The Writer's Cottage

Archive for the ‘Writing Coaching’ Category

an excerpt from Simply Single by Suesan Marie (our founder’s pen name):

To be simply fearless means to have built your spiritual foundation on something solid. This foundation does not have any flaws in it that might eventually lead to cracks.

Fear is one of those flaws. Like pebbles that mix in with the concrete and then are encased in its hard embrace, fear permeates your spiritual foundation. Eventually, tiny cracks appear at the pebble’s location; without great care and attention to remove these tiny cracks, they will become large spider veins throughout your foundation, eventually causing it to crumble.

So if you have a fear like a pebble stuck in your base, simply remove it, carefully.

Unfortunately, removing fear from your life is not always that simple. Remember the goal is to be simply fearless. Getting to that state of mind is not all that simple.

You can go around it, or at least try to do so; you can accept it as part of your life and live with it; or, you can go through it.

If you try to avoid or go around the fear it will only get stronger. If you try to live with it, it will control you, reshaping you into an imitation of its own ugly form.

But if you go through the fear, light is shining on the other side to reward you!

I love the imagery those words bring to mind—bright, comforting, safe light just outside the end of that dark tunnel of fear, waiting for me to finally emerge, holding fine gifts I have only dreamed of having: peace of mind, complete relaxation, financial security, love.

As a writer, I have made a commitment in my life to be simply fearless. Fear paralyzes your writer’s muse, your creativity, your passion. I was reading a discussion on one of the online writers’ groups about the fear of submitting a proposal to an editor and being rejected only to discover later that the editor actually used your idea and assigned it to another writer. Writers in that discussion agreed that it does happen and you can’t do anything about it except convince the editor that you are the only writer who can make that book or article or essay come to life so that you, and only you, get the assignment.

… continued in Simply Single.

I like today’s quote from St. Francis of Assisi:

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

Writing feels impossible sometimes, especially if you’re trying to write a book or flesh out a query for a fantastic new idea that occurred to you overnight. It seems that writer’s block will never move out of the way.

But if you study St. Francis’s words, you can see the old adage “Do it for just 15 minutes” come to the surface. In other words, if you’re stuck in your writing, choose a task from your mundane to do list and work on it for just 15 minutes. Set a timer if you must to make sure you stick with that 15-minute guideline. Then when the buzzer sounds, switch over to your writing task, again setting that time for just 15 minutes. Your writing will flow out easily from your creative mind because you have “warmed it up” with your 15 minutes of doing what’s necessary. Now you’re doing what’s possible–writing. Keep practicing this routine every day, and next, before you know it, you’ll be accomplishing what you previously thought was “the impossible”: finishing your book, completing and sending the query on that great new idea… achieving your dreams of being a writer.

Happy Writing!

Sue

I’m teaching an ESL writing class this semester at the local community college. ESL stands for English as a Second Language. The students in my writing class are advanced speakers of English as another language besides their native language. They are from South Korea, Egypt, Brazil, Caracas and Romania.

Although they are mostly fluent in speaking English, they need to improve their English writing skills. That’s why they were placed in my class. They have been writing paragraphs all semester, polishing their skills so that they write at least three passing paragraphs. They’ve nearly achieved this goal as a class. At the end of the semester, we are going to enjoy food from everyone’s native culture and discuss tips and tools to help them continue to improve their writing.

That’s the thing about writing — whether in your native language or another language. You must keep writing every day. If you don’t use it, you will definitely lose it.

