The best part of the day
How does anyone know how to write a novel -- especially the very first time?
I'm having a go, but not sure what to do. Some of my friends politely ask me, "How's the novel going?" And I'm not sure...
So, inspired by some of my writing friends, I've started this blog as a way to keep going.
The SciFi writer, Jack Dann, inspired the title of the blog. In "A Few Keys to the Kingdom: Thoughts on Getting published, and on Being the Best Writer You Can Be" (Writer's Digest 69, Jan, 1989), Dann's advice includes:
"Give the best part of every day to yourself. You must try to write every day!"
Ok, Jack. Here goes!
(Thanks to "Victorian Writer" November 2006 for including Jack Dann's article. If you live in Australia, I recommend the Victorian Writers' Centre and their newsletter. It's terrific.)
I also bought the writing memoir by Kate Grenville Searching for the Secret River this week (Text Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 2006). You might know Kate Grenville's novels. Most recently, The Secret River won the Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
In Searching..., Grenville aims to share the process she went through to write The Secret River. I'm loving reading about her uncertainty, her sense that something's wrong in the text but she's not sure what to do. It makes me think: ok, I feel uncertain too!
So far I'm reading it out of sequence. Here are some parts that really helped me.
* Describing writing Lillian's Story: "From that experience I'd developed a few mantras about writing. Never have a blank page was one. Don't wait for the mood: that was another, because you could always fix it up later." [p.145.]
* "My rule of thumb was to cover at least five pages a day with writing. I didn't have to be good writing or even useable writing. I just had to cover the pages. So I kept going." [p.148]
But I was really heartened to read about Kate Grenville's breakthroughs. There's a time in the writing when she suspects that point-of-view and structure isn't quite right. I love hearing about how she was puzzling over this, then picked up a novel by Michael Ondaatje.
"Anil's Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje, is a very good book, but that wasn't why I stayed there reading it for the rest of the morning. I was wolfing it down because Michael Ondaatje was telling me what to do." [p.156.]
Thanks, Kate!
I'm having a go, but not sure what to do. Some of my friends politely ask me, "How's the novel going?" And I'm not sure...
So, inspired by some of my writing friends, I've started this blog as a way to keep going.
The SciFi writer, Jack Dann, inspired the title of the blog. In "A Few Keys to the Kingdom: Thoughts on Getting published, and on Being the Best Writer You Can Be" (Writer's Digest 69, Jan, 1989), Dann's advice includes:
"Give the best part of every day to yourself. You must try to write every day!"
Ok, Jack. Here goes!
(Thanks to "Victorian Writer" November 2006 for including Jack Dann's article. If you live in Australia, I recommend the Victorian Writers' Centre and their newsletter. It's terrific.)
I also bought the writing memoir by Kate Grenville Searching for the Secret River this week (Text Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 2006). You might know Kate Grenville's novels. Most recently, The Secret River won the Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
In Searching..., Grenville aims to share the process she went through to write The Secret River. I'm loving reading about her uncertainty, her sense that something's wrong in the text but she's not sure what to do. It makes me think: ok, I feel uncertain too!
So far I'm reading it out of sequence. Here are some parts that really helped me.
* Describing writing Lillian's Story: "From that experience I'd developed a few mantras about writing. Never have a blank page was one. Don't wait for the mood: that was another, because you could always fix it up later." [p.145.]
* "My rule of thumb was to cover at least five pages a day with writing. I didn't have to be good writing or even useable writing. I just had to cover the pages. So I kept going." [p.148]
But I was really heartened to read about Kate Grenville's breakthroughs. There's a time in the writing when she suspects that point-of-view and structure isn't quite right. I love hearing about how she was puzzling over this, then picked up a novel by Michael Ondaatje.
"Anil's Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje, is a very good book, but that wasn't why I stayed there reading it for the rest of the morning. I was wolfing it down because Michael Ondaatje was telling me what to do." [p.156.]
Thanks, Kate!
posted by ChanGrrrl at
2:39 PM
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