Posts Tagged ‘writing’

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Make your world – by Linda LaRoche

Friday, January 20th, 2012

This is the last of Linda’s guest contributions, a topic near and dear to me, as I drown in regurgitated news items sent to me via social media and thirst for original insights that make us progress as a species. Thank you, Linda for joining my blog. Shane

Make your world – by Linda LaRoche

This week I had a former student ask me if he could use the title of my book. I pointed out how as a native-English speaker, he could come up with his own title. I neglected to point out that I’ve had a copyright on it with the Library of Congress since 2008. As an exercise in my creative writing class on characterization, I read students a sample paragraph and asked them to write on the facial features of a character they know well. Some choose to use the same words in the same context I had read aloud. The problem is, we tend to be blind to our own mistakes — and without a teacher or an editor, we keep making the same ones over again!
According to the Global Language Monitor, published May 18, 2011, there are over one million words in the English language. And while I understand that many works of art are derivative, such as a blog, where we link to one another, commenting on something that has been said or done by someone else, adding our bit of wisdom, but borrowing from one another, I ask– where is original thought?
Art is a noble quest. I know a few writers who won’t read while they in are in a writing mode just so they can be assured that their words are uniquely their own. I’m a believer that as part of the race of man we share some of the same creative ideas on the spiritual plane. But how we choose to interpret what is in us makes us distinct and adds style. Good writing involves a love of language. Using your own words comes down to original thought. A thought is tied to a string of personal memories, biased and uniquely yours: original in every sense. And isn’t creativity whereby a person creates something new from what is inside them?
It takes work to reconsider what you are trying to say. It involves the need to improve the content of your material, looking for a whole new aspect of the issue, and in the end, to express it in a fresh way. The Creator has a Master Plan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkVLS6muw1k

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Those who say “yes” have more fun – by Linda La Roche

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

This is the second of Linda’s posts – for those who may be fearful of taking the leap into writing. Enjoy! Shane


Those who say “yes” have more fun – by Linda La Roche
August 11, 2011

How do we make that scary leap from thinking about writing to actually doing it?

Now, I cannot claim to be a total expert on this. There are many things that I’d like to do/am in the process of doing that may never fall under the done heading. Hiking in Nepal, taking flying lessons, and competing in a triathlon to name a few. However, I do have a decent track record of actually completing a good number of the seemingly improbable things that I set out to do. Here’s what has worked for me:

Write it down, and start mapping your path
A jump-start is by putting pen to paper as one of the best ways to make things happen. It’ll start to seem realistic when you look at it on paper. Taking it further helps even more; research, and start compiling the information that will bridge the gap between what’s inside your head and what’s not.

Blast it
Tell everybody about it! Anybody worth knowing will be excited for you and feed your enthusiasm. Also, you’ll be a less likely to back out of your plan because everyone you know will be asking you about it. Shame can be a great motivator.

Spend money on it
Most will be exponentially more likely to complete a goal that they spend money on. It’s a great step towards getting there.

Make it irreversible
Now that you’re making tendrils of progress, keep going. When you’re really serious about something and you know intuitively, that it’s the right choice, don’t allow yourself the luxury of a backup plan. I once bought a one-way, non-refundable ticket to Europe expecting to stay six months and instead it turned into three years. Be courageous! By putting yourself at the mercy of fate you are going to have so much fun!

Doing begets more doing
I’ve found that action begets more action. Once you’ve published your novella, you know that you are capable of moving to Hong Kong on your own, or learning to speak Hindi, and you can’t be deterred from starting an import business–all these things are totally doable, you go-getter, you!

Freelance writer, Linda LaRoche teaches Creative Writing and Blogging at College of Southern Nevada and continuing education classes at UNLV. Her last two multi-cultural novels and collection of short stories portray a heartfelt tale of liberation, desperation, and the grip of love.
Find out more by visiting: http://www.lindalaroche.com/blog
And join the discussion on her blog, the Quill.

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No two ways about it – by Linda LaRoche

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

This week I am featuring guest blogger, Linda LaRoche, an author and editor who teaches Creative Writing and Blogging at College of Southern Nevada. Linda shares my zest for travel and for getting to the heart of why we write. I hope you enjoy her blog and welcome your comments
Happy reading!
Shane


No two ways about it
February 8, 2011
In my classes I was recently asked two questions, “When did you know you were a writer?” And, “Is that all you do, write?” They are identity questions, self-worth questions, fulfillment and personal freedom questions–a nascent creative soul’s penetrating questions. And loaded into the questions seem to be an underlining ground-zero that tethers the one asked to a primary sense of identity— something presumably more real, more acceptable, more common, much more stable. To be a loan officer, you apply for the job and show up every day for work; to be a writer, you have to know –via, perhaps, some mystical experience – that you’re a writer.

