Kurt Vonnegut shares his tips on how to write with style.
5. Sound like yourself. The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.
(via chris glass)
Writing advice from Zadie Smith: write it then put it in a drawer.
When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second -- put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year of more is ideal -- but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can't tell you how many times I've sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go on stage and read from them. It's an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it's published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you.
Top notch advice. I'm currently working on a (mostly visual) redesign for kottke.org. I pretty much finished the Photoshop part of it two months ago and haven't looked at it since, hoping that the distance will give me some much needed perspective on whether the new design is any good or not. I've used this technique on the past couple of designs as well...if you have the luxury of the extra time, I'd highly recommend it.
Advice on writing screenplays.
I think people see inspiration as the ignition that starts the process. In fact, real moments of inspiration often come at the last minute, when you've sweated and fretted your way through a couple of drafts. Suddenly, you start to see fresh connections, new ways of doing things. That's when you feel like you're flying. The real pleasure of any script is the detail. And a lot gets lost in the process. Put it back in at the last minute.
Giles "Finds it hard to write a meaningful bio, despite being a professional writer for some 15 years now. That's horrifying. It's frightening." Turnbull on the difficulty of writing one's own biography. Having to write three-line bios is at least 33% of the reason I stopped speaking at conferences. (The other two-thirds: a) I don't like speaking at conferences, and b) conference organizers stopped asking me to speak.)
Mark Gaberman on what it's like to write for Jeopardy, which he's been doing for 7 years.
I've had Alex Trebek rap Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" -- he had his mind on his money and his money on his mind that day. Did a category called "Death and Texas" just because I liked the title (and finding stuff about people dying and/or getting killed in Texas turned out to be remarkably easy). I've learned about Jean Sibelius, and word to the wise, if you see "blah blah blah this Finnish composer blah blah blah...", Jean Sibelius might not be your worst guess. Well, at least if I wrote it. I'm just not that up on my Finnish composers.
This comes from a blog called Why We Write, a collection of essays by TV and film writers who are currently out of work due to the Writer's Guild strike. My favorite part of the site is the placement of two spaces after a period instead of the HTML default of one. View the source to check out the crazy markup they use to accomplish that little bit of fussiness. (thx, mark)
RU Sirius asks: Is the net good for writers? Ten professional writers weigh in.
I like to develop topics, approach them from different, often contradictory angles, and most of all, I like to polish the shit out of them so that the flow and the prose shine and bedazzle. On and offline, I find the internet-driven pressure to make pieces short, data-dense, and crisply opinionated -- as opposed to thoughtful, multi-perspectival, and lyrical -- rather oppressive, leading to a certain kind of superficial smugness as well as general submission to the forces of reference over reflection. I do enjoy writing 125-word record reviews though!
My favorite aspect of the piece is the interspersed American Apparel ads...they add a little texture to the discussion.
In a short post yesterday about where writers do their business, I mentioned that Witold Rybczynski had written about the writing room of a famous author that was purposely set away from the rest of his house. I grabbed my copy of The Most Beautiful House in the World off the shelf just now and found that I'd turned down the page containing the relevant passage back when I read the book a few years ago. The author I was thinking of was George Bernard Shaw; here is Rybczynski's description of his writing room:
But Shaw too was a builder, and the writing room that he erected in his garden was a Shavian combination of simplicity, convenience, and novelty. He called it "the Shelter," but it was really a shed, only eight feet square. It contained the essentials of the writer's trade -- a plank desk, an electric lamp, a wicker chair, a bookcase, and a wastepaper basket. Beside the desk was a shelf for his Remington portable -- like [Samuel] Clemens, Shaw was an early amateur of the typewriter. There was also a telephone (modified to refuse incoming calls), a thermometer, and an alarm clock (to remind him when it was time for lunch).
Shaw's writing hut had one other curious feature: the entire building was mounted on a pipe so that it could be rotated to take advantage of the sun's warmth at different times of the day. But the tiny building was so loaded down with books and furniture that the feature was probably never used. Pictures and more on Shaw's writing hut at BBC News, the National Trust, and Cool Tools.
