Every other Friday I post one of my photos. I’m always working on developing my skills and welcome your input. Please leave your feedback in the comments.
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Posted: September 28th, 2007 under Photos.
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Have you ever read a book by an author with a particularly powerful voice and later found yourself writing or even thinking in that voice? I recently experienced this again reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. The combination of the first-person narrator and his distinct medieval mindset created a voice that wouldn’t leave my head for days.
Such voices can be a problem when trying to write consistently in your own style and voice. It can be jarring to work on a story of your own, only to reread it later and realize that you were apparently channeling another writer. Some authors prevent this problem by not reading any fiction when they are working on a novel. Nonfiction usually has a less distinctive authorial voice. Reading nonfiction alone, however, causes its own problems.
In order to write novels, you have to read novels.
It’s important to have an instinctive understanding of the underlying structure, flow, pacing, and other elements that make up a novel, as opposed to a short story or a poem. It’s necessary to have a good technical understanding of what you’re writing, but the instinctive understanding is absolutely essential and that’s only achievable by reading what you want to write.
One of the easiest traps to fall into when learning a craft like writing is to only read about novels, rather than reading examples of the kind of writing you would like to do. It’s easy to feel like you’re making progress by reading endless books about writing, but I guarantee you’ll struggle if you sit down to write and can’t call up any real examples from novels you’ve read.
I have to consciously encourage myself to seek out fiction to read. I’m so easily disappointed in fiction, and it’s more straightforward to glean something “useful” from a half-read nonfiction book than from a novel. I need to stop thinking this way though. If I tried a little harder, I could learn a lot from the fiction I haven’t enjoyed. Why didn’t I enjoy it? Did I not like the characters, the author’s style, the pacing? Everything I didn’t like is a lesson for what I want to do differently when it comes to writing my own fiction. I can learn more by studying examples than by trying to apply some hazy concept I once read in a book about writing.
Ground yourself in your own voice.
If you’re afraid of being influenced by another author’s voice, don’t stop reading fiction. Instead, take time each day to reestablish your own voice. Try morning pages or timed writing each day when you wake up or as a way to begin your regular writing session. I find it helpful to take a few minutes to freewrite out all the junk: random thoughts from the day, worries about what a terrible writer I am, and the echoes of other writers I may have read recently. Then I begin my current writing project. It gets me in the mood to write before I put pressure on myself to continue writing my story.
Just as it’s true that you are what you eat, you are what you read. Make sure your reading contributes to your goals as a writer by immersing yourself in the literature you want to create.
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Posted: September 27th, 2007 under Writing.
Comments: 2
In the next few weeks leading up to Blog Action Day on October 15, I’m taking the opportunity to discuss creative ways to be environmentally friendly. This week, I want to review the No Impact Man blog, one of the most creative ways to help the environment I’ve seen.
No Impact Man is one of my favorite blogs to read. It’s the story of a New York man, his wife, and young daughter who decide to reduce their consumption and increase their good deeds to result in a net zero impact on the environment. He acknowledges that this is more of a philosophical goal than a strict scientific one. That attitude of compromise is one of the things I love about this project. Although many of their actions seem far-fetched and unrealistic in this modern world, Colin and his family know when to make allowances (coffee) and how to be realistic (the program is a year-long trial, after which they will decide which elements of the No Impact experiment to keep and which to discard).
Such radical-seeming ideas as going without electricity other than what they can generate from a single solar panel, biking everywhere rather than using public transportation, and reducing their water consumption by stretching the time between showers and laundry, have earned Colin plenty of criticism in the comments to his blog. He emphasizes repeatedly that he’s not trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives; he’s just sharing what he and his family are doing and offering suggestions to those who want them. Many other commenters have been helpful, offering advice when Colin asks how to accomplish a certain goal, like going without toilet paper.
Not long after I found the No Impact Man blog, I read through all the archives, because this story fascinates me. Some favorite posts include:
Today’s post, Sometimes it’s hard, describes Colin’s feelings about having to make an exception to their rules when they had run out of food for the day. He acknowledges,
“I’m sure it has to do with my own addiction to perfection, but I felt like a loser and a hypocrite. It’s silly, because I don’t think it serves anyone to think that I breeze through this project, like I can follow all the rules without a problem. Painting a picture of total ease sets other people up to feel like failures if they find their own versions of environmental living difficult.”
Reflections like these make No Impact Man an engaging, thought-provoking read.
No Impact Man is also the title of the book Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project , Colin is using his blog as part of the writing process for his book. I’ve seen many authors promoting published books by using blogs, but only No Impact Man and The Happiness Project seem to be blogging as part of the writing of the book. I’d love to hear of any other authors doing this in the comments.
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Posted: September 26th, 2007 under Blog Action Day, Reviews.
