This post will be much more like a tweet. It’s short and points you to a link of a new favorite writer, Melinda Snodgrass, a blog post at her website about her plotting, and she’s an excellent plotter. Anyhow, here you go: How I Write.
New Year’ Eve 2011 update of Books Bought, Books Read (with commentary as warranted):
Books bought since Oct. 1, 2011:
In the SF Masterworks series:
Books Read:
Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity Third Edition/Expanded by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Most books on writing are a variation on a theme: they explain several techniques to improve writing; they give examples of those techniques; and then they supply exercises for practice.
Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing provides almost none of that sort of writing advice. The closest thing to that sort of writing instruction is a section in which Bradbury talks about how he makes lists of nouns and then reviews those lists as a source for ideas.
In this collection of essays, Bradbury, using personal anecdotes about how he wrote and found inspiration for some of his most famous short stories and novels, spends most of his time not instructing on technique, but talking about how writers can tap their creative spark, their subconscious creative mind, their Muse by writing what they love and by writing with gusto and joy.
The lead essay’s opening paragraph sums the theme of the book:
Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see his gusto.
And how do you do this? As Bradbury digs deeper, he suggests you approach writing perhaps as a Zen master might approach it — through work, through relaxation, through nonthinking, and through further relaxation.
To work, of course, is a common piece of advice given by writers in writing advice books. Bradbury suggests a standard of setting a regular daily schedule, and a set amount of words.
But unique to his advice are the parts about relaxation and nonthinking.
Relaxation, as Bradbury uses the word, isn’t kicking back at the beach; it’s achieved through work. As you work, as you build quiet confidence in your self and your writing, you relax, your body responds to natural rhythms. And as you relax, you stop thinking and you create.
The essays are for the most part inspiring, in particular the lead essay “The Joy of Writing” and the title essay “Zen and the Art of Writing”. In fact, to writing, Bradbury adds a spiritual dimension lost in books solely concerned with technique, a spiritual needed to truly be creative.
Dear Blog and Blog Reader:
Sorry for the neglect over the past few weeks. There are times I’ve meant to write interesting posts like the one I had in mind of defending genre fiction, science fiction in particular. I’ll put a link here to China Mieville doing a good job of that, or parts of this piece in The Guardian do so.
I really have intended to write more here. But things were happening that weren’t so great. Or maybe they were. I ran away; I came home; I moved to a new place; I don’t know what to make of all that, except to say my Memorial Day weekend was interesting and maybe one day I can write about it.
Speaking of writing, Blog, one chief reason I’ve been neglectful is because I’ve been writing, almost daily, with a few interruptions (see above). When I get on writing jags, I tend to neglect you.
I’ll try to be more attentive, Blog. But I won’t make any promises.
Best,
Todd
Here’s a brief segment of a Richard Matheson interview on writing. Note Matheson mentions he writes in longhand and will not use a computer.
As I draft fledgling attempts to write science fiction, I’m finding myself worrying about the believability of my understanding of the science part. I come from a liberal arts background, though I love science and loved my required science classes: I took basic zoology and botany and astronomy, as far as the hard sciences go, and anthropology, as far as the soft sciences go. But, much of my understanding of science comes from studying the history of science in history classes, watching the Science Channel and Mythbusters, and reading mainstream science journalism.
One of my current drafts follows an ordinary guy — a liberal arts type — about 50 years in the future who gets his hands on an invisibility suit. The idea for the suit came from a short article in Science News. What I imagine happening to the guy once he gets hold of the suit . . . well, I’m not sure how plausible the idea is, or why or how it could happen, but somehow I want the suit to allow the wearer to fold space time. Oh, and none of you better steal my idea.
Of course, as I’ve begun to write, I also realize that who the character is and what the character wants is also primary to the story. It’s primary to any story. But for SF the plausibility of the science has to count for something.
I took part in a blogging round table discussion of favorite movie tie-ins/novelizations at SF Signal. My favorite was Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of the original Star Wars film. That novel is as responsible for introducting me to the SF genre as any book or film and certainly was an early influence on me as a writer. As you’ll see from the other guest posters, Foster is a master of the novelization. Anyhow, go read the post.
Hello all! Below are links to PDFs of some recent writing I’ve been doing. They are science fiction story beginnings drawn from writing prompts by Joe Haldeman. I am asking/begging/pleading/grovelling for any interested readers out there to give these “shitty” first drafts (as Anne Lamott might say) a look-see and give me feedback, especially to which beginnings you think have the greatest potential for a short story. Remember, these are drafts—I haven’t proofread them for errors.
Can you tell by my headline which writer I’ve become obsessed with lately? Besides reading his novel The Forever War, I became interested in the fact he writes his science fiction novels, generally set in the far future, in longhand.
In this podcast below, he talks about his process and about writing in longhand:
http://copperrobot.com/2010/09/science-fiction-writer-joe-haldeman-discusses-unplugging-to-create/
I used to romanticize Henry Miller or rather the character of Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer and the film Henry & June or even the man biographers portrayed. I imagined myself living on the cheap, writing a masterpiece on a typewriter borrowed from a sultry lover. Then wandering the streets and drinking and dancing and talking til dawn.
I believed I could live on the edge like that and a life like that would inspire great works. Masterful writers who put you in their worlds do that. They make you feel you can do the same.
Except . . . I’m close to the edge now. Very close. No borrowed typewriter. Only an aging computer.
Instead of Paris, I’m in Fort Worth, Texas. I have no liasions set up with a banker’s wife. And I’m finding little inspiring me to write as I sit in my sister’s spare bedroom wondering if I can write more than a blog post, worrying if I’ll find gainful employment, and longing for any sign my wife might want to reconcile our marriage.
Since early November I’ve been stuck in the middle of yet another attempt at a novel, attempting to write in an genre — science fiction, a first love —that’s both foreign and familiar. As all my current chaos closed in, my writing shut down.
Perhaps, too, I feel crippled by a storm darkening my mind, ripping away the drive to write, the same crippling storm that raged through William Styron’s beautiful essay Darkness Visible. In fact, the storm in the mind is Styron’s trope for the melancholy that afflicted him.
I know, at least for me, living on the edge isn’t inspiring, it’s terrifying.
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