Envision Publishing: Archive

Too much "reblogging?"

I apologize for so many reblogs lately. The blog “Writing Advice” has such good information I can’t help but share it with you.

To bring you up to date on my writing goals, I am happy to report that I finished the writing the hardest part of my Canada book! By the end of the week I hope to have my first edits done, and turn it over to the publisher for more editing suggestions from them.

Edits is the fun part! I love editing. How about you?

My next project is research for my next novel: Secret Stones. At least, I hope it’s my next novel. We’ll have to see.

I plan to attend the FaithWriters conference in Michigan in August. I’m going to drop in to the ACFW conference to see friends in September (I won’t be attending the conference, though.) These are very special writing friends — my critique partners. If you want to write, you gotta have them. We’ve grown very close to one another.

I also hope to purge my house in the month of July and get most of the extra stuff I never use out of the house. That goes for my closet, too. Some of the things I’m letting go of is a little painful, but I know I need to do it to simplify my life.

How about you? What are your writing goals for the next four weeks?

Jun 29, 20111 note

writingadvice:

By Jan Allen

I hope you have been writing for at least 90 minutes each day of the break. And I hope that by now you have a crappy first draft. If not, we will start to hate you. “I know some very great writers… Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do…

Jun 29, 2011227 notes

“Write.

In order to be able to call yourself a writer, all you have to do is write. But I have another piece of advice: Don’t go passing out business cards emblazoned with that word just yet. (…)

Ignore James Brown’s advice to get up offa that thing — sit down on that thing and write. It doesn’t matter what you write, but it matters that you write.

It also matters that you read — and, similarly, the what isn’t as important as the that: that you read. Read literary classics and airport novels and graphic novels. Read biographies and memoirs and as-told-tos. Read magazines and newspapers and blogs. Read about people and places and things real and imagined.

But learn to distinguish between bad writing and good writing and great writing. Notice the style and tone and technique of the great stuff. Don’t try to imitate it, but recognize it and what it does for your reading experience. Think about what you want the experience to be like for your readers.

Don’t forget, though, the most important reason to write: for your own enjoyment — the joy of creation, the joy of reading the story you had to write because nobody else had done so until you came along. Don’t write with any goal in mind except this one: to complete a story — a novel, a novella, a short story, a short short story — so that you can read it. (…)

What are you waiting for?” —Mark Nichol (via writingadvice)

Jun 29, 2011152 notes

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” —Neil Gaiman (via writingadvice)

Jun 29, 2011323 notes

writingadvice:

by Sarah Domet

All artists have their tools. For a painter, it’s a paintbrush; for a sculptor, it’s a chisel. For a novelist, it’s an outline. But not just anybody with a paintbrush or a chisel is an artist. You must first learn how to use your artist’s tool properly in order to create something…

Jun 28, 2011191 notes

writingadvice:

Here is a common structure found in many stories, illustrated by examples from Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’.

1. Initial harmony

The initial state is one of general everyday happiness or humdrum. Nothing unusual is happening and the normality allows the reader to associate into leading…

Jun 28, 2011163 notes

Play

Jun 28, 201139 notes

“It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, “Read,” but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, “Don’t read, don’t think, just write,” and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you’re going to be a writer you’ll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think, “There must be something else people do,” you won’t quite be able to quit.” —Alice Munro (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 201171 notes

“Write every day. Write something. Every day.

Easier said than done, right? Here are some suggestions for making it happen.

1. Commit to writing for at least two hours every day. (Why? Because 1½ to 2 hours is the maximum that most of us can endure mentally and physically before needing a break.) So write for at least 90 minutes without getting up from your chair. Seriously. No breaks, no distractions, no getting everything else done first. And especially no e-mail and Facebook.

2. Write every day for two weeks. For most of us, that is enough to make it a habit. And I promise that if you do this, you’ll find out how much more productive you become as a writer. Try it.

