On The Road

What skills does a writer need to develop?

I think maybe this list needs to be pinned up above my monitor.

Chip MacGregor .com: What skills does a writer need to develop?

What skills does a writer need to develop?

Samantha wrote me this past weekend and asked, "If you were my mentor, what are the skills you would share with me to help me develop a career in writing?" I love the question...may I just create a laundry list as my answer?

1. Develop a writing schedule (i.e., have a time and a place where you write regularly)

2. Have a goal (perhaps "create 1000 salable word per day")

3. Learn to get the words down on paper (you can revise later - it's always easier to edit something than to create something)

4. Create short assignments for yourself (you're not trying to write a book all at once -- if you break it into pieces, you're trying to get each small assignment done)

5. [This is going to offend some people, but hear me out] In the words of Anne Lamott, be willing to create shitty first drafts (okay, forgive the language if it offends you -- that's stolen from Anne Lamott's fabulous book Bird by Bird, and it's one of the best writing lessons ever. So what should I say? "Poopy" first drafts? First drafts of deep doo-doo? It seems weak to say, "Be willing to create first drafts that aren't very good." So...I'll just ask you to live with my colorful use of the language today.)

6. Know what makes a good story (understand what a plot is and how to follow a story arc)

7. Learn to create true-to-life dialogue (nothing keeps people reading more than a great conversation)

8. Establish a place (many novelists has lost the art of establishing a setting)

9. Characters make your story (newer writers often want to focus strictly on plot, but strong characters are what add depth and texture to a story)

10. Understand what makes superb writing (great themes, the deep questions, wrestling with morality, decision making, choices that may not be correct)

11. Learn to organize your life (in the words of management guru Bobb Biehl, everybody needs a calendar, an address system, a filing system, and a "To Do" list)

12. Learn to partner "a big idea" with "great writing" and "a solid platform" (publishers want all three)

13. What is unique about your idea? (Solomon was right -- the writing of books is endless, so figure out what is different or special or fresh about yours... If you can't answer the "so what?" question, you're in trouble.)

14. Establish your voice (the hardest thing to do in writing, but the single most important step to becoming successful)

15. Network so that you can create strong relationships with other authors, with editors, and with publishers (it's who you know in publishing...just like every other business)

16. Know your audience (books are read by individuals, so know exactly which individual is going to be reading your book)

17. Create perfect proposals (work to create a proposal your publisher can't say "no" to)

18. Seek to understand the market (you don't have to be driven by trends, but it's important to know what they are)

19. Understand what helps writing sell (fiction is for entertainment, nonfiction is for education, but great writing for either should change me)

20. Know how to sell (your book, your idea, your self)

21. Establish a relationship with a good agent (there are some lousy agents out there, but a good agent can help shape your career as much as any choice you'll make)

22. Know how to plan a writing career (how to write, what to write, when to write, who to write to, how to move forward, and when to go full time)

23. Be able to read through a publishing contract (understand what you're signing and what it means)

24. Be able to negotiate (even agented authors need some basic negotiating tools)

25. Work hard at marketing (the author is the person most responsible for marketing the book, not the publisher, the editor, the sales team, the publicist, or the marketing director)

26. Know how to manage your money (writing is feast and famine...knowing how to fill in the gaps is a really handy ability)

27. Understand yourself and your writing (plan your work and work your plan)

28. Politeness counts (express appreciation to others -- success should be matched by grace)

29. Learn to give back (every good writer is a mentor who carries on the craft by investing in a protege)

30. Keep perspective on your life and work (publishing doesn't make you smart or pretty or holy; getting your name in print doesn't validate your life)

There you go -- my list of things I'd share with you. If this interests you, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Carolyn See's wonderful little book Making a Literary Life. In it, she encourages authors to write 1000 words and send a "charming note" each day. If you only did those two things, you'd probably be miles ahead of the pack. Maybe the best advice I know.

Mike Parker explores modern cartography

Classic bit of Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rghjp/On_the_Map_Motoring_Maps/

Self-confessed map addict Mike Parker explores modern cartography.