Rybczynski also mentions that Samuel Clemens wrote most often in a hilltop gazebo he'd constructed for that purpose away from his luxurious house..
The Guardian has an extensive list of writers and the rooms in which they write (with photos and descriptions by the authors). For whatever reason, I became very interested in writers' rooms after reading Witold Rybczynski's The Most Beautiful House in the World, in which he describes several rooms built by writers specifically for working in, including one author who built a completely separate room apart from his house which combined his need for solitude with a short commute. (thx, youngna)
Show creator David Simon talks with author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, etc.) in the The August 2007 issue of The Believer. The entire interview isn't available online but one of the three best bits is:
My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.
Simon goes on to talk about the overarching theme of The Wire: the exploration of the postmodern American city and the struggle of the individual against the city's institutions. Many of his thoughts on that particular subject are contained in this Dec 2006 interview at Slate. But in talking with Hornby, Simon draws a parallel between these city institutions and the Greek gods:
Another reason the show may feel different than a lot of television: our model is not quite so Shakespearian as other high-end HBO fare. The Sopranos and Deadwood -- two shows that I do admire -- offer a good deal of Macbeth or Richard III or Hamlet in their focus on the angst and machinations of their central characters (Tony Soprano, Al Swearingen). Much of our modern theatre seems rooted in the Shakespearian discovery of the modern mind. We're stealing instead from an earlier, less-traveled construct -- the Greeks -- lifting our thematic stance wholesale from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides to create doomed and fated protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality.
But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It's the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomics forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millenium, so to speak.
The NY Times still deals in the Shakespearian and tells us the story of Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd (thx, nirav), whom Simon and The Wire co-creator Edward Burns introduced to each other. Andrews was the inspiration for the popular Omar Little character on the show and Boyd was depicted in a previous Simon/Burns collaboration called The Corner. The Times also has their wedding announcement.
And finally, some news about season five. Sadly, instead of 12 or 13 episodes, the final season of the show will only consist of 10 episodes. The shooting of the final episode wrapped on September 1 and the season will premiere on Jan 6, 2008 (both facts courtesy of a Washington Post article about the end of the show). The season 4 DVD should be out a month or two before that. Two actors from Homicide: Life on the Street (based on a book by, you guessed it, David Simon) will appear in the final season: Clark Johnson (who also directed the final episode) and Richard Belzer, who will reprise his Homicide role as Detective John Munch.
Michael Pollan has some good advice for writing about nature and science. "So choose your first person deliberately. Too many newspaper first persons -- and a lot of magazine first persons too -- are written in the voice of the neutral feature-writer. They're the voice of the Journalist. That is the least interesting first person you have. Nobody cares about journalists. They're not normal people. So choose a first person that draws on a more normal side of your personality. And think about which one will help you tell the story. You'll see that in very subtle ways it will shape your point of view and your tone and unlock interesting things."
Writer's Dreamtools has a timeline of events, people, entertainment, fashion, money, etc. for every decade since 1650. This allows the writer to put herself in that time period and as a jumping off point for further historical research. Favorite categories: "who's in" and "what's in". What a great resource for writers. (via youngna)
Robert Shields is the author of the world's longest diary. It runs to 35 million words and he wrote about everything he did. Everything. "3:30-3:45 I was at the keyboard of the IBM Wheelwriter making entries for the diary."
Following the lead of the Six Word Story group on Flickr and Caterina's prompt, Wired asked some prominent writers to pen their own six word stories. "Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ('For sale: baby shoes, never worn.') and is said to have called it his best work." Got any good ones?
Computing is killing cursive writing. My writing was always bad, but now that I write things maybe once every three months, it's like I don't even know what a pencil is...most monkeys print better than I can.
