Writers, You Need To Get Out More

Once upon a time, freelance writing was an out and about business. You went out, met people, talked to sources, talked to editors and generally had a range of conversations related to what you were writing. Now, freelance writing can be very different, especially if your main business is writing web content.

As a web content writer, you can spend days or weeks at your desk without ever seeing another person. You can research your articles on the internet, draft them and send them off with very little human contact at all. In some ways, it's like living in a protective bubble, where you don't have to deal with the real world. However, it's a mistake to stay in that bubble for too long.

The reason is that without some outside input your writing will get stale. You will be drawing on the same old sources for inspiration you have always used. No matter how expert your knowledge, you need to refresh it from time to time. In order to produce a pearl, you have to throw in a little dirt.

So how do you do this when your writing job keeps you tied to your desk? Virtuality has advantages as well as disadvantages and one of the advantages is that you can keep up with developments in your field without leaving your desk. You can read news sites, online magazines and ezines, and you can subscribe to blogs in your field. All of this will keep you abreast of what people are talking about and thinking.

Offline, you can get a lot of inspiration from the books you read, the radio programmes you listen to and the television you watch. Anything can spark an idea or create a metaphor that will liven up your writing. The trick is to be alert and be ready to capture these fleeting inspirations – and to get out more. It will do your writing no end of good.

Why I Blog

I've been tagged by danahinders to give five reasons why I blog, so here goes:

Reasons For Blogging

1. I started blogging because I heard it was a good way to bring traffic to your site. That worked well, though it took longer than I thought.
2. Then I found WritingUp and fell in love with the community aspect of blogging. At that point I no longer cared about traffic, I was just having fun.
3. I also blog because it's like an online portfolio, which I have used to show my writing ability to various people.
4. Blogging is a good way of fostering creativity - and of taking a break when I'm mentally exhausted
5. I blog because I get to write in my own voice - which is nice for a change after a day of ghostwriting.

.

Whose turn next? How about Inklings, kohuether and merryone?

My Path To Writing

I was inspired to write this by a recent post from Trick Falls on writing inspirations. I haven't always wanted to be a writer, though I have nearly always written. When I was a child, I used to mess around with drawing house plans and I thought I might want to be an architect. My high school art teacher finally put an end to that when I was 14 by requesting that I not waste her time by returning the following year. (Shame really, I enjoyed art, but even I must admit that drawing wasn't my strong point.) I also enjoyed playing with Meccano and experimenting with buildings, but it would have helped if I'd had either a good science teacher (for the laws of physics) or some aptitude for scientific subjects. But I didn't. So that left me with words.

Don't get me wrong, words were not something that I settled for in lieu of the other two options. In fact, they had been a part of my life for as long as I remember. My mother remembers me as a little girl who never stopped talking. And what I remember is that as soon as I started getting pocket money (maybe around the age of seven), I started spending it on books.

I was a voracious reader. I started with Enid Blyton, moved on to Richmal Compton (William stories), Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Biggles and various children's classics. Once I'd exhausted those, I took a brief swing through some teenage fiction (Judy Blume and the like), before heading for my parents' bookshelf. Now they had a lot of books. There were books in the hallway, in the dining room, in their bedroom and in every spare space, so I was happy. At first I took the books I was allowed to read (lots of mysteries - Agatha Christie, Nero Wolfe etc) and then I raided the shelf for other books (Jacqueline Susan among others). Don't worry, I was quite a bit older than seven by this time. Not everything I read was great literature, but it made me appreciate a good story. And though my reading tastes have changed, I still do.

The reason I mention this is because most writers worth their salt are also readers. So reading was a crucial part of my development as a writer. (And let me take a moment to plug Scrabble. I started playing the junior version at around six and the adult version at eight with my grandfather. There's nothing like it for enouraging a love of words and boosting your vocabulary.)

