encouragement for writers

Throwback Thursday: 50 Quotes About Writing

Posted on 16/01/202011/01/2020 by Ndrw

Originally posted: 28/01/2018

Well, we’ve already had fifty quotes about fiction in general so today it’s time for another fifty quotes, this time providing advice, encouragement and general reflections on the process of writing. So without further ado…

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ — Douglas Adams
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ — Maya Angelou
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ — Ernest Hemingway
‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ — Mark Twain
‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ — Stephen King
‘It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.’ — Robert Hass
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ — Anaïs Nin
‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’ — E.L. Doctorow
‘A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.’ — Susan Sontag
‘You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.’ — Madeleine L’Engle
‘If a story is in you it has got to come out.’ — William Faulkner
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ — Saul Bellow
‘I’m not a very good writer but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ — James Michener
‘You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.’ — Doris Lessing
‘It is a very cool thing to be a writer.’ — Bryan Hutchinson
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’ — Ray Bradburry
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison
‘Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.’ — Louis L’Amour
‘Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ — Mark Twain
‘The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.’ — David Schlosser
‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’ — M.J. Bush
‘Growing up is highly overrrated. Just be an author.’ — Neil Gaiman
‘Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days.’ — J.K. Rowling
‘What doesn’t kill us gives us something to write about.’ — Julie Wright
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ — W. Somerset Maugham
‘When asked “how do you write?” I invariably answer “one word at a time.”‘ — Stephen King
‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’ — Isaac Asimov
‘Writing is show business for shy people.’ — Lee Child
‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage –as long as you edit brilliantly.’ — C.J. Cherryh
‘If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer… Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.’ — A. Ferguson
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’ — Martin Luther
‘Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’ — William Wordsworth
‘Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.’ — Philip José Farmer
‘I write to find out what I’m talking about.’ — Edward Albee
‘Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.’ — Raymond Chandler
‘You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.’ — Annie Proulx
‘Don’t be a writer. Be writing.’ — William Faulkner
‘Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.’ — Katrina Monroe
‘Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.’ — Natalie Goldberg
‘To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.’ — Aristotle
‘You can make anything by writing.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.’ — Joss Whedon
‘I need solitude for my writing; not “like a hermit” — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.’ — Franz Kafka
‘Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.’ — Donald Miller
‘Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.’ — George R.R. Martin
‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ — Margaret Atwood
‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ — Thomas Mann
‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.’ — David McCullough
‘Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.’ — Ralph Keyes

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.

Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

5 Writing Laws I Just Can’t Keep

Posted on 28/04/201920/04/2019 by Ndrw

Google it, and you’ll see that the internet (to say nothing of books and formal writing courses) is simply teeming with lists of rules on how to write fiction. I’ve been known to knock out a list of rules or two myself; rules I generally believe make for a better writer if they are carefully adhered to and applied with a little wisdom.

Nevertheless, it is human nature to rebel against the rules. If the Writing Police ever do raid my house at four in the morning and drag me before the Fiction Judge, I’m pretty sure the list of charges will be a long one and he’ll throw the book at me for every one of them.

And so, today I’m here to confess my crimes. I know that some of these things are wrong, and I am ashamed of them. Other laws, I break with pride. And so without further ado, here are my crimes:

Using adverbs

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Stephen King

I confess it ashamedly. Sometimes when I’m writing, especially when I’m writing dialogue, I use adverbs liberally to describe the way people said things.

And I will proudly confess that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with very occasional adverbs. My real crime is that I don’t just use them ‘very occasionally.’ I use them all over the place and wait until the editing process to come back and replace them all with stronger verbs.

It’s the only way I know to get anything done.

Long-Windedness

Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

Ernest Hemingway

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might have already noticed that I have a tendency to say things in a verbose fashion; using an excess of words (with little side notes in brackets) to say even the simplest things and breaking it up with more commas and semi-colons than you can shake a stick at, when all I really need to say is something along the lines of: ‘I can be quite long-winded’ (or something like that).

