I know that it’s a time of year when everyone is making lots of resolutions. Most people only do this once a year, if that. Can that be enough? Do you remember last year’s resolutions? Each week in the Book Writing World, we begin by posting our goals for the coming week and checking in […]
Goals: 3 Simple Steps to Success Read More »
1) Try to keep things a secret. This is not something we are great at in our family, though we are getting better. We always want to let someone know as soon as we’ve gotten—or even thought of—the perfect present. Leo and Charlie are making secrets gifts in class for us, and Leo keeps asking
3 Gift-Giving Habits to Apply to Your Writing: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
I am setting out to reread my manuscript of my latest book, and I looked back to a blog I wrote a few years ago when I was doing just that with a very early draft of what eventually became this book. The advice about editing your own work felt helpful for me and I
10 Ways to Be Your Own Best Editor: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
1) Write where you love. People both repeat and refute the expression, Write what you know. But start by choosing or creating a place that you love to write in. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I love my local cafe–the steamy warmth, the strangers, the art, the tea. 2) Write what you see, around
5 Important Ways to Say Yes While You Write: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
Happy December! Today I want to talk with you about clownfish. Clownfish? Yes, like Nemo, with orange and white stripes. According to one of my kids’ books, clownfish live in sea anemones (which I still want to spell as if I were five, with consonants reversed). Each fish goes through a process of exposing itself
5 Writing Secrets of the Clownfish and Sea Anemone: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
There are writers who know the last sentence of a book before they sit down to write it, and writers who write only to learn what will happen next. There are writers who work meticulously over a sentence, only to erase it, and writers who pour words onto the page, going back later to cull
NaNoTip: Holding Fast: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
I was recently listening to Sherman Alexie read and discuss a Jessamyn West story on the New Yorker fiction podcast. When Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor of The New Yorker, asked Alexie if the story had a subtext or was really as simple as it seemed, he said that it definitely had a subtext; in
The Thanksgiving Story as Structure: Ways to View Our Writing: By Elizabeth Stark Read More »
NaNoTIP: Don’t write excessively long, winding, meandering sentences or phrases or paragraphs full to bursting, redolant with, literally stuffed with redundant, repetitive, overly-used adjectives, adverbs, coordinate or otherwise. Remember, you want your messy, shitty first draft to be useful to you later. Need to ramp up your word count? Don’t run in circles around your
NaNoTIP: Making It Happen: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
1) Start loose, just getting words on the page. How is it so easy to forget the magic of that act? How lively are our minds, our imaginations! We cannot shut them up. Stop and listen for a bit. (Try this with children, too–it works miracles against temper tantrums, transforms routine irritation into marvelous conversation.)
Five Steps to a Brilliant Writing Practice: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
There are certain things that satisfy in and of themselves. If you exercise on a given day, you’ve done what you were supposed to do and can check it off your list. If you read for pleasure, you’ve had the pleasure. So, too, other intimate pleasures. They are in and of themselves or part of
Celebrated Chunks: Looking at a Writer’s Schedule: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
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