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The more I’ve been writing lately, the more I’ve thought about getting in touch with my writing professors from college. I’d like to say thanks for everything they taught me. I used to correspond fairly regularly with some of them, sometimes even mailing a letter rather than sending an email. The novelty of writing a letter with pen and paper is appealing because it makes me think about what I’m writing in a different way. For one, I’ve become used to being able to edit instantly, without scribbling. I’m used to seeing the final copy of my writing clean and crisp, without obvious human faults.
Periodically changing the form of my writing grounds me and forces me to think about what I’m writing and how. Writing on paper is different from using a computer. Writing a novel is different from writing a blog post. Both novel and blog feel different from the moods created by poetry or a formal essay. And a letter is different yet again. In a way, blogging is similar to letter writing because both forms ask me to reveal myself to another person. But writing a letter, especially with pen and paper, is more intimate than blogging. In this blog, I’m writing for a wider audience. When I write a letter, I’m crafting my words for that one special person. She or he will hold this paper that I’m holding now.
Letter writing, especially to people who have influenced me as significantly as my college professors, opens up another avenue in writing that I seldom explore: It offers the opportunity for gratitude. That may sound like a topic for journaling rather than more “serious” writing, but it isn’t necessary to first record what I had for breakfast. I just dive into reflections on gratitude. It opens me in a way that impacts all my other writing. Acknowledging gratitude, whether for help with my creative pursuits or for something else entirely, helps me reconnect to myself and where I came from. It also connects me to other people, on a much deeper level than the surface interactions that so often take the place of truly connecting to those around us.
As I contemplate the letters I will write to my teachers, I am grateful for the lessons they taught me about writing and literature and life. I’m grateful for the help they tried to give me - which I too often refused, confident that I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. Most of all, I’m grateful for the human contact, for the sympathy, humor, and advice they gave me during a trying time of my life.
I also feel gratitude toward influential teachers whom I’ve never met. Many writers have influenced me through the power of their writing, their skill at joining streams of words into rivers. As with the teachers I know, the writers I appreciate most are those who share wisdom by letting their humanity shine through the words.
Take some time to think about those to whom you are grateful. Better yet, pick up a pen and tell them so. Write a letter to your parents, an old teacher, an author you admire. Even if you never send the letter, the experience will open you to the interconnectedness of everything and stir the deep well of creativity inside.
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Posted: September 25th, 2007 under Writing.
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Ideas come in floods or not at all. Right now the floodwaters are roiling across the surface of my serenity, lapping against the crumbling sand of my island of sanity. Every so often I’m seized by this frenzy of creativity. I want to learn everything, now. I want to do everything, now.
I read a little about blog design this weekend and all the old half-buried interests rose like zombies from their shallow graves. I want to learn to code the blog myself. I want to design the whole thing myself. I want to learn Inkscape, GIMP, take brilliant photos, and write sublime copy. Now.
Such a surge of creative frenzy is exhilarating, but I’ve learned before that I quickly drown if I don’t grab hold of one sturdy idea. One thing at a time, I scold the wild-eyed child inside me. Now, what do you want to do first? That’s the hardest thing. What to choose? I have reasons for all these desires. They’re all marketable skills if I develop them enough. Some of these things come easier than others. And other skills I’ve wanted to learn for a long time. How to choose?
I pretend I am a Zen master. I try to center, calm the demons that gnaw on me. One thing at a time. I decide I will still just write, take photos, and maybe do a little tinkering with a new blog template. I will not let myself check out a book on PHP from the library. I will not spend the whole day working through GIMP tutorials when I should be doing homework. I will breathe in, then out. I will keep my hand moving. I will write.
Think about your creative passions. What moves you so forcefully you can’t focus on anything else? Is it writing, is it starting a new business, is it design? How do you balance your life between love and duty? I have learned, with long experience, that I can’t do everything I want all at once. I need a balance.
When I wrestle with a surge of creative longing, I force myself to think in terms of time constraints. How much time do I really have to spend learning a new skill? Do I want to drop another interest to make time for the new one? I know that if I try to do everything at once, I’ll neglect the things I have to do, burn out, and end up quitting everything just to have a break. It’s a long, slow climb back up the creative mountain after that. I have, in the past, come to resent writing and other things I love because I let them take over my life. I hate how long it takes me to recover my confidence, my skill, and my voice after such a drought.
Now I realize that before leaping into anything new, I need to take the time to step back, examine my life, and choose when and where my new interest fits. Perhaps it doesn’t fit anywhere right now. So I make a note of a book to read on this topic someday. I record my thoughts in my journal. Then I let the idea go. I focus on what I choose, having faith that I’ll come back and renew my interest when the time is right.
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Posted: September 24th, 2007 under Creativity.
Comments: 2