You are a writer when you are writing. I know it sounds simplistic, yet it is true. Do not roll your eyes, reader, as if I’ve heard that one before. As we evolve in our work lives, piecing together various kinds of employment to earn money, step-by-step nudging out the non-writing stuff and making the writing central (or at least that which is writing-related), I find it to be even more starkly true: I am not a writer when I am editing or critiquing someone else’s work, or composing social media articles. I am not a writer when I am nibbling on wine and cheese at a fashionable literary event. I am not a writer when I am teaching, i.e. talking about craft and helping others with theirs. I am not a writer when I am tweeting other writers or keeping up on my self-promotion, or reading literary blogs. I am not a writer when I am on a search for a new book to read or when I am drinking coffee in Starbucks leafing through the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com. I know I am a writer when I am writing. When I am working with words, when I am making ideas and characters come to life with written language. When I am laying out the pages on the desk and taking my blue sharpie to chunks of text that I know don’t work in the story, when I lose myself and forget basics like the hour, eating, brushing my hair, while typing a paragraph where something terrible, or euphoric, or quietly illuminating is happening. This may sound naïve but I feel strongly that I must be honest; I must be writing to be a writer. Otherwise, I feel like a fraud. Even if it’s just an hour because that’s all there’s time for, or even if I’ve been working on the same damn narrative arc problem in a short story for weeks, I know that I cannot stand in front of either my own mirror or even in front of you, dear inquirer, and exhort you to “show, don’t tell” or “up the emotional stakes” or instruct you to “live your passion” if I am not myself at the writing desk, messing with words, living in the trenches and heights of which I speak.

That is how it feels to be a writer; nothing more, nothing less. It’s a full-time job, anything else distracts from it. I’ve had my share of work that has taken me away from writing, and it may not be all I do, but it’s my priority in life, and the secret to being a writer is to not stop writing and to show up for work.

Freelance writer, Linda LaRoche teaches Creative Writing and Blogging at College of Southern Nevada and continuing education classes at UNLV. Her last two multi-cultural novels and collection of short stories portray a heartfelt tale of liberation, desperation, and the grip of love.
Find out more by visiting: http://www.lindalaroche.com/blog
And join the discussion on her blog, the Quill

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Standing on the Edge, Again

Friday, November 25th, 2011

I recently bought a small place back in the Big Smoke. A bold move for a guy with indeterminate income who had started to get comfortable in semi-retirement, writing books and playing guitar in his small town by the lake. I will have to work again – I mean, really work – to afford it all, with a hovering recession and high unemployment that refuses to go away as my travelling companions. In exchange, I would be opened to the attractions and distractions that the city would offer: theatre, art, literary events, traffic, rent-a-bike, smog and crime. And I would stand once more at a window on the larger world of diverse and displaced people struggling to make it in their new home, just like I did, oh so many years ago.

I remember when I first “retired” from writing and moved abroad, in my early twenties, because at that time all the stories of my tender life experience had been written and I needed new fodder. I never thought that I would ever write again. I wanted to “do” not “dream.” The next 20 years of “doing” and screwing up gave me enough for a truckload of books and stories, but now that conduit too has slowed to a trickle. The time to hunt has begun again; the new harvest, or gathering, will have to follow at a later date. Life, it seems, full of new beginnings. What is the alternative? An ending? The END?

But now there are those reports of the “throwaway glass condos” springing up all over Toronto, buildings that are energy efficient yet not durable in the long term. Have I picked myself one of these lemons? Should I have stayed put in my cottage by the lake and buried my money under a mattress to escape the stock market’s never ending case of the hiccups? Am I suffering from buyer’s remorse? Am I scared of change, of the unknown? Isn’t life all about surprises? Couldn’t just the next medical check-up spring a surprise?

They say that growth happens on the edge, not in the comfort zone, and I am deliberately placing myself on the edge again I realize, hoping that it would bring me raw material for the next round of stories, whether that even includes personal loss. Unlike my last “retirement”, my life span is a lot shorter now, so I can’t afford another 20 years of “doing” before the next harvest of experiences. I am going to have to gather as I do and hope that the finished material falls into a coherent whole. Writing on the go will also help me deal with the fear of taking the plunge again.

