Writing

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.  (Elmore Leonard)

There must be a few million books and sites out there on the topic of writing, and I don’t plan to add to that.  What I’m sharing here are the various and diverse elements of my personal and intense roller coaster ride, both thrilling and terrifying, toward publication.

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. (Gene Fowler)

So this page is personal … about the factors that work for me creating direction and resulting in turning points.   Sometimes that will involve common sense tips, articles, events, worksheets, books, courses; sometimes it’ll be about the more intimate side of my development as a writer, the people who influence, nudge, coach, cajole, encourage and inspire me.

RECOMMENDED READING

 

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TURNING POINTS

• Don’t Kill Your Writing by Being Too Impatient a re-blog from Susan M. Toy author of “Island In The Clouds”.
• Staying Motivated, a re-blog from C.B. Wentworth on why staying motivated is so much different than getting motivated in the writer’s world!
• Alissa York on Receptivity Where do you get your ideas?
• Tangibilitate Your Utilization Potential  Do you risk being guilty of puffery? Daryl L. L. Houston shares some thoughts on puff-words … use vs. utilization.
• Background Noise: Fire Up Your Creativity  Do coffee shops make you more creative?
• If a Tree Uses a Dangling Modifier and Nobody Hears it …  Dangling Modifiers can be hilarious according to Daryl L.L. Houston.
• Abandoning the Frankenstory  Check out Daryl L.L. Houston’s dangerous conclusion.
• C.S. Lewis: Show and Tell  Advice from C.S. Lewis via Susan Lynn Reynolds.
• Why Show Don’t Tell is Misleading In “The Making of a Story” Alice LaPlante demonstrates how advice that didn’t make sense, most likely doesn’t!
• ebooks Rapidly Gaining Popularity Time Thief provides some great links and advice on how to e-publish.
• 15 Key Links When You Want to Self-Publish Your Book Via the Hack Novelist.
• The Oxford Comma Via The Daily Post, Daryl L. L. Houston takes a stance on the Oxford Comma.
• Wake, Woke, Awaken, Awoken Daryl L.L.Houston and Maeve Maddox explaining the usage of these irregular verbs.
• Poetry Chapbook Workshop The League of Canadian Poets offer a one-day workshop facilitated by James Dewar.
• Highly Irregular I recommend checking out the “Language Log” blog.
• Allyson Latta : The Writer Magazine 125th anniversary issue names Allyson’s website one of its 16 favourites!
• Are you a Grammar Nerd?  Writing tips from The Daily Post.
• Yellow Squeaky Nose Toy The weird and wonder-filled world of search engine terms.
• Blogging Your Book!  A fellow blogger and author, The Hack, gives it away in exchange for a promise that if you like his book “REMNANT”  you’ll share it.
• Show and Tell Solid advice and examples how to move our writing from the abstract (telling) to the concrete and specific (showing) from Daryl L.L. Houston
• Please God, NOT a Camera! Don’t just be a spectator or detached observer - don’t let your work read like a movie.
• Just Shoot Me, Please!  The pros and cons of making notes for your novel using a digital recorder.
• Over Easy and Productivity About purposeful release from the tensions of the BIG writing project – creative escapes.
• Writing as Reader … another kind of classroom.  Lessons from Lessing.
• Anomalous Girls to Lost Girls.  Points to ponder about a riddle by Nietzsche.  Endings and preludes.
• Talent Comes Cheap.   Day one of two days of serious writing time culminates with permission to write badly for the first draft.
• Catharsis at a workshop facilitated by Allyson Latta, “Illuminating the Path: Finding Theme and Structure in Your Memoir” at the Life Writers Ink second annual writing retreat hosted at my cottage on Otter Lake, Ontario.
• A review of the debut novel, “Icefields” by Canadian, Thomas Wharton, a self-described jigsaw maker who ignored conventional narrative and put the book together from story fragments he’d amassed, linking all the tales with and through the main protagonist, a cool and distant explorer from England.
• Lisa Moore was the guest speaker at WCDR’s June Breakfast Meeting.  She talked about the ‘power in writing’.
• I’ve written here about something so common sense I couldn’t see it or how it would help me make the time (not find it) to write:  “Wander About Lost“.
• Some thoughts on Irish author and playwright, Patrick McCabe and his disturbing and accomplished novel, ”Winterwood“   “A reader is left confused, dazzled and breathless. It’s astonishing.”  Daniel Hahn
• “I’m not dead yet“,  the first-ever Tattled Tale that  inspired the launch of this feature.
• Seven Questions with Cheryl Andrews by Reading as Writers – some insights into my competing passions, writing and reading.
• “Finding Lily” A Memoir by Richard Clewes where he augments the prose with his own sketches and illustrations .  We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
• My thoughts on “What they Wanted” by Donna Morrissey, a book that grabbed me in the first five pages.
• Talk by Tish Cohen at the Richmond Hill Library.