Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
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.
This is a piece of advice that writers get quite often, from books, teachers, other writers. It’s nothing new. But sometimes, I’ve found, we tend to forget this very fundamental tool at our disposal.
To me, one of the great things about being a writer is that you notice things others don’t. As a writer, mundane details such as the coffee stain on a desk or the beauty mark underneath someone’s eye become richer, fuller, bursting with potential. And that’s always been the beauty of writing. It opens up the world.
So I see the coffee stain and imagine the trigger than must have caused such carelessness, or I think to myself that this person with this beauty mark would make a great side character. And then, as everyday life gets in the way and pushes more and more details in my direction, each more distracting than the one before it, I forget about the coffee stain and the beauty mark, and that story, those characters, are lost forever.
If only I had written it down.
These days I carry a composition notebook with me everywhere and jot down quick impressions as I ride on the bus or sit down at a table for lunch. The world is a treasure trove of ideas. No lie.
“But what do I take notes of? When will I ever use these notes?” you may ask. There’s no way of telling, for either of those questions. But I would suggest taking notes on absolutely everything that you find interesting. The professor whose mouth froths at the corner with spit as he lectures energetically in front of a class, the rows and rows of old photos on a restaurant’s wall, the cat who hops onto your balcony every night at 8 like clockwork. You may not have any use for it now, but maybe one day, when you’re in need of ideas, you can flip through your pages of notes and find interesting characters, settings, and situations in them.
I found no less than ten snippets of notes from my 2006 notebook that I’ll be turning into story bits for NaNoWriMo.
Remember: the more detailed your notes are, the more vivid and real you’ll be able to make your writing. So don’t skimp on the details. I find that labeling your notes with a header (CHARACTER, or SETTING, or IDEA) helps when trying to find things to fill one’s story. Another thing to keep in mind is that your notes don’t have to be accurate. Many people get caught up in finding just the right word to describe something they see faithfully, instead of writing down what the situation could be about. Use your imagination in your note-taking. A woman is crying on the bus. Is that all you write? No. You should write why she’s crying. You should write what happens when she gets off the bus.
Challenge: Next time you’re in a public place, take notes on everything that interests you, gathering as much detail as possible. Then go home and try to compose a short story or snippet using your notes. (I’d also love it if you shared what you came up with!)
 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…)
I haven’t gone through the whole stimulus bill handout that was passed out in class (yes, I am a bit too busy to go look up all the information on my own–how do CPAs keep up?), but I’ve looked over the first-time homebuyer and new car deduction bits, and they just make me want to get a job and be able to take advantage of them before they expire. It must suck to be one of the people who purchased their homes before new year.
The homebuyer credit is going to be a no pay-back one, which basically means the government is giving first-time homebuyers money, to encourage them to buy instead of saving. It’d not only give a big boost to the real estate industry, and anyone who has taken economics knows that money goes through a sort of multiplication effect. It’s not just $500,000 that will be spent in just the real estate area–it’ll be a lot more money spent in all sorts of other areas as well.
The stimulus bill also seems to have a lot of energy incentives in place. I wonder how that’ll affect the area in the coming year. I read the other day (followed a link on my twitlist) that one of the best jobs to have in 2009 that will likely weather the economic storm will be jobs related to alternative energy. That’ll be interesting to follow!
Writing-Babble: I’ve been thinking to myself that original historical fiction set during and after the Vietnam War would be really fun to write. I’d get to do research on a period of history that is very personally relevant (me being Vietnamese and all) and I get to listen to my parents tell stories about their crazy old neighbors. What’s not to like? Other project I’d like to explore is a short-short story collection (for my own amusement) using my fairy tale -themed tarot cards as prompts.
Bird-Babble: Got Kelsey little wooden chew toys last month. They came in a little container, and he only seems to be interested in the ones shaped like thread spools. He’s completely destroyed two already, and now there are only two left. Next batch of toys I shall take before & after pictures.
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