For subtle but mind-blowing genius, check out agent Donald Maass’s post on “The Inner Journey” at Writer Unboxed today:
A journey needn’t involve travel but it does enact a transformation. For a transformation to occur, two things are needed: outward events and inward change. Great novels use both.
“I can’t imagine a life without stories. But fiction, I think, is a means, not an end; a prescription, not a cure.”
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Just 2 links today, folks. I’ve been crazy busy, both with work-work and with writing-work. Since Andy and I are on vacation all next week (first cruise for both of us!) I have been rushing around the office, trying to make sure everyone’s got what they need and the poor temp that’s covering for me won’t be up a paddle without a creek. Or whatever.
Meanwhile, I’m also off and running (or maybe jogging) on the new YA manuscript, and I love it. Looooove it. It’s fun and fresh and full of adventure. It is a joy to think about, and a joy to sit down and write. Even the rough patches, one of which I hit last night.
As for the blog, don’t you worry. I’ve lined up some AWESOME guest bloggers for next week. Want a hint? One has freckles, one plays origami with the earth, one is mighty with both pen and pencil, and one sets me straight in my own comments every. single. post.
I finished rereading Hunger Games and Catching Fire last night, and I thought I would be okay, but seriously, IS IT AUGUST 24TH YET?! I NEED MOCKINGJAY!!!!!!
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Ahem.
While I attempt to retain (or regain) my sanity, here is some interesting food for thought.
1. As a design professor once told me, limitations lead to the greatest creativity. If you had anything/everything at your fingertips, you would feel overwhelmed — where to start, what to do?! But when you are restricted, you figure out how to accomplish what you want with what you’ve got.
Let’s face it, as Hollywood budgets for summer blockbusters expand, the sets get bigger, the special effects nastier, and the locations trendier. Except Toy Story 3.Think back, most of the action took place in a daycare center. The other parts of the movie were set in Andy’s house and a trash dump. Not exactly Pirates, right? Yet these set limitations set the writers’ imaginations on fire—adding a baroque texture to an otherwise boring series of sets.
2. Books are beloved. Oh, the publishing industry is terrified of ebooks, and ebook lovers call printed editions “Dead Tree Books” like they’re evil, but let’s face it, folks: we love books. I didn’t even realize it, to be honest with you, but then Lee pointed this out:
Nobody throws away books. We give away books to friends or family, donate them to libraries or prisons, sell them at yard sales or book stores, but we don’t trash them. In the worst case scenario, [when moving] books are neatly stacked next to the dust bunnies and left for the next occupant.
Where does this reverence come from?
Good question. And speaking of questions…
3. Team Gale or Team Peeta? Why? (Ooorrr… Team Haymitch? *snicker* Okay okay okay. More realistically: Team Katniss?)
Don’t “Write what you know.” Start with what you know. You are like the hero and you are like the bad guy too. Keep making stuff up until it’s true.
Speaking of genius, Erin Danehy is beginning a new Writers Workshop Wednesday (ah how we bloggers love our alliteration, no?) and she started with six Tips for the Novice Workshopper. (Really, they are important for any writer to keep in mind.) My favorite:
Some people are born gifted. Plain and simple. But that doesn’t mean you are talentless.
Glimmer Train featured an article by Olufunke Grace Bankole, who recently won one of their short fiction contests. Her words are sheer brilliance and beauty:
There is a time, a season for each thing: a time to act, and a time to wait. When I forget this, I struggle to make progress with work that requires not force, but patient, gradual persistence. In this waiting season, it is as if nothing at all is happening, and it can feel as if the things that are, discourage us from continuing on. The bane of most writers’ lives, this waiting time asks that we be alone with the very things we are waiting—wading—through: doubt, stagnation, aching self-consciousness. In solitude, we are to hold vigil over our words. We turn them over on all their sides, and then tuck them away; we take them out again, and put them on the page, even when they seem unworthy of it. We trust that in their time, they will tell a whole story, beginning to end. And because it is only a season, the waiting eventually gives way to the birthing of a piece that had been incubating all along, somewhere away from our eyes.
Rachele Alpine (whose book is out on submission right now, cross your fingers for her!!) compiled some great writing advice via a contest at her blog. My favorites:
*In the time you just spent whining about how you don’t want to revise, you could have revised two pages.
*Love your writing like you love your dog; unconditionally. It might not always be perfect, but at the end of the day, you can’t live without it and it makes your soul smile.
Natalie Whipple talked about the “crit partner arsenal.” Basically she outlines all the different types of crit partners you could have, and why you would want them. This is a really valuable guide for writers looking to connect with people for feedback that will take their writing to the next level.
And last but not least, Kiersten White, whose forthcoming book Paranormalcy is being heralded as the second coming of Edward-and-Bella-and-Jacob-only-better-and-with-less-vampires-and-adverbs-and-a-funnier-voice-and… okay, you get the point. Anyway, Kiersten had some great things to say about setting goals…
That’s important in setting goals–make sure they are things YOU control. You can’t control sales. You can’t control being nominated for or winning awards. You can control what you do and what you write to make those things more likely to happen, though. So focus on what you can control, decide what your goals as an author (aspiring author/pastry chef/world’s foremost expert on rare evolution type Pokemon/professional beach Taser operator) are, and then figure out what you can do to make them happen.
What it comes down to is this: I am not my characters. I’m not even my writing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I’ve been answering interviews (and interviews…and interviews…), and questions about Evie’s obsession with the color pink have popped up a couple of times. You know what? I don’t really like pink. I never have. Evie, however, can’t get enough of the color. Why?
I had never heard of Turkish author Elif Shafak, but after hearing her beautiful and intelligent TED talk, I will definitely be checking out her books.
“He wanted to see the manifestation of my identity. He was looking for a Turkish woman in the book, because I happen to be one. We often talk about how stories change the world, but we should also see how the world of identity politics affects the way stories are being circulated, read, and reviewed.”
“When the interviewer tried to pigeonhole him as a gay writer, Baldwin stopped and said, ‘But don’t you see? There is nothing in me that is not in everybody else, and nothing in everybody else that is not in me.’ When identity politics tries to put labels on us, it is our freedom of imagination that is danger.”
“It was just a story. And when I say ‘just a story,’ I’m not trying to belittle my work. I want to love and celebrate fiction for what it is, not as a means to an ends.”
“Identity politics divides us; fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations, the other in nuances. One draws boundaries, the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water.”
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