At school, I always enjoyed writing stories, but I never thought much about that enjoyment. There were two experiences that set me on the road to writing. One was pleasant, the other not. The first one was growing up with an alcoholic father. By the time I was 15 I had a lot of anger and sadness to write out and that's when I started writing poetry and keeping a journal. I'm not saying it was any good, but it was writing. The second thing was becoming co-editor of the school newspaper at 17. Now, this was in the old days. We used a Gestetner machine, commissioned people to do illustrations by hand and got covered in ink. That was when I first felt the thrill of writing for publication and managing a magazine. I really loved it.

But I'm slow on the uptake sometimes. So I did nothing more than the occasional poem while I was at university and away in France. When I got back home, a local paper was looking for someone with language skills. I applied, got it and started work as a journalist. In that job and in all my other journalism jobs, I got to write about a variety of things and to do a variety of publishing related tasks. Although I didn't always like my bosses, I loved the job.

Then came my last boss. He was a bully and for the first time, I contemplated leaving journalism. So when a chance came to teach it at university, I jumped at the chance, thinking that I could freelance as well. That didn't work out, because of the amount of preparation a new teacher has to do and then childbirth and motherhood.

Throughout this time, I'd continued to write the occasional poem, but it was when I went back to work after maternity leave that it struck me. I wasn't happy. I wanted to write full time (or at least part-time so I could spend time with my daughter). Finally, a year ago I made the jump after listing the pros and cons. The pros were that I had lots of experience as a writer and would be able to work from home doing what I loved. The cons were that I didn't have many recent contacts and I might not make any money for a year.

So now, here we are. I'm getting paid to write and I'm happy. Inspiration is all around me. My daughter has inspired children's stories (five to date) and poetry. My nomadic life has inspired books on moving (still half-finished). And blogging at WritingUp has inspired lots and lots of writing, most of which you have seen.

Writing As Art - Update

A couple of weeks ago I did a post on whether writing could be seen as art. The answer from all of the WritingUp denizens was a resounding yes. I expected that, as there are some very talented writers here, including those who don't see themselves as writers.

Today I went to the final session of the course that sparked the question and to my surprise, someone asked whether journalism was an art. The audience were divided on this, because for most of the people there, tabloid journalism was about as far from art as you could get. However, they did say that the best examples of writing which touch and move people, which spark a response, have artistic merit. Nice of them to admit what we already know, don't you think?

Thinking About My Blog

Sometimes it's difficult to keep the writing momentum going. With all the writing I'm doing for InspiredAuthor and other sites, I don't have as much thinking time as I used to. Plus, there's the not so small matter of my very active toddler. Thinking time is essential for writers. Good ideas often need time to percolate before being put on paper or sent out for public consumption. This is not true of everything, of course. Sometimes writers just have to write to meet a deadline. But for many of us, having the time to think and polish is essential. The posts I do here are a mixture. Some of them I've thought about, drafted and let sit for a couple of days. Others have come straight out of my head onto my blog. But in most cases, it's the ones I've spent more time on that you've liked the most. Have a look:

Most read blog posts

10. Alphabet Soup 335
9. Keeping Track Of Your Writing 353
8. Do You Give Good Headline? 385
7. The Color Question 423
6. Three Months Of Blogging 445
5. Freelance writers - four reasons to get on the net 497
4. Read Em And Weep 552
3. How I Get Paid To Blog - UPDATE 560
2. WritingUp Alphabet 648
1. How I Put My Site On Steroids 875

Most commented blog posts

10. Do You Give Good Headline? 26
9. SHH Blogwatch 28
8. Read Em And Weep 29
7. Without Word: Free Online Tools For Writers 30
6. Alphabet Soup 31
5. How I Put My Site On Steroids 32
4. Do You Know Your ABCs? 32
3. The Color Question 36
2. How I Get Paid To Blog - UPDATE 42
1. WritingUp Alphabet 72

Compiling these lists was an interesting process, because I realised that people don't always comment on the posts they like. (That shouldn't really surprise me, as I don't comment on every post I read.) And some of the ones that I personally like best don't feature at all. Looking at what people are reading and talking about is instructive for bloggers and writers so they have some idea of what the audience wants. This is a key element of good, targeted writing. Thanks for reading.

Is Writing Art?

