Morrill's Monday Morning Mashup - 3/19/12

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

Writers are often bombarded with information on what we should and shouldn't be doing in our writerly lives, especially with all of the turmoil in the publishing industry today. The posts I've listed this week reminded me that right and wrong is not black and white. It's a big, foggy gray area, and it varies for each individual.

# # #

Jenna Blum writes "The Tortured Soul: Do You Need To Be One To Be A Writer?" in a post on Grub Street Daily. In this post, she muses about the caricature of the tortured soul, but the best part of the article is where she lists qualities you actually DO need to be a writer. http://grubdaily.org/?p=4944&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GrubStreetDaily+%28Grub+Street+Daily%29

# # #

The post "How to Write Readable -- And Retweetable -- Tweets" by Dave Copeland on ReadWriteWeb.com includes some of the best advice I've seen on tweeting, including where to place your links within your tweet. Did you know it should not be placed at the end of your tweet? Read on! http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_write_readable_-_and_retweetable_-_tweets.php

# # #

I love the New York Times article, "My Life's Sentences," by Jhumpa Lahiri. In this post, Lahiri discusses her love of sentences, both in reading and writing them, saying, "The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life." And though we're often taught that only after we complete our "shitty first draft" (Anne Lamott) should we then go through and perfect our sentences, Ms. Lahiri admits compulsion to analyze and perfect each sentence as she goes along. "All the revision I do — and this process begins immediately, accompanying the gestation — occurs on a sentence level." I felt better reading this article, because I admit, it's my natural way to write, also. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/my-lifes-sentences/?emc=eta1

# # #

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

Your assumptions are

your windows on the world.

Scrub them off every

once in a while,

or the light won't come in.

                            

                                         ~ Alan Alda 

Morrill's Monday Morning Mashup - 12/12/11

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

Now that many of you have finished your Nanowrimo novels, (or for any other novel that needs some rework,) this is an excellent article on how to work through what Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, calls the "shitty first draft." I like to think of first drafts as the seeds to a flower, eggs to a chicken, a trickling stream to the Grand Canyon. Oh, forget it. You get the picture. Three Ways to Work Through a Difficult First Draft was written by guest blogger, Christi Craig, on Suzannah Windsor Freeman's Write It Sideways.

http://writeitsideways.com/3-ways-to-work-through-a-difficult-first-draft/

Kristen Lamb's blog post, Is Your Novel a Spineless Weakling, was another good follow-up for Nanowrimo, and one of the best articles I've read on the necessity of an antagonist in your novel. In Broken Dolls, there are two antagonists -- Society, and Mama. Who is your antagonist? (Big newsleak: Watch for news of a guest appearance by Kristen Lamb at a future Ozarks Writers League meeting!)

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/is-your-novel-a-spineless-weakling/

And, if you are having a tough time even coming up with a "shitty first draft," here are a couple of links with writing prompts:

http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts

http://creativewritingprompts.com/

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/fiction-writing-prompts.html

I'll close this week's mashup with a quote by Elmore Leonard, who defined the difficulty of editing in a deceptively simple way:

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

The Zen of Splitting Wood

The cool, crisp days of autumn have arrived, and that means it’s time to split wood. Squirrels stockpile acorns for the long, cold days ahead. We stack firewood.



In the first days of the splitting season, there is a kind of charm—even novelty—to the task. With the hot doldrums of summer over, a welcome, cool breeze blows. All around us trees in spectacular stages of golden yellow and fiery red send leaves to swirl around us.


But after half-a-dozen or so occasions of splitting, the novelty has worn off (for me, but not for my husband,) and I can think of a hundred other things I’d rather be doing—cleaning out litter boxes, paying bills, writing the ending to my novel.

I’m kidding, really. I enjoy the splitting process. After all, my only “chore” in the routine is to stand by the splitter and raise the handle that controls the hydraulics up and down, up and down, while my husband does all the heavy lifting and positioning of the trunk segments. Not difficult work at all. In fact, it’s rather meditative.


Today, as I watched the pile of tree trunk segments shrink and the pile of split wood grow, I compared it to writing my book—the one I should have been working on instead of watching a splitter move up and down, listening to wood creak and crack as it splits and shuddering at the myriad of bugs that skitter around, alarmed by the rude light of day brought by the splitting.

Tree trunk by tree trunk. The process reminded me of Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird. In her memoir about writing and life, she tells the story of her brother, who as a boy sat in tears at the kitchen table the night before a report on birds was due—he’d had three months to write it, and hadn’t begun. In her words, her brother was “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.” She writes:


“Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”


So much of life is that way. Even before I’d heard of Bird by Bird, I remember consoling my son as he sat in the middle of his messy room I’d just told him to clean. As with Anne Lamott’s brother, Adam was “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.”

“I don’t know where to begin, Mom,” he had complained.

“Pick up your toys first. Then, your dirty clothes. Then, your books . . .”

Bird by Bird, even before I knew the meaning.

So, today, we split trunk by trunk. Then, we stacked log by log. Tonight, I’ll grab a good book and take pleasure in a warm, crackling fire.

And once I post this blog, I’ll get back to my book, Broken Dolls. I’ll write word by word. Page by page. Chapter by chapter. And maybe one day, I’ll have the thrill of knowing someone took pleasure in it—maybe sitting by a fire, after a day of splitting wood.

 

 

"Booger," our little stray puppy who found us.

 

 





The Splitter

Bear and Booger