Category Archives: writing

Gain Access to Other Worlds Previously Unimaginable

October 27, 2012 By in inspiration, listening, writing Tags: , , Leave a comment

I have been watching so many speeches lately b/c of the presidential election, but this has to be one of the best written/preformed speeches I have ever seen.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wish that you had a transgender sister to love and protect…

“We became acutely aware of the preciousness of anonymity — understanding it as a form of virginity, something you only lose once. Anonymity allows you access to civic space, to a form of participation in public life, to an egalitarian invisibility that neither of us wanted to give up…

 

“ I wrote about the way that knowledge had an actual materiality not unlike the materiality of a ladder that could be used to gain access to places and worlds that were previously unimaginable…

 

“If I can be that person for someone else [pause, applause] then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value. I know I am also here because of the strength and courage and love that I am blessed to receive from my wife, my family and my friends. And in this way I hope to offer their love in the form of my materiality to a project like this one started by the HRC, so that this world that we imagine in this room might be used to gain access to other rooms, to other worlds previously unimaginable…

 

Bravo, Lana Wachowski!

Basic Guidelines of a Story According to Pixar

August 6, 2012 By in process, writing Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

Love this! I don’t generally think that there are universal rules for creative process, because our brains all work differently, but I am always interested in knowing guidelines that groups or individuals use to ensure genius happens each and every time ;)

Pixar story artist Emma Coats has tweeted a series of “story basics” over the past month and a half  on how to create appealing stories:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuffbut it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you writer, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

 

(via Pixartouchbook)

Stepping Away to Let Ideas Mature

August 4, 2012 By in inspiration, Quotes, writing Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

“There is much to be said in favour of laying a work aside to mature; for one thing it gives the judgment time to operate; the mind is able to return to the work from time to time with a fresh outlook; and check it from many different angles. It follows also that if new ideas are to be set aside to develop and newly finished works left to ‘mature,’ there must be several things on had at the same time in various stages of development. The continuity of attention is purposely shorted and interrupted partly on account of the rest this gives.”

This time, I am not going to apologize for the lack of blogging, because I have actually been spending all of my free time WRITING my book :) I can’t believe that I can say that I just hit the 65,000 word mark and have finished the first draft of part I.

I read these quotes a few days ago from, An Anatomy of Inspiration, 1942 by Rosamond E.M. Harding, (via Brainpickings) and it inspired me and helped my justify taking a break. So, I am going to spend the next week dropping the self-inflicted pressure to write new chapters, to see some shows, do some edits and most importantly re-read the first 65,000 words as a unified part. I’ll also try and post more here!

“The true nolvelist, poet, musician, or artist is really a discoverer. Ideas –the theme of a plot, a poem, a picture, a theme of music– come to him as a gift. The idea, ‘the seed-corn’ as Brahms called it, he allows to develop naturally. There may come a point where is branched in one or many directions; he is free at this point to follow one or other. And is is here and here only that the judgement or choice of the true artist is in much the same position as a gardener growing prize rose trees, who in order to produce beautiful roses lops off unwanted shoots and suckers.”

 

Wattpad Meetup NYC

June 23, 2012 By in photography, technology, wattpad, writing, YA fiction Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Good morning, weekend!

I just thought I would post a few pics of the Wattpad NYC meet up from a couple  of weeks ago (I am obviously super far behind in posting on this blog.)

A huge congrats to their amazing team on their Series B!

We don’t determine who or what gets published – again, it’s about the network instead of the traditional hierarchy. So, while Wattpad sometimes gets pegged as operating within the traditional publishing industry we are not a publisher. We don’t see ourselves playing in this space at all. Wattpad is actually creating a completely new digital entertainment category, one that hasn’t existed before.

Here’s my favourite example: a traditional publishing house like Penguin published 5000 books in the last 12 months, while Wattpad users uploaded 10,000 stories in just the last 12 hours! We have something for everyone – every sub-genre and every specialized interest. The diversity of human creativity is what makes Wattpad so great.  

co-founder and CEO Allen Lau

I <3 Wattpad!

