Writing: Grab Your Ideas Fast

Pre-Memorial Day wishes to all you writers out there. This is Adair Heitmann scribing this post from chilly Connecticut. A proverbial writing question is “Where do ideas come from?” Well, they come from your mind, heart, and soul. Ideas come from your observations, reflections, and experiences. They arrive from conflict, loss, despair, joy and ecstasy. Plots, plays, and poems bubble up from an instant connection that percolated its clarity to you in a heartbeat. As clear as a sparkling blue glacier-fed lake, those are the ideas to grab.

Keeping pen and paper notebooks handy in your car, purse or pocket helps. Jotting down ideas in your mobile device using Evernote makes writers on the go even more organized. Writers can snap photos, take notes, and even record videos and voice memos. The content syncs to all of your desktop or mobile devices.

For Android users, you can use an app called Colornote Notepad. Colornote is a simple, color-coded note taking app that uses sticky note style homescreen widgets to give you quick access to your note from your homescreen. You take your notes on a stylized notepad, and can organize them by color and category so they stand out easily. Red for immediate! Or blue for, need to sleep on this one.

While brushing my teeth, I’ve been known to open and flatten a cardboard toothpaste box, just to have something to write on. I also have what’s called a tickler file. It’s a three-ring notebook with pockets. I scribble the idea on whatever scrap of paper is at hand, date the concept and add it to binder. That way I never lose the inspired moment.  My seeds are kept safe and dry until planted. Until yesterday, when I didn’t follow my own advice.

I took the day off from work. I was opening an antique washstand in my living room, by twisting an old-fashioned key into the lock. The washstand was from the farm my mother grew up on in Virginia. I keep votive candles and tablecloths in the washstand. As I retrieved what I was looking for I had a Maxwell House moment. A crystal clear idea for a play rose to the top of my mind. A play! I’ve never written one! The idea had to do with a totally different perspective on Memorial Day. One I’d never heard of or read about. The idea was so strong and so good and so complete I didn’t jot it down. Today the idea is a wisp in my memory.

So fellow writers, do as I say, not as I do. Grab those creative ideas, and jot them down anywhere, anytime. Don’t falter.

Until next time, keep on writing.

Writing w/o Distractions

As Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast, this is Adair Heitmann chiming in, writing to you about staying focused on your writing.

Of all professions, it seems like writers are the ones who always have the most excuses not to write. Today, as the wind howls outside, my family and I are in the home of friends. I thought distractions would be a good topic for today’s blog. Here’s my list of hints and observations:

1. Only you are in charge of your focus, be ruthless in carving out your mental space.
2. Like rubbing a knife on a whetstone, look for ways in your everyday life to sharpen your writing skills. Those exercises help you down the road.
3. Writing for social media trains your mind to cut to the chase. Condensing a topic to 140 characters or less on Twitter is a good way to hone your writer’s brain.
4. If you have to write captions for your job, like I do, that can sharpen your communication skills.
5. When you write, write, don’t edit.
6. Set aside time just to write. Don’t pick up the phone, do laundry, or check your Facebook account.
7. Make sure your tools are up to date before you start writing. Check the ink in your pen before you sit down. Make sure you have a full toner cartridge in your printer.
8. If you are stumped on what to write, set a timer for 20 minutes. Write nonstop, don’t edit or ponder. Write stream of consciousness, when the timer goes off, stop.

Enough of my ideas, what are your favorite suggestions?

Until next time, stay safe out there, and keep on writing!

The Versatile Blogger Award Winner: Thank You!

Hello to all you writers out there, this is Adair Heitmann writing to you on this steamy summer day. Did you hear the bells and whistles? The Fairfield Writer’s Blog just received The Versatile Blogger Award! This is awarded to blogs that are considered helpful and excellent. Aw shucks. Both my colleague and fellow writing workshop leader, Alex McNab, and I currently keep The Fairfield Writer’s Blog going (along with our invited guest authors). We strive to be informative and always bring the blog back to its core mission of “literary connections.”

As writers we constantly hear about building our writing platforms. Part of building your platform includes creating and maintaining an online presence. Blogs are a great way to do that, and commenting on other people’s blogs can be invaluable. (See more about this in the list below.)

The Versatile Blogger Award was a connection that came put of the blue, thanks to blog reader Brooke Ryter.  Part of being nominated for the award is to select and share 15 blogs/bloggers that have been recently discovered or that we follow regularly. Here’s Alex and my edited and combined list, sorry we couldn’t put every blogger we know on it. The list is in no particular order, but we attempted to include blogs that are good resources for writers. Please check them out.

http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com/

Mary Carroll Moore writes all about the book writing and creative writing process.

http://janefriedman.com/

Jane Friedman – Being human at electric speed: Exploring what it means to be a writer in the digital age.

http://ollinmorales.wordpress.com/

Ollin Morales Courage 2 Create inspires writers to do just that . . . write!

http://artistsroad.wordpress.com/

Patrick Ross: Travels of a MFA student and prolific writer.

http://writeconnexion.wordpress.com/

Gabi Coatsworth: writing about a writer’s life in Fairfield County, CT.

http://kimscraftblog.blogspot.com/

Kim Craft Fiction, Memoir, Creative Writing (from Top Ten Blogs for Writers list)

http://christinakatz.com/

Christina Katz: The Prosperous Writer. Her handle sums up her niche.

http://anneksmith.wordpress.com/blog/

Anne Kathryn Smith, writer at large. She recently commented on The Fairfield Writer’s Blog and I was drawn to a helpful link to her blog.

storyfix.com
Larry Brooks is one of many storytelling gurus online. He revisits the basics of structure from time to time in helpful ways.

the millions.com
Publishing news, author Q&As, plus a lot of links to pieces of interest on other sites.

mediabistro.com/galleycat/
Galleycat is a publishing news place. On the parent media bistro site, there are periodic interviews with authors and editors, under the heading What Do You Do?

plotwhisperer
The focus here is on plotting your story.

bloodredpencil.blogspot.com
A rotating group of book editors has something new up every weekday. There are a lot of helpful gems back in the archives.

dystel.com
Dystel & Goderich Literary Management posts essays and links from its agents. Again, lots of good stuff in the archives.

jenniferweiner.blogspot.com
She spoke at the Library a few years ago, and is currently doing the mega media circuit.

Thank you again to The Versatile Blogger Award for helping us here at The Fairfield Writer’s Blog continue to be a valuable resource to writers everywhere.

Until next time, stay cool, and keep on writing!

A Cure for Writer’s Block

I have writer’s block, oh my!
I’m going to sit in a tree, up high.
Where I will look down at my toes,
Wiggle my nose
And think up some prose.
Why can’t I feel flighty
Up here in my nightie?
Maybe a cuppa Earl Grey
Sipped here my tree
Will go with my warm scone and me.
Then onto writing with all my might
As I wave my silver sword in delight
On passion, on vixen, onto my mission
Will I finish in time for my next contest submission?

Hello writers, this is Adair Heitmann here writing to you today about the dreaded disease called writer’s block. All of us have had it at one point in our journeys as writers. Recently, after I developed a creative writing prompt for a writing critique group I lead, I was inspired to write the preceding poem.

The prompt for my writing workshop was: You have “writer’s block.” What is your cure? It cannot be practical or logical in any way. Describe it using all your senses.

The exercise was like a vitamin shot in the arm. The prompt reminded me of the invigorating power of being impractical. Often we approach problems with a like-for-like solution, only to feel drained and more dissatisfied. The next time you are at a loss for words, break out of your routine, do something illogical. You’ll be surprised what you find up there in your inspiration tree.

What are your favorite dazzling cures for writer’s block? Share them in the comments below.

Until next time, keep on writing!

Bulletin Board Wisdom

According to lore, author William Styron had a piece of cardboard tacked to the frame of the door that led into his workroom at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. The cardboard was inscribed with these words from Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Looking for some writing wisdom, familiar or fresh, for your workspace bulletin board? See if you find some here, winnowed from an original list of one hundred.

• “Story ideas begin with a simple “Suppose” or “What if.”—Anonymous

• “. . .All art comes out of conflict.”—Joyce Carol Oates (right)

• “Get black on white.”—Guy de Maupassant

• “Words are sacred. They deserve respect.”—Tom Stoppard

• “When in doubt, use a simple declarative sentence.”—Robert B. Parker

• “My task is by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.”—Joseph Conrad

• “In every scene something engrossing needs to happen.”—Suzanne Hoover

• “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”—Kurt Vonnegut

• “Everything a character says should tell you something about who he or she is.”—Nell Freudenberger

• “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”—Stephen King

• “Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained.”—Esther Freud

• “Research is best when it doesn’t show.”—Lawrence Block

• “Stop when you are going good and you know what will happen next.”—Ernest Hemingway

• “There is but one art, to omit.”—Robert Louis Stevenson

• “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”—Elmore Leonard

• “Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.”—Jane Smiley

• “The writer’s life is a life of revisions. . . .”—Jonathan Franzen

• “You can always edit garbage. You can’t edit a blank page.”—Jodi Piccoult

• “Don’t be jealous of others’ success. . . .Wish others well and hope to join them someday.”—Po Bronson

• “. . .Never, under any circumstances, give up submitting one’s work.”—James Lee Burke

• “The ordeal is part of the commitment.”—Philip Roth

• “Don’t be ‘a writer.’ Be writing.”—William Faulkner

• “Don’t get it right, just get it written.”—James Thurber

• “Don’t make excuses; make sentences.”—Rick Mofina

• “I decided it was okay to try and fail; not okay to fail to try.”—Hallie Ephron

• “It’s a long haul. Remember to enjoy it.”—Tim Parks

• “Finish the damn book.”—Laura Lippman

• “Being a good writer is 3 % talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.”—Anonymous

PS. Congratulations to Joanne Hus. Her story “We All Fall Down,” which she workshopped awhile ago in our Saturday morning writers’ group at the Library, has been published in the new issue of Venü magazine, available at the Fairfield University bookstore downtown. Joanne also did the illustration that accompanies the story. She illustrated and designed the Library’s collection of original essays Around the Table: Food Memoirs from Fairfield that was published last year.—Alex McNab

Embracing revision

To be a better writer, you must embrace revision. Not just endure it, embrace it, again and again and again.