It makes for a tedious narrative and a painstaking editing process.

having holidays

Just write every day of your life…
Ray Bradbury

I tried that, Ray. I really did. But I’m a firm believer that a regular day off is healthy and makes me a better writer, provided I am diligent about my writing schedule for the rest of the week. I also give myself a set amount of ‘annual leave’ (a maximum of 33 days per year, the exact same as my day job gives me) to allow for holidays and so forth.

On a related note…

Writing is not the sum total of my life

For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
Eugene Ionesco

I know they’ll throw the book at me just for saying this, but my life consists of more than writing. I will go further: I believe that a life which consists of nothing but writing will produce very limited writing. I say that with the greatest of reverence to Ionesco, who was clearly a superior writer to myself. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion Ionesco’s own life probably consisted of more than writing. After all, to quote another great writer, ‘in order to write about life, you must first live it’ (E. Hemingway). Believing things, doing things, experiencing things and feeling things, all fill your mind with the raw material to create good stories.

Don’t misunderstand me. Writing is very important to me. I write diligently every Monday-Saturday and I do spend an excessive amount of my non-writing time thinking about writing. But I also think about my wife and daughter. I think about God and I think about the state of the world. I think about my day job and I think about how I want to reward myself at the end of a hard day’s work. I think about tidying up my death-trap of a back garden and I think about what I want to read, watch or listen to. Writing is not my life, but all my life goes into writing.

Self-doubt and arrogant pride

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like.
Neil Gaiman

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly…
Romans 12:3 (KJV)

We writers walk a fine line between vain conceit and abject self-abasement: a line called ‘sober judgement’. Most of the time (though not always!), I tend to struggle with the latter rather than the former. I doubt my writing to such an extent that I shy away from boldly writing the things I want to write. As a result, my progress is slowed to a crawl as I sit at the computer and try to convince myself that what I’m writing isn’t a crime against literature.

However, I won’t lie to you. There have been some occasions where I’ve fallen down on the other side of ‘sober judgement’ and began to sing my own praises. This, too, is crippling, because (apart from being annoying to others) when the inevitable dry spell comes, where I struggle to write well, it makes that feeling of self-doubt all the more devastating.

What about you? What writing rules do you struggle (or outright refuse) to keep? Confession is good for the soul, so tell us all about it in the comments below!

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

Are You Making The Best Use Of Your Writing Time?

Posted on 07/04/201930/03/2019 by Ndrw

Writing takes time. Lots of time, especially if you’re writing a novel. If you’re writing a novel and maintaining a weekly blog, you have to devote even more time to writing; and even then, you might still have that niggling feeling in the back of your mind that you should be writing a few short stories here and there.

That pretty much describes my situation, along with juggling a wife, a daughter and a full time job that has nothing to with writing. And so, I’ve recently made a few more changes to my weekly writing schedule which I hope will allow me to make better use of my limited time. I know I’ve spoken about this before [2], but I’m always trying to think of new ways to make the most efficient use of my limited writing time and while I’m sure your writing schedule won’t be exactly the same as mine, I thought I’d tell you about it anyway to provide you with a bit of food for thought.

On the average week, my writing time looks something like this:

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
19:30 – 21:00	19:30-21:00	19:30-21:00	19:30-21:00	19:30-21:00	07:00-11:30	Day off

Note that the evening slots are very approximate, depending on how long it takes to get my toddler into bed. Also note that my Saturday session, while longer, is subject to regular interruptions and is therefore not always the best quality writing time.

I think you’ll agree, that’s not a huge amount of time, but it should be adequate. The big killer, as I mentioned in previous posts, is this blog. Because I publish a post every week (a deadline I don’t have with my novel), it seemed only natural to prioritise the blog. And so, I would sit down at 19:30 every Monday and write my blog. Once the blog was finished, I would use the rest of the week to work on my novel. If I managed to smash the blog on Monday, that gave me Tuesday-Saturday to write my novel. If I was still struggling with it on Friday, I probably wouldn’t get much novel done at all that week. While I had taken a few steps to try and redress the balance between my blog and story writing time, the fact remains that my fiction writing was still very much at the mercy of my blog. If the blog was going well, my novel got written. If progress on the blog was slow, the novel ground to a halt.

