As usual, all answers, no questions....
- I'm a huge procrastinator, too.
- This works.
- You'll have to experiment around and find the best time for you. Me, I write at night….
- The easiest thing in the world is to not write—this is true for everyone
- I hate getting started. But once I start, I'm fine.
- Most of the time we'll never know the autobiographical relationship of poet and poem.
- Poems tend to be more personal than stories—there are fewer places to hide in a poem.
- I would always prefer that students analyze a text rather than talk about their feelings about the text—analysis over autobiography.
- A university class is not a book club.
- As writers we might strive to be perceptive, rather than judgmental.
- It’s (mostly, probably) perfectly okay to find the behavior of a fictional character repellent!
- The super-badass character is also aspirational for many readers….
- The discomfort perhaps comes as we recognize the limits of our empathy and the difficulty of truly imagining the experience of another human.
- Factual aspects of a story can always be researched, and research is always important to a creative writer.
- Take your knowledge of these emotions and give them to your characters.
- It means reading for HOW a text means, not what a text means. It's reading as perception, not judgement.
- It's maybe like when dreams fade once you wake up.
- When you're bored with what you're doing.
- All writers have an internal editor. I sure do! As writers we have to find a way to shut up that voice, dodge around it, suppress it.
- When you've accomplished one thing and want another challenge.
- When your vision of the world changes.
- When you learn something new.....
- Keeping notes is a really good idea! Most writers I know have overflowing notebooks with will all sorts of ideas and inspirations....
- I think this would all have to depend on the writer and where they are at that moment in their lives....
- Said is NOT dead. I would strongly advise you to stick with SAID and ASKED (almost) all the time.
- They are inoffensive little words that become invisible.
- When they are invisible, readers can actually focus on your character's brilliant talk.
- Maybe try skipping the things you're having trouble with.
- Add those things later as part of the revision process...?
- Is this writer's block or is it the voice of your internal editor?
- Not necessarily.
- In a short story, you can get by with only one "round" character. You can distinguish between secondary characters by giving them distinguishing physical characteristics.
- (I learned this from my man Tolstoy, in War & Peace).
- For a long work like a novel, you want to keep character notes just so you don't suddenly change their educational background or eye color or whatever.
- You can improvise as much as you like, but keep notes on your improvisation.
- I feel pretty confident starting when I know more or less how I want the book to end, and I have an outline that will get me at least 40 pages or so into the first draft. But even better is a BIG outline.
- I use both. I love my little notebooks, and I love my phone.
- An advantage of the notebooks: when you're at a meeting (in pre-pandemic times) it's considered impolite to mess with your phone while someone is speaking. But you can write in your notebook and say whatever you feel like saying, even if you're slagging the speaker! It's fun.
- Getting any book out is a big deal. After that, you can't control how many people read it, and you really can't control who likes it.
- So much of what is considered success is luck. But—you have to work hard to put yourself in a position to have luck.
- Research! Creative writers do research!
- Show their character through action. Just like every day real people show who they are by how they act....
- Yes, I think all of us should be writing in response to the pandemic.
- This historical crisis we're going through right now is complicated and exhausting—it calls for writers to pay attention to it.
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