Yarny, Storymill, and Pages, oh my! (the software debate)

June 10, 2012 By in technology, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

What writing software do you use?

For the last few years, I have done most of my writing (which mostly consisted of blog posts) in Omnwriter.  I loved it (still do) because of it’s simple, beautiful aesthetics (both the graphics and audio) but most of all, because it’s distraction free – working only in Full Screen Mode.

When I started more serious writing (whatever that means) I investigated many different options, longing for something to help my process, organize my brain, write the plot for me; I don’t know?!  I looked at many different options and because I am crazy, I settled on 3 different solutions and use them according to my mood and access to technology…

Yarny.me

A guy in my class at Gotham introduced me to Yarny;  I immediately loved it.  It’s simple, it’s cloud based,which was great for me because I was traveling a lot, at the time, and switching back and forth between my work laptop.

It’s well designed, customizable modules make it really easy to turn the web based interface into something that works for the specific piece you are working on.  Each “snippet” allows you to build your larger piece of writing in the left column, while your people, places and things work similarly in the right column.  As soon as you type for more than a few seconds, Yarny automatically switches into full screen mode, forcing you to stop multi-tasking, similar to Omwriter.   The word processor is basically a glorified whizzywig, so you can’t do much editing to the style, unless you write in some simple html.  I find this highly annoying.  Simple functionality, even alignment, B, I and U would go a long way here.

The biggest down side to Yarny, and why I don’t use it as much as I started is because there is no offline mode, like Evernote.  (I really hope this is in their product roadmap!)  I was doing a lot of my writing in transit, waiting around at airports or sitting in coffee shops with no wifi, so I had to look for an additional option.

It’s also worth mentioning that a paid membership gets you a pretty robust iPhone App, which is convenient.  Too bad, most of my “don’t forget this!” moments come when I am underground in the subway, so I can rarely get them into the system in real time.  Nonetheless, I still love Yarny; it’s great for exporting your work to a unique link that you can quickly pass on to others for feedback.  Using the burgeoning technology makes me feel calm and hip (except for the couple of near heart attacks I had when it’s crashed, but hey, that’s a start up for you.  Luckily that have great autosave/versioning!)

Storymil

This one might be only for Mac’s.  It’s interface is very Mac-centric, having a strong visual resemblance to the iTunes interface.  I bought this software after doing a lot of research on the best software for novel-writing.  The opposite of Yarny, Storymill has EVERYTHING.  Places for your research, character descriptions, locations, timelines and complicated ways to connect everything to your scenes.  It took me a while to get the hang of it and I am sure that I am only using a fraction of the bells and whistles, but now that I can easily navigate the system, I do love it.  The progress meter, the word and page counts, do for some reason make me feel more serious.   I work in Storymill when I have the desire to feel like a writer.  Yes, I realize that this is ridiculous.

The downside to Storymill is that it’s desktop based.  Since I was traveling a lot, I looked for yet ANOTHER solution.

Pages

Most of my friends write in Word, which makes sense, as it’s the most popular word processor.  So, I started a document in Pages (Mac’s version) and I have to admit, I like the freedom to format my writing in whatever way suits my fancy.  I realize that the current format might not follow proper protocol for submitting to publishers, but I don’t care, I can change it later.  For me, formatting the text is almost works way that costumes help actors get into character.  Plus, designing is so built into my day-job process that my brain often does its best thinking when I am fiddling with the design (read : procrastinating).  Pages has a great full screen mode that you can manually turn on.