So how can you incorporate writing in your very busy daily life? Here are some ways I listed to discuss with my students:

• Buy a daily writer’s book, such as The Writer’s Book of Days. These books are great because they give you a writing prompt for every day of the year. Some of the prompts are sentences you are supposed to finish, topics, or questions to answer. You are supposed to write for 15 minutes nonstop. I used to do this daily writing practice every day. I haven’t done so in a while and I can tell in my writing! When I was writing from my book of days every day, my writing on my day job and in my freelance work improved and I sold more pieces! The lesson here is to write every day and these books are great tools to help you do just that.
• Write morning pages before you get out of bed. Julia Cameron talks about these in her bestseller, The Artist’s Way, another excellent book for all writers to read by the way.
• Read one book about writing at least every month (I think it’s best to read two writing books a month, but let’s start with just one). Right now, I’m reading Sol Stein’s How to Grow a Novel.
• Read at least one novel a month for pleasure. And, while you’re enjoying the story, pay attention to how the author writes it. In fact, you could read the novel the first time for pleasure and then go back and re-read the novel to study the author’s technique and the general techniques for fiction writing. I know of one now-famous author who started writing fiction by doing this practice. It helped her see the geneeral format for the genre she was interested in writing. She then went on to write and publish many bestsellers.
• Of  course, we cannot forget about writing in our journal every day. Journal entries are different than morning pages and the book of days writing practice. Journaling is for our eyes only; it is more personal. When we journal, we don’t worry about grammar or style; we just write and write and write. It’s the time we gift our creative muse to just “let it all hang out.” Journaling is very important to honing our writing skills and assuring our creative muse that we will pay attention to her and we are serious about being writers.

That’s all for now. I’ll add more after my students and I have our discussion in a few weeks.

Happy Writing!

Sue

Dialogue…is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes. ~~ Sol Stein in Stein on Writing

One of the elements that many fiction writers struggle with is the art of writing good dialogue in their stories. Recently, I returned to a classic, and favorite of mine, Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, to brush up on my fiction techniques.

In Chapter 11 of his book, published in 1999 by St. Martin’s Press (ISBN 0-312-25421-0), Stein talks about the secrets of good dialogue. Here are some golden nuggets from this chapter:

• Dialogue…is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.
• Learning the new language of dialogue is as complex as learning any new language.
• Dialogue is always in immediate scene, which is one reason readers relish it.
• Confrontational dialogue… is immediate, creating a visual image of the speakers as it shoots adrenaline into our bloodstream.
• Dialogue… is indirect. The key word to understanding the nature of dialogue is that the best dialogue is oblique.
• Characters don’t need to make speeches at each other.
• We’re not only characterizing, we’re building a story… . A reader’s emotions can be sparked with few words. That’s the power of dialogue.
• Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts. Count for what? To characterize, to move the story along to have an impact on the reader’s emotions.
• What the reader gets from your fiction is the meaning of words. And most important, the emotion that meaning generates.
• … what counts is not what is said but the effect of what is meant.
• … the best way to judge dialogue read aloud is to read it in a monotone without expression. The words have to do the job.

Stein has many more wonderful suggestions and tips for improving the dialogue in your fiction. I strongly suggest you read Stein on Writing and, when you’re finished with it, read another Stein classic, How to Grow a Novel.

Happy Writing!

Sue

My husband told me the other day about one of the soldiers in his National Guard unit who has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. The soldier told my husband that after one evening of watching the American news for the first time since being back home, he turned to his wife and asked, “What have you people done with my country?”

My husband asked me to write about that. I responded, “I can’t do that; it’s not my experience, it’s his. Tell your soldier friend to start his own blog and write his story.”

That’s what writing is all about – you have to write about what you know. Only you can tell your experience with your passion for the subject. Only you really know what it is or was like to go through what you lived.

Let me give you another example. My 21-year-old son was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (known for short as Lupus SLE) when he was just 14 years old. What followed his diagnosis was five nightmare years of treatment, surgeries and too many nights in the emergency room or the hospital wondering if he would live to see the morning.

I can write about how it felt to be my teen son’s mother and caregiver. I can write about the toll that caregiving took on my body, my psyche, my soul. But, I cannot write about the experience from the perspective of the person whose body was being ravaged by this insidious and wicked disease. Only my son can write that story because that’s his story.

