Thursday, February 1, 2007

Tidbits

Today's Mood: Thoughtful. Today's Music: Robert Pollard: Normal Happiness. Today's Writing: Chapter 1 of I Feel For You. Today's Quote:
“You can’t edit nothing but you
can edit crap.”
-Sylvia Kelso


********
I was reading Justine Larbalestier's Blog and ended out clicking on a link that led to her husband's--writer Scott Westerfeld--blog. His section on writing advice is just hilarious--and dead on from my experience. I especially liked the section titled Mr. Chandler Speaks were Scott talks about the collection of letters by the great hard-boiled writer Raymond Chandler. This is one of my favorite parts (partly because I'm a writer and partly because I'm a teacher):

This next motivational technique is one I always tell aspiring
writers to try:


2. Letter to Alex Barris, an interview by mail18 March 1949
The important thing is that there should be a space of time,
say four
hours a day at least, when a professional writer doesn’t do
anything else but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t
feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out of the window or stand
on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other
positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write
checks. Write or nothing. It’s the same principle as keeping
order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn
something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very
simple rules, a. you don’t have to write. B. you can’t do anything else.
The rest comes of itself.

Put those two rules on your refrigerator and you’ll have a
novel within a year. Or at least someone else who uses your refrigerator
will. (Scott Westerfeld)

Two other notes of interest (well, to me anyway.) First off, I just finished Writing Down the Bones. I have a new plan for writing this novel (getting past the editor/censor in my brain) On Mondays I'm going to spend my writing time plotting the chapter that I'll be working on for the
week. That will get me into the writing after the weekend and it will give me direction for the week. Then for four days I'll write. A chapter a week is optimistic for me, but hey, I did it for the last month I was writing Free Lunch Program--so I know it's possible. See today's quote.

Second, I've been asked to speak to something like 60 second graders about revision. And I agreed. Whew! I stressed over it, thinking that because I don't have anything published I'm not qualified to be a speaker. But then I realized, heck, I'm still a writer, and I still do a heck of a lot of revision--so, there you go. I agreed. I'll tell you about it how it goes next week.

Here's wishing you all lots of happy writing.

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