I haven't been blogging in over a week because I've been using all my spare time to write my novel. Because of this I'm feeling guilty about not blogging regularly. I can certainly find things in my life to feel guilty about but this one is making me feel more guilty than most. So I'm going to try blogging every other night about my novel. I'll see if that works.
I'm progressing into chapter two without having finished chapter one. But chapter one is almost complete and I pretty much know how it ends so I'm not messing anything up by beginning chapter two early. At least I hope I'm not.
Not much else to write about my novel tonight so here are a couple of good links. Are you looking for some good online writing classes? Like anything else check this out to your satisfaction before progressing but I recommend (at least taking a look at) Gotham Writer's Workshop online, http://www.writerclasses.com/. Writer's Digest magazine also presents online writing instruction at http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/retail/ . Again I say check these out thoroughly and to the point that you're comfortable before paying for instruction. In fact that's probably a good rule for anything in life, i.e.: use someone else's recommendation as a starting point and then do your own research. I'm planning on taking classes from both later this year when I have a little more discretionary income.
Book Review Links:
Here's an interesting piece about Mark Twain from the USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-04-20-twain20_CV_N.htm
And here's a link to a review of Jennimae & James: A Memoir in Black and White. It's an interesting story of the relationship between a white mathematician and his uneducated African-American housekeeper.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2010-04-22-newmanrev22_ST_N.htm
Finally, do you like history? Think Teddy Roosevelt played an interesting role in American history? Then read The War Lovers by Evan Thomas...and the New York Times book review I've linked to about Teddy Roosevelt. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/books/review/Steel-t.html?ref=books
Till next time.
Bill Browning. Sunday, 25 April 2010.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Why write? It's better than parking cars...and you get to work inside.
You ever write anything and realize, after spending a fair amount of time on it, that it's total garbage? I did that tonight. I wrote a long blog entry about my motivations for writing. I then read it and realized that if I were reading someone else's blog I would think the writer was a complete jerk. "Pretentious crap" is the name of the discard file I put that particular piece of garbage into.
So what are my motivations for writing? To be able to communicate with others on a level that affects them emotionally is my number one reason. I love to tell stories that cause people to feel something. It usually means you're connecting with them. I also enjoy reading books that cause me to have an emotional response, joy, sadness, etc. I think that all this points to a basic human need, connection to other people.
To create is another. To create a story from nothing is a difficult thing; I know, I'm in the process of doing it. To create a good story from nothing that then gets you all sorts of positive feedback, attaboys and woot woots (where did that expression come from?) is probably close to a miracle. I'm aiming for the miracle. I'm mentioning that in case I haven't been clear on the issue.
Being able to earn my living as a writer would be a pretty good thing also. I have no illusions that a writing life would be any simpler or easier than any other kind of life. Writing is just as difficult a way to earn a living as anything else you choose to do. In my case though I seem to have some talent for it and it's what I want to do so I'm going for it.
So those are some of my reasons for writing. I'm sure if you asked a hundred other writers to explain why they write you'ld get a hundred different answers. In fact there are probably as many reasons for writing as there are writers...that comment was pretty zen wasn't it? Bill, the master of insightful writing.
That's all I've got for tonight. More tomorrow.
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Tuesday, 13 April 2010.
So what are my motivations for writing? To be able to communicate with others on a level that affects them emotionally is my number one reason. I love to tell stories that cause people to feel something. It usually means you're connecting with them. I also enjoy reading books that cause me to have an emotional response, joy, sadness, etc. I think that all this points to a basic human need, connection to other people.
To create is another. To create a story from nothing is a difficult thing; I know, I'm in the process of doing it. To create a good story from nothing that then gets you all sorts of positive feedback, attaboys and woot woots (where did that expression come from?) is probably close to a miracle. I'm aiming for the miracle. I'm mentioning that in case I haven't been clear on the issue.
Being able to earn my living as a writer would be a pretty good thing also. I have no illusions that a writing life would be any simpler or easier than any other kind of life. Writing is just as difficult a way to earn a living as anything else you choose to do. In my case though I seem to have some talent for it and it's what I want to do so I'm going for it.
So those are some of my reasons for writing. I'm sure if you asked a hundred other writers to explain why they write you'ld get a hundred different answers. In fact there are probably as many reasons for writing as there are writers...that comment was pretty zen wasn't it? Bill, the master of insightful writing.