So these days, I find myself working from a Pages document that I keep saved on Dropbox, so I can always access it from any machine.  Of course, that machine has to be a Mac and has to have Pages installed in order to open the doc, but that isn’t usually an issue for me.  I still keep back-ups of my work in both Yarny and Storymill because I am crazy and never know what kind of mood I am going to be in!  This way, I know that there is always something that will suit my needs.  ^-^

Teen Female Characters “Still Figuring it Out”

April 28, 2012 By in Characters, Pop Culture, writing, YA fiction Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I have been thinking a lot lately about female protagonist and especially teen female protagonist.  The more YA I read, it seems like most teenage female leads can be broken into 3 big buckets:

  • the Hero – she is either the head cheerleader/prom queen who has the stereotypical perfect life but deep down inside is missing something OR the nerdy, unnoticed, unsuspecting girl who eventually finds herself and rivals the head cheerleader/prom queen.
  • the Damsel in Distress – she is constantly needing/wanting to be saved.  Mostly from herself, mostly by hot, male characters.
  • the Born Matriarch – shel has the heart of Mother Teresa and will one day surely be canonized because she always does the right thing.  She wants to save everyone (even your dark, vampire soul).

This is not to say that characters that fall into these buckets can’t be totally amazing. Of course, clichés exist for a reason; we all play these roles.  Some of us favor one more than the others and some of us flip-flop every hour.  Tavi Gevison, one of my favorite bloggers gave this great TedxTeen talk a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve been reading Tavi’s blog Style Rookie, for the past four years partly because she’s amazing, partly because she really takes me back to my teenage years and partly because I want to be her when I grow up…

“…[cardboard characters cause people to] expect women to be that easy to understand and women get mad at themselves for not being that simple.  In actuality, women are complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy and women happen to be people.”

Her concluding talking point is that people (especially teens) are a walking bundle of contradictions.  I love this because despite having not been a teenager for a decade, I feel like every day is still an adventure in trying to reconcile these contradictions.  Of course, now I use different tactics than I used then, and am now far more OK with this dichotomy within myself (personal growth #FTW!).

People make both rational and irrational decisions.  Decisions that are pragmatic and decisions that are emotional.  I know that in my life, some of the smartest decisions and some of the most boring choices I have made came from a logical place.  Some of the most rewarding decisions and some of the dumbest choices I have made came from making completely emotional decisions.

I realize that this is all very obvious, but why isn’t it more reflected in teen female characters and particularly in YA Faction?  Who are your favorite YA book characters or writers who break this mold?

Read Dreadful Dumb Books

April 23, 2012 By in Quotes, writing Tags: , Leave a comment

“You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your creative muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories – science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”  — Ray Bradbury

Albiet 4 days late, I am happy to report that I managed to complete my first writing assignment for class. While anything to do with “late” generally gives me anxiety, I am feeling pretty good about this. Considering last week, I also finished my old job AND started my new job, one which involved a business trip to Kansas City (ok, maybe I just spent too much time eating BBQ).

Usually after going this hard I would give myself a break from writing, but honoring my plan, I am not going to do that. However, I will switch it up a bit, so maybe a little more blog writing :)

Oh, and this week, I want to read – both the “dumb and the glorious.”

Happy Monday!

xo

Conflict: Man Versus ?????????????????

April 13, 2012 By in Quotes, Vonnegut, writing Tags: , , Leave a comment

Photo credit: Helen Warner

I nearly had an anxiety attack when I signed into my Gotham Writer’s Workshop class today and realized that I have been assigned to post my work NEXT WEEK!  At GWW, you turn in two longer pieces for critique, so it’s kind of like having to take your mid-term after just one lesson.  I basically have two options at this point, continue with the piece that I started in the first class or start something new.  The problem with my old piece is that I still haven’t really worked out the conflict, yet.  So, all afternoon I have been conflicted over conflict, er.

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”  - Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titans

Sometimes getting back to the basics eases my need to breathe into a brown paper bag.  Approximately 2 seconds of Internet research triggers memories from Freshman English Class…there are two types of conflict: Internal and External.  I think that most good stories have both.