Both stories have value; both stories will help different groups of people. Both stories must be told.

That’s what I believe, very strongly: you must tell your story. If you don’t, no one else will. And if your story is not told, the world loses because your story happened so that you could share it and through its telling, help many others who need to read what it was like for you to live that story so they can make it through their own story with the faith, courage, and strength that they gain from reading what you wrote.

So go tell your story with all your passion and soul. The world is waiting.

It’s 2010, do you know where your journal is? I’m not kidding. Journaling is one of the best ways for you to learn a new language, such as English. It’s always one of the ways to let your writing muse know that you are serious about being a writer. So, whether you’re new to the American English language or you want to apply your native speaking skills to the written word, get journaling!

It’s a brand new year, so there’s no time like TODAY to grab a new book (preferably lined) or start a new file on your computer titled: JOURNAL 2010. Scientific studies have shown some advantage to handwriting over typing on a computer keyboard–something about the physical motion of the hand on the paper connecting more directly to the language center in the brain. As a teacher of writing and English as a Second Language (ESL), I used to be pretty firm about my students handwriting in their journals. But, then I stopped journaling for a period of time. After about a year, I asked myself why I had stopped. It was then that I realized I had become so accustomed to typing so fast (about 110 words a minute) on a laptop keyboard, that handwriting was just too slow for the flow of my thoughts that came tumbling out every time I picked up my paper journal to write.

So, now I tell my students—use whatever technique feels right for you and supports your inner writing muse in his/her journaling. Just do it—start with five minutes a day, every day. After just a few days of this practice, you will feel so great about your new language skills and/or the amount of original writing you are creating, that you will most likely increase your journaling time.

What are you waiting for? Go start that journal!

Happy New Year of Writing!

Sue

This morning, I got into a car I wasn’t used to driving and I expected to get to where I was going on time. Of course, I didn’t. Why not? I wasn’t prepared to drive this particular ar.

That’s how writing is: if you don’t do the prep stages in the four-step writing process, you won’t get to where you want to go in your writing, whether you’re writing a technical report, novel, short story, article, memo, or status report.

The prep stages of the writing process are first, pre-writing (getting the ideas through brainstorming or freewriting), and second, organizing those ideas into a logical format or flow. Skip these two steps and get right to writing, and you’ll end up where I was this morning — stuck in a driver’s seat going nowhere.

Happy Writing!
Sue

Do you think it is easier to write a 1,000-word essay or a 360-word article? Think carefully before you answer. I had an interesting conversation today with a colleague who commented that he had so much respect for news journalists because they had to report the most important news in a very limited number of words. His comment gave me pause to think. When I was a technical writer pumping out 80 to 120-page user manuals in a week, I learned how to write 1,000 words in about 15 minutes. The 10-year experience taught me how to write a lot under pressure and how to self-edit my work. But I didn’t have a limit to the number of words I could write; news journalists do. And, that’s a very valuable skill to develop as a writer because it makes you focus your topic and choose your words very carefully. In other words, your writing becomes sharper, more concise.

The following exercise will help you develop those “news journalist” writing skills. Do it at least once a week and you will be well on your way to clarity and conciseness in your writing.

Choose a topic or ask a friend to give you a topic. First, write 1,000 words on the topic. Then write 500 words on the topic. Finally, write a 360-word article on that same topic.

Compare all three pieces. Which one do you think says the most with the least amount of words? You most likely answered the 500-word or 360-word one. You can consider the 1,000-word piece as your first draft (also known as your rough draft). Rough drafts are very important in the writing process. They are part of the third step (write), but they are not the end of the writing process. After you have written your verbose rough draft, you must proceed to step four: rewrite and edit. This is the crucial step that many new writers skip in their eagerness to send out their writing for publication. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the reasons their words are rejected by editors. Verbosity does not breed conciseness; careful rewriting and editing do.

Happy Writing!
Sue