Famous writers let you know in The Guardian!

Brian,

It is indeed a mystery!

I think it is a question of inertia–we get so used to being one way with ourselves, our minds, our time, that it is hard to move into an altered state, which I believe writing is.  Also, to write well, we have to give up control and allow the words to come through us without judgment, at least in starting the material and writing until there is enough down on the page to make good use of our editing and shaping skills. We don’t like to give up control, to be surprised by what we say, to try even at times to make sense of what the words are telling us. And sometimes they tell us things we have been trying to ignore.

But once we have moved beyond the inertia and our brain is in flow, we get such a high. Still, the next time we have to move once more beyond the fear of not knowing what we will have to say as well as the fear that our words are not up to the challenge of saying what we have to say.

Writing isn’t built in one session, though, and as writers we need to look for the words and phrases we put down that we want to continuing writing from and then continue, rather than get stuck in harshly judging our first drafts and freewrites as inadequate.

And guess where we learned such judging ways? In school, when we weren’t taught that writing is a process and where we had to write without sounding like we’d written what we wrote if teachers demanded “objectivity.”

Thanks for the question!

SB

This week we discuss subplots–what they are, how they work, why to use them, and how thinking about them spawns ideas for fiction. Let us know your experience and questions about the topic.

Deadline March 15:

http://www.wwu.edu/bhreview/contests.shtml

32nd annual Nimrod Literary Awards: The Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction.  The Awards offer first prizes of $2,000 and publication and second prizes of $1,000 and publication, along with a trip to Tulsa to receive the Awards and take part in our annual writing conference. The postmark deadline for this year’s Awards is April 30th, 2010.

We are happy to announce that this year’s Pablo Neruda Prize will be judged by Molly Peacock, and this year’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize will be judged by David Wroblewski.

One of the oldest “little magazines” in the country, Nimrod has continually published new and extraordinary writers since 1956.  We are dedicated to the discovery of new voices in literature, and the Nimrod Literary Awards are a special way to reward talented new poets and fiction writers.

Guidelines, reading fee and submission info at http://www.utulsa.edu/nimrod/awards.html

1st place wins $1,200, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 10 copies.
2nd-place: $500 and possible publication.
3rd-place: $300 and possible publication.
Results post on April 30. Winning story will be published in Issue 79.
Open only to writers whose fiction has not appeared in any print publication with a circulation over 5,000. (Entries, of course, must not have appeared in any print publication.) Please, no longer than 12,000 words. Any shorter lengths are welcome. Reading fee is $15 per story.

http://www.glimmertrainpress.com/writer/html/index2.asp

Deadline May 3, 2010

guidelines, entry fees, and submission online at writersdigest.com/competitions

This week’s article is about building scenes–what we are after in scenes and techniques for making sure they are vivid and varied. Please let us know what you think about writing scenes in fiction as well as nonfiction. If you are a WIR subscriber and have questions, post them here for me and other readers to answer.

If you don’t have a subscription yet, please click here.

Willow Springs is accepting entries postmarked through March 1, 2010 for the Willow Springs Fiction Prize. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication in Willow Springs 66. The entry fee is $15 and all entrants will receive a one-year subscription to Willow Springs, including the issue with the winning entry. Submission details on the website.

By journaling for ten to twenty minutes three times a week, you can begin to break the habit of not writing.  You can use exercises or prompts to help you start to get experience on the page. Soon you’ll be using the time to do revisions or lengthen the pieces you’ve begun. The minutes will extend themselves and you will find that you have the habit of writing and do it before or after chores. Sometimes we turn to business or chores instead of writing because we know what they demand of us, but writing may take us places we don’t expect to go, and there is some inertia in all of us because of this aspect of writing. So, part of the trick is to recognize when we go to what we know how to do when we should perhaps go to what we are unsure of doing. Then we have to learn to look forward to the surprises writing brings!