This Year You Write Your Novel
Walter Mosley
This was a fairly surface-level treatment of the writing process and elements of fiction, as it had to be by necessity considering the 25,000-word length. Yet there were some good nuggets of advice, the main being "Write every day and don't stop." Every writing how-to book will tell you that, but I liked hearing it from someone whose books I see on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. May 2010 indeed be the year I write my novel, although I'd also satisfied by a nice pile of short stories.
2 comments:
Thanks for the review. I think what I need is a book that tells me how to stop thinking about writing and just do it, because the more I "try" to write, the less I can do it. The formality of sitting down to write causes me to crack under pressure. (I guess I'm a terrible lightweight.) When I do write something, it's self-indulgent stuff about ennui. (What's more boring than ennui? Reading about ennui!)
Those 250 words you came up with were great. A mini-story.
With my life as dull yet stressful as it is, you'd think I would immerse myself in a fantasy world and have no trouble coming up with stuff. But even my fantasy world is boring. In my fantasy world, I watch TV and cook. Maybe if I had more imagination I could get a story out of that, but nothing's coming.
I don't claim to have any answers, as I mostly have the dilemma that when I sit down to write something purposeful I get blocked, and if I journal it's just the same angst-ridden bullshit over and over, and I'm pretty sick of the latter.
I started reading a book about writer's block before I left for Olympia (and left it behind) that said writing is like running a marathon. If you just jump in without training, you'll fail. You have to stretch your muscles and work up to it ("it" being something like a novel). I'm starting to do these little exercises in an attempt to try to train myself for some longer races. I don't try to write a particular story, but just to let my creativity flow for 30 minutes or so and see what comes out.
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