Date Archives → March 2009

Write With Style

Several links today from articles on writing and publishing that I’ve stumbled upon over the past few weeks:

  • Damon Runyon, who wrote “Guys & Dolls”, would sit in New York City restaurants and absorb the speech rhythms of the local gangsters and hoods. This great article examines his dual-layered narrative, and his key insight that “American slang is double: first, that street speech tends to be more, not less, complicated grammatically than “standard” speech; but, second, that slang speakers, when they’re cornered to write, write not just fancy but stiff.”
  • An article on Ian McEwan’s life, process and style from the New Yorker:

    McEwan said that he never rushes from notebook to novel. “You’ve got to feel that it’s not just some conceit,” he said. “It’s got to be inside you. I’m very cautious about starting anything without letting time go, and feeling it’s got to come out. I’m quite good at not writing. Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I’m a hesitater.”

  • The Book Cover Archive – where authors can review thumbnails and closeups of published book covers and research details on the artists, designers and publishers who created them.
  • A series of brief interviews with authors about the Sisyphean occupation of writing.

The Reader

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

~Samuel Johnson

What’s the number one tool in the writer’s toolbox? You guessed it … his library.

Read, read, read. Read published books. Read literary criticism. Read book flaps and synopses. Read things you don’t like (often – it will break you out of a rut). Look up words you don’t understand in the dictionary. Join a reading group in your area. Read the New York Times book reviews.

Deconstruct the things you’re reading. Analyze the point of view. Why did they choose first person? Who is this all-knowing narrator who keeps popping in to make those annoying omniscient comments foreshadowing things to come? Can I trust this narrator? Keep track of plot and pacing. Make unseen connections. Buy the Cliff’s notes and actually do the homework lessons.

There is a solitary, quiet concentration required to finish a novel that mirrors the writing process itself. Good writers are, first and foremost, good readers – they understand the rubric of their genre, when breaking a rule is acceptable … and when it’s a grammatical mistake. A good writer understands the elements of great literature (even if they’re writing in the most restrictive of genres) and uses them accordingly.

And after you’re done reading for the day, go sit down in another solitary corner and write.

Walkabout

Brainstorming is a tricky thing. In the advertising world, we try to bottle the process into a sort of scientific method … cramming a lot of smart, creative folks into a room and hoping for the best. But brainstorming for a client or a product is very different than brainstorming for a novel (or poem), where the intent is to let the mind wander rather than focus it in on a solution.

In a season one episode of “Mad Men,” Don Draper tells a writer to “think about it as long and hard as you can … examine it from every angle … put your heart and soul into it. Then go do something else. It will just come to you.” (Or something along those lines.)

And mostly he’s right. The best ideas come to us when we’re busy doing other things: walking the dog, playing with the kids at the park, falling asleep on the couch.

Other than hard drugs, there are several ways to train your brain to loosen up, and to capture the results:

  • Go On A Walk:
    Make sure to carry a notepad with you in case the lightning flashes. Vary the time of day. Take the wife, the kids, the dog, a Frisbee, or all of the above … but make sure you get some time to go off by yourself and think.
  • Read Poetry:
    Really great poetry is like a riddle that needs solving. While your mind is doing the mental back flips required to decode whatever the hell that poet is trying to say, you often get flashes of insight that are great fodder for your own poems, stories, or projects.
  • Write Down Your Dreams:
    Keep a notepad by the bedside and when you wake up in the morning, write down everything you can remember.
  • Learn Something New:
    Learning a new skill (like karate, or transcendental meditation … even juggling) forces your tired old brain to make connections that weren’t there previously. When these connections are made, you suddenly start thinking in new & exciting ways and the ideas begin to flow.

I have to run now, I’m off to my juggling class.

Travelogue

Back in the day, before the dawn of the series of tubes we call the Internets, writers were forced to get out from behind their dreary writing desks, pack up pen and paper … and travel to exotic locales to experience new and exciting things which they could then write about in a semi-convincing fashion.

The horror.

Nowadays, when a writer needs to imagine what it must be like to live on, say, an isolated Caribbean island with a semi-active volcano, the only place they have to visit is Google or Wikipedia.

For those of you with a desperate yearning to describe some foreign land in all of its exotic glory, here are a few resources that might help spark some creative ideas:

  • The Sunday edition of the New York Times (Travel section) – I buy the Sunday edition of the Times and cut out articles from this section every week. You’ll be amazed at the quirky details that these articles contain about food, attractions, customs, history and more. For the cost-conscious, most of these articles are available for free on the New York Times web site, though I prefer to keep a folder with articles cut out for easy reference.
  • The Economist – For the bigger picture, the Economist magazine is an excellent resource. Here you can track economic, political and social trends and how they affect not just individual countries but entire regions of the globe. This is especially great if you’re writing a war novel, historical novel or political thriller.
  • Wikipedia – Another great reference for pretty much anything. I visit this site several times per day to do research. Often the information contained in the articles will spark ideas for other stories or plot points.

Signing off for today – I’m off to the Caribbean for a few hours this afternoon, before roller skating with the kids down the street.