That's all I've got for tonight. More tomorrow.
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Tuesday, 13 April 2010.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Can Annie Hall Make Me a Better Writer?
Writing this blog is far harder than writing my novel. On the days I blog I try to think of something interesting to write and have a difficult time doing that. So I plod on. This blog will be as much a learning experience as writing my novel is.
I'm midway through L.A. Requiem. Great book; it's probably one of Crais's best if not the best of his Elvis Cole mystery series. Read it...it's great. I'm also dissecting it, per my last blog, and I'm getting a lot of good info about putting a novel together. I'm hoping that doing this does not put me behind on finishing within the year but we'll see how that turns out.
The novel itself continues, slowly, but it continues to grow and take shape. Sort of like the Frankenstein monster, "It's alive," although it really isn't a monster. It's just a novel that sometimes drives me crazy in the process of writing it.
Thought for the night: does anyone remember Woody Allen's riff on relationships from Annie Hall? You don't? Well you've come to the right place to hear about it. Warning: I've bored many a past girlfriend with quotes from Woody Allen movies. However I love Woody Allen's films and stand unafraid of spreading ennui so here goes. Woody starts by telling a joke at the end of Annie Hall about his uncle who thought he was a chicken. People would continually ask his family why they didn't have the uncle committed. The answer: "Because we need the eggs!" Woody then goes on to draw parallels with relationships, i.e.: in most cases they don't go anywhere, we are mismatched with the person we're with and, in the end, we get nothing but pain and heartache (I'm paraphrasing). So why do we continue having relationships? You guessed it...because we need the eggs. Well damn son, writing is just about the same thing. We agonize for hours over a line or two, we read other authors who make us despair of ever writing anything that's good and we convince ourselves that no one will ever want to read our finished book (or short story, poem, etc). So why do we continue writing...
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Monday, 13 April 2010.
I'm midway through L.A. Requiem. Great book; it's probably one of Crais's best if not the best of his Elvis Cole mystery series. Read it...it's great. I'm also dissecting it, per my last blog, and I'm getting a lot of good info about putting a novel together. I'm hoping that doing this does not put me behind on finishing within the year but we'll see how that turns out.
The novel itself continues, slowly, but it continues to grow and take shape. Sort of like the Frankenstein monster, "It's alive," although it really isn't a monster. It's just a novel that sometimes drives me crazy in the process of writing it.
Thought for the night: does anyone remember Woody Allen's riff on relationships from Annie Hall? You don't? Well you've come to the right place to hear about it. Warning: I've bored many a past girlfriend with quotes from Woody Allen movies. However I love Woody Allen's films and stand unafraid of spreading ennui so here goes. Woody starts by telling a joke at the end of Annie Hall about his uncle who thought he was a chicken. People would continually ask his family why they didn't have the uncle committed. The answer: "Because we need the eggs!" Woody then goes on to draw parallels with relationships, i.e.: in most cases they don't go anywhere, we are mismatched with the person we're with and, in the end, we get nothing but pain and heartache (I'm paraphrasing). So why do we continue having relationships? You guessed it...because we need the eggs. Well damn son, writing is just about the same thing. We agonize for hours over a line or two, we read other authors who make us despair of ever writing anything that's good and we convince ourselves that no one will ever want to read our finished book (or short story, poem, etc). So why do we continue writing...
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Monday, 13 April 2010.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
A Way to Learn Novel Crafting
I was thinking yesterday of books on writing technique. Specifically I was thinking of those I've read in the past and remembered a technique I once read about in Lawrence Block's Spider Spin Me a Web, his book on writing a novel. I recall that he mentioned a technique in which you deconstruct someone else's novel by writing a synopsis of each chapter on index cards. You might also mention the characters introduced in each chapter and then the story points introduced in each chapter (I might have added some of these myself; I can no longer find my copy of the book). In this way you can see how the novel was constructed. Not a bad idea, I think. Time consuming but not a bad idea. So I'm doing it with Robert Crais' L.A. Requiem. I am reading the book at the moment anyway. I'll let you know how it works out.
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Thursday, 8 April 2010.
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks/Ansley Mall. Thursday, 8 April 2010.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Prologue, Chapter One...and Reading
I've finished my prologue. I agonized over it for a few days but finally got something I can not only live with, I think it's good as well. Too bad you don't get to see it until the book is published! I can now concentrate on Chapter One.
