by Laura Lai/ Uncategorized
On
the 20th of February 2010, ‘The Guardian’ published an article containing
valuable advice from consecrated writers of different genres. To construct my
creative writing exercise for this ‘Writing Break Blog’ I used some of the
advice to build this personalized fictive dialogue from a playwright point of
view.
Ian Rankin:
1 Read lots.
2 Write lots.
3 Learn to be
self-critical.
4 Learn what
criticism to accept.
5 Be persistent.
6 Have a story
worth telling.
7 Don't give up.
8 Know the market.
9 Get lucky.
10 Stay lucky.
I will! One question,
though: How can I get lucky and stay lucky? How do you do it? Any other options
besides writing to Santa and getting lucky to get his visit? J
Will Self:
1 Don't look back
until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last
sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings,
and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the
real work which is all in . . .
I noticed, too, that
some people prefer to read again what they wrote and then to continue. I don’t.
I sit to write when the story unfolds clearly in my mind, or a great part of
it. Therefore, when I resume writing I start from the last sentence of the story
I have in mind. And I edit the entire document over and over.
2 The edit.
This is like or almost
like a never-ending process for mainly two reasons: first, with every reading
the writer finds a new and better word that fits better the story. And this
happens also or more often when the author is writing in a foreign language,
too. To me, English is a foreign language, but after studying it in school for
years, then at the university I made all classes of political sciences in
English (because so was this unique program in the whole country then) that I
don’t perceive it as foreign to me, but it is. Living in an English speaking
country will make it even less foreign and more naturalized-mine. Hopefully,
the editing will stop, too.
3 Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
I do, although I think
that smartphone can be of a great help here: it voice records, it saves notes,
etc.
4 […] Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.
What you’re trying to
say is to be original. I agree that there is ‘enough books about books’. This
idea I’ve met it … somewhere under the form of ‘from ten books, an eleventh is
born’. I agree with you that originality is the most important asset nowadays. It
is that thing that distinguishes the author and its writing from all the
others. And with this thought in my mind, I can say that each of my writing
project has a degree of originality. The highest degree of originality is in
the book I wrote in German, I found a publishing house in Switzerland for, but
I still didn’t find a sponsor. That was a challenging project and in German – a
foreign language I don’t master as I master English, for example. Or French.
Every time, I started from the last sentence. And went on and on, mainly to practice German – learning it, while writing it. After having stopped I read
and re-read, trying to correct as much as I could my foreign language mistakes.
It is at the third (maybe forth) complete reading that I could give it the
shape I wanted from the beginning and submit it. I’m honored I found a
publishing house for this original project. And what a publishing house! Very
honored – it already means the world to me!
5 By the same token remember how much time people spend watching TV. If you're writing a novel with a contemporary setting there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching: "Later, George watched Grand Designs while eating HobNobs. Later still he watched the shopping channel for a while . . ."
J J J
6 The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can't deal with this you needn't apply.
Indeed, a writer is
more familiar than many others people working in other fields with the word ‘lockdown’
for writing. Sometimes it takes longer, some other times shorter – it depends
on what the writer is researching and writing.
7 Oh, and not forgetting the occasional beating administered by the sadistic guards of the imagination.
Eh?!
8 Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine…
You’re right about the
writer being a small corporation of one. Especially that if it sells, it will
also have to pay taxes on what the writer sold – as you said, as a corporation.
Given the fact that I have relocation plans, I only prepare the manuscripts for
the small corporation rather than to be caught in between two countries with
the one-person corporation. I like to keep things fair and simple for
everybody. You’re right again with the team-building – I have just accomplished
the online course at Harvard on the art of persuasive writing. And this is all
we agree on because from here you lost me: Why shall I hold a Christmas party where
I shall stand at a corner? Why shall I be shouting to myself? Drinking wine? Etc.
Etc. Different writers, different preferences.
Helen Simpson:
The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on
the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire"
(Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with
it."
I translate it to
myself as ‘speaking less and working more’ – a saying I mostly subscribe as I
see myself more often in front of my computer than sitting on a terrace with a
glass of wine, listening and talking - making conversation. Even now I’m sitting in front
of my computer thanking every writer who shared her or his advice and wishing everybody
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
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