Tag: Writing Advice

Just Do It!

12th February 2021
Writing
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Close up of a vintage-style typewriter with the words "Just do it" typed on the page.

Just Do It may or may not be a morbid slogan, but it’s a darn good one. Write every day. Just do it!

By writing every day, painting every day, touching the piano tangents even when we’re not “feeling like it,” we stay attuned to the craft magic, and we learn. Small steps every day build up experience and skills over time.

We learn discipline. We learn patience. We learn that creativity is not inspiration, something that strikes mysteriously one moment, but a habit. The habit of daily practice.

The body is smarter. It has muscle memory. You sit at your desk every day, you take up your pen or your brush, and you start. Small things; a few words, a few sentences. Nothing scary or demanding. The play of shadows and light on the wall. The well-known fragrance of the incense sticks. The hot tea mug in your hand. The body remembers the clues. You’re primed for creating. 

Just do it. 

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How to Do Research for a Non-Fiction Book

8th February 2021
Writing
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Stack of old books.
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

When we moved from Switzerland to Sweden in late 2019 I decided to do a Kondo review of our possessions. I didn’t want to bring old stuff into our new home and new life in Sweden. It was a signal of new beginnings, with a clean slate.

Old stuff in the huge garage or the bomb shelter … OK, that sounds crazy. Let me explain. Yes, we had a bomb shelter room, with a heavy, thick steel door like a bank vault, complete with six field beds, a chemical toilet, and an air filtering system. It’s a requirement when building a house in Switzerland. If it made me feel safer? I don’t know, but it was perfect for additional storage with 25 square meters.

This brings me back to the move. The extra storage area meant that even more stuff found its’ way there. Some things were easier to throw out than others. Books and my archive papers were hard. 

I had the idea of my non-fiction book for a few years and had started collecting material, even though I wasn’t sure how I could write it when I was working more than full-time and was utterly exhausted during the weekends. But I kept at it because I knew the day would come.

So here I was with boxes of papers, ready to start my new life as a writer, at last. I couldn’t leave all that behind now, could I? What I did, in the end, was a quick scanning, removing duplicates or outdated papers. There were still too many boxes, but I did what I could.

Now to the “how” part. 

How to Do Research for a Non-Fiction Book

1) Preparation

“To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries: to lose a notebook was a catastrophe,” travel writer Bruce Chatwin said. All research starts with a notebook. A kernel of an idea, an overheard conversation, something the neighbor said, a book I’ve read. I write it all down in my little Moleskine notebook that I always carry with me. Nowadays I use the iPhone’s Notes app as well.

As my intentions became clearer, I wrote a few points that would later go into the book outline. Nothing detailed yet, just high level, to provide directions.

Once I had a pretty good idea about what kind of book I wanted to write, I bought a few folders in clear pretty pastel colors and organized the papers I already had. This helped me better understand where I was going with the book.

2) Online Research

Then on to do some online research, starting with Google Scholar, and expanding from there. I did a quick check on what others have written on the subject, and their sources, as they’ve already done their research.

I follow a few writers in my areas of interest; many of the experts in their field would have a homepage or a blog, and often, they would list recommended books. A pre-validated list, that’s gold.

3) The Library 

Libraries are magical. Imagine all that knowledge, free for anyone to grab! Non-fiction books are organized by topics, so this step is relatively easy. I just went to the relevant shelves and browsed. I’m pretty good at scanning books quickly, and my list grew pretty fast.

The advantage of “real” books is that you can browse through whole books fairly quickly; with e-books, it’s much harder.

4) Analyze Sources

I like to think I’m pretty good at evaluating sources, but a formal test is always good. I use CRAAP (an acronym for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose). I also prioritize primary sources (first-person accounts) before secondary sources whenever possible.

5) Organize the Material

Now, the tricky part is keeping track of everything you’ve found. Enter the research database. I’ll write a separate post on this.

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Authors Should Be Good Gods

29th January 2021
Writing
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Frozen lake and snowy trees. Photo by Mihaela Limberea

If authors are gods, sole and powerful creators of fictional worlds, they should be good gods. Even if characters are put through hell (and they should, if the book is to have any verisimilitude), there should be a meaning to their suffering. Poetic justice, if you will. It doesn’t necessarily mean a happy end. But something that makes sense. He who has a Why can endure any How, as Nietzsche put it.

This is what makes the Greek tragedies so powerful. The hero’s journey is tragic, yes, and we wouldn’t want to be in their shoes, to have to face those choices. But they find a meaning to their suffering, eventually, when all is revealed at the end.

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Ray Bradbury’s Writing Advice For Writers To Be

13th January 2021
BooksWriting
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In one of his lectures collected in the slim volume titled “Ray Bradbury: On Writing,” Bradbury talks about young people dreaming of writing a novel. His advice? Start small. Don’t start with a novel, which will take a long time to write, only to find out at the end it wasn’t good enough.

On Writing

Practice your skills, learn how to write by writing short stories. Write one short story a week. You’ll have the satisfaction of completing something in a relatively short period of time, and you’ll learn a lot. You’ll learn to compact things; to look for ideas; to see a metaphor, and how to write it. At the end of the year, there should be at least one good story. And you’re learning the craft.

Write What You Want to Read

Write what you want to read. Write about what you love, what you hate; write about what you fear; write with joy and abandon. Writing should be fun, not a chore.

Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun at it. (…) I’ve never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy my joy.

Close up of book shelves, two of them dedicated to writing. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.

On Reading

As a writer, you should write a lot, and read a lot, too. The library is your school of writing, as it was his. Ray Bradbury never went to college; he couldn’t afford it. But he went to the library several times a week and, in his words, “graduated from the library”.

I want you to live the fever pitch. I want you to go to the library. The great thing about libraries is surprise, isn’t it? To pull books off the shelf and not know what they are (…).

What Should You Read?

Read and learn from the best. Every night, before going to bed, read one short story, one poem, one essay from various fields. Do this for a thousand nights, and you’ll have a solid education.

Ray Bradbury’s Recommended Reading

Short Stories

Short Stories

  • Roald Dahl
  • Guy De Maupassant
  • John Cheever
  • Richard Matheson
  • John Collier
  • Edith Wharton
  • Katherine Anne Porter
  • Eudora Welty
  • Washington Irving
  • Melville
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne

Essays

Poems

  • Aldous Huxley
  • Loren Eiseley
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • G. K. Chesterton

Go back and read the classics.

  • Shakespeare
  • Alexander Pope
  • Robert Frost

My Reading Education

I grew up in a home where there weren’t many books, but the ones we had were all classics. There was a book series collecting the classic works of both Romanian and foreign authors of all time. That was a gold mine for a child with an inquisitive mind, thirsting for knowledge, curious about everything. My parents didn’t forbid me to read any books; thankfully, they didn’t practice age-appropriate reading.

So I grew up reading Jules Verne, Daniel Defoe, and Mark Twain’s children’s books. In fact, my sister read them to me before I could read them myself. You could say I was primed for reading (thank you, sis!).

But I also read Balzac, Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, W. M. Thackeray, Emily Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë. I probably read Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre a dozen times before I went to university.

Book Cover of Anton Chekhov Stories. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
My edition of Chekhov’s Stories.

At the university, we were required to read the classics. I was one of the few students who actually read the whole list.

They’re classic for a reason: they’re well written and show us the universal in people, humanity, our world. They endured hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Which best-sellers of today would still be best-sellers in fifty years?

Long story short, reading classic works is a good, free education. I would add Anton Chekhov, Sake, and Katherine Mansfield to Bradbury’s list of short stories.

I leave you with the best quote from this lecture (The Hygiene of Writing).

Don’t live on your god damned computers and the internet and all that crap. Go to the library.

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Just Squander Yourself

5th December 2020
QuotesWriting
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Waves crashing on the beach. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Waves crashing on the beach, Fregate Island, Seychelles.

The task is always to write every single piece like it’s your only one. It has to have that energy. Use your best material now. Just squander yourself. Enjoy it. I don’t want to read anyone’s tepid writing.

Parul Sehgal 

The quote comes from this excellent interview with Parul Sehgal, book critic at The New York Times, and former editor and columnist at The New York Times Book Review.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard, along the same lines.

How To Handle A Creative Block & Avoid Distraction

2nd December 2020
Writing
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Creative Block?

As creators, we’ve all been there, showing up to do the work, and nothing happened. Going through the motions, following the ritual (you do have a ritual?), yet the creative spark is gone, not even smoldering ashes left. The empty page.The blank canvas. The feared creative block. “Is it all gone? Will I ever be able to write anything? What’s happening?” That’s scary. I know it because I’ve been there. Too often.

Try Visual Writing Prompts…

One of the tricks I’ve learned to jumpstart my writing when I feel stuck is visual writing prompts. I would pick a random photo and force myself to write the beginning of a story based on the image. Something short and easy to get me going. You can see an example at the end of this post.

I try not to use one of my own photos but something completely different, to force my brain into something new. A site such as Unsplash, offering free photos for download, is great for the purpose. (I may want to use a text in the future, so it’s good to know I won’t need to worry about licensing).

This gets me started at any time, just because I don’t have any expectations to produce something extraordinary or brilliant. I’m just supposed to write a few words; I can do that.

… And Avoid Distractions

Close up of a Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly on a daisy. Photo by Mihaela Limberea.
Don’t fly from flower to flower as a butterfly. My photo from my old garden.

However, more often than not, as my writing starts to flow, it takes me in a new direction. I’m suddenly drawn into a new story, and curiosity pushes me to continue instead of returning to what I was working on. It’s good fun, and the temptation is to go with the flow. The brain is skilled at taking the path of the least resistance, that old rascal.

This is where discipline comes in. I can’t afford to start on a new story; I have to finish what I’ve started before going in a new direction. It’s tempting to abandon the work when the going gets tough and respond to a new project’s sirens’ song. But all this approach does is make sure I don’t finish anything, ending up with many great starts with no ends. Ask me how I know.

Use a Slush File…

This is where a slush file comes in handy. What’s a slush file, you ask. This is where all good but seducing ideas go. Got a great idea for a different project? I write it down and return to the project I was working on. Once I’ve finished it, I’ll visit the slush file and pick a new project.

… And Keep It Simple

My slush file is very straightforward: a bullet point list in Apple’s Notes app, points grouped by project. Something like this:

  • End of the world story, a prepper & his cousin.
    • “Prepper John” has a so-called shack middle of nowhere, in fact, a well-stored bunker. Remote island??
    • Cousin (she), a journalist, meets him at the shack for an interview on prepping.
    • Zombies!!

I keep the Notes app easily accessible on my phone’s home screen. I don’t need to search for it, or open folders and files. As soon as I get one of those tempting ideas, I just write it down quickly in Notes, and resume whatever I was doing at the time.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

Visual Writing Prompt Example

I leave you with an example of a visual prompt. I found an everyday photo of a garage on Unsplash; these are a few story beginnings I wrote. I can tell you that I’ve used my slush file after this exercise. (Yep, I love a good zombie story, I admit. And terriers called Jexy.)

  • I was tinkering with my old motorcycle in my parents’ subbasement garage, with Jaxy as sole company, when the first zombies reached Stockholm. That saved my life.
  • Having my own space was the most important thing back then. Even if it was just a run-down garage with an astronomical rent and rich in cockroaches.
  • My new home office didn’t look much to the world, but it was my own. Only Jaxy seemed to think differently and barked at the battered van. I had to agree, “some renovation needed” was an understatement.
  • The morning the first undead burst into the city, Mats woke up in a dilapidated garage, his head pulsing with the mother of all headaches. A dog stared at him, tail wagging furiously back and forth. Where the hell was he? What was he doing in this, this…place? With a terrier? If it was a terrier, Mats didn’t know much about dogs and frankly, didn’t care. Of course, had he known about the undead, his view of things may have been slightly different.

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Writing Lately

4th April 2020
CreativityWriting
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Taking my own advice, I continue writing, despite alarmist media reports, gradual movement restrictions in Sweden, and my own distraction. Creativity is hard work at any time, not only during a pandemic. So, I sit down every morning, turn on my computer, and start typing. 

I’m writing a short story at the moment. I was working on a novel but decided to pause it for a while. With a story, I can (hopefully) be done quickly, and that would give me a feeling of accomplishment. It’s also good fun writing it, and fun is a good thing these days. 

The funny thing (see what I did there?) is that I had completely forgotten about it. I had a few loose ideas, but I was working on a different thing at the time, so I just wrote them down, saved them in a “Writing Ideas” folder for later, and then promptly forgot about it. 

A few days ago, two years later, I was looking for something else and came across this file titled “The Author.” I had absolutely no idea what it was. I opened it, read the couple of pages it consisted of, and, not to sound my own trumpet, but they were good! With a few funny twists thrown in for good measure. So, I grabbed the file, got to work, and ended up in that creative bubble where everything seems far away, even the coronavirus, and the world is warm and nice, and fuzzy.

The learnings?

Koala by Mihaela Limberea www.limberea.com
A cute koala for your enjoyment. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

1) Always carry paper and pen with you and jot down any idea that you get. You will not remember it later. I’ve placed small blocks of paper and pens strategically everywhere in the house and in my pocket when I’m out. You could argue, of course, that you can use your smartphone, but I favor paper and pen. I enjoy leafing through the pages, slowly, back and forth, for the incommensurable joy of the unexpected connections that sometimes may jump at you from the pages.

2) Use a folder to organize these loose thoughts so you can easily find them later. Whether the folder is digital or analog doesn’t really matter, it only needs to suit your organizational system. You do have one I trust? 

Then let them marinate for a while, while you can carry on with your ongoing projects. You can come back any time to look for some ideas when you’re stuck or ready to kick off a new project.

Chance, fate, or just the butterfly effect may sometimes lead you to the end of the rainbow too. All you have to do is trust your creative genie.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay calm and soldier on. And don’t forget to laugh. 

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