Archetype Writing Blog

Yeah, so I got bored with the old template. Google needs some spiffy new templates, IMHO, but nobody actually asked me.

Remember that great QueryTracker.net site I told you about? Some of the members decided to do a writing-themed blog chain, and since I never use my blog properly, I figured this might help me out.

Ideally, you follow the chain and visit the other posters' entries. Since I'm the second one to brave this first go-round, that means you should stop by the blog before mine and the blog after mine, and so on. (You can also use the Blogroll links to your right.)

On to the topic at hand: writing methods.

When I was about 11 years old, I had an English book that contained blurbs describing different novels. For some strange reason, it wasn't clear what the names of the books in question were.

I happened upon one blurb that I found particularly intriguing, and because I couldn't figure out what the book was, I decided to write my own. I'm too embarrassed to tell you what it was called, but I wrote it in bubbly blue ballpoint letters. I still have it somewhere, I'm pretty sure. If I weren't too embarrassed to show it to you, I'd dig it out and post some of it here.

After that, a friend and I decided we were going to write a novel together. We didn't get all that far before she decided she had better things to do. Like chase boys. I was a late bloomer, so the boys weren't interested in me. So I kept writing.

Writing became my haven, and all of my teenage angst went not into a journal, but into the lives of these characters who had become as real to me as real people.

I wrote my first few novels in spiral-bound notebooks. In blue (and often black) ballpoint pen. And I didn't just write, I edited the living you-know-what out of them. Since I believe that the brilliance is 90% in the editing, that's important.



Later I graduated to a word processor, and finally to a computer.

So what kept me writing?

I couldn't not write. In some ways being able to lose myself in my stories was asylum from my problems. And now, even though I don't have the same problems (mostly), I still feel compelled to write. It keeps me sane, which is sayin' something.

If I'm not writing something new, I work on old stories that need work. That disaster I posted above has an idea worth saving in it, so from time to time I go back and write a little bit more of a new novel stemming from that gem. (I think I just mixed my metaphors in a seriously bad way.)

I write mostly on the computer, though I find when I get stuck the best thing to do is pull out the old spiral-bound notebook and work there. Sometimes I only write a few pages that way; sometimes I end up with scene after scene written longhand.

For a long time, as I was learning to write, I'd note lines and paragraphs in books I was reading that really moved me. I'd fold the page down so I could find it later, then copy it into a new notebook to be analyzed at length. I never really picked up anyone else's style, but it did help me understand how the people I admired did what they did. If I come across something truly astounding now, I do the very same thing. (I also do it for factoids I find intriguing.)

I work on my writing almost every day. I climb into bed with my laptop and work for however long the muse whispers in my ear...and often when she's nowhere in sight. People who are close to me know that "I'm going to bed" doesn't mean I'll be sleeping anytime soon.

Some days I don't feel like writing, and I have to admit that this wireless internet thing hasn't been much help...but I still do it.

Fortunately, it's fairly easy for me to get into a flow state , which makes me want to write more. Based on the research Susan K. Perry did in Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity, setting aside writing time and simply sticking with it makes reaching flow easier over time.

When I'm working on a new story, my brain is constantly working in the background. If I have a flash of what should happen next, or even a line some character must say, I grab the closest scrap of paper and writing utensil and scribble it down. Even if I'm in the car. Or the shower.

Fortunately, I can read my own handwriting.



Tag, Elana, you're it!

New article: Gathering Information from Characters: Types of Questions
Summary: Former military interrogator JJ Cooper teaches you how to construct questions that get the answers you want from your characters!

New Article: The 5-Step Secret To Great Fiction
Summary: Stephen King says he starts his novels with a "What if?" question. And I have heard others say they just saw an image in their mind, or had a persistent sentence knocking on the inside of their brains, and they just followed that to where it lead them. And while their insight and tutelage is invaluable, when I was a budding writer it left me with another question: What's next?

New Article: The Six Writing Hats
Summary: Over the years I have studied the great storytellers, in an attempt to ascertain what sets them apart from others and sees their books sell in the millions, while tens of thousands of manuscripts never see the light of day. In an attempt to find an answer to this question I turned to one of the pioneers of thinking, Edward de Bono, and found that his seminal work on the Six Thinking Hats® applies perfectly to the art and craft of writing. So here is my version of the Six Writing Hats.