For All The Writers Out There........

Boundless has posted several interesting articles on writing this past week. I haven't had time to read them all thoroughly yet, but I plan to. I have skimmed over all of them and they seem to have lots of great tips and information. One is about getting past writer's block. I definitely need to read that one a second time. :)

I think one of the best ways to improve your writing is to read lots of books. All kinds of books from different eras, styles, and genres. When you learn what you like you like in other people's writing, it will be easier to see where your own can improve! I'm pretty picky about writing. I have strong opinions about what I like and what I dislike. It's not always easy for me to tell you exactly what it is that I dislike about a particular style of writing or book, but I know if I don't like it. I love Jane Austen's writing style. Her sarcastic descriptions make me laugh out loud, her characters seem like real people, and her conversation makes you feel like you are there. I love Dickens' style. He mixes in so many complicated characters and twists in his stories that I am never bored. On the other hand, I have rarely read a "classic" book from the twentieth century and enjoyed it. The writing style changed. The morality went downhill. Last year, I decided to experiment with reading classic/recommended books written later than 1890, just because all the other books I had been reading were the same 19th century style. I started two or three and turned them back into the library without finishing them. Some I finished, but didn't enjoy. Nearly every book was written in a style that I can only describe as a tangled mess of run-on sentences comprised of too many adjectives. I know some authors are loudly applauded for that kind of writing style. I guess I'm not intelligent enough to make any sense of it.


So, what is my own writing style? I love to write. I've written stories since I first learned to spell. My project now is a novel of epic proportions. Yes, I'm joking because I've been working on it for so long. It can also be taken literally because I have about fifteen five-subject notebooks stacked up in a chest in my room filled with rewrites of that same story. One thing I really hope I can achieve in my life is finishing that novel. It won't be easy. I want it to be a novel about real life and real people. Good times and hard times. Joy and sorrow. That's hard to describe. My biggest struggles are conversation and over-description. It's hard to make a conversation in print and no matter how many times I think it through, it never sounds the same when it's written. To make up for that lack, I always want to describe everything -- the dresses, the trees, the flowers, the food -- and so distract from the weak place in my story, the lack of conversation. Sometimes I can almost see the finish line for this novel. Other times I feel like starting all over. Hopefully, one day, I will be able to write "The End" on the last page with satisfaction.

Quote Book

I have lots of favorite quotes from movies, books, TV shows, historical figures...... lots of quotes from lots of different sources. A few years ago, I got the idea from a movie to write down all my favorites in a nice journal. Well, my mom gave me a nice journal for Christmas that year. It was exactly what I had in mind -- a wire-bound book, with sturdy pink pages and a scene of a garden gate on the cover. It look like just the thing to write quotes in. Anyone could open it and read it, but it was durable enough to last, as well as pretty. As I started trying to write down quotes, however, I drew a big blank. On the first page is a paragraph from a book I read by Matthew Henry and a poem by Emily Dickinson about books. After that, I couldn't come up with anything. Sure, I had several ideas of what I would like to write in it, but I got carried away in the details. I would think of a line I enjoyed from a movie. Then, as I began to write it, I would wonder if this was the exact wording. After all, this has to perfect! Or if I thought of a quote from a book, I would want to try to find the exact place in the book so that I could quote it word for word. Not very practical. Eventually, I gave up and put my notebook on my bookshelf and pretty much forgot about it. As I was reorganizing my room after Christmas, I found my quote book, and all those ideas came back to me. Besides, I had just found a few wonderful lines in some books I had just read. So, I started working my way through all my ideas. I have several Jane Austen quotes. I couldn't help it. After reading all her books again after Christmas, there were so many lines that I wanted to remember. There are a few movies quotes. I even quoted in its entirety one of my favorite songs from a musical and I may do that again because there are so many musicals with songs that I love. I am going to have to do some research to quote exactly some famous historical sayings, but I can take my time with that. I really want to add to it year after year. It's a fun project. On the down side, I showed my sister a page of it and she said she couldn't read a word of my handwriting. :( I don't think it's that bad, but I should make an effort to be neater. It's perfectly legible to me, but I also have a shorthand all my own that I fall into if I'm not careful, even when I'm trying to write perfectly. It must be the writer in me. I write so much that I have a tendency to scribble, even though I love beautiful handwriting. Anyway, I'm going to try to make my quote book full of interesting quotes and neat. If anyone has any favorite quotes they would like to share, I would love to hear them!

Blogging

I read a lot of blogs. I thought I read a lot of blogs when I read about eight on a regular basis, but now the "MyFavorites" link section of my Internet homepage is full of blogs. Some are new finds, but I have been reading a few of them for more than two years. It amazes me how you can learn so much about a person through reading their blog. When I find a new blog that looks interesting, I sort through a few of the older posts, and in fifteen minutes, I already have an idea of the blogger's interests, family life, and personality. I am often amazed, too, at the thoughtful posts, neat pictures, and great ideas so many bloggers post on a regular basis. Before I tried blogging myself, if I gave any thought to how all those posts I enjoyed ever got posted, I just thought that the blogger probably set aside fifteen minutes for a picture and a paragraph, maybe thirty minutes to put together the long, insightful posts. Now that I blog, I laugh at my former ideas and ask for a big round of applause for all those bloggers who really put time and thought into their posts.

When I started blogging, it was in part for the fun of it, but I really wanted to work on my writing skills and and have a place to post photographs. I had no idea what I was getting into. It is hard to say what I want to say without having the luxury of several rewrites and it is even harder to come up with new things to post about that are even mildly interesting on a consistent basis. I wanted to blog about all my craft/art/cooking projects, but I didn't want my blog to consist solely of that. I wanted to write what I thought about the news or in response to articles I read, as well as detailed movie/book reviews. So far, I just can't find the time. For example, I wanted to write a post on October 31 about the Protestant Reformation. I did have it written out nicely in my head. The trouble was, October 31 came and went and I never even began the post. I do have one very good excuse for my shortcomings: I'm very new at blogging. I only set this blog up in July. It took two months for me to get all the details worked out and I deleted several of my first posts because they were awful (even worse than these). I only began letting people read my blog in September, so I've really been doing this for only two months. My two biggest problems that I must overcome are these:

1. Even though I'm 22, I can't move past the high school mindset that I need at least a week to write a paper before I hand it in to the teacher. Blogging doesn't work that way. I suppose I could write longer posts out and work on them apart from the blog, then copy them into a post, but the point is for your blog to be like your online journal, not your online collection of essays. I may have to try that way a few times, though, at least until I get used to posting about something besides crafts.
2. I have an obsessive habit of proof-reading. Each post must be proofed at least ten times before it is published or I have a nagging feeling throughout the rest of the day that I used the wrong form of "there" somewhere in that post. (I've noticed that the typos somehow slip by anyway. If you see one, don't worry. I always find them two days after I publish it.)

So, my new goal is to put more thought into my posts, even if it takes me three days to get one post up, and I only get to proof-read it three times. Again, to all the bloggers out there who post such great stuff so frequently, thank you!!!

Writing Tips from Boundless

http://www.boundlessline.org/2007/10/so-you-want-to-.html

I thought this was a pretty interesting blog entry called "So You Want To Be A Writer". It gives a lot of tips about writing everything from articles to novels. There are even some good thoughts in the comments section and a link to another article about writing well.