September 2012
208 posts
August 2012
217 posts
“If I had a whole day, I would write for an hour and then be completely exhausted. I would actually fall asleep on the floor of my studio for twenty minutes to half an hour. I’d reach some sort of an impasse, a psychic impasse, where I just couldn’t move forward in the writing. I would sleep and I would have a dream, and in the dream I would figure out where to go in the writing. Then I would wake up and start writing from that point. It was really this sort of accessing of the unconscious in some way. I would write for another hour and then I would fall asleep again, it would just keep happening. I’d do that maybe four times over one day. That part was an excavation.”
—Nick Flynn
Writer's Relief Blog: "How A Little Patience Goes A Long Way Toward Success" →
writersrelief.com
What is the secret to a long, successful career in publishing—full of many book publications, collections of poems and short stories, awards, and accolades for your creative writing?
While a select few folks get lucky—scoring major book deals with little or no writing technique or background—others must toil for years before finding success.
We writers take classes, go to workshops, shell out money for writing conferences, sit alone at our computers for hours, and make countless sacrifices all in the name of achieving The Dream. We wonder: How much longer can we keep going? How much more can we give before we burn out? When—if ever—will we get a payout?
The Week In Reviews: August 27 - August 31, 2012 →
goodreads.com
In need of a book recommendation? We’ve got you covered! Check out what the WR staff has read & rated by following Writer’s Relief on Goodreads. This week’s books are:
- Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
- If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, by Bruce Campbell
- Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”
—Stephen King
Writer's Relief Blog: "Verbal Gobbledygook: Editing Extra Words Out Of Your Writing" →
writersrelief.com
Many writers struggle when it comes to editing extra words out of their sentences. Finding extraneous words and knowing when to delete them can be tough, and if you’re a novelist working on a book or a short story or essay writer, you can’t depend on your editor to line edit your prose. Wordiness and bad sentence structure repel busy editors. Serious writers must learn to self-edit and get rid of unnecessary words.
“I’ve been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can’t remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice.”
—Anton Chekhov
Writer's Relief Blog: "Mail Call: How To Send A Manuscript To A Literary Agent" →
writersrelief.com
Q: Dear Writer’s Relief: How do I send my complete book (or novel, or memoir) to a literary agent?
We’ve got the answer!
“Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.”
—Johann Gottfried Von Herder
Writer's Relief Blog: "Promoting Your Writing—Creating The Ultimate Author Website For Your Books, Stories, Or Poems" →
writersrelief.com
Creative writers who wish to go pro should have an author website. A Web designer can help you create a classy, interesting website to showcase your creative writing—or you can create one on your own. A great site can also help you sell books, gain readership, and create a Web presence (not to mention get a literary agent or editor).
GREAT NEWS! Writer’s Relief can help you design your author website. Check out Web Design Relief! We know the publishing industry, and we know great design. Check us out!
“Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened [his/her] lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say”
—Vladimir Mayakovsky
Writer's Relief Blog: "Where To Submit Poetry For Money" →
writersrelief.com
Do you know where to submit poetry for money? Believe it or not, there ARE literary journals that are willing to pay their writers for poems. They are few and far between, but they do exist. Some literary journals receive grants or are university funded, so they are able to pay their poets a relatively small amount of money to publish their work. But most literary journals are unable to pay anything to writers who submit poetry.
“About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.”
—Margaret Atwood
Writer's Relief Blog: "Character’s Thoughts: Punctuating and Formatting" →
writersrelief.com
Knowing how to punctuate or format your character’s thoughts can be difficult. Should you use italics? Quotation marks? Underlining. What is the best way to show that a character is thinking within a given sentence or paragraph?
When the protagonist of your story pauses to think something, you need to set it apart somehow from the regular text and dialogue. There are a few different ways of formatting characters’ thoughts.
“Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.”
—John Green, The Fault In Our Stars
Writer's Relief Blog: "Wasting Time: Procrastination Problems For Writers" →
writersrelief.com
People who work for a living know that being efficient and productive is not always easy. It can be even harder for writers who attempt to work from home or write at home after work. It’s definitely hard to stay focused sometimes. The risk of procrastination and the temptation to make excuses is part of the writing life.
Sure, we start out with the best intentions and with specific goals in mind—edit a novel, revise an old poem—but we soon find ourselves distracted by any number of things.
We can only hope that those of us who work with computers can be strong and resist the temptations. And distracting temptations there are! Such fabulous, time-wasting activities abound. We can’t resist giving you a small sample.
Accidentally writing in so much detail that your short story is no longer short
Did I just write that much?
“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.”
—Mark Twain
Writer's Relief Blog: "The Trouble With Clichés In Short Stories, Essays, Poems, And Books" →
writersrelief.com
The trouble with clichés in creative writing (short stories, poems, books, and personal essays) is that they’re so spot-on. They can describe exactly what you’re trying to say in a way that everyone can understand. So, for instance, if his hands are ‘softer than a baby’s bottom,’ most people, including literary agents and editors, can relate—there aren’t many things softer in this world. When your verse describes the fragile state of romance as delicate as a flower, it’s a phrase that sums up exactly how you are feeling, no matter how threadbare and great the risk that it may not get your poetry published.