I was reminded of that imperative the other day while reading the May 16, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, specifically Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “Creation Myth,” about the legend of Xerox PARC and its connection to the development of the Apple Macintosh computer. Xerox PARC was a research-and-development center in Palo Alto, California where, in the 1970s, the computer mouse, the icon-based graphic computer interface and the laser printer all came to life and, in 1979, were seen by Steve Jobs.

What does computer-engineering history have to do with writing?

After telling the story of these “wild geysers of creative energy” at Xerox PARC, Gladwell cites psychologist Dean Simonton, who wrote, “Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity.”

Continuing, Gladwell says, “Simonton’s point is that there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. ‘The more successes there are,’ [Simonton] says, ‘the more failures there are as well.’ ”

Gladwell goes on to discuss the case of the Rolling Stones album, “Exile on Main Street,” as told in Keith Richards’ new memoir Life. The songs that stuck “had to fight from under an avalanche of mediocrity,” Gladwell writes.

Irish writer Samuel Beckett’s famous quote is a favorite of writers asked for advice on their craft: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” There is even an online literary journal, failbetter.com.

In a blog I posted here two years ago this month, I recounted the story told by one of my writing workshop mentors, Suzanne Hoover of Sarah Lawrence College, about a New Yorker story written by her faculty colleague, the late Grace Paley. When Suzanne told Paley how perfect the story was, the author replied, “It only took me 19 tries.”

Write your story. Revise it, trying to make it better. Try again, fail again, fail better. That is the path to writing success.—Alex McNab

Learning from a Pulitzer Prize winner

I recently finished the prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan’s (right) structurally groundbreaking book of 13 linked, yet stylistically unique, stories that have the arc of a novel. Those styles, by the way, include a pitch-perfect celebrity profile and, most famously, a 70-plus-page PowerPoint presentation.

Since Goon Squad’s publication in hardcover last July, and especially in the wake of this year’s paperback release and awards, Egan has written and spoken about her evolution as a writer, her pen-to-paper writing process (first drafts by hand on legal pads, 20 redos of each individual part), the thinking that went into the creation of Goon Squad and much more. Tracking this material online is like taking a self-directed seminar in the craft of writing from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is illuminating and inspiring.

Below are a few of the themes that Egan articulates, with samples of her words. First, here are links to three of the many sources of her wisdom: an article she wrote for The Wall Street Journal; a long Q & A at thedaysofyore.com; and a video of an on-stage conversation with salon.com’s Laura Miller at the New York Public Library.

Commitment: “I was absolutely dogged.”

Writing badly: “My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. For me, the bad beginning is something to build on. It’s no big deal. It won’t hurt you. Forget it! You can’t expect to write regularly and always write well. . . .Maybe good writing isn’t happening, but let some bad writing happen. Let it happen! It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.”

Outlining: “I write so blindly I don’t see what’s coming in my first draft. I outline everything in revision. Some of my revision outlines are 50 pages long.”

Revision: “It’s all about re-writing.”

Routine: It is “a gigantic part of it.”

Writing groups: Before joining her first group years ago, “I was in a vacuum. . . .I had lost track of. . .what makes something interesting to read. . . .What I lose by not listening is much greater than what I lose by listening to bad advice. . . .What’s bad falls away.”

Submitting: “I started sending work out, right away. . . .And as soon as something came back, I would immediately send it back out, the same day. So I would sort of convert disappointment into hope, right away.”

Reading: It is “the nourishment that let’s you do interesting work.”

Perseverance: It’s “huge. That is my biggest gift.”

Storytelling: “If you don’t have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you’ve got nothing.”

—Alex McNab

Creativity and Writing

Hello, Adair Heitmann writing to you today about creativity. As writers we expect our inspirational well to always be full. Our readers, agents, editors, and publishers do too. Yet, there comes a moment, every so often, when the brain freezes, we pause, and the words don’t come out right, or they don’t make it out at all. Or, in the real world of writers, you just don’t have the time to write today, but want to stay connected to your muse. If this happens to you, why not use a tried and true creativity technique? It is . . . move a muscle. Get up out of your chair, and walk over to your “Quotes” file. Remember the file I told you about in my July 22, 2009 “The Power of the Written Word”  blog?

Dip your hand in and randomly choose a quote. Let it fill your writing vessel, enjoy the stimulating moment. Today’s quote is:

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Until next time, keep on writing!