I've been reading Robert Crais' L.A. Requiem, one of his Elvis Cole mysteries. It's later on in the series but, in my opinion, one of his best. Cole and his partner, Joe Pike (the strong and silent sidekick, but as strong and silent sidekicks go, Joe Pike is pretty well written; not at all a caricature), are hired by the father of an ex-girlfriend of Pike's to find her. Seems the ex-girlfriend has gone missing and no one knows where she is. I'm about a third of the way through the book and am enjoying it, even though I've read it previously.
Crais' mysteries are among my favorites. I also like reading, and I've said this before (yes, I can repeat myself to the point of boredom), James Lee Burke and early Robert B. Parker , both of whom I'll be reading after I finish L.A. Requiem.
Reading other mystery writers, especially current mystery writers is fairly important, I believe. Doing so shows you what's selling to the publishing houses and also gives insight, to me anyway, into how good stories are put together. I need to do a lot of work on story structure, my weak point. In fact I'm planning on taking Robert McKee's Story Seminar the next time it is held in either New York or L.A. If you don't know what Story Seminar is just go online and Google "Robert Mckee Story Seminar." Or rent the Nicholas Cage movie Adaptation in which Cage plays screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. It is the story of Kaufman himself adapting Susan Orlean's Book The Orchid Thief...which became Adaptation on screen. A little confusing but fun; and in the film Kaufman attend's McKee's class. Enough of that. Just go look it up.
I have to be careful about reading the work of others, however, because I can come away feeling completely inadequate to the task of writing a novel. James Lee Burke is arguably one of the best mystery writers of the last twenty years. I can read him, think that I'll never be able to write like him and then do nothing until I manage to remotivate myself a few weeks later. And a "few weeks" is the fast turn around time for me. It could drag on longer. Dangerous.
Towards the end of developing my skills in crafting a good story, or just writing a book that makes sense, I'm reading Scene and Structure, a Writer's Digest Book. It seems like a pretty basic book but will probably help me since I'm at the basic level in both scene and structure. I'll talk more about the book as I get further into reading it.
More later.
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks at Barnes & Noble/Buckhead. Monday, 5 April 2010.
I've been reading Robert Crais' L.A. Requiem, one of his Elvis Cole mysteries. It's later on in the series but, in my opinion, one of his best. Cole and his partner, Joe Pike (the strong and silent sidekick, but as strong and silent sidekicks go, Joe Pike is pretty well written; not at all a caricature), are hired by the father of an ex-girlfriend of Pike's to find her. Seems the ex-girlfriend has gone missing and no one knows where she is. I'm about a third of the way through the book and am enjoying it, even though I've read it previously.
Crais' mysteries are among my favorites. I also like reading, and I've said this before (yes, I can repeat myself to the point of boredom), James Lee Burke and early Robert B. Parker , both of whom I'll be reading after I finish L.A. Requiem.
Reading other mystery writers, especially current mystery writers is fairly important, I believe. Doing so shows you what's selling to the publishing houses and also gives insight, to me anyway, into how good stories are put together. I need to do a lot of work on story structure, my weak point. In fact I'm planning on taking Robert McKee's Story Seminar the next time it is held in either New York or L.A. If you don't know what Story Seminar is just go online and Google "Robert Mckee Story Seminar." Or rent the Nicholas Cage movie Adaptation in which Cage plays screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. It is the story of Kaufman himself adapting Susan Orlean's Book The Orchid Thief...which became Adaptation on screen. A little confusing but fun; and in the film Kaufman attend's McKee's class. Enough of that. Just go look it up.
I have to be careful about reading the work of others, however, because I can come away feeling completely inadequate to the task of writing a novel. James Lee Burke is arguably one of the best mystery writers of the last twenty years. I can read him, think that I'll never be able to write like him and then do nothing until I manage to remotivate myself a few weeks later. And a "few weeks" is the fast turn around time for me. It could drag on longer. Dangerous.
Towards the end of developing my skills in crafting a good story, or just writing a book that makes sense, I'm reading Scene and Structure, a Writer's Digest Book. It seems like a pretty basic book but will probably help me since I'm at the basic level in both scene and structure. I'll talk more about the book as I get further into reading it.
More later.
Bill Browning, writing from Starbucks at Barnes & Noble/Buckhead. Monday, 5 April 2010.
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