Reasons to write

Recently, I promised Melanie I was going to talk about my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books this week. Well, that’s been put off until next week (Sorry Melanie!), because I actually had an actual blog-worthy life occurrence this week.

So, on Monday  night, I went to see this lady in concert, the one whose Kickstarter I mentioned a while back:

Amanda Palmer is a former member of the cabaret punk group The Dresden Dolls. She has a rough edge to voice and a talent for hooks and rapid-fire lyrics. Her concerts are as much spectacle and theatre as they are music.

But there’s one other thing about Amanda, the issue that makes this blog post relevant: she’s married to Neil Gaiman. (Click on this link for an amazing photo of them by Kyle Cassidy)

And, as it happens, Neil attended the San Diego show, and kindly came out to sign autographs afterward. And this time – unlike the only other time I met him – I managed not to babble like an idiot. I went for the straight approach, and told him that I really loved his books, and that I was an aspiring writer, and that his writing had helped inspire me.  He was really sweet and friendly and told me that the most important thing for an aspiring writer was to write every day.

So, I have this issue where I never, ever remember to bring things to a concert to be signed. So I looked at this piece of paper I had, and then at the bag I was carrying it in. I bought it from the Southern California chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

Yes, that's right - rare plants AND embroidery.

Having nothing else good to be signed, on a whim I handed that bag to Neil and Amanda instead.

So now my bag has nerdy, geeky AND rock star cred!

Indeed an excellent night. And now I have something else to add to the list of reasons why I write:

1) Because it makes me happy

2) Because I love flexing my imagination to coming up with worlds and characters and plots

3) Because it expands my knowledge, of science and vocabulary and culture that I might never have otherwise encountered

4) Because NEIL GAIMAN TOLD ME TO

Writing tips - best of

Last month, my friend and former in-person-critique-group buddy Margo (permalink to her blog on the right!) took part in an interesting blog challenge: a whole month of top ten lists organized by alphabet.  It made for fun reading, and I kind of wish I'd joined in – I’m sure you all have noticed how much I love lists.

My favorite of her month's posts was her Top Ten Writing Tips. I love that idea - writing seems to be such an amalgamation of tips and tricks and lengthy discourses on how to make your pacing work.  So for this post, I decided to compile my favorite tips and quotes and pieces of advice for this post - though I came up with six instead of ten. Nothing too lengthy, just the single sentences or short paragraphs that were real eye openers from me, and ideas I revisit again and again (except when I lose the links).

  

1) Making a list of ten ideas (this was also on Margo's list).

I've written about this before, in this post, and gave an example. Basically, if you're trying to come up with an idea or solve a problem, you write out a list of ten possible answers. Those first ten, or at least the first seven, are generally clichés. Once you get past those, the truly fascinating ideas start to flow.

2) First step toward a character driven story

All right, I can't find my link for this one, but I found one piece of advice for how to tell if your story is heading toward being plot driven or character driven: Does your story start with something happening to your character? Or does your story start because of something your character did?

3) For those of us who get too attached to individual words:

Writer Erin Bow says:  "No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”

4) This perfectly sums up what I strive for in my characters. 

Holly Lisle: ” “Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great... ...

and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves.

THAT is why you write fiction."

 5) This isn't a tip as much as a perspective that really fits how I feel about writing, and about money, and the perspective I sometimes see that pure art should be unconnected to money.

Greg Curtis : "“People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.”

6) From Neil Gaiman: "Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

I had a hard time with this last one. Everyone's advice on how to fix things seemed so sensible… until I'd fix something just to have a publisher say they didn't like that part of the story. Now I still listen to advice, of course – but I fix I it in a way that's true to the theme and the heart of that particular story.

More groups of author quotes:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show_tag?id=writing-advice

http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/writing_rules.html

 Go give it a look. Find your magic tips. And I hope my fellow Prosers and all the readers will share their favorites... I'm only at six out of ten, after all.