I suppose I'm still steamed up about that writing workshop I attended. I went because it was a two-day workshop (there are two half days to follow in a couple of weeks) and it was free. I also went because you always have to be open to learning new things. I suppose I did. What I learned is that the people in that room who painted, sculpted and created didn't consider writing art. For them writing was something that served their art.

I don't tend to get all misty-eyed about writing. I do it and I enjoy it. Writing is also a craft. By that I mean that those who write have a skill in using words to create a picture or an atmosphere. It also takes skill to take a particular phrase and build an article or a blog post around it. (I'm sure many of my fellow bloggers will agree.)

But writing is also art, in my view. This is because it involves the 'creation of beautiful or significant things', as Wordnet puts it. Words tend to live with us even when the authors are long gone. This is true whether you're talking about the Declaration of Independence or Macbeth. And it's also true here on WritingUp. Every day we read blog posts that touch us in some way; or posts that astound us with their beauty and thought.

So yes, darn it! Writing is art as well as craft, at least for me.

What do you think?

In Defense Of Blogging

Today I attended a writing workshop. The people who were there were mostly artists who wanted to write about their creative practice, though there were a few writers like myself. Some of the writers wrote for academic publications; others for newspapers and magazines. A question that came out of the presentations had to do with blogging. The question was: what is a blog and how can we use it? To my surprise, most people were not sure.

Those few who had heard of blogging (here in the UK, we're a bit behind our friends in North America) believed it was some sort of online diary. And although that's one possibility, I believe a blog is so much more than that. Yes, some people create diaries and travelogues, but other people create so much more. I don't know what those people would make of joetheartist's blog, the Liverpool blog, the networking blog, and our resident philosopher's blog - to name just a few. These blogs don't fit into the online diary stereotype perpetrated by the unknowing.

A Blank Piece Of Paper

For me, people were getting hung up about the form over the content. As one person puts it, when an artist sits down with a blank piece of paper, anything can be created. It can be a work of art, a doodle, the beginning of a novel, a mind map for another creative idea. So for me a blog is an online version of that blank piece of paper. It is exciting precisely because the blogger can create anything s/he wants to.

Liberating Creativity

When I started blogging here, I didn't know what I was going to do. My blog has evolved as I have interacted with people here and seen what they like, what they appreciate and, most importantly, what they ignore. This, for me, is another key part of the blog puzzle - the possibility of interacting with your audience. Some people might find this frightening; I find it liberating. Just think, I can write what I like, try out ideas, get feedback, improve my creative output - all before I try to sell a piece of writing to a potential client.

In the past, this creative process took place offline, sometimes alone, sometimes with like-minded people. But the fact that creativity is taking place in full view of the world does not negate the viability of blogging as a creative form. In a sense, it gives everyone the possibility of being an artist but allows them to choose the form that their art takes.

Answering The Question

In the end, my answer to the question was this: a blog is what individuals make of it. And a blog is also a conversation with your audience. That seems to me to be a good thing for all artists, including writers.

So that's my view on blogging; what's yours? I'm seeing these people again in a couple of weeks and I'd love to give them some insight into what committed bloggers think on this issue.

More posts on blogging:

Blogging and Creativity
Blogging As Portfolio
How WritingUp Helped Me Get A Writing Job

Feel The Fear ...

Everyone's afraid of something. I've always felt confident about writing articles and I know that one day I will finish my novel. Yet despite writing lots of poems, I'd never shared them with anyone. Part of the reason was that I could still remember the voice of my snooty English teacher. She tended to play favourites, and I was definitely in the OUT crowd. But when she repeatedly slated the poems I wrote as assignments, I decided never to show them to anyone, a promise I kept for about 20 years. But then something changed. And it wasn't the poems, it was me.

A few years ago I had a friend and fellow writer staying at my house. She's someone I've known for years, whose opinion I respect. We did a kind of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' thing. I read some of her poems and she read some of mine. She thought they were good, and that gave me the courage to show them to a few family members.

