77 Things I Learned From Writing 1,000 Blog Essays – Auxiliary Memory By James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, January 20, 2016 This is my 1,000th blog post and I’ve learned a lot from blogging. My first post was “Access time in a fifty-five year old brain” published 12/26/2006. Here’s the first paragraph: The main reason I’ve created this blog is to help me remember. Well, I’m still struggling to organize my thoughts, but I’m quite confident Auxiliary Memory has been an huge help as an external memory device. To celebrate these nine hundred and ninety-nine essays, I thought I’d note some of what I’ve learned. Blogging is like piano practice for writing. Like this: Like Loading... Yo as a Pronoun Mignon Fogarty is the creator of Grammar Girl and the founder and managing director of Quick and Dirty Tips. A magazine writer, technical writer, and entrepreneur, she has served as a senior editor and producer at a number of health and science web sites. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. Mignon believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. To book a lecture event with Mignon Fogarty for your company or organization, contact Macmillan Speakers. Follow Mignon on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Awards Media The Oprah Winfrey Show, Grammar Girl Fixes Common Mistakes, March 2007 "Mignon has come up with clever ideas to help even the most grammatically challenged person remember the rules." New York Times, Book Not Ready for Print? Los Angeles Times
South Park Writers' #1 Writing Rule : writing Sit Down, Shut Up, and Write Your Fucking Book: Uplifting Tips for the Aspiring Author. Ease into it Waking up can be an extremely complex issue. In fact, there is no guarantee it can always be done. Take a moment to marvel that you have accomplished a great feat. Be properly attired What are you wearing? Keep hydrated Fill up a gas can with water or Honey Jack Daniels. Keep your blood flowing Other things that should be on your mind at this early stage in the writing day are deep-vein thrombosis and lethal blood clots. IMPORTANT NOTE: IF THE WORD “WRITING” IS TOO INTIMIDATING, CONSIDER USING A EUPHEMISM LIKE “PENPIDDLING” OR “WORDYWHOOPWHOOP.” Draw strength from past defeats Take a minute to remember that time your writing teacher told you to consider an alternate career in underwater basket weaving. Take deep, deep breaths Fill your lungs with Febreeze’d air and look around your writing room/prison cell. Copy the routines of your heroes Think carefully about your literary idol and ask yourself how they approached their writing day. Don’t sweat the small stuff Goodness!
If Americans Knew - what every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine Steve Martin Shows You How to Write a Sketch Show in His Rare TV Special The Paley Center for Media, which has locations in both New York and LA, dedicates itself to the preservation of television and radio history. Inside their vast archives of more than 120,000 television shows, commercials, and radio programs, there are thousands of important and funny programs waiting to be rediscovered by comedy nerds like you and me. Each week, this column will highlight a new gem waiting for you at the Paley Library to quietly laugh at. (Seriously, it’s a library, so keep it down.) This might be heresy to some of you, but I just can’t get into the early seasons of SNL. I’m willing to attach this lofty claim to an NBC special entitled Steve Martin: Comedy is Not Pretty. The Absurd Sketch Advertisement There’s not an awful lot of information about Comedy is Not Pretty available on the Internet, but when it is discussed there’s one sketch that seems to get mentioned more than any other, and it is ostensibly a music video for the Marty Robbins song “El Paso.”
Brent Weeks | Writing Advice My eyes usually glaze over whenever I see somebody saying something as artsy as “go into yourself”. But this is Rilke. And it’s worth getting past that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. In an effort to make it so you don’t have to scroll ludicrously far to read the new update every month, we’ve broken the Writing Advice Page into four pages. LATEST POST: Should there be happy endings? 1. a. b. c. d. I. e. f. g. I. II. III. IV. h. i. 2. a. I. II. b. I. c. d. e. 3. a. b. c. d. e. I. II. III. f. g. h. i. j. 4. a. b. c. a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k.
