Nothing you write can ever be as pure or perfect as your idea. That’s the writer’s challenge, and that’s what keeps me up at night. It keeps me alive. This lifelong pursuit of perfection. How can I express on the page the strange feeling that carried itself into my daydream? Turning this intangible idea into…
Tag: Writing Advice
Planning a novel (a step-by-step guide).
In my previous post, How to plan a novel, I answered a subscriber request to discuss planning a novel. I shared my process, which is on the light side of planning until the right vehicle for my character emerges. But some writers plan a significant amount of the story (sometimes the entire story) before they…
How to plan a novel.
I’m writing this post because an About Writing subscriber got in touch to request more detail on how to plan a novel. In this post, I’ll talk about my experience. In next week’s, I’ll provide a step-by-step plan that some other writers follow. The creative stereotype sometimes pigeonholes us as whimsical hedonists living from one…
How long should a novel be?
As a general rule, I believe that every work of art exists mainly in isolation, without too much regard for conventions and confining rules. If a story needs to be shorter or longer, it should be, even if that goes against advice. Some of the best novels break the rules – but they rebel with…
Natalie Goldberg’s First Thoughts.
In a previous post, What you must know before you start writing, I mentioned Natalie Goldberg’s First Thoughts writing experiment from Writing Down the Bones. I wrote about it as an opportunity to give your imagination the chance to surprise you, as a way to overcome writer’s block. And I explored the idea of incorporating the…
How to write well: what’s your point?
What point are you making? And how much do you want to cover? The writer should work with these two questions throughout the entire writing process. Too many try to cover everything, attempting to write the definitive piece. But there will never be a definitive anything. As a writer, you don’t write to explain or…
What is Iambic Pentameter? (what every writer must know)
The first thing I want to say here is that, on some level, every English speaker is already familiar with iambic meter. There’s a reason that great poets have used it for centuries. It’s natural and human. The tones and rhythm resemble our everyday speaking voice, so you could find yourself speaking in iambic meter,…
How do you know your novel is complete?
The question ‘How do you know your novel is complete?’ is one I’m dealing with right now. Since the publication of my first in 2015, I’ve been working on a follow-up. To the frustration of the readers who enjoy my work, I’ve finished novels only to abandon them, because they weren’t better than The Little…
How to Write Like Kerouac.
Kerouac’s writing advice, titled Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, is more of an offbeat reflection on beat life than an instructive list that shows how to write like Kerouac. But I think that makes it more interesting, and more useful. He reportedly stuck the list on the wall of Allen Ginsberg’s North Beach hotel…
What the famous six-word story teaches us.
I referenced the famous six-word story, attributed to Hemingway, in my previous article about the difference between prose and poetry. It struck me that it might be worth spending a little time with the story here. One reason is because some may be unfamiliar with it. Another is because it teaches an invaluable writing lesson….