The ultimate in cheap and ubiquitous mapping, there's scarcely a vehicle in the land that doesn't contain a dog-eared road atlas. Road maps and their digital descendent, the sat nav, may guide us efficiently around our nation's highways but they don't tell us much else about the landscape we're speeding through. Mike recalls a bygone age of elegant motoring maps and considers how modern road mapping and its unrelenting emphasis on our motorways and trunk roads has changed our picture of Britain.



Got this from Joe Moran who is interviewed on the program and blogs this quote:
Me on the map

... this is from an article in The Times in 1908: ‘Many people love a map for a map’s sake. A good map gives them a peculiar kind of pleasure and makes their imagination glow. Before a journey the study of a map suggests all kinds of delights. The road down a mountain valley is almost seen by the mind, with a rock wall on the one side and a foaming torrent on the other … Thus we of the wheels think before beginning our tours … For it is a plan of the earth laid out on paper, a diminutive reality, though miles are but inches. And the motorist who has a soul will dote on his maps, cherish them, and thus keep fresh in mind past pleasures and the hope of future delights.’

Scrapings of plot

Writing a novel.
Once I have a premise and some scrapings of plot, the trick is to write, to assemble a progression of story. Nothing too experimental but nothing formulaic. This is literary fiction, not genre fiction. Writing constantly is the only way to find out what happens inbetween your plot points. Sometimes I have no idea about key issues, but I think about the book endlessly while I'm not writing. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a solution pops into my head, and I am further down the road. It happened today, a major idea of what is going on, a wonderful moment, the story starts to work.

Premise and Plot

Distinguish between premise and plot. Premise is the idea you had that made you want to write the thing. Plot is the story, that makes it actually readable. I spent years trying to write novels based only on premise.

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Reading fiction is like ..... translunar flight

But what then is writing it like?

OnFiction: Reading fiction is like ..... translunar flight (Part I)

The multi-stage Saturn rocket left Earth a 3,000 ton behemoth, 110 meters tall and 10 meters wide, initially accelerating up to 8,500 kilometers per hour (Woods, 2009, p. 56). The crew returned to Earth in a 4-meter wide by 3-meter high capsule that weighed one fifth of one percent of the starting rocket’s weight. At re-entry, the capsule coasted at 13 times the speed of a rifle bullet, burning off the “two-inch-thick honeycomb of carbon fiber and ablation compound ... taking the heat with it” (Nelson, 2009, p. 300). Similarly, it could be said that we go into a novel with a sprawling mass of personal baggage, things that we never perceived or understood about ourselves and others, things that have for some time required an extraordinary amount of psychic energy to transport from one place to another, and, if we are lucky, experiencing the novel allows us to walk away significantly lighter than before, burnished, even cleansed. A nurse who worked with astronauts returning from space saw something similar in their faces: “They have something, a sort of wild look, I would say, as if they had fallen in love with a mystery up there, sort of as if they haven’t got their feet back on the ground, as if they regret having come back to us . . . As if up there they’re not only freed from weight, from the force of gravity, but from desires, affections, passions, ambitions, from the body” (quoted in Nelson, 2009, p. 308). On the return leg of Apollo 14’s journey, Edgar Mitchell experienced what he later called an “ecstasy of unity.... the sensation of physically and mentally extending out into the cosmos” (Mitchell, 2008, p. 75) and expressed his belief that “humankind was going into space primarily to discover itself” (p. 48.) Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, later mused, “Perhaps going to the Moon and back in itself isn’t all that important. But it is a big enough step to give people a new dimension in their thinking – a sort of enlightenment” (quoted in Nelson, 2009, p. 327). Isn’t this just the sort of thing that reading a good novel can do for us?

Does journalism help you write fiction?

David Hewson blogs beautifully on his writing life and writes novels which I've never read but I'm sure are excellent. I'm a (sort of) ex-journalist, I've done enough paid for journalist type writing and work on magazines to be one in my head, plus my dad was a real journalist. It's a good question. I always assumed that I had a headstart as a literary writer because I'd proved I could deliver and get paid for readable writing. But as David points out here, there is a downside to it.