3. What to do when you have holidays to observe and celebrate? Or when you are too ill to write? Or when you can’t possibly find even 90 minutes in your day to write? That is when you must write even 15 minutes each day. No matter how tired or busy or even sick you are, write 15 minutes each day. Here’s why this works:

- The hardest part of writing is getting started. We amateurs procrastinate minutes, hours, and days. (The pros – some of the best and most prolific writers – report procrastinating weeks and even years.) We’re afraid we won’t have anything to write. We’re afraid that what we write will be terrible. We’re afraid we’re not up to the real pain that good writing requires. For some of us, it’s only when the pain of what we would lose by not writing – fellowships, degree completion, book contracts, jobs – feels more real than the pain of actually writing that we even begin to write.

- If you make yourself write 15 minutes a day, you have overcome the biggest hurdle – getting started. I’ve never known anyone with the goal of writing 15 minutes a day actually limit writing to just that 15 minutes. Once you start, I promise you won’t watch the clock. You’ll write for 30, 60, even 90 minutes before you realize it. (The trick is that you tell yourself you only have to write for 15 minutes and that you can endure anything for that long. Once you start to write, the anxiety will begin to disappear and you’ll write longer.)

- Writing everyday contributes to continuity of your thinking and generating the ideas you need to write. Your mind will function differently when you write every day. We all think about our writing every day. But the cognitive processes involved in writing are different from those involved in thinking. Your project moves forward when you write… even if you write a gosh-awful first draft.” —Break Writers’ group, Columbia University (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 2011791 notes

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.” —Erin Bow (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 2011121 notes

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions.

The most important of the questions is just, What if…? (What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term – but you didn’t know who?)

Another important question is, If only… (If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)

And then there are the others: I wonder… (‘I wonder what she does when she’s alone…’) and If This Goes On… (‘If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman…’) and Wouldn’t it be interesting if… (‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?’)” —Neil Gaiman (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 2011519 notes

writingadvice:

By Glen C. Strathy

A sagging middle is one of the most common problems you can run into when writing a novel. Fortunately, it can be cured and/or avoided.

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about what happens to a writer’s body when it is forced to spend long days at a keyboard, getting no…

Jun 28, 2011131 notes

writingadvice:

By Hope Hammond

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people… people, not characters. A character is a caricature.” ~ Ernest Hemingway.

The first tip for creating fictional character sketches is to make sure they’re actual people. Not just a hollow “caricature” — a real…

Jun 28, 2011276 notes

“Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” —Kurt Vonnegut (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 201196 notes

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” —Kurt Vonnegut (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 2011283 notes

writingadvice:

By Glen C. Strathy

The first and most important element of any plot is the Story Goal or Problem. This is the organizing idea around which the entire plot of your novel will be based.

Without a goal, a plot becomes just a haphazard series of events with no meaning or purpose – one that will…

Jun 28, 2011103 notes

“Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.” —Ernest Hemingway (via writingadvice)

Jun 28, 2011254 notes

Jun 23, 2011

writingadvice:

by Kaye Dacus

Before I was laid off from the publishing house, one of my duties was going through the slush pile. What that meant was that all manuscripts coming from authors we’d worked with or through agents went straight to our publisher. Everything unsolicited went into the slush pile….

Jun 19, 201197 notes

“I think it’s important to read, to write, and to ask lots and lots of questions, because I think when you ask questions, you begin a dialogue. When you begin a dialogue, you begin an understanding. The more you understand, the more you know, and the more you know, the more you can do. It just keeps growing that way.

It is also so important to listen. I learned how to be a writer by taking everything in. I walk through the world hearing and thinking about what people are saying. I think there’s this way in which listening to each other says, “I respect you, I care about what you have to say.” For me, learning to write came from being able to hear people, and — even though I didn’t always agree with them — being able to let those ideas come inside me and do whatever I need to do with them.” —Jacqueline Woodson (via writingadvice)

Jun 19, 201157 notes

Envision Publishing

June 2011

33 posts