Stepping off edges doesn’t get easier with age; on the contrary, it’s bloody scary, but exhilarating! What will I attempt next? Russian Roulette? Or bungee jumping off the CN Tower?

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New Year Resolutions – short and sweet

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

On a beach in a Caribbean island, I ran over my usual list of New Year resolutions: manage the weight, exercise regularly, save money, save the trees, go e-books, write more, read more, work less, drink less, shamelessly self promote, keep building my online platform etc., etc., etc.

As nudists on the adjacent beach strutted their stuff, ate and drank copiously, and engaged in a relentless flesh-hunt, I was seeking the austere life. I did not stop with my usual list of resolutions this time either. I went deeper: talk-less, desire less, listen more, dream more, blog only about things that matter, take more risks, make more mistakes (i.e. learn more lessons). I was really getting going here. And there was more to come: open the heart, give until it hurts, burn the writing that does not help humanity, endure more dark nights of the soul – oh boy, and I hadn’t even had a margarita yet. By this time, the sun was high, the nudists roasted and soused, and there was I, a noble idiot, digging myself into the largest hole of self denial, when all about me others were just “havin’ a good tyme, man!”

The solitary nature of my occupation came home to me, especially amidst this sea of humanity that had come to the Caribbean to chill out and be brainless for a short time. As I walked the beach, I scanned for what people were reading. There was one e-reader amidst the variety of paperback genre novels (Dan Brown was still going strong), spread out on deck chairs; their owners were either lapping up the sun with their eyes shut and their reading material abandoned, or dousing themselves in the ocean, or helping themselves to their umpteenth dirty banana (a cocktail) for the day. There was no evidence of literary fiction on this beach.

“Want ganja, man?” the local beachcomber asked me. “No,” I replied. “How about a girl?” “No!” I said. “Want a ride in my canoe?” He kept pace with me, like a barnacle on a boat. “No, I can’t swim.” “How about some fun?” “What’s that?” I asked. “Ganja, girl and canoe – with a life vest,” he replied, looking concerned, “you looking too serious, man.” “I write books,” I clarified. A wide grin broke on his face, “Ah that explains it, man – you loco, right?” “Right,” I said, and left him to find a more interested customer.

The solitary resolution that I am sticking to since returning from this beach holiday does not resemble any of my perennials. I don’t have to worry about those mainstays—they will get done—they are second nature to me now. And those newer, harder items, like spending more dark night with my soul etc., have been scrapped as well. My only resolution since returning from Jamaica is “Get a life, man!”

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Monetizing Content in the Hippie Era of Writing

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

How does one make money at writing today? That question seems to be the “pre-occupation de jour” of most commercial writers and journalists. The cyber airwaves are chock full of content: blogs, wikis, e-mail, self-published books, e-zines. How does a writer insist that he gets paid for his work when there are equally good, or sometimes better, content being written by people who possess a deep understanding of their subject matter and an altruistic desire for sharing their writing, and who earn a better living through other means than they can or ever will as writers?

Encyclopaedias were money makers once, but their time ran out; software makers made money too, but they spawned the open source movement and jumped into services instead. Pagers were absorbed into cell phones, typewriters into personal computers, music CDs into MP3’s, videos into You Tube, broadcast radio into blog-talk radio, cable television into web-TV, long- distance phone plans into Skype, and now tree-books into e-books. Many successful products that once exchanged value for monetary benefit are now offered free or have been subsumed into other inventions. And content—a writer’ primary product, plucked out of a fertile imagination not given to many, and delivered in beautiful language—is now also… free?

I think of the hippie era when we played in musical bands purely for the love of expression, not for money but in protest against an out-of-touch establishment and all things resembling corporate greed. But that did not last either, did it? After the hangovers and love-ins wore out, we took haircuts, shaved our beards, bathed, bought new clothes, and joined the very guys we had protested against, to unleash some of the greatest economic growth cycles in history, creating unparalleled inventions, and unleashing unbridled greed that resulted in the meltdowns of Black Monday, the dot-com bubble, and the Crash of 2008.

And now, as if in atonement for our past excesses, we are going back to our hippie days of free drugs, free love and free expression, and giving everything away for free again, including our artistic creation—our writing. Even Big Business is calling this the Age of Creativity and seeking to monetize it. But the creative ones don’t seem to care; self actualization is triumphing over the baser needs of the ego and the pocketbook.

