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Writing Words - writing it is the only way of getting it written

And then life happend

April 24th 2011 21:12
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon

I had ambitious plans for March - and now it's almost May. I got ill back then and the time I thought I could spend on blogging was spent sleeping (well, as much as possible with the little one). My ambitious plans went right out the window then. By the time I was better, I had family visiting, and before I knew it, March was over.

For the last few weeks, I've been busy with an assignment for my creative writing degree. I only have an hour or so per day for it and there's no time for blogging. A side effect of working on the assignment is that it's given me lots of ideas for blog posts. It will be a couple of weeks yet before I'll get round to writing them, though.
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By the time the imagination is finished with a fact, believe me, it bears no resemblance to a fact.
Philip Roth

Take the facts and run wild with them.
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NaNoWriMo Daily Inspiration: Finish It

November 27th 2010 11:31
"Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it."
Neil Gaiman (from the Guardian, Ten Rules for Writing Fiction)

Don't know about you, but that's my motto for this weekend. Get as close to 50k as I can and somewhere in the vicinity of having told the whole story.
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If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser

So there it is: Writing is hard.
And still you're doing it. You're doing something that most people want to do but shy away from.You're a step ahead, even if the novel you've been working on this month isn't as good as you expected or won't be finished or ends up being shorter than 50,000 words.
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There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
Natalie Goldberg

You can turn this on it's head: Just because we wrote something bad yesterday doesn't mean that today's writing will be bad, too. You'll know if today is a good writing day once you look back on what you've written.
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Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they do - not why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad.
Stephen King (On Writing)

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"Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."
The last of Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules

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NaNoWriMo Daily Inspiration: And Action

November 13th 2010 17:49
Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions - what we do - that we are happy or the reverse....All human happiness and misery take the form of action.
Aristotle

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NaNoWriMo Daily Inspiration: Trailblazer

November 10th 2010 07:11
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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NaNoWriMo Daily Inspiration: Don't Wait

November 7th 2010 12:03
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Jack London
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"When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."
Raymond Chandler

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"I'd gotten going, there was that much. The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better."
Stephen King, On Writing (page 325)

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"Impossible" Writing Projects

July 22nd 2010 20:56
"It always seems impossible until it is done."
Nelson Mandela

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"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist."
Isaac Asimov

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Quote on Editing (4)

March 24th 2010 18:20
Reporting back from holiday with one of my favourite quotes about editing fiction:

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them. - Elie Wiesel


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Quote on Editing (3)

March 5th 2010 22:31
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. - Truman Capote

One thing to bear in mind for NaNoEdMo: If in doubt, cutting it is better than leaving it in.
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Quote on Editing (1)

February 17th 2010 22:08
Mark Twain said: "I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

A bit of handy advice for NaNoEdMo and editing in general, I reckon.
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Let Conan O'Brien Inspire You

January 23rd 2010 12:35
I just watched Conan O'Brien last show online. He said about his seven-month stint and the early end of hosting 'The Tonight Show": "[...] I did it my way with people I love. I do not regret one second of anything that we've done here."

So, back to the writing life. Imagine it's August 23rd - seven months from today. What have you achieved as a writer by that date? How did you achieve it? Are you on track for achieving your 2010 writing goals? Can you look back and say, "I do not regret one second of anything I've done", even if things didn't turn out as planned


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Best Writers' Quotes

January 10th 2010 21:18
Most writers have a collection of quotes by other writers about writing. Reading what the great and successful have said about the writing process can be a comfort and provide inspiration when you are stuck or despair of your own writing. Here are some of my favourite writers' quotes:

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. - Terry Pratchett


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Editing dialogue

November 23rd 2009 22:54
Fictional dialogue in first drafts are usually boring. Most of the time. At least in my first drafts. That's why I take Elisabeth Bowen's Seven Rules for Dialogue to heart when I edit.
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