“One hasn’t become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession.”
Niyi Osundare
Image: SusanNYC
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I was recently introduced to the idea of doodling in an art class as a way to connect with the right side of the brain. As I’m sure you know, the left side of our brain is the analytical side and the right is the more dreamy, creative side.
Writing calls on both parts in different ways but the right plays a huge part in allowing you access to the world of your characters and being able to evoke that world for the reader.
You have probably noticed that the longer you stay away from your work, the harder it becomes to merge yourself back into that imaginary world. But doodling can help get you back there and you can feel the effect quite quickly.
Before you start writing (just after you’ve finished procrastinating) grab a piece of paper and lose yourself in some dreamy doodling thinking about nothing in particular. As the world around you starts to recede, allow yourself to drift into your imaginary world and – without interruption – move across to your writing. Give it a try.
Doodles by Stargardener
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If you are working on your first novel you can’t fail to be impressed at the standard of Kathryn Stockett‘s work and by the dazzling success of her first novel.
‘The Help’ is interesting and inspiring from a number of perspectives. Firstly the ambitious approach of telling the story in three distinctly different voices two of which are black maids. So, not only does she need to create three complex characters but to emulate the distinctive speech and idiom of those characters.
On top of that she has done an amazing job in creating a web of secondary characters all of whom are connected to and driving the main plot. The time and place are also cleverly evoked within the context of the story.
I’m often heard moaning about books being exceptionally long, some of which really need a massive edit! But ‘The Help’ isn’t one of them, I found it so readable that I powered through the 522 pages in about four days – and I’d already seen the movie.
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I am always suspicious about new kinds of software or ‘fool-proof’ techniques to get writers to write but this little trick is simple and free.
Basically you download this one page from ‘The Writer’s Store’ print it out and every day that you actually WRITE ie. work on your novel or screenplay or whatever (Facebook/email/text doesn’t qualify!) you get to put a big stinkin’ red cross on your calendar.
It is strangely compelling. I started on the 1st of January (okay it’s only five days) but there is a real resistance about allowing a day to pass without adding a link to the chain – so far so good!
BTW: The Writer’s Store is a great resource (mainly aimed at screenwriters) either online or drop if you’re in LA – I’ve also attended some of their industry specific courses which they run onsite.
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1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
As ever,
Jack [Kerouac]
[Jack Kerouac. "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, 1958, 1977, 1983.]
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