Fast forward to 2006 and I still had done nothing with my store of 50 poems. (The only exception were a couple that were inspired by particular people. In those cases I showed them the poems before putting them away). I looked at them again and decided to risk submitting some of them to a couple of poetry mags. I heard nothing - still haven't. Then one day, I needed something for my blog urgently and I published one of my poems. A couple of days later, I got an invitation to join Todays-Woman.net (a writing group). I was elated, signed up and posted a couple of poems, to which I got a great response. Encouraged by that, I posted Gratitude here (97 reads and counting).

So when Katryn published a call for submissions to RITRO, I decided to go for it. It was hard to let my babies go, but to date, I've submitted three poems and all three have been accepted. I'll post a link when they're up.

My point is that if you want to get your work published, you'll have to show it to someone other than the cat and dog. So why don't you have a look at all your unpublished work, pick one thing you're really happy with and send it off somewhere. What have you got to lose?

Alphabet Soup Results

A post I did earlier in the week on character development proved to be great fun, and sparked another one on plot development, which was just as much fun but harder to complete. Here, for your edification, are the ABCs of plot development, as suggested by a few hardy contributors.

A is for Agenda
B is for Betrayal
C is for Characters
D is for Development of plot - do you know where the story is going?
E is for Environment: Where are you anyway?
F is for Focus: back story, direction, characters
G is for Good googy moogy: twists and turns
H is for Hurry up..the plot sure is dragging now
I is for Interest (as in love interest)
J is for January, June, July...just what time does your story take place in?
K is for Killers
L is for Links between plots and subplots
M is for Motivation - whether it is money, murder, or madness.
N is for need. What does the plot need ? What do the characters need?
O is for Offshore bank accounts
P is for Plot twists and protagonists.
Q is for Quick: Let's not drag the plot on too long
R is for Redundancies, as in, make sure your plot and dialogue have none.
S is for Sex and you'd better have some and make it dirty
T is for Teleplay (and hope we can get a movie out of the book)
U is for Upsets - things that you just didn't think were going to happen
V is for Vivid description, make sure your audience can see, taste, and feel.
W is for Whispers, warnings, wickedness and other plot spicers
X is for Xanadu - that elusive paradise your readers should enter if you've done your job correctly.
Y is for Yesterdays and youth - events in the past that affect the story in the present.
Z is for Zenith: the climax of the story

Players:
Katryn
swissmiss
Keywoman1
wcbelew
SenseChange
merryone

Related posts:
Do You Know Your ABCs? (the original post that set us all off)
Alphabet Soup(the ABCs of plot with all the comments in full)

Alphabet Soup

My last entry was about using the letters of the alphabet to describe your characters and make them come to life. Keywoman and Katryn suggested a new thread for plot. So here it is ... Jump in, everybody.

If you're interested, here are the ABCs we came up with for character:

A is for Age - how old is your character?
B is for Build - is your character short or tall?
C is for Color - what is your character's skin color or ethnicity?
D is for Distinguishing Marks - any scars, marks, scratches?
E is for Eyes - color, size, shape?
F is for Face - shape?
G is for Girth - is your character stocky or thin?
H is for Hair - color, length, style?
I is for Interests - what does your character like to do?
J is for

• Jellybeans - what's the character's favorite flavor?
• Jumpy - is the character calm or jumpy?
• Jocular - does your character have a sense of humor?
• Jauntiness - does your character have style?
• Je ne sais quoi - does your character have ... that certain indescribable something?

K is for

• Kindness (or lack there of)
• Kin - does your character have family? How do they relate? How have they impacted your character?

L is for Love (who is/was/will be the love of their life)
M is for Motivation
N is for Needs
O is for Opinionated. Does your character have an opinion on everything? Nothing? What issues would your character be stubborn about their beliefs in?
P can be for perfect, priceless, person with preliminary issues about pets
Q is for

• qualities - what kind of qualities does your character have?
• questioning - does your character want to investigate everything and find out the reasons why?