Create Your Writing Year with a Vision Board or Map Happy New Year! Each year I spend time either on New Year’s Eve or on January first visualizing my year. In this way I “create” it. I use a variety of tools, such as writing goals, writing a vision and making vision boards or vision maps. Just yesterday I mentioned on Twitter that I was making a vision board, and someone said they’d always wanted to make one but never had. Basically, a vision board is a visual representation of what you want to create during the year or during any period of time. When completed, a vision map looks like a collage of all the pictures you’ve pasted onto a piece of sturdy paper or poster board that represent what you want to create–a published book, an income from your writing, a career as a speaker and writer, a balance between personal life and professional life, a trimmer body, time for your family, more friends. Here’s a vision board I created a few years ago on a full poster board. This year I am focused on balance.
Writing Comedy Sketches That Sell by Brian LuffThe Internet Writing Journal, July 1999 Introduction The first thing to do before you sit down and try and write a sketch, is to watch and read as many other comedy sketches as you can. Go to the library, borrow books, videos, tapes, records, lock yourself away and watch sketches until they come out of your ears. Study the masters of the art. Monty Python, Mel Brooks, The Fast Show, Saturday Night Live, French & Saunders, etc etc. Research While you're watching, make notes. Getting Started Never sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper. Write the titles at the top of three separate pages, and then, working on all three sketches at the same time, write down everything you can think of connected to each of the three subjects. 1) Choose a setting. Brainstorming Bounce comedy ideas off the people around you. Where do the Ideas Come From? If you're stuck, the best place to go looking for ideas for sketches is in big reference books like, for example, Halliwell's Film Guide. Layout
Karl Ove Knausgaard on Failure, Memory, and Writing 20 Pages a Day The fifth book in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s widely and obsessively loved My Struggle will be released next week, April 19th, from Archipelago Press. John Freeman caught up with the inimitable Knausgaard in Japan. John Freeman: Book five of My Struggle was written at speed and originally published five years ago. Karl Ove Knausgaard: Yeah JF: Now you’re eight or nine thousand miles from home, in Japan, recalling a time that was experienced at speed as well. KOK: Yeah. JF: Did you use any stimulants at all? KOK: No. JF: It’s shocking to read it and to realize that at one point you were a lousy writer. KOK: [laughs] Yeah. JF: And your teachers told you that. KOK: Yeah, they did. JF: What was Jon Fosse like as a teacher? KOK: He was very nervous, very shy, but almost aggressive in his comments. JF: Do you think teachers teach more by example than by what they say? KOK: Yeah, absolutely. JF: And do you think writing can be taught? KOK: No. KOK: You asked, what kind of… Yeah. JF: You survived. KOK: Yeah.
A Small Meditation on Art, Commerce and Impermanence I’m going to touch on something that I’ve discussed briefly before but which I think is worth reheating into its own post. Here are the best selling books in the US from 1912, which is (for those of you for whom math is not a strong suit) 100 years ago. 1. The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter 2. Questions: How many of these have you read? This isn’t a slight on the authors or their works, mind you. We’re not. If you’re a writer, this might depress you. And that’s fine. Forget even sliced bread; you can’t imagine the values or interests or views on the world that people might have a century from now. If you must aim for relevance, try for being relevant now; it’s a context you understand. Will your work survive?
Writer on Writing 38 ways to check for character life-signs I procrastinate so badly with revisions that I have been known to clean my entire house instead. And once the house is clean, I procrastinate further by compiling check-lists of things I need to consider when revising. Because putting together a check-list still makes me feel like I am getting revision done, even though I'm really not. Here is the first of 5 checklists I have put together to help during revisions (with some additions in 2014: I'm up to 46 items on this checklist). A picture of a handsome character doesn't hurt when working on your characterization, either. Character checklist Main character: 1. 8. Other characters: 19. 27. The antagonist (if your antagonist is a person and not an event) 34. 39.
Writing Questions Answered Anonymous asked: My mc has a crush on a guy who’s an adult film actor. I’ve written the first chapter but it seems like he’s just lusting after him. How can I make it so it seems like he’s genuinely in love? I think there’s a really fine line between unrequited love, a one-way crush, and simply lusting after someone. 1) Unrequited love doesn’t require sexual desire, though that is often a part of it. 2) Unrequited love is less superficial than a one-way crush. There is some question as to whether or not unrequited love is the same thing as reciprocated love, and people can debate about that all day. You’ll want to start with the Subtle Signs of Love, but only to whatever extent you can illustrate them from a one-sided perspective.