· Writers must be readers. This is how you build your vocabulary, learn new concepts, and the building blocks of syntax, spelling, and grammar. Reading respected writers won’t make you “sound” like them. If you don’t believe me, try entering the contest where you have to imitate Hemingway’s style by writing a spoof. It’s easier to look like Hemingway than to write like him. When you read something that stops you in your tracks, ask yourself why. Keep a notebook. While reading, write down strong words, words that are beautiful, words that lift you. Notice their connotations.
· Solitude is an essential state of mind for writing. I can experience solitude in the middle of a coffee shop, in an airport, by a noisy hotel pool, or in a park. You can’t write if the phone is ringing, or the neighbors are stopping by. Distractions, by the hundreds, lurk around the house. The library is a good place to write if you can ignore the siren song of those lovely books. I can’t, so I don’t go there to write.
· Write it down! I keep a yellow legal pad near me when I drive. I can write a word or a fragment of an idea at stoplights or, if it’s an awesome idea, I’ll pull over and make a note before it evaporates. If I don’t do this, then all I can remember later is that I had something to write down, and it disappeared into the ether. Write down weird things you overhear, people you observe. Notice.
· Rewrite. Great things happen when you let the story evolve. Keep pushing for a higher level of writing. Having said that, let me add: Don’t rewrite to the point of ruining your work. Think of people who have plastic surgery until they look like a Halloween decoration. Don’t do that.
· I’m going to slip in a pet peeve in here. Don’t try to pass off memoir in a fiction workshop. I love memoirs, and hate that so many people bad-mouth personal writing, but I also love fiction. The two genres are distinct. It’s a disservice to the writer as well as an insult to the people spending their free time reading and thinking about your work.
· My final thought for today concerns the current state of publishing. We are writing during an exciting time with a multitude of options for getting our work into print or online. I have this hopeful feeling that even more people will discover their love of reading as writing breaks out of the current homogenized requirements for publication. There are innumerable ways to tell a story, so let’s stop buying into the notion that there are only a few successful “techniques” for writing fiction.
"It's easier to look like Hemingway than to write like him." !!! Ha ha, that's great! And so true. His seemingly simple style is harder to achieve than it looks.
ReplyDeleteI also love the part about trying to resist the "siren song" of all the books in a library. When we first moved to Maine, I did work for awhile in the library, and the desk I liked was in some sort of psychology section. I kept staring at the spine of this book about a woman with multiple personalities (the name of it escapes me now, of course) and occasionally flipping through it.