S is for Sexuality - and anything and everything pertaining to sex
R is for race or region
T is for temperament - is your character placid? Short tempered? Neurotic? Emotional? Vulcan-like?
U is for uniqueness - what unique characteristics does your character have
V is for virtue and viciousness (or lack thereof) or va va voom!
W is for wisdom, picked up through the years (or again, lack there of)
X is for Xanadu. What are the character's fantasies/wildest dreams?
Y is for Yearnings
Z is for zig zag...can your character make up his/her mind which direction they will ultimately end up going?

The players: Katryn, rosie deerfield, Keywoman1, Haven, ladyscrapper , saphirdragonfly , Ethan Mawyer , wcbelew

Do You Know Your ABCs?

I've written before about inspiration popping up in the most unlikely places and today's post is a good example. One day, about a week ago, I was sitting in the sauna at my health club, when a man I didn't know started to talk to me. It turned out he was an aikido instructor and former military man and somehow we got onto the subject of crime fighting. One of the difficulties in catching criminals, he said, was the inability of victims of crime to describe their attackers properly. Barry said there was an easy way to remember the attributes you needed to describe. Writer that I am, I immediately saw his list as a way of describing characters in a story or novel. Here they are:

A is for Age - how old is your character?
B is for Build - is your character short or tall?
C is for Color - what is your character's skin color or ethnicity?
D is for Distinguishing Marks - any scars, marks, scratches?
E is for Eyes - color, size, shape?
F is for Face - shape?
G is for Girth - is your character stocky or thin?
H is for Hair - color, length, style?

That's as far as we got before the conversation ended. I ran into him again a few days later and asked whether there were any more. As he pointed out, you could use the same letters for different attributes (H for Hands, for example) and you could keep going till the end of the alphabet. So here's my challenge: can you fill in the rest of the alphabet? I'll start you off with this one:

I is for Interests - what does your character like to do?

Come on, writers, have a go!

Writing And Blogging: Beyond The Wall

It's finally happened. You've hit the wall. The dreaded writer's block has struck and you're being outstared by a blank screen. What do you do? Where do you turn for inspiration? The answer may be closer than you think.

Writers are often told to write what they know. So what do you know? My response: you know more than you think. Here are five places to look for inspiration.

Look inside
How do you define yourself? People describe themselves by age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality or, in my case, by hybridity. This last is a term used by Homi Bhabha to encompass those who have mixed cultural influences. My influences are the British and Caribbean parts of my heritage. Although these haven't yet made an appearance in my fiction writing, they've produced a couple of interesting poems. However you define yourself, there will be characteristics and issues to write about - and you'll have a ready made audience in those who also think of themselves that way.

What's the job worth?
The workplace is another rich source of inspiration. In addition to all my writing-related jobs, I've worked as a sales assistant in a bookshop, a receptionist/typist/temp (for three weeks), a human resources/personnel person and an English teaching assistant in France. All of these jobs have given me experiences and brought me into contact with people who might inspire a piece or pieces of writing. So what's on your resume (or off it) that might inspire you?

Family affairs
Casting the net wider, think about the wealth of experiences that you and your extended family have had. Marriage, divorce, childbirth, parenting and the like are rich fodder for writers. Medical and mental conditions such as gallstones, heart disease, hysterectomies, alcoholism, polio (to name only those that have affected people I know) can give you a starting point for an article or story.

Role play
Continuing the theme, your role within a family or extended family gives you even more to draw on. Are you a wife, husband, father, mother, parent, child, only child, sibling, uncle, aunt or grandparent? What have you learned from that role that you might want to share with others? Have you met anyone who seemed to epitomise the role, or someone who was getting it completely wrong?

Free time
Hobbies and interests are another rich source. I can still remember the pain of cross-country running around the school - and I'll write about it one day. I'll also write about tennis, badminton, volleyball, track and field, racquetball, netball, basketball and swimming. Don't think I'm athletic, I'm not. But I've tried all of these and learned something which I can use in my writing.

My point is that inspiration is all around you - you don't have to look very far. And don't think you have to bare all to make these ideas work. These are merely starting points for material that you may well alter and fictionalise completely. Some things have to stay private, after all.