I support those trying to make a living at this very difficult art at this particular time in history. It is indeed a desired end: to do the things you love and to also earn one’s livelihood from it. But it seems like these bold souls are swimming against a tide that has, at least for the next few years, turned against them.

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A day in the life of a shameless self-promoting writer

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Bill sets down his second coffee cup, rubs his eyes in the early hours of the morning and starts on his blog. In it, he declaims world hunger, the war in Afghanistan, greedy corporate types and the malaise among readers who were still migrating over to TV, twittering and texting, and leaving the printed word in the dust. East week he writes the same article with variations on the theme. “Stick to the core message” was what he had been taught at Writer’s School.

On his third coffee, he opens his query letter template, scans the agents he has targeted from the week before, there are five left in his list of 45. He cuts and pastes, adds the customary links to his website and blog, attaches the standard chapter of his novel which is so well edited for grammar and punctuation that it has lost its spirit, and puts the three envelopes in the mail tray – later he will take them down to the post office, where he has become a regular.

Then he enters his standard five short story contests for the day, all sourced from the internet the day before. Each has a differing word length and he picks from his 500 word, 1500 word, 2500 word, 5000 word and 10,000 word stories, depending on the rules for application. Today’s contests have higher entry fees, $50.00 in some cases, instead of the customary $15.00.

After a lunch of bread and butter, washed down with more coffee, Bill get onto his social networking sites where he has to maintain his presence: Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon and a few new ones that are sent to him daily via his “network”. He comments on the various online forums, where he is reputed to carry a heavy stick and is known for his literary flair, always ending by listing his website address. He sources more contests for entering tomorrow.

By 2pm he is dozing in his seat – time for his nap to re-charge the brain cells.

He wakes with a start – it is 3.30pm – he has really dozed off. The sun is warm outside and the skies are blue. It is time for a walk down to the beach, where he could blow the cobwebs of sleep away and find out if any grains of inspiration have been planted during his temporary visit to Dreamworld. He returns at 4.30pm after a brief stop at the post office, having found no grains other then the grains of sand sticking to his shoes after walking the beach.

Time to write my three pages a day. He dives into it with gusto. He is writing this crime novel in which he does not like the heroine, she just sort of came to him from that Dreamworld place. So halfway into his writing he gives her a cancerous tumour and sends her off to hospital, while her husband has wild sex with his administrative assistant on the office couch. Feeling vindicated, Bill ambles off into the kitchen and fixes himself a tuna sandwich.

Now for that grant application. Bill hates begging for money, but he needs it – he has not sold any work in six months, the last being a freelance journalistic article. His only published novel never made the top ten, and sank into oblivion soon within three months of its launch. His publisher never called him back.

At 9pm, Bill yawns – it’s been a long day. Time for bed. Tomorrow he will repeat the cycle. Eventually, something will give. Spoiler alert: Wannabe Writers – this could be you!

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Returning to the Grind

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

After taking two years off to focus on my writing, I recently returned to the business world that earns me more money in a day than in a whole year as an author.

Was this caving in? Selling out? Giving up? It was all of the above, and the achievement of wisdom that the business of writing and the art of writing are two different pursuits. My business logic tells me that one avoids entering markets as a seller when supply exceeds demand, and this is the case in the fiction market. And yet, we eternal hopefuls enter it in hordes every year because we all want to tell our story. The only hope of garnering attention in this supply-heavy market is through the power of endorsement. So should a writer wine and dine every agent and publisher, as well as Oprah, as part of his next phase to being commercially successful, apart from writing his break-out novel? Probably—for those so inclined.

For me, it has been a wake-up call to return to my art of writing and focusing on developing that aspect of this gift (or curse) that is foisted upon some of us. There are no limitations to developing the art: it has a linear growth trajectory and contracts or extends based on how much time and effort you put into it. And yet the business of writing today is faced with so many variables, many outside the control of the writer: e-books, Google, publishers going bankrupt, the blockbuster phenomenon, self-publishing, occasional social networking jackpots—where do you place your bet?

A wise teacher once told me to worry about the things that only I could control and leave the rest to God (or the Devil). And so it is with the writing. I will return to the craft and find reward and enrichment for my soul in that endeavour. As for the selling of books, you can’t miss what you never had, so the idyllic life of the writer living in exotic lands and jettisoning the occasional manuscript upon a hungry agent, who then turns it around into mega bucks and movie deals—that will have to remain a dream – for now!

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Left and Right Brain balanced – wise man or muttonhead?

