Have you started you novel? No? Have you at least started writing a poem or a short story?
If the answer is still no, DO NOT READ THIS BLOG! Write instead!
If the answer is yes, please continue...
If you are a beginner writer go to your local library. Do not buy books on writing, borrow them! Read writer's digest books and magazines. If you plan on writing magazine articles then you will probably want to purchase the ones you are interested in submitting to, but if you are merely using the magazines for learning purposes, save your money.
Have a desperate need to own writing resource books? Pick up used writing books. The information may be somewhat dated, but you can look for the updated material on-line, and again save money!
Writing Reference Books to check out
See Jane Write: A Girl's Guide to Writing Chick Lit
Sarah Mlynowski (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Sarah Mlynowski Page
Farrin Jacobs (Author)
ON WRITING, by Stephen King
WRITE YOUR HEART OUT and WORD PAINTING by Rebecca McClanahan
Thesaurus
Dictionary
Webster's Compact Rhyming Dictionary
Webster's Compact Writers Guide
The Elements of Style (1918), by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White
If you absolutely must buy some books visit http://www.betterworldbooks.com/ or amazon.com
Will Write for Shoes: How to Write a Chick Lit Novel
Buy new: $14.95 $11.21
40 Used & new from $6.70
4.2 out of 5 stars (16)
This Is Chick-lit
Buy new: $17.95 $15.34
34 Used & new from $0.68
4.8 out of 5 stars (9)
The Weekend Novelist
Buy new: $17.95 $12.21
46 Used & new from $5.28
4.0 out of 5 stars (24)
See all 13 results
Also browse your favorite authors sites. That will give you insight into the writing life and the technological demands of a career in writing!
Monday, August 23, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
How to write a novel without losing your mind?
I don't know if you can truly remain sane while writing a novel. I had my only swearing match with a smart good hearted lady, while I was writing a novel. The fight was more my fault than hers. I put milk in the cupboard instead of the refrigerator and money in the refrigerator instead of my wallet. The joke I wanted cold cash was indeed made. I have done some insane things while writing, but I know that sanity returns after I finish. It does not return if the writer walks away from the project mid sentence or paragraph or story! The truly insane never finish or started their novel(s). Girl Interrupted is a good example of how a book, a memoir in this case, can restore someone's mind.
So far I explained that to write a novel I needed to ignore my doubt, be true to my own unique words, and lose my mind. I have read the myriad of books on writing, the craft, the process and the techniques. They were helpful after I started writing! Before they can derail, confuse and discourage a new writer! Once I started writing I had the experience, limited, yes, but still, to recognize that advice and those tips that helped my writing and those that harmed it. Now to be clear a word of advice that would hinder my process, my writing path, may in fact help another writer on his or her way. As I wrote before writing is very individualistic.
I am reading my own words as I write. The argument could be made that novelists, and or writers that kill themselves are not sane, but I argue that in fact these suicides were the result of writers who indeed have NOT finished their work, their novels. These writers, poets, novelists, and or artists had more to write, to release. The words they most needed to put out in the world stayed trapped and it was that or those inner demons that never became fully formed paragraphs, chapters, that killed their creators, or rather caused the creators to kill themselves.
Also a true writer lives forever in his or her printed words. Look for Writing a novel, 3rd Lesson
So far I explained that to write a novel I needed to ignore my doubt, be true to my own unique words, and lose my mind. I have read the myriad of books on writing, the craft, the process and the techniques. They were helpful after I started writing! Before they can derail, confuse and discourage a new writer! Once I started writing I had the experience, limited, yes, but still, to recognize that advice and those tips that helped my writing and those that harmed it. Now to be clear a word of advice that would hinder my process, my writing path, may in fact help another writer on his or her way. As I wrote before writing is very individualistic.
I am reading my own words as I write. The argument could be made that novelists, and or writers that kill themselves are not sane, but I argue that in fact these suicides were the result of writers who indeed have NOT finished their work, their novels. These writers, poets, novelists, and or artists had more to write, to release. The words they most needed to put out in the world stayed trapped and it was that or those inner demons that never became fully formed paragraphs, chapters, that killed their creators, or rather caused the creators to kill themselves.
Also a true writer lives forever in his or her printed words. Look for Writing a novel, 3rd Lesson
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Returning to reading...
