Do you want to write? Advice from someone more successful at writing than almost EVERYONE is a good place to start. Ten bits of writing advice from the author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling.
Writing Advice from J.K. Rowling
Ernest Hemingway’s Bloody Mary Recipe
Writers drink. Or do drinkers write? Either way we should all turn to the masters to learn our craft. As for writing, Ernest Hemingway said, “Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.” As for what happened next, Papa Hemingway often had a cocktail … or seven. Below is Mr. Hemingway’s recipe for the perfect bloody mary.
“To make a pitcher of Bloody Marys (any smaller amount is worthless) take a good sized pitcher and put in it as big a lump of ice as it will hold. (This to prevent too rapid melting and watering of our product.) Mix a pint of good Russian vodka and an equal amount of chilled tomato juice. Add a tablespoon full of Worcestershire sauce. Lea and Perrins is usual but you can use A1 or any good beef-steak sauce. Stirr (with two rs). Then add a jigger of fresh-squeezed lime juice. Stir. Then add small amounts of celery salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper. Keep on stirring and taste to see how it is doing. If you get it too powerful, weaken with more tomato juice. If it lacks authority add more vodka.”
Proofreader Marks: What They Really Mean
A Nice Essay from One of My New Favorite Authors
First jobs are almost always the worst. Check out “Be Kind to People Dressed as Food,” by Gillian Flynn, author of “Dark Places,” “Sharp Objects,” and “Gone Girl.” It appeared in The New Yorker.
1993 Interview: Stephen King on Charlie Rose
Corporate-Speak: Don’t Let It Happen to You
The company email was painful.
“We are focused on enhancing our climate by creating a paradigm so that we may be a model for blah, blah, blah.”*
And you’re selling what, now?
As someone who’s dealt with politicians, large faceless corporations and small children for years, I’ve been attacked almost daily by gibberish. However, “enhancing our climate” is not just an attack, it’s the literary equivalent of an intentional food poisoning.
Trust me. I just threw up a little.
The point of communication, any type of communication, is to communicate. And the best way to do this is to choose words that actually mean something. Unfortunately, since we Americans have used the English language as long as we can remember, we think we can communicate. However, most of us have a weaker vocabulary than Koko the sign language gorilla. We have the mistaken idea that if something sounds good, it must be good. Right?
Wrong.
For example: “The positive aspects of the elements of our character factor into condition of the situation.”
I just made that up (hey, I could work in government), and although the sentence may seem important, all it really sounds like is official. Read it again and tell me if the sentence means anything. No, wait. I’ll save you the time. It doesn’t.
“I want French fries,” has meaning.
“I sat on a cat,” has meaning.
Even “I like both major candidates running for president,” has meaning. It means you’ve gone stark raving mad.
The point is Americans are busy people and we don’t have time to spend determining if we should listen to what you say, or if we can nod our heads and wander off to read in the bathroom.
Here’s a tip: If you use words like aspect, character, condition (unless you’re talking about the great 1968 song “Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition), element, factor or situation, chances are you’re simply babbling in Corporate-Speak.
If something’s important enough to read, it better be written simply enough to understand. Here are Jason’s Five Steps to Battling Corporate-Speak:
Step one: Have an idea.
Step two: Chose words to express that idea. If you can’t define a word without saying “uh,” or “um,” don’t use it.
Step three: If you’re confused about words, you can find lots of them in a big red book. No, the one labeled “dictionary,” not the one labeled, “Better Homes and Gardens: New Cook Book,” although that one does have a killer recipe for roasted potatoes.
Step four: Put these words together. If the words don’t make sense, try putting them in a different order.
Step five: Read it aloud to Koko the sign language gorilla. If she doesn’t throw you through a window, you’ve advanced beyond Corporate-Speak and can now communicate in English.
*Company name withheld to protect the enhanced integrity of its character.
In Defense of the Period
News headlines rarely offend me. I’ve gotten over that. If an article attacks my political, social or ethical viewpoint, meh, big deal. Everyone has the right to an opinion.
But I do have a hot button and the Washington Post pushed it with: “Stop. Using. Periods. Period.”
Hu-wha?
Stop using the period? The Period? The period is a standard, one-size-fits-all sentence stopper. It tells the reader my statement, or indirect question, is over. It tells the reader I’m not asking a question (there’s another big, friendly fellow for that). Why so much hate for my pal the period?
Apparently young people don’t use them anymore.
Early writing was generally meant for the person who wrote it, so punctuation wasn’t all that important. The Greeks didn’t even put spaces between words. Everything ran together in one long sentence, like a line of thought from a kindergarten class. What’sthiscolorwhat’syournameIhaveacat.
This laissez-faire attitude about punctuation was understandable. Most people couldn’t read.
Then, in the 15th Century, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press. For the first time the printed word became available to the masses (at least in Europe. The Chinese had developed the movable type printing press around 868 A.D.).
This outflow of reading material brought with it standardization in spelling and punctuation. Thank you, Johannes Gutenberg.
Which brings us to today. Young people text. Young people send instant messages. Young people have grown up in a world where they don’t have to talk with anyone to get their point across. This has done two things:
- Seriously annoyed me.
- Changed the way young people use language.
They talk in “textese,” which is the code word for “gibberish.” For example, “*$” means “Starbucks.” What? “NIFOC” means “nude in front of the computer.” That’s common enough it has its own abbreviation? And “KK” means “OK.” Which I assume must make some sort of sense to people too lazy to move their finger to the “O” key.
Young people also have new rules for punctuation.