The thing is, as much as I love doing this blog, I only ever really considered it a kind of hobby. What I really want is to publish my novel and send a few more of my short stories to magazines and writing competitions (my output in that department has been shockingly low) but I just didn’t know how I could make better use of my time– until recently when I did a time management course at my work. Then my eyes were opened.

I don’t have time to go over all the particulars of the course, but one of the lessons I took away from it was the importance of organising tasks by order of importance and urgency, giving priority to important tasks (that is, the ones that mattered to me the most) first, then urgent ones (ones that were simply time sensitive) second. Since my blog is urgent (it needs to be done every week) but not as important to me as establishing a career as an author, it is clearly wrong for me to slave my novel to the progress of my blog. It’s also important to me to submit shorter works to magazines, but this is something that I’ve been completely neglecting as the blog has taken up so much of my time.

And so, I have reorganised my writing schedule. Now it looks like this:

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
Novel	Novel	Novel	Shorts	Shorts	Blog	Day off

If you think about it, you’ll realise my novel now gets a guaranteed four and a half hours a week of my time with very few interruptions; short stories get three hours and my blog gets a still very generous four and a half hours (with more regular interruptions). This means that my blog has got just as much time as it always did, but now my novel is free of restrictions. It will get the same four and a half hours of quality time every week come hell or high water with the blog. Not only that, but I’ve even managed to make time to work on my short stories. In addition, by making Saturday my blog day, I remove the temptation to ‘borrow’ time from other days, as my blog is published on Sundays. Thus my novel and short story writing productivity is increased with little or no loss to my blog.

What about you? Do you struggle to make time to juggle life with multiple writing projects? How do you prioritise your time? Share your wisdom and experience with us in the comments below!

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

How To Write When Time Is Short

Posted on 23/09/201819/09/2018 by Ndrw

Dear writer, you know that writing takes a long time. There are some who claim to be able to knock out a novel in a couple of hours, and perhaps they can, but I’m pretty cynical that the average writer would be able to do that without cutting some major corners and coming away with a substandard novel as a result. Good writing takes time. That’s why it’s so important to write frequently and regularly.

‘Ah but you don’t understand!’ I hear you cry. ‘I simply don’t have the time to write for hours on end, day after day!’

‘Really?’ Some writing-guru glibly cries back before I get a chance to answer. ‘Don’t you have the same twenty-four hour days; the same seven day weeks and the same fifty-two week years as Tolkien, Dickens, Twain and–‘

‘No, that’s not what I mean!’ I hear you cry back, somewhat irked by Mr. Writing-Guru’s superior attitude. ‘I mean, I’ve got so much other stuff that demands my attention! I’ve got a job, a spouse, a mortgage, a budgie, six kids and one more on the way! I can’t just renounce them for the sake of a few extra hours of writing time!’

‘Well then!’ Mr. Writing-Guru replies. ‘Maybe writing just isn’t for you if you care more about your family and–‘

But before Mr. Writing-Guru can finish this latest patronising utterance, you lunge across the table and begin attacking him with his own ceramic coffee flask while he tries to defend himself behind his trilby.

…

Leave him alone, friend. I understand your situation. There are some things (not many, but some) that simply matter more than writing; other things you simply have no choice but to prioritise, such as a day-job to pay the mortgage. That’s okay. All that matters is you make the best use of the time you do have for writing, no matter how little it is.

First, sit down with a planner (whether physical or mental). Start by working out those times you absolutely cannot write. For instance, I work a day-job from 9-5, Monday-Friday. This makes it absolutely impossible for me to write in those hours (though could you squeeze some juice out of your lunch break?). However, that does leave me evenings and weekends. Surely that’s plenty of time?