As far as I am aware no one is reading my how to write a novel, or more aptly how I finally finished a novel, barely, series of blogs. So since I have now read the first Sisters of the heart series by Christine Feehan three times I figured I'd write on that for a minute or two.
Water Bound flows up drowning you in fire with the first paragraph. Soon Christine Feehan's story soothes and cools you down, with rain, if you like the way she writes. The main female character has "Sensory problems," but courageously swims and dives and calls the water to live a life. Thanks to the women, her sisters, that she believes saved her, she lives the life she never thought she'd have. Saving a drowning man she connects with him and he with her.
I am deliberately avoiding using the characters names and being as vague as possible because any one reading this needs to read Christine Feehan's book. Yes, it is a paranormal romance, but it is also the story of second chances when a good decent life during the first chance wasn't even a choice, an option.
We need a cure for autism, but failing that we need to accept people as they are, not as we need or wish them to be.
The honesty in this book between a man who does not want to know himself or his memories and a woman who doesn't see herself clearly, although she views everyone else's image fairly well, when her eyes are focused memsermized me.
Obtaining this book was a bit of a farce. First on a lazy Sunday after a weird week, I am beginning to feel those are the only kind I am allowed anymore, I begged my husband to take me to get this book after wrongly reading that it had been released. I found out my error when my former boss at Waldenbooks told me the book was scheduled to come out at the end of JULY not the beginning. I went home a little to dejected considering. I mainly wanted to find out if I was right when weeks earlier I told another Feehan reader that I was pretty sure I knew the idenity of the main male character. I was right but I had to wait to discover that fact. I knew Feehan wouldn't let her Drake Sister fans down!
As it was I got Water Bound two days early, on Sunday July 25, instead of on Tuesday July 27! I didn't sleep that night. This story is one of her best, and so I no longer even care if I ever get to say I told you so to that other Feehan reader. I just hope she gets a chance to read the book. I am not lending out my copy!
I did let a friend borrow the first Drake Sister, Sarah, story and THE DARK PRINCE, the first Carpathian, so to speak.
I read Dark Destiny and that book will always be my favorite Feehan novel! I haven't purchased any of the GHOST WALKER novels, but I have read a few, borrowed from the library. Love JDL, our local library! Avid readers, especially the broke ones, in Jackson Michigan are grateful for our incredible library!!!
So I am all over the place, but I really enjoyed Water Bound. Another weird thing happened after reading it the first time. I awoke to the ceiling leaking in the bathroom and the kitchen. I did not call the water! The person two apartments above me flooded the empty apartment directly above me with an overflowing bathtub.
WATER BOUND is my second favorite Feehan novel. A cleansing shower after Turbluent Sea. Now I will read it for the fourth time!
Sending this via e-mail.
Water Bound flows up drowning you in fire with the first paragraph. Soon Christine Feehan's story soothes and cools you down, with rain, if you like the way she writes. The main female character has "Sensory problems," but courageously swims and dives and calls the water to live a life. Thanks to the women, her sisters, that she believes saved her, she lives the life she never thought she'd have. Saving a drowning man she connects with him and he with her.
I am deliberately avoiding using the characters names and being as vague as possible because any one reading this needs to read Christine Feehan's book. Yes, it is a paranormal romance, but it is also the story of second chances when a good decent life during the first chance wasn't even a choice, an option.
We need a cure for autism, but failing that we need to accept people as they are, not as we need or wish them to be.
The honesty in this book between a man who does not want to know himself or his memories and a woman who doesn't see herself clearly, although she views everyone else's image fairly well, when her eyes are focused memsermized me.
Obtaining this book was a bit of a farce. First on a lazy Sunday after a weird week, I am beginning to feel those are the only kind I am allowed anymore, I begged my husband to take me to get this book after wrongly reading that it had been released. I found out my error when my former boss at Waldenbooks told me the book was scheduled to come out at the end of JULY not the beginning. I went home a little to dejected considering. I mainly wanted to find out if I was right when weeks earlier I told another Feehan reader that I was pretty sure I knew the idenity of the main male character. I was right but I had to wait to discover that fact. I knew Feehan wouldn't let her Drake Sister fans down!
As it was I got Water Bound two days early, on Sunday July 25, instead of on Tuesday July 27! I didn't sleep that night. This story is one of her best, and so I no longer even care if I ever get to say I told you so to that other Feehan reader. I just hope she gets a chance to read the book. I am not lending out my copy!