Does journalism help you write fiction? | The Blog

That’s a question I get asked a lot. Most journalists feel they should be able to write novels too. The truth? Journalism is a great training ground for several aspects of fiction writing. But it also encourages habits that will kill most novelists stone dead unless you manage to throttle them.

Let’s start with the benefits of a journalistic background…

Honesty

I'm writing the story of how I made millions and threw them all away. It's not really the story of how I made or didn't make money, it's not really the story of the .com boom, it's not really the story of an artist lost in the world of business. It's a human story. Hopefully.

I know I have to be totally honest if I'm to tell this story. I've looked into the depths of myself and realised that nobody knows what happened in that year. I've never told a soul. I was alone at the time. I blew a big chance to move my life on, and as a result my life has been somewhat stuck since.

Now I have a chance to address that. To move myself on. But it's going to be hard.

I am a Jew but not an Israeli

Bernard Avishai is my hero. I don't reallly have heros, but I have one now. He writes sense about the Palestinian issues, and the Israeli issues, and even the Jewish issues. What issues? Well, for all the thunder and fury that the subject brings forth from people who have convinced themselves that Israel is always in the right, there are serious nuances to work through. Sure, they are being ignored, but Bernard addresses them. Read his blog and see.

 The Nation Of Israel? Wait And See.

The Israeli Interior Ministry recognizes 126 nations, but not the Israeli nation. An Israeli citizen can be registered as belonging to the Assyrian, the Tatar or the Circassian nation. But the Israeli nation? Sorry, no such thing.

According to the official doctrine, the State of Israel cannot recognize an "Israeli" nation because it is the state of the "Jewish" nation. In other words, it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations. Messy? Indeed.

Fan letter

I just wrote a fan letter, of sorts, to a woman who writes erotic romance. Hmm. Well, I read a blog post she wrote and it rang my bell. So I wrote her a letter. Not sure if that's a fan letter, but as I told her my story, I thought I would reproduce it here in an efficient manner:

Dear Kate,

Just read your guest post at Bookends LLC blog. I loved it so I went looking for your email address and thought I'd drop you a quick line.
Now, I don't read what you write. To be honest, I never would or could. I'm too much of a european literary arty man to do that, sorry, can't change.
It was when you said 'I’ve never worked harder in my life or had as much fun, and if you want to see what a sixty-year-old grandmother, who always wanted to be an author, can write when she’s got a supportive agent and a terrific editor,' that you got my attention.
I'm not sixty yet (I'm not far off fifty though). My kids are still young (but not that young). I've had a long and varied career that revolved around art, college and business. Ten years ago I made and then lost a huge amount of money in internet business.
However, all along the way I've written. I was one of those children who could write. I sold my first well paid piece when I was fifteen and all through my business success years I wrote and was paid for pieces. I even have a book published, though it's non-fiction and fifteen years ago now. I can write.
But I never wrote a novel. I often started out on them, since I was about twelve. But they always seemed too long and too complicated. To tell the truth, I thought I just didn't know how.  But, last year, finding myself at the rough end of a ten year furlough on work and acknowledging that my art career was not going anywhere, I decided to take what I was best at and run with it. So I hashed out a novel, as a way of finding out if I could get from one end to the other, i.e. to learn how to do it. I decided to take the themes that I always made art about. I decided to write about things I knew about and things I cared about. I decided not to shy away from difficult subjects but at the same time to avoid the literary masterpiece in favour of a brilliant read. I decided to take my core skillset (which, when I boil it down, is 'ideas, ideas and ideas') and use that as the core of my first book.
So I've written and am almost finishing revising my first novel. I know what my second and third and even fourth will be, with a bit of luck. And I'm loving every minute of it. OK, now I need an agent and a publisher, but I've got enough contacts in the world to get started on those.
So why am I writing to you? Well, I'm not that young and I loved what you wrote. I also really enjoyed reading your extract. As I said, not my stuff, but so well written, and so reassuring to me.
So - best of luck with your new series and thanks for listening.