Will people need to know how to read and write in the near future? Emails and texts are already not exactly literature and in 10 years, text-to-speech will be good enough that you can listen to anything you want. On the flipside, text holds a lot of advantages over "icons and audio prompts". A quick survey of the modern workplace reveals slow progress on the paperless office, so I'm skeptical that this no-text future is soon to arrive. (via 3qd)
By asking for "for the next sheet of paper that he or she would have written on", Jonathan Safran Foer collected emtpy sheets of paper from a group of writers, building "a museum of pure potential". (thx, matt)
Update: Here's the uncut version of the article as it originally appeared in Playboy. (thx, chris)
Seth Godin, who ruminates for a living, wrote a little something about how ideas are transmitted last year:
For an idea to spread, it needs to be sent and received.
No one "sends" an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits
No one "gets" an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time
Seth hits the nail right on the head with this. When I'm deciding what links to post here, I'm essentially curating ideas, collecting them to "send" to you (and to myself, in a way). And unconsciously, these seven points factor into my decision on what to post here.
a. they understand it - I read everything I post and attempt to understand an article enough to represent it accurately when linking to it.
b. they want it to spread - I pick links and write posts based on ideas that I think are in some way important, meaningful, relevent, or good for the soul. And sure, I want those ideas to be more widely known or enjoyed, even if it's something as simple as someone getting a needed chuckle from a video of a monkey teasing a dog.
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind - This factors into anyone's motivations for anything. In George Orwell's 1947 essay Why I Write, his #1 reason is "sheer egoism".
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits - If I wanted to, I could post 30 links or more a day without too much more effort on my part, but in this case, part of sending the idea is making sure the reader has enough attention to consider it.
a. the first impression demands further investigation - I spend a lot of time on getting the description of some linked text, photo, or video just right, so that the reader has a good idea of what they're getting into. Choosing a 1-2 sentence pull-quote that accurately represents the idea of an article is key in getting people's attention in a productive way. "This is an awesome link" is only going to cut it so many times; you need to tell people what the link is and give people an honest reason to click.
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea - I assume visitors to the site are regular readers and that they have a good sense of what happens here, but I try to limit my reliance on jargon or "in-crowd" references so that everyone can follow along.
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time - If I do all that other stuff right, hopefully you'll trust me enough to be receptive to the ideas I'm sending you. And if not, you probably won't trust me for long.
Like I said, all this was pretty much happening unconsciously. I've worked consciously on bits and pieces of it, but until I read Seth's post, I didn't know that this was the end-to-end process.
Jack Shafer waxes poetic about the NY Times TV listing's film capsules. Their succinctness reminds me a bit of writing remaindered links posts.
Writing prose and writing software have much in common. "Vigorous writing of words is the same as vigorous writing of software. Every word, every line of code, every interface element should tell."
Robert Birnbaum interviews writer Gay Talese. "Look, if you want to make your living chopping people up, you will find an audience. You will, but it's not me."
Robert Birnbaum interview with Susan Orlean. Here's his first interview with her from 2001.
Update: I linked to this without reading it first, something I *never* do, but now that I've read it, there's really some great stuff in there about the writing process, magazines (specifically The New Yorker), and editing. And great quotes like "I'd rather work for Drunken Boat than for Time magazine, to be honest with you". Ouch for Time magazine.
Winterhouse (along with the AIGA) is sponsoring an award for design writing and criticism. There's a main award ($5000) and a student award ($1000). Be nice to see some Web design writing in there.
Merlin's excellent advice for writing sensible email messages. This one is excellent advice for email and blog comments: "Emails to a thread are like comments at a meeting; think of both like your time possessing the basketball. Don't just chuck at the net every chance you get. Hang back and watch for how you can be most useful. Minimize noise."
Paragraph looks like a neat idea. It's a writer's workspace located near Union Square here in NYC. It's like a gym, except for writers. You pay a membership fee and then you can show up and use the facilities (desks, kitchen, your own locker for your stuff, wifi, etc.). More on Paragraph at designer Khoi Vinh's site.
Winners of the 2005 Faux Faulker Contest. Winner: "The Administration and the Fury: If William Faulkner were writing on the Bush White House".
"So You Want to Write a Book?". O'Reilly Media's guide for new authors.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about his work space. He does most of his writing on his laptop while sitting on sofas and in coffeeshops and restaurants.