I did let a friend borrow the first Drake Sister, Sarah, story and THE DARK PRINCE, the first Carpathian, so to speak.
I read Dark Destiny and that book will always be my favorite Feehan novel! I haven't purchased any of the GHOST WALKER novels, but I have read a few, borrowed from the library. Love JDL, our local library! Avid readers, especially the broke ones, in Jackson Michigan are grateful for our incredible library!!!
So I am all over the place, but I really enjoyed Water Bound. Another weird thing happened after reading it the first time. I awoke to the ceiling leaking in the bathroom and the kitchen. I did not call the water! The person two apartments above me flooded the empty apartment directly above me with an overflowing bathtub.
WATER BOUND is my second favorite Feehan novel. A cleansing shower after Turbluent Sea. Now I will read it for the fourth time!
Sending this via e-mail.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Trying Something new or blogging via email
Writing a Novel 2nd lesson and a half
Writers and each individual thinking or daydreaming about writing read writer references. Blogs on writing are as prolific as the writers that write and manage these web logs. Books on the craft, the process, the techniques of writing have whole shelves in bookstores and libraries. Stephen King, Janet Evanovich and Ann Lamott wrote books on writing and or how to write or the writing life. Magazines focused on writing include Writer's Digest, Writer's Journal and Poets and Writers.
The biggest mistake a new writer makes is to copy success. To believe that a formula for writing exists and that once he or she discovers it and follows it, success will come easy, is a time consuming error that can become a setback. A writer's greatest asset is originality. Finding his or her own voice is just the beginning. He or she, okay I, needed to learn my uniqueness. I needed to recognize the experiences that shaped me and that only I will put into words. I needed to give voice to my feelings, the flutteration that is not a word, the emotion that is unnamed, that I have never read, felt, in another's writing. I needed to focus on the distractions, the kind kids, the hurting husband, and the fueling friend, to enrich my quiet writing. I needed to discover me, not some formula.
Writing as a hobby results in self knowledge, but writing as a career requires that the writer use that self knowledge intellectually, emotionally, spiritually without discarding a single aspect of the soul, the integrated person that writing uncovered. Writing a novel is an investment in the writer's self, but if the writer plans to submit his or her work, it becomes a marketable product. But that is a different series of blogs. Someday I may write selling a novel series of blogs, but must complete this writing a novel blog. You have to have a product to sell a product.
During my process I have learned that getting ahead of myself is one of my original quirky abilities as a hobby writer, but something I must control when I am writing professionally.
Reading writers references aids a writer, but a writer must decide which writing advice and information is useful. Reading it all is recommended, but implementing it all is discouraged, at least by me.
At that point in my novel writing experience I had written over two hundred thousand words and skimmed hundreds of writing reference books, but I had never finished a novel. A writer has not written a novel until he or she has finished a novel. I forced myself to finish my first rough draft of my novel HALF HEARTED STRESS TEST last year, December 2009! I am polishing the novel, working on finishing others, and plan on submitting novels next year. However like I wrote earlier that is another blog!
Writers and each individual thinking or daydreaming about writing read writer references. Blogs on writing are as prolific as the writers that write and manage these web logs. Books on the craft, the process, the techniques of writing have whole shelves in bookstores and libraries. Stephen King, Janet Evanovich and Ann Lamott wrote books on writing and or how to write or the writing life. Magazines focused on writing include Writer's Digest, Writer's Journal and Poets and Writers.
The biggest mistake a new writer makes is to copy success. To believe that a formula for writing exists and that once he or she discovers it and follows it, success will come easy, is a time consuming error that can become a setback. A writer's greatest asset is originality. Finding his or her own voice is just the beginning. He or she, okay I, needed to learn my uniqueness. I needed to recognize the experiences that shaped me and that only I will put into words. I needed to give voice to my feelings, the flutteration that is not a word, the emotion that is unnamed, that I have never read, felt, in another's writing. I needed to focus on the distractions, the kind kids, the hurting husband, and the fueling friend, to enrich my quiet writing. I needed to discover me, not some formula.
Writing as a hobby results in self knowledge, but writing as a career requires that the writer use that self knowledge intellectually, emotionally, spiritually without discarding a single aspect of the soul, the integrated person that writing uncovered. Writing a novel is an investment in the writer's self, but if the writer plans to submit his or her work, it becomes a marketable product. But that is a different series of blogs. Someday I may write selling a novel series of blogs, but must complete this writing a novel blog. You have to have a product to sell a product.