‘You don’t understand,’ I hear you cry, warily eyeing Mr. Writing-Guru to make sure he’s still unconscious. ‘I use that time to socialise with my family, to feed my baby, to play a little bit of that new Spider-Man PS4 game…’

Oh but I do understand. Some of these things are essential. Others are optional. Ask yourself honestly what things you can and should give up to make time for writing. You might still find that only leaves you a couple of hours every evening to write, but friend… that’s all you need. You can easily knock out 500 words in an hour or two. I, myself (who am by no means the greatest of writers), wrote the first draft of this blog in just over an hour. Do a little bit of arithmetic with me (I know it’s hard) and you’ll soon see why the ‘little and often’ approach is so useful.

A bog-standard novel tends to be around about 80,000 words, give or take 10,000.

If, like me, you’ve only got evenings and all day Saturday to write, you might be tempted to think Saturday will be your Big Writing Day. Indeed, you certainly should take advantage of Saturday however:

If you write only 3,000* words one day a week, every week, you’ll have 156,000 words by the end of the year. Technically adequate, but I can’t recommend this approach for for these three reasons:

Your friends and family are more likely to want a piece of you during what they perceive as your ‘free-time’, even if you’ve not got any regular business on those days.
Writing only once a week can seriously bust up your rhythm, meaning you constantly have to get back into the flow every Saturday.
Large daily word count goals are hard to accomplish even without distractions. It is difficult to guarantee success.

However, if you allow yourself one hour to write only 500 words (half the length of this article) every evening, when the kids are tucked up in bed and your office is shut for the night, you’ll have 182,500 by the end of a year. That’s more words than you would’ve had writing in a single huge weekend burst and it’s a heck of a lot easier to accomplish. And let’s not forget, you can still take advantage of any weekends or holidays that do become available to you.

If you’re still struggling, however, here are a few more simple tips to make sure you make the best use of your precious minutes.

Disconnect your internet. No excuses. Every second you spend looking at Instagram, checking your e-mails or ‘researching’ your novel is a second you’re not spending writing.
Turn off your phone and put it somewhere you can’t reach it.
Make sure your family, friends or anyone else who depends on having a slice of your attention understands that you write between the hours of x and y every day, and that you cannot be disturbed for all but the most life-and-death reasons. No, not even for two minutes. They’ll probably be cool with that if they know you are available during your non-writing hours.
Stick to one writing project. You’ve no time to lose as it is, so don’t double or triple your workload with new projects.
Establish clear goals for each writing session. Aimless writing wastes time, so have a realistic goal in your mind for each particular session. E.g.: ‘Today I will write 500 words of my first draft’ or ‘today I will complete my chapter outline’. Keep your goals ambitious (after all, you want to accomplish as much as possible in the time available) but most importantly of all, keep them realistic.
If you have time, experiment with pre-writing techniques like free writing.
Write fast; edit slowly.

You can do this, dear writer. I believe in you.

*3,000 words is about the average output I tend to manage on a single Saturday session. It’s certainly possible to do more but it’s increasingly unlikely you’ll achieve it week after week, especially if you’ve got family and friends etc. clamouring for your attention.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Be sure to leave us a wee comment if you enjoyed it and don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what organises your calendar.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m hoping to do author interviews here on Penstricken over the coming year, especially with new fiction authors. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

You can check out our previous interviews here:
Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

