Book recommendation continued

I should never try to post when I'm tired. Turns out I can't think. Ignore my previous post, please.



Elizabeth George's Write Away
As I was attempting to say in my previous post, this is an excellent book on writing. It deals in ideas, but it also deals in specifics.

I'll quote from chapter twelve:

All that I've shared with you so far begs the real question: How do you write it? It being the book. "One word at a time" is the coy answer (like the incredibly helpful response I heard a writer give a student aksing how to write good dialogue: "Open a vein." Now that was really useful.). The answer I prefer to give is this: If you see your novel as a collection of causally related scenes, you just write the book one scene at a time.

She spent previous chapters explaining the term "causally related scenes." She spends the rest of this chapter outlining how she has put it to work in her own writing, and how she sees it put to work in the writing of others.

I love the quote above, because the "open a vein" crap is the kind of "advice" that some writers give, hoping to enhance the mystique of what they do--to claim that they can do it, because they have the touch. Obviously, mortals like you can't do it. Baloney! Writing a book is a skill, like playing tennis. The more you practice, the better you get. Some people end up winning Wimbledon, but you don't have to win it to make your living as a tennis player.

I admit that there are books that are better than others--that some writers write more inspiring prose than other writers. Just like Tiger Woods has a touch that not all other professional golfers have. Not all of us are destined to win the Masters more than once, or to win Nobel prizes in literature. But we can probably tell a damn good story that other people want to read.

What else do I like about the book?

• She divides the book into useful sections: Overview of the craft, The basics, Technique, Process, Examples and Guides
• She starts every chapter with an interesting quote from a journal that she has kept when writing each book. (She explains about keeping a journal when writing a book in the Process section.)
• The Process section rocks! (IMHO.) The chapters in this section are: Baby Steps First, the Value of Bum Glue, and Tidbits from Q&A. We all know the value of "bum glue." She explains it with humor. I read this section first, just for a little inspiration. I got a lot of inspiration.
• Once again, let me repeat: concrete details.

You know how you've heard "the universal can be found in the details." Details are what keep a reader involved. It what makes every actor's performance worth watching. It's what makes art interesting. (Really, if you don't know what makes color-field paintings interesting, you must look at one up close--to see the brush strokes, to see the shadows at play, to see that "red" isn't just red.)

Finding Flow

At the same time that I'm reading Write Away, I'm reading CM's Finding Flow. It's interesting to read the two in conjunction. To be in a flow state, you need a task that requires a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses, and immediate feedback.

Considering these two books together, I can help my own creative process. (One goal of keeping this blog is to consider my own creative process, and in doing so, help others solve problems with their own. ) So, in order to increase "flow" in my own creative process I can set clear goals. Of course, there is always a page count or word number goal that I can work towards, but there are other goals I can set too. For example, these goals might be:

• to spend time writing character analyses
• to work out my causally-related scenes
• to revise for verb choice, or to revise to eliminate extraneous words ( I love to start sentences with "Well,")

As I do these things, then I help clear my head of the anxiety that fills it when I am not concentrating on my goals, which in turn, will help me live a better life. (Which is what Finding Flow is really all about.) Bonus!