During my process I have learned that getting ahead of myself is one of my original quirky abilities as a hobby writer, but something I must control when I am writing professionally.
Reading writers references aids a writer, but a writer must decide which writing advice and information is useful. Reading it all is recommended, but implementing it all is discouraged, at least by me.
At that point in my novel writing experience I had written over two hundred thousand words and skimmed hundreds of writing reference books, but I had never finished a novel. A writer has not written a novel until he or she has finished a novel. I forced myself to finish my first rough draft of my novel HALF HEARTED STRESS TEST last year, December 2009! I am polishing the novel, working on finishing others, and plan on submitting novels next year. However like I wrote earlier that is another blog!
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Writing a Novel 2nd lesson
Before reading reference books on how to write or not write and after learning to ignore the inner critic or self doubter or whatever the creative writer in you wishes to call the evil hater voice inside of you, as an aspiring novelist, a writer, you need to WRITE!
Instead of reading advice on how to write a novel you need to write one, or at least start one. Certainly writing can be learned from books, but the practice of putting letters together to create words to create sentences to create paragraphs to create, ah, well, whatever the creative writer in you wishes to create from words, that is a skill, a craft that needs hands on experience.
Another novelist can write about writing a novel. Can write the absolute truth, Can describe the process step by step, but until I wrote everyday, in my journal, until I had written more than a hundred poems, until I had started three novels and finished several short stories I had no hope of writing a completed manuscript. A novel is a process, but a personal one, and another novelist's step by step instructions, blueprints, were meaningless until I had my own measuring tape,hammer and nails. Until I had my own tools. I read Deborah Macomber's essay on the topic of a writer's tool belt in 2008 or 2009 Writer's Market. She is a very good creative writer.
Check out her words after you write!!!
Instead of reading advice on how to write a novel you need to write one, or at least start one. Certainly writing can be learned from books, but the practice of putting letters together to create words to create sentences to create paragraphs to create, ah, well, whatever the creative writer in you wishes to create from words, that is a skill, a craft that needs hands on experience.
Another novelist can write about writing a novel. Can write the absolute truth, Can describe the process step by step, but until I wrote everyday, in my journal, until I had written more than a hundred poems, until I had started three novels and finished several short stories I had no hope of writing a completed manuscript. A novel is a process, but a personal one, and another novelist's step by step instructions, blueprints, were meaningless until I had my own measuring tape,hammer and nails. Until I had my own tools. I read Deborah Macomber's essay on the topic of a writer's tool belt in 2008 or 2009 Writer's Market. She is a very good creative writer.
Check out her words after you write!!!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Writing a Novel 1st lesson
I'll be online and thus adding to this blog more now that I have AT&T wireless at home. Originally I intended to write about my favorite hobby, reading, and I will continue to do that, but I have written a novel and I plan on writing thirty or more books so I thought I'd share on that subject as well!
My self doubt is shouting. "You are so boring. No one wants to read your lame a** thoughts or even your novel. Stop torturing yourself and everyone else!" I write my self doubt's words and then ignore them! That is the first lesson I learned as a writer. I don't have to believe that I am the greatest or that I am the most talented or skilled, but I have to be willing to push worries and doubts aside. Focus is imperative and listening to anything other then the creative force's voice is distracting!
Writers and other artists are notoriously harsh critics when it comes to his or her own talents! I certainly am not a judge of my own work. I read Ezra Pound's words about what is well loved remains. That worried me for a minute because I hate everything I write. Fortunately the hatred never lasts. I find the love in the legacy of words.
My self doubt is shouting. "You are so boring. No one wants to read your lame a** thoughts or even your novel. Stop torturing yourself and everyone else!" I write my self doubt's words and then ignore them! That is the first lesson I learned as a writer. I don't have to believe that I am the greatest or that I am the most talented or skilled, but I have to be willing to push worries and doubts aside. Focus is imperative and listening to anything other then the creative force's voice is distracting!
Writers and other artists are notoriously harsh critics when it comes to his or her own talents! I certainly am not a judge of my own work. I read Ezra Pound's words about what is well loved remains. That worried me for a minute because I hate everything I write. Fortunately the hatred never lasts. I find the love in the legacy of words.
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