50 Quotes About Writing

Posted on 28/01/201826/01/2018 by Ndrw

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ — Douglas Adams
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ — Maya Angelou
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ — Ernest Hemingway
‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ — Mark Twain
‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ — Stephen King
‘It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.’ — Robert Hass
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ — Anaïs Nin
‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’ — E.L. Doctorow
‘A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.’ — Susan Sontag
‘You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.’ — Madeleine L’Engle
‘If a story is in you it has got to come out.’ — William Faulkner
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ — Saul Bellow
‘I’m not a very good writer but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ — James Michener
‘You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.’ — Doris Lessing
‘It is a very cool thing to be a writer.’ — Bryan Hutchinson
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’ — Ray Bradburry
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison
‘Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.’ — Louis L’Amour
‘Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ — Mark Twain
‘The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.’ — David Schlosser
‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’ — M.J. Bush
‘Growing up is highly overrrated. Just be an author.’ — Neil Gaiman
‘Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days.’ — J.K. Rowling
‘What doesn’t kill us gives us something to write about.’ — Julie Wright
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ — W. Somerset Maugham
‘When asked “how do you write?” I invariably answer “one word at a time.”‘ — Stephen King
‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’ — Isaac Asimov
‘Writing is show business for shy people.’ — Lee Child
‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage –as long as you edit brilliantly.’ — C.J. Cherryh
‘If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer… Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.’ — A. Ferguson
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’ — Martin Luther
‘Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’ — William Wordsworth
‘Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.’ — Philip José Farmer
‘I write to find out what I’m talking about.’ — Edward Albee
‘Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.’ — Raymond Chandler
‘You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.’ — Annie Proulx
‘Don’t be a writer. Be writing.’ — William Faulkner
‘Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.’ — Katrina Monroe
‘Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.’ — Natalie Goldberg
‘To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.’ — Aristotle
‘You can make anything by writing.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.’ — Joss Whedon
‘I need solitude for my writing; not “like a hermit” — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.’ — Franz Kafka
‘Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.’ — Donald Miller
‘Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.’ — George R.R. Martin
‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ — Margaret Atwood
‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ — Thomas Mann
‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.’ — David McCullough
‘Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.’ — Ralph Keyes

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

I’m looking for authors (especially, but not limited to, new and/or indie authors) whose work I can feature here on Penstricken over the coming year. It will simply take the form of a quick Q&A about yourself and your work via private message or e-mail and, of course, a link to where we can all get a copy of your work.

I’m open to interviewing authors of almost any kind of story, provided your work is complete, original and of course, fictional. I will not consider individual short stories/micro-fictions, however I am happy to feature published anthologies or entire blog-sites of micro-fiction, provided you are the sole author.

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

Writing Six Word Stories

Posted on 10/09/201701/09/2017 by Ndrw

“Brevity is the soul of wit” — W. Shakespeare

If you’ve been following Penstricken for any length of time, you’ll know that I appreciate the delicate art of the six word story (don’t worry though, today’s post isn’t going to be another instalment of 6 Six Word Stories). When I first encountered this phenomenon several years ago, I wasn’t sure it was possible to cram any meaningful kind of narrative into so restrictive a word limit. Even if it could be done, I wasn’t convinced of its artistic or literary value.

I was wrong. And really, I should’ve known better. Ernest Hemingway’s(?) six word story about the death of a baby and the subsequent sale of his/her clothing proves that you can pack a mighty punch with very few words indeed. It’s no small task, however. Some of the traditional rules of writing need to be bent or artfully re-imagined to make it work.

I’ve said before that all good stories, no matter how short, must have a beginning, a middle and an end. This is also true of six word stories, however unlike in longer prose (even 50 or 100 word stories), it’s almost impossible to make each stage of the story arc explicit. Instead, you need to do what Hemingway(?) did and imply the beginning, middle and end.

Let’s take one of my own six word stories for example: ‘KING FELIX DEAD: Nine assassins executed.’

This story takes the form of a newspaper headline. It includes only two specific statements:

The king is dead.
All nine of his assassins have been executed for the crime.

However, from these words, we can glean a whole lot more. For a start, this story is set in a felinocracy (a world ruled by cats). Not only that, but there is a whiff of revolution in the air. Nine people have conspired together to end the king’s life (that’s our beginning). They succeeded (middle), but were finally caught and executed (the end).

Unsurprisingly, the format in which you decide to write your six words will be pivotal in determining whether or not you succeed in implying a full story arc. In King Felix Dead, I decided to write in the style of a newspaper headline for two reasons.

