writer stuff !
 Professional writer, artist, and educator Anne Olwin, brings you some of her best tips and insights:
Best Tips
The Indispensable Trio
Seven Suggestions for Busting Writer's Block
Invaluable insights from professional writer, editor, speaker and educator Kay Moser.
Tips on Overcoming Creative Dry Spells
"Am I a Writer?"
Best Tips
by Anne Olwin
In 2003, I went to a national writers' conference and then on to a national booksellers convention. Both were invaluable experiences and opened doors that would have remained sealed shut otherwise.
A little-known fact: most book manuscripts go into a slush pile and receive automatic rejections unless personal contact is made with a publisher who requests a query at a writers conference.
Decide you will accept 100 rejections before you quit.
Write, write, write. Market, market, market.
Forget being a prima dona. Accept the edits of your editor without comment. Blow off steam around your friends and smile graciously at the editor.
It's easier to sell articles to magazines.
There is an old saying: Write what you know. I like the way Robin Roberts' mother put it better: "Make your mess your message."
The Indispensable Trio
 My idea notebook is indispensable and has gotten mention both here and on a writer’s group to which I belong.
This is a photo of it and its companions. These three small moleskins go with me everywhere. Their titles are: Ideas and Inspiration; Plans, Goals and Actions; and Sketchbook.
I’ve written the title and my name on each in calligraphy using acrylic ink and a dip pen.
Posted by Anne Olwin
February 2, 2008
Seven Suggestions for Busting Writer’s Block
Whether you want to write professionally, write for fun, or have a writing assignment, you will undoubtedly encounter writer’s block.
Follow these suggestions to break through the block.
1. People watch for half an hour to an hour and make notes. Get your senses involved. Listen to the conversations. Watch how they walk, sit, talk, interact. Think about their perfumes or colognes or lack thereof. Pay attention to their clothing and mannerisms. Consider how you might use them in your short story, novel, play, article or report.
2. Write an alternate ending to a book you have read or movie you have seen.
3. Listen to snippets of conversations wherever you are: the line at the bank or grocery, in the mall, etc. Extrapolate how the conversation might continue or evolve into actions.
4. Rewrite something you wrote in the past.
5. Keep your own Dave Berry file of odd or unusual reports, incidents, news stories, words, situations and names.
6. Ask “What if?” and “Why?” Key the questions to your subject.
7. Get some physical exercise and a healthy snack, then plant your behind firmly in the chair and get to work.
Posted by Anne Olwin
February 2008
by Kay Moser
All the tactics Anne suggests for moving yourself beyond a dry spell are great and work well for writers as well as visual artists. One of my favorite tactics involves making myself a “To Do” List.
“Great!” you say, “Just what I need. Another “To Do” List in my life!”
Now, hold on. This is not just any ole ordinary “To Do” List. This one includes such awful (and authentic) alternatives that writing looks like heaven. For example, one of my favorite lists included the following 4 items:
· Roto-till the garden (I live in Texas, and it was 95 degrees outside),
· replace grout in shower (the shower looked like a Louisiana swamp),
· clean the oven (yes, I did forget to put a cookies sheet under the molasses-laced, baked beans last Sunday, and yes, they definitely spilled over.)
· write Chapter 7 of new novel.
Guess which one I chose?
Another super tactic and one I use every time I write is to never stop at a logical stopping point. It’s such a natural (and logical) thing to stop writing when you finish a scene or a chapter, but don’t do it! Start the next scene or chapter. Write at least the first paragraph. Then quickly list the content of that scene or chapter.
Click on “Save” and “Exit” and celebrate! You not only did the work you needed to do, you’re well on your way into your next scene. When you turn on the computer to write again, you’ll find yourself sailing into the new scene or chapter because you’re already started. Even if you decide to make some changes because your “time out” has given you a new vision, you’ll be “fixing” something you’ve already written, not staring at a blank screen.
Works every time!
Have you got any suggestions for dealing with dry spells you want to share. E-mail me at kay@kaymoser.com and we’ll post some of the best.
Happy writing, painting, etc.!
Kay
|