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

As a student, I was often told by a wise teacher that we needed to have balanced personalities, so that humanity would not tip the world over its axial tilt where it hangs precariously today, askew by about 23 degrees. That meant that we needed to keep our left (analytical) brain in sync with our right (creative) brain, and have one side always question the actions of the other because power on one side alone corrupts absolutely—so I was told. That is why there are two houses of parliament, a government and an opposition party in the colonial democracies, the division of powers in the USA, the Cold War, and so on.

As soon as I was able to figure this out, I enrolled to become an engineer and also signed up for a creative writing course. But I quickly ran into trouble. My math teacher told me that I was not enough of a linear thinker; I kept getting sidetracked with side-plots, and I always wanted to know “why?” My creative writing instructor called me a freak, because, frankly, “engineers did not become writers”—period—in his world! Besides, I was anal about plotting in those days and he wanted me to drift all over the place and get lost instead. My Myers Briggs personality scores were never consistent, because I was a NT (intuitive thinker) or a SP (sensory perceptive) depending on which mood I was in when I took that very reliable test.

I never became an engineer or a bestselling author in the end, although I worked in project management for a number of years and a few of my novels were published. When we hit a tough problem on a project, I took time out to tell my team a story that may have provided them some relief, or hinted at some answers. I like my short stories and novels to have a beginning, middle and an end. I could never be one of the “boys”, or even one of the “girls.” I was just a fringe dweller and even named one of my books after that moniker because I was so used to it applying to me. And as I progressed through life as a jack of all trades and a master of some, I wondered whether I was indeed a freak, or if the rest of the world was perhaps being a bit harsh due to its own shortcomings. I guess it’s easier to take a position and raise the flag for one side than to wonder what is really going on, on both sides.

But I also wonder if we care to develop both sides of our God-given brain, would the world be a lot different than it is today; more peaceful and understanding, more patient and tolerant, perhaps? “Use it or lose it,” they say; and between the artists and the engineers, we are losing a lot of wisdom due to one-sided brain power. Half-brained people are more inclined to take the easy way out and look externally for answers to questions that perplex them, and blame everyone else when the answers they find are not satisfactory to their one track thinking. Perhaps, all along those answers reside in the undeveloped side of their brains. What was that saying, “the Kingdom of God lives within you”? Ah, another side-plot worth investigating, much to my old math teacher’s chagrin…

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Book Reviews

Monday, June 29th, 2009

I started writing book reviews this year – of every book I read. And I began publishing them on any site that accepted a review, with the author’s permission where necessary. An easy way to commit my impressions of a particular book to written memory in case I was asked a question about it sometime in the future, I thought, and a cheap way of making a name at someone else’s expense (the poor author of that book). Every marketing guru will tell you that you need to put your name and website address next to anything you write online. I’ve realized that my website hit count has gone up since. I no longer have to visit my site each day and hit it a dozen times before the metrics tracking bar rises marginally above the base line.

And then I realized the heavy obligation placed upon, but not often assumed, by the book reviewer. This was not about the reviewer – this was all about the book and its author. A bad review can sink a writer and a good one does not necessarily sell more books. And if reading is all about taste, don’t we all have different tastes? Isn’t one person’s poison, another’s honey? Isn’t the whole book industry all about tastes? Isn’t that why it got segmented into genres with their own unique sub-cultures, so that the literary fiction aficionado would not go ripping up the crime fiction book and saying, “the characters stink and move like cardboard cut-outs,” and the crime fiction buff would not toss out the lit-fic tome, screaming that it put him to sleep every time he opened it?

What right did I have to destroy these writers with my reviews of their work? So I narrowed my area of reviewing to the books I like to read: mainstream and literary fiction. And I tried to focus on the parts that left positive impressions on me, dropping hints of the not-so-nice elements, and hoping like hell that that writer (if he or she is still alive) would do something about it the next time. And when I read a poorly written book (in my opinion only) I send the author, or his agent, my comments separately as sincere developmental feedback; and in this instance, I do not post a review. Not that I am the world’s greatest writer, but as a frequent reader one picks up flat notes pretty damn quick.

Reviewing is a tough business, I have come to appreciate. Why do I do it? Because I have now learned, that more than the cheap fame factor, dissecting another’s work is a great way to hone one’s own craft and learn to write great sentences that resonate, and a way to avoid the black holes that some writers sink into. What we do with the dissected pieces and how we distribute them around is what calls for sensitivity, tact, and plain common sense. And the day I am not able to exercise such a balance is when I will give up writing book reviews.

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