Posts Tagged ‘Writing’
So sorry I’m late announcing the winner of Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! There were only three entries, so I just used the old slips-of-paper-in-hat thing. I picked #1, which is Ali! =D Congrats Ali! If you send me your mailing address (thanhtam88 [at] gmail [dot] com), I’ll be by the post office to mail it out in the next week! =D
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I added Gail Carson Levine’s Writing Magic - Creating Stories That Fly to my Amazon shopping cart to get free shipping on something, and have decided that I’ll probably give it away when I’m done reading and reviewing it. It’s geared towards Young Adult and Children’s fiction, I think. For those of you who don’t know, Levine is the author of Newberry Honor Book Ella Enchanted, and many other Young Adult novels. Does anyone want my copy of it? If you do, comment and I’ll put you in the drawing list again for when I finish with it.
 Write your novel this November! Each year, thousands upon thousands of writers gear up and plunge themselves into a crash-course adventure in noveling. National Novel Writing month is just two months away, and I’ve gotten all that I can out of my copy of Chris Baty’s guide through the thirty days of novel-madness that is NaNoWriMo.
So I’m giving it away so it can get better use. It’s in pretty good condition, minimal wear and no unsightly stains. It really fired me up the first time I did NaNo, and is a really well-written and amusing read. Something I would buy again, except I’ve read it five times already, and I’d like to pass it onto someone else.
So if anyone wants it, comment and tell me about what exciting thing you’re writing this November. I’ll do a drawing for the winner on October 1st, and have it send out by the 15th.
=D Good luck!
I find that the best of my first drafts and free writes are inspired by songs that strike a chord inside me. I once wrote a short-short story inspired by an epic Vietnamese song about a wife who sits on a cliff overlooking the sea with her baby and waits, and waits, and waits for her husband to come home from war. Eventually, she waits for so long that she turns to stone. There is a boulder in Vietnam somewhere that actually does look like a woman, cradling a baby, looking out into the sea.
I can’t say it’s the best thing ever, though it is one of the few pieces that I’m very proud of.
Here’s the piece in its entirety:
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My memories of Vietnam are not of the war. Instead, they are of hot, narrow, gravelly neighborhood streets flanked by open-doored, just-as-narrow houses; of dust-clouded intersections where cars knit chaotically past one another like crayfish in a tank on market day; of sleepy afternoons swinging pendulum-like on a hammock; of freshly-made pho and ice cream drizzled with sweetened condensed milk in crunchy, air-filled buns that melt in your mouth.
But the novel I’m writing won’t be about my memories, though hopefully I can still put the part of myself that loves Vietnam and thinks it’s beautiful into the piece. It’ll be about the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War was a major historical event that has been written about probably a hundred, a thousand times over. Still, for years now, I’ve wanted to write a novel about the war and the people that it affected–people who lived and loved and created memories in Vietnam that must be even more vivid and wonderful than that of my four-year old self are. (more…)
Inspired by my DW writing buddies to explore the wealth of inspiration that writing books provide, I bought a book. It’s by Roy Peter Clark, and it’s called Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. I picked it because it received good reviews on Amazon and because its four sections have great headers: Nuts and Bolts, Special Effects, Blueprints, and Useful Habits.
I’m more than 2/3 in, and I agree with the good reviews. I really do like the overall organization of the book, though, as with any book that attempts as grand a task as teaching people how to write better, there are bound to be some things that one already knows. Even for the seasoned writer (which I’m not, by the way) this book will probably offer some insight into the craft of writing, or inspire inspiration for starting new projects. (more…)
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