If someone doesn’t use an exclamation point in a message, they’re angry. If someone uses a period, they’re angry. If someone uses a comma, semi-colon, or em dash they must be an NSA agent. Drop your phone in the pool and go hide at *$.
In texting, most of the time young people simply do not use punctuation at all. To go from one sentence to another they insert a line break – like a poem
that doesn’t rhyme
or take effort to compose
or make sense
Our language evolves. I get that. If it didn’t evolve we Americans would still spell “theater” with an “re.” In the early part of the 20th Century the word “theatre” morphed into “theater,” which actually makes sense. And don’t give me any “‘Theater’ is the building, ‘theatre’ is the art” crap. Tell that to an editor and they’ll laugh in your face and make you spell it right.
But ditching the period is silly, especially for the reason the Post article argues – that young people don’t use it anymore.
So, since the cool kids are doing something, we should all do it too. Excuse me, too
I mean, like the period is so 1439 A.D.
Madness.
Jason’s Appearance on ‘The Unexplained’ is Live
Jason recently appeared on the U.K. radio program “The Unexplained with Howard Hughes.” Jason and Howard talked about Shadow People, time travel, a mind-reading dog, and more.
(Click here to listen.)
While you’re there, check out Howard’s other excellent interviews.
A Discussion on Writing Between Stephen King and George R.R. Martin
Whether you like Stephen King and/or George R.R. Martin, or you don’t, this is still a great discussion between two best-selling authors about how and why they do what they do. It’s an hour long, but worth the time. Here’s the link, check it out.
Oh, and they say “fuck” a lot.
So, you want to write a novel. Let’s get started
A friend recently posted on social media (seemingly the only media people listen to anymore) that he had started writing a book. Good for him. He concluded his post with “I have never completed a fictional work in my life. Always gave up before I got through it.”
How many of you have done the same thing? I know I have.
After starting a couple of novels in college (and failing miserably), upon graduation I sat down and hammered out my first novel. Unfortunately, like all first-time novelists (or non-fiction writers for that matter), I had no clue what I was doing. I plopped down in front of my Mac Plus, loaded MacWrite, and typed whenever I got the whim.
Note, I said, “typed.” I don’t think I was really writing. I didn’t consider character development, setting, plot, or any of those other pesky elements of a story we’re taught in school. I fired on pure inspiration alone. And yes, I fired blindly.
About 10,000 words in I almost quit. I wanted to. I mean, I really, really wanted to because writing, contrary to what people who don’t write believe, is hard. Sure, it’s sitting in front of a computer, or typewriter, or blank pad of paper (like I did sometimes while writing that first novel, on the hood of my car, staring across a lake hoping inspiration would fall from the sky). But the act of writing, of composing entire new realities, of bringing new people to life, is nothing but hard work.
One of my favorite quotes on writing, mainly because of its accuracy, has been attributed from everyone to Ernest Hemingway to Thomas Wolfe, but it was Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Red Smith who said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Although I did everything wrong, two years later I finished my first novel out of pure persistence. It was awful. Simply terrible writing. It’s gone now, thankfully. I had the manuscript in a box for a while, but it was lost in a move at some point, and the electronic copy is on a 3.5-inch floppy. Good riddance.
I started four more novels after that, and stopped at roughly the 10,000-word mark for not doing what I’m going to outline in these five handy bullet points:
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Available now. Just click. Don’t let a good idea pass you by. Good ideas are everywhere; you just have to pay attention for them. Stephen King conjured the basic thoughts for his novel, “It,” when his footsteps on a dark, creepy bridge made him think of trolls. Danielle Sosin’s novel, “The Fate of Mercy Alban,” popped into her mind unexpectedly when touring a historic mansion. My latest work, the novella “Matriarchal Nazi Cannibals,” came to me in a dream. I woke, and told my wife who said, “You should write that story.” And I did. Thanks, honey.
- The two main obstacles in writing a novel are starting it, and finishing it. Start at the beginning. No, scratch that. Don’t start at the beginning. Novice writers spend a lot of time staring at a blank page because they don’t know where to start. Don’t be that guy. Start somewhere – anywhere – which, strangely enough, is rarely the beginning of the story, but usually winds up being the opening of your novel. If you really need the beginning, or origin story, weave it throughout your work as the reason for the protagonist’s troubled soul. Start somewhere exciting, like when your hero is in trouble. Your goal is to get words on a page. This will help you do it.
- Goals – set them. Novel lengths vary. A YA or romance may be as short as 50,000 words, whereas a thriller or science fiction epic could be 100,000-plus. Either way, those numbers are daunting. Your goal should not – I repeat NOT – be to finish the novel. (Yes, yes. That’s what we’re doing here. Bear with me). If finishing your novel is the goal, you’ll probably give up at 10,000 words. You need multiple goals. Your main goal should be to complete one chapter. After that’s finished, your main goal is now to complete another chapter, and so on. Relish the completion of each small goal. If your working goal is the book as a whole, you’ll quickly start begging yourself to quit. Try establishing a word count. Five hundred words a day, 1,000, 2,000, something attainable. Before you know it those chapters will add up.
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I said ‘Finish,’ not “Finnish.” Don’t edit your work until you’ve finished the entire manuscript. First-time writers who keep going back to edit almost never finish their book. There will always be something to fix. Always. Graham Greene, author of “The End of the Affair,” famously stopped mid-sentence whenever he reached his daily word count. That way he could easily pick up where he left off without having to refresh his memory.By reading what he’d already written, he would have felt compelled to edit it. You’ll have plenty of time to edit your work AFTER it’s finished. The main thing that keeps writers from becoming authors is they don’t finish the book.
- Now finish the damn thing. That is all.