According to Aristotle, in order to hold the interest, the hero must have a single conflict; let’s take a look at some options…

Seven Basic Conflicts (via wikipedia)

  1. Man v. Man - A conflict arising between two or more characters of the same kind.
  2. Man v. Nature - A character pitted against one or more forces of nature.  It is also commonly found in stories about survival in remote locales.
  3. Man v. Machine - A conflict between a character and an artificial entity such as a computer, robot, or android. The emphasis is on contrasting the character as a natural organism with a synthetic creature.
  4. Man v. Self- An internal conflict involving a character wrestling with conflicting emotions, thoughts, or desires.
  5. Man v. Supernatural - A character at odds with elements outside of the natural realm. These include encounters with ghosts, extraterrestrials, and other speculative or theoretical phenomena.
  6. Man v. Society - A conflict between bad and good.
  7. Man v. Destiny - A character attempting to break free from a future path chosen without his or her consent.

Do you have a favorite type of narrative conflict to write/read about?

Does blog writing count as procrastinating? hmmmm…..

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do

April 10, 2012 By in Tips, writing Tags: , Leave a comment

I loved waking up to this post on McSweeney’s, so I figured I would repost.  I think that I am going to post these on my wall, next to Ideo’s Braistorming Rules.  I particularly like #5 about finding your Muse.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do by Colin Nissan

1. Write Every Day   Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts….

2. Don’t Procrastinate   …Well, it’s time to look procrastination in the eye and tell that seafaring wench, “Sorry not today, today I write.”

3. Fight Through Writer’s Block   …Whatever you choose to call it, staring into the abyss in search of an idea can be terrifying. But ask yourself this; was Picasso intimidated by the blank canvas?…

4. Learn from the Masters   Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” This is an incredibly important lesson for writers to remember; never get such a giant head that you feel entitled to throw around obscure phrases like “Show, don’t tell.”….

5. Find Your Muse   …Just be patient in your search, because the right muse/human relationship can last a lifetime.

6. Hone Your Craft …Perhaps George Bernard Shaw said it best when upon sending a letter to a close friend, he wrote, “I’m sorry this letter is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”…

7. Ask for Feedback   …Remember, the only kind of criticism that doesn’t make you a better writer is dishonest criticism…

8. Read, Read, Read   It’s no secret that great writers are great readers, and that if you can’t read, your writing will often suffer…

9. Study the Rules, then Break Them   Part of finding your own voice as a writer is finding your own grammar…

10. Keep it Together   …So treat your demons with the respect they deserve, and with enough prescriptions to keep you wearing pants.

Read the full descriptions by Colin Colin Nissan, here.

Writing Tips from a Commitment-Phobe

April 8, 2012 By in Quotes, Tips, Vonnegut, writing Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Hello!

I am rested, relaxed and feeling particularly motivated.  This year has been all about new things for me and I am happy to report that this has been my most successful year for accomplishing New Year’s resolutions (it’s only April so knock on wood).  One of which is to dedicate more time to writing and reading.  My daytime job keeps me pretty nomadic (which is what I like to blame my commitment phobia on), as one would suspect, the hardest part for me is to find the time. So here are the 4 steps I am taking to help make writing a more regular part of my life:

  1. Start a new blog
  2. Sign up for classes
  3. Block out time on my calendar
  4. Write every day.

Rationale:  1. I have this theory that if I tell the world about it, then I will do it.  check.  2. I take homework seriously.  And I love school; I am a nerd.  I just signed up for my second class at Gotham Writer’s Workshop.  check.  3. If something is on my cal then it’s real.  I think most clearly in the early morning or late at night, depending on what I did that day.  I am really going to try and stick with an early morning routine.  I marked off time everyday, in different amounts of minutes.  check.   4. Only time will tell, but I am off to a good start today ^-^

Here is some inspiration for the day (that I totally ripped off of Brainpickings) from Mr. Kurt Vonnegut himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmVcIhnvSx8&feature=player_embedded

8 tips on how to write a good short story according to Kurt Vonnegut:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible
  6. Be a Sadist.  No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible.  To hell with suspense.  Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

If you have made it this far, THANKS for reading my first blog post.  I am not totally sure what this blog is all about and I am ok with that (commitment-phobes LOVE ambiguity, ha!)  But you can expect posts with regularity on: literature, travel, and a plethora of random topics that I might be “researching” for something that I am writing.  Oh, and my tastes range from Kurt Vonnegut to Amanda Hocking, so you have been warned!

<3

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