2012 Writing Tips of the week (most recent one is listed at the top)
Aloha,
Here’s your writing tip of the week
Writing Tip of the Week – May 14
It’s easier than you think to tap into your originality.
”An original artist is one who encounters the origin of his/her work within their individual experience of the imagination. It is this authentic experience that affords their work the conviction of absolute authority- or in other words, it’s originality.” From the Way To Write, by John Fairfax & John Moat.
Here’s your writing tip of the week for May 7
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” —Henry Ward Beecher
I listened to an artist sharing her process of creating a painting. It sounded so familiar. Whenever you create something that starts from your inspiration, whether it be with words, a paintbrush, a camera, you give a part of yourself that is fresh and original. Let the paintbrush of your soul give way to your expression.
Here’s your writing tip of the week for April 30th.
Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get
to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.
~Sharon O’Brien
This is what happens to a lot of the students I work with. This could
be you!
Writing tip of the week – April 23
“The writer who cares more about words than about story – characters, action, setting, atmosphere – is unlikely to create a vivid and continuous dream; he gets in his own way too much; in his poetic drunkenness, he can’t tell the cart – and its cargo – from the horse.” John Gardner
Albert Einstein
Writing Tip of the Week April 9, 2012
“You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.”
Neil Gaiman
Writing Tip of the Week April 2, 2012
“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
Miguel de Cervantes
If you can talk, you can write. Will a bit of skill, most of us can write well. Try it! If you find you like it, you’ve found a best friend for life.
Writing Tip of the Week – March 26
Aloha Writers -
“Anytime you start a sentence with I am, you are creating what you are and what you want to be. So, if you sometimes say, “I am bad at this, I am ugly, I am stupid,” these words take you farther and farther away from the part of you that is God. When you choose to say, “I am happy, I am kind, I am perfect,” you help the light of God inside you to grow and shine.” Wayne Dyer
As it pertains to writing, if you say I can write, you give yourself the confidence to allow the best writer in you to emerge.
Building on last week’s quote about listening beyond your inner critic, be your biggest supporter by encouraging your best.
Enjoy!
Writing Tip of the Week – March 19
“If you gave your inner genius as much credence as your inner critic, you would be light years ahead of where you now stand.” —Alan Cohen
Writing Tip of the Week – March 12
“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.” —Horace, Roman poet
When approaching life and writing, that which bursts forth from the temporarily closed curtains of adversity, opens us to our creativity and the ‘aha’ moments that make us feel uniquely alive. Use adversity to enliven your story.
3/5 – “An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.” —Charles Dickens If you are staring at a blank page or a blank document on your computer, ask yourself a question or two or three about the subject you want to write about, and answer those questions on the page. That may give “your ghost” something to respond to and voila, you’ve begun!
2/27 - Your theme is the backbone of of your story. Think of it like a well marked hiking trail. Everything you write extends from it and also leads back to it. A theme is a broad idea, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the fundamental components and can be seen as the story’s underlying philosophy. Choose it well. It will be your travel companion for as long as you write a particular book or piece.
2/20 – You don’t have to write an entire book to share your wisdom and insights.
For those of you who want to start sharing your writing, here are some tips for writing good inspirational articles.
1. They are personal.
2. They involve an emotional struggle or challenging decision.
3. They paint a scene.
4. They include a universal message.
5. They are true.
The moments that inspire you to do what you do will likely inspire your readers too.
2/13 -Ernest Hemingway, “You must be prepared to work always without applause.” He said critics would take joy in pronouncing your latest work a failure and you wouldn’t be able to look at it for years. And then, one day, in some other place, you would pick it up and open it, start to read and in a little while say, “Why this stuff is bloody marvelous.”
2/6 - “Many writers who think they’re inefficient actually suffer from perfectionism. It takes them hours to come up with a snappy introduction because they discard every idea that pops into their head and wait for the “perfect” idea instead of honing and refining one of their existing ideas. As one of my favorite writing quotes says, ‘Don’t get it right, get it written.’”
1/30 - “Rejection has value. It teaches us when our work or our skill set is not good enough and must be made better. This is a powerful revelation. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe?” (from the website terribleminds.com)
1/9 - This is by Jacob Appel.
The first cardinal rule of opening lines, in my opinion, is that they should possess most of the individual craft elements that make up the story as a whole. An opening line should have a distinctive voice, a point-of-view, a rudimentary plot and some hint of characterization. By the end of the first paragraph—unless there is a particular reason to withhold this information—we should also know the setting and conflict.
This need not lead to elaborate or complex openings. Simplicity will suffice. For example, the opening sentence of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” tells the reader:
The grandmother did not want to go to Florida.
Already, we have a distinctive voice—somewhat distant, possibly ironic—which refers to “the” grandmother with a definite article. We have a basic plot: conflict over a journey. And we have a sense of characterization: a stubborn or determined elderly woman. Although we do not know the precise setting, we can certainly rule out Plato’s Athens and Italy under the Borgias and countless others. All of that in six words.
1/2 - These two short videos touched and inspired me. In place of a writing tip which I will begin again next week, I send you these inspirational messages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA_nDLM_xko&feature=fvwrel Jim Carrey-George Harrison – A message to humanity in 2012
And
Let this beautiful message of your power to affect all that you touch, ignite you as you complete 2011 and head into 2012 to leave your new mark!
http://www.elion.ee/docs/joulukaart/eng/
2011
12/26 – “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” Edith Lovejoy Pierce
In more ways than one, we write our own story.
12/19 - “The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.” Victor-Marie Hugo (French Poet)
Let yours soar!!!!!
12/12 -“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.” C.S. Lewis
12/5 - For all of you who doubt you really have something to write that is worth reading, here are the words of C.S. Lewis, best known today for his series Chronicles of Narnia.
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