When world-leaders get assassinated, it tends to make the news. It therefore seemed an obvious way to draw my readers into my feline fantasy world.
Newspaper headlines, by their very nature, are designed to imply a story in a few short words.

This second reason was the most important. Real newspaper headlines grab a prospective reader’s attention by making them say to themselves, ‘Surely they don’t mean such-and-such has happened…?!’. In short, the reader instantaneously makes up a story based on the headline, then reads the actual story to find out if they were correct. It implies a big story in a small way; the very thing we six word story writers hope to accomplish.

Of course, the newspaper headline is only one possible format. It is certainly not always the best option. The Hemingway(?) story we referred to earlier takes the form of an advertisement. Alternatively, you might opt for something more simple, such as a single line of dialogue as I did in ‘”I shall avenge thee!” Bambi vowed.’ or a single line of narrative, such as ‘Remembered and avenged every unicycle “performance”’. It’s worth spending time trying out a few different formats to see what works best.

For example, if Hemingway(?) had decided to write his story in dialogue format (instead of as a newspaper advert) he might have written something like “I’m selling these unused baby shoes”. However, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. It’s still six words long and it communicates the same explicit information (someone is selling brand new baby shoes), but it doesn’t imply anything beyond that. While technically, it could be the words of a bereaved parent, the matter-of-fact conversational tone makes it sound more like a door-to-door salesman who is trying to make a quick quid selling baby clothes. But a short advert, probably published in a local rag somewhere… that sounds far more specific. There is one person out there with one pair of unused baby shoes they want to get rid of as efficiently as possible (but perhaps can’t bear to simply throw them in the bin). All the grief of bereavement is implied by this simple choice of formatting.

The other thing you need to think more creatively about than usual is characters. Under normal circumstances, your story would have a handful of characters (each with their own biographies), who would gradually be developed throughout the story (your so-called ‘character arc’). You might give a little description of their physical appearance but most of their personality and backstory will be revealed by what the characters do and say. But – uh oh! – we’ve not got nearly enough words for all that!

If you want characters of substance (and who wouldn’t?), less is definitely more. It’s highly unlikely (though not impossible) that you’ll create excellent characters if you have more than one character in a six word story. Even so, six words still doesn’t give you much scope. Formatting your story as a line of dialogue or first-person narrative will certainly make it easier for the reader to encounter your character directly, and therefore, get to know them better (if that’s the effect you’re going for, of course). For example, here’s two six word stories about a man enquiring about his evening meal:

John asked what was for dinner.
‘Woman! What’ve you made for tea?’

The first one tells us sod all about John except that he’s curious about dinner. The second one may not tell us John’s name, but it it implies much more important information about him: specifically that he’s a chauvinist pig who expects his dinner on the table when he gets home (or else!) and that he’s curious about dinner. Not only is he curious about dinner, but there’s an implied threat in his question. What if he doesn’t like the answer? We can only imagine, but that’s the point: we can imagine. In six words, we’ve created a bad guy. But as for the guy in the first story… we don’t know anything about him. He’s just a name and a question without substance.

Until next time!

Being a ‘Real’ Writer

Posted on 03/09/201726/08/2017 by Ndrw

There seems to be a notion in a lot of folks’ minds that while lots of people may wish to be authors, and may even actually sit down and try to thrash out an original work of fiction, not all of these are real writers. If you look around the internet or other public forums where writers gather, you’ll see what I mean. People will say things like ‘if you don’t write something every day, you’re not a real writer,’ or ‘real writers read at least twenty books a year– oh and newspapers as well!’

These are just examples but you get the idea. Many try to be writers, but only those who do this-this-and-that are real writers. But wait just a minute. What does it even mean to be a ‘real writer’?

Oxford Dictionaries has a rather lengthy definition of ‘real’ you can view here, but let me draw your attention to the important bits:

Adjective

2. (of a thing) not imitation or artificial; genuine.
…

2.2 [attributive] Rightly so called; proper.
‘he’s my idea of a real man’

I would suggest that when people talk about being a ‘real’ writer, they are referring to something akin to this: ‘[attributive] Rightly so called; proper’. So, a ‘real writer’ is someone who displays certain key attributes we might expect a writer to possess, and is therefore justly called a writer. In other words, ‘real writers’ are people who do a certain thing, behave a certain way, drink a certain brand of coffee or write in a particular genre (or who spit out the word ‘genre’ are if it were an insult); something which separates them from other unreal/pretend/bogus/inferior/impostor writers.

Well I think you can see where I’m going with this. I’m here to set the record straight. And I’m going to do it with a parable.

The Parable of the Real and Pretend Writers

by A. Ferguson

In a certain town there lived an Aspiring Author. This Aspiring Author religiously attended the local coffee shop every day with his laptop. He would arrive early in the morning and drink their most expensive coffee and diligently study blogs about how to be a writer (he was a particular fan of Penstricken.com). His mug said ‘WRITER AT WORK’, and his table was always littered with notepads (with snazzy writer slogans on the front) and pens. He had even scribbled out a few character profiles and he had a strong idea for a plot in his mind. He got to know the staff there and told them all about the novel he was writing and promised to give them all signed copies when it got published. He also had a Twitter page which he used to communicate with other Aspiring Authors, tell the world about the novel he was writing and to share inspirational quotes about writing.

This Aspiring Author also had a five year old daughter. She spent most of her time in her bedroom scribbling out stories in crayon (complete with illustrations) which she then sellotaped together into a book and sold to her long-suffering relatives. To date she has “published” seventeen such books and is now working on her eighteenth: The Day Mummy Took Me To The Zoo (We Saw Lions!).

So… the question is, who was the real writer: Aspiring Author or the daughter?

The answer is the one who displayed the attributes of a real writer. Specifically, the one who actually wrote stuff: the daughter!

Dear friends, writing stuff is the only truly defining attribute of a writer that I know of. If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer. You may be the author of Such-and-Such a Work but you’re no longer a writer. Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.

‘But you don’t understand…’ I hear you lament. ‘I only manage to write five days a week!’

That doesn’t invalidate the fact you write. I agree that you should write as often as possible, and certainly if you intend to become a professional writer you might want to do it as close to daily as possible, but I’ve found that writing regularly is far more beneficial than writing constantly. In any event, how often you write does not define you as a writer, as long as you write often.

‘But you don’t understand…’ I hear you lament. ‘I care about my husband/wife and kids more than I care about writing. Why, I even missed a deadline to attend my husband/wife while s/he was in hospital!’

That proves nothing except that you prioritise your family above your writing (a perfectly right and healthy thing, if you ask me). Believe it or not, I’ve actually heard it suggested that ‘real writers’ put their writing before their families, but I for one profoundly disagree. In any event, how you prioritise your life does not define you as a writer. When my daughter was born, I took the day off my day-job as a clerical officer to attend her birth. When I returned to work, no one questioned whether or not I was a ‘real clerical officer’, just because I had other things that mattered more to me. In the same way, whether writing is your life, your day-job or just a hobby: real writers are people who write.

‘But you don’t understand…’ I hear you lament. ‘I only seem to be able to write YA space operas!’

So what? You still wrote it, didn’t you? If you write, you’re a writer. Don’t let snobs get you down. No genre is any more valid than any other so write what you’re going to write. People that like your writing will read it and people that don’t, won’t, but the same is also true of people who write so-called ‘serious literature’.

There seems to be a strange mysticism surrounding writers, as if being a writer is something otherworldly; an awesome gift bestowed upon only the Chosen Few. Worst of all, I fear it has perhaps gone to some of our heads; that we may be tempted to believe we really are somehow supernatural or unusually gifted. But we’re not. Writers are people who write. Excellent writers practice their craft, yes, but ultimately they’re still just people who write. If you are in any way committed to writing, then I hereby acknowledge and publicly confess (for better or worse) that you are a real writer.

Until next time!