visit, events to attend… and as much as you want to write for hours and hours you struggle to find the 10 minutes here or there. You take the time at the sports game to write, you grab 20 minutes while the spouse showers, or whatever have you. Do you lament that you don’t have enough time or enough money?

But seriously… if you offer me a whole weekend just to write you know what happens? I have tea with a friend, I run to the store to get whatever munchies I need (usually chocolate), and sit in front of my computer drawing a blank. IT’S ANNOYING! Like seriously. AND not only do I suffer that malady I’ve noticed other writer friends do exactly the same thing! Why is that?

Why?

Why do we want the time, and then when we get it, the writing doesn’t pan out the way we think it should?

Do you think just maybe that the fitting our writing in the events in our lives could actually be the best way to do it? That the very busyness we lament is the glue that focuses our creativity? That those short time frames actually give us a goal to push through?

“You don’t actually have to write anything until you’ve thought it out. This is an enormous relief, and you can sit there searching for the point at which the story becomes a toboggan and starts to slide.” —Marie de Nervaud, WD Click To Tweet

A given week

Take for instance a given week for me… I’ll have three blog posts to write just for me and two to write as reviews, and then I’ll have papers to mark as well. What happens? I know that my son has army cadets on Monday nights so guess what happens in that two hour time span he’s away.. I WRITE! Two hours, just for me. In that two hours, if I’m focused (ie no tv on, no munchies, sitting a the dining table) I can push out three or four reviews freeing up time to have a nap next week! (or more liking more writing just for fun). BUT if the lad’s at home you know what happens? We’ll play a game, watch TV and what not… and those two hours will be frittered away TOGETHER which is good, but then I have to try to write later as I wait for hubby to come home from work and I end up napping half the time. GAH! That free time with the lad away… it’s GOLDEN! But in the times that I am busy with my lad, or walking with hubby, or showing a student how to fry an egg, in the back of my mind I’m thinking… how an I talk about the word Crowd? Or how can I help my lad remember his cookie recipe? When I care for my bunnies I think about a conversation with Michelle about writing an animal husbandry column.

And before I know, my whole post is written, it just needs to spill out from my brain to the laptop and it is SO much easier and quicker and half the editing is done already.

Cherish the Busyness

I say cherish the busyness, see it for what it is. A time restriction that forces our brains to work around ourselves, enabling us to focus our thoughts, to refine the words bumping around inside, spilling out through the keyboard or out on paper. Cherish it. All those goal inspiring moments help us to write to our best. It’s a grand thing indeed.

Don't complain about a lack of time to write. Without a lack of time, the urgency of our passion dissipates. Grant Faulkner Pep Talks for Writers. Click To Tweet

Just as we need to plan our writing space, and find routines that work for us we also need to embrace the lives we live. The distractions, the busyness, and the running around. It’s part of what makes us who we are. Embrace the time constraints of your life, it gives you needed goals that make you a more productive author.

Writing is Discovery

September 10, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Did you know I have a neice that is a writer? I wish I could do the same thing with words that she does! 🙂 She maintains a blog over at Inkwyrm and I like going over there sporadically, commenting on everything. Nicole often makes me laugh or think, and sometimes even both! I am immensely proud of her. Anyways, we were talking one night about how sometimes she’s writing and she wants a character to go a certain way and it ends up being another way that suits that character better. It’s a struggle to balance the what you want with the what you discover. Anyways, that conversation was recalled to me as I read through this chapter on discovering who you are as you write, that what we write is based on aspects of ourselves.

Writing draws words out of you. Think about it… in every character you write you need to research, watch, learn, discover new things. If you talk about a father figure you will naturally be caused to think about your own father, memories for good or ill. When we write about a best friend, we’ll be drawn back to friendships we’ve had in the past or still presently maintain. Sorrow, heartache, joy, anger … all these things will come from the weal of experience that is our own lives. From what we observe in the folks around us, to the research we do, everything we write comes from something we have interacted with and then somehow make our own as we write.

And so as we write we learn more about ourselves and become more deeply in-tune with who we are. Reading and working through books such as Observe, Collect, Draw are tools we can use to deepen our understanding of ourselves. This process can fuel our thought as we write. Paying attention to our emotions and attitudes as we work, play, or rest. Watching out own interactions with people and the way others interact. Listening to challenging talks, confronting out fears and minding our hopes. All these things feed into our ability to write and share our thoughts with others.

Taking the time to work

…muscles straining, brains thinking, pondering, connecting, being part of a team. Interruptions, people around us, meetings, and smells, sounds, actions taken. All these things become a part of us and therefore part of the world we write about. Observe it and remember it.

Then write.

Taking time to play

… find whatever it is that you want to do just to have fun, be it playing playdoh with a little buddy, walking a trail, jumping off a cliff (or out of a plane) or rummaging through a thrift store for undiscovered treasures. Listen to the joy of your heart as you play and put that in your writing. Dwell on the sorrow of death, or a hard diagnosis, or job loss.

Then write.

Just write.

Whether for an audience of one (yourself) or a larger audience. Give voice to your words, your thoughts, yourself. Become more of yourself as you truly discover who you are. Write as if what you say matters. “Write as if you are dying” Annie Dillard would tell you. Give eloquence to your words, as if they are the last words you’ll ever write and keep writing until they are.

Keep on discovering, discover aspects of yourself you didn’t know, broaden the ones you do know… just keep writing. You’ll make a better you in the end. 🙂

If you would like to follow along I’m reading from this book.

Writing

Five Reasons to Share Your Writing

Why?