For my New Year’s resolution this year I am offering myself a challenge that I once kept with little difficulty. I resolve to write a new poem every day for the entire year. Some days may be simple haikus, other days may include harder closed-form poems such as pantoums or sestinas. I will try many styles, but try every day. I know that the only way to get better as a writer is to write often. That is what I plan to do this year.

What will your New Year’s writing resolution be? Will you join me in my poetic challenge? Do you have a different writing challenge for the year? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

© Joshua Dodson for Writers Community, 2010. | Permalink | Join the Discussion (2 comments) | Follow Writers Community on Twitter | Tell others: delicious.com, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
Post tags: challenge, New Year, new year resolution, Poetry, Writing

Writing for the Web works best when it is scannable. The following tips will help make your articles scannable and ready for the Web.

Use Headings

Headings and sub-headings are important for emphasizing key points in the article. Search engines place a great deal of weight on headings when indexing the page.

Use Lists

• Web users love lists!
• Lists help section off important points.
• Lists make the content scannable.
• Most of the articles that are popular in social bookmarking sites use some form of list within the article.

Use Bold and Italics

Emphasize key points within paragraphs and lists by using bold and italic formatting.

Use Active Verbs

Tell the reader how to respond to the content. People who read your articles consider you an authority by default. They want your advice so give it to them. Using an active voice with active verbs clearly tells them what their role is as a reader.

Use Internal Links

Linking to pages within our site structure adds relevancy to your article and gives the user a “next step.”

Keep it Short and Simple

400-800 words is enough to give the reader an idea of what you are saying. This is not a doctoral dissertation; it is only a chunk of information. Short sentences and short paragraphs help to keep it simple and scannable.

Use a Conversational Tone

Write directly to the reader in a conversational tone. Using a conversational tone keeps things friendly and open.

© Joshua Dodson for Writers Community, 2009. | Permalink | Join the Discussion (3 comments) | Follow Writers Community on Twitter | Tell others: delicious.com, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
Post tags: Arts, Digg, Diggable articles, Information, Reddit, Scannable content, Social bookmarking, Voice, Web search engine, Web writing, Writers Resources, Writing for the Web

As an essayist, I’ve written scores of autobiographical shorts, seldom intimate, usually relating to isolated events and ideas from recent life, things I can write before the mind’s emotional snapshots dry and fly away. The task of marathon writing about my personal experiences from earliest memory and then carrying that on in the following months, however, is daunting.

I’ve heard a human’s favorite word is their own name. We hear complaints occasionally about those doing nothing but talking about themselves in conversation. You would think, in general, writing about ourselves would be a piece of cake. That we’d welcome the organized opportunity. I think I’d rather be set afire in the middle of a glass eating contest.

There comes a point when you’ve run out of convincing excuses and the fear subsides. My time is now.  

I think working from the “what if” of fiction was a helpful preparation. As I chased the slippery fiction of Black Mountain Light through the days I kept over-ending big mental rocks and uncovering my own non-fiction. I couldn’t help working in the occasional personal element, constantly weaving the road between personal truth and entertaining lies, of real and speculated history.

There were cathartic moments when I recovered memories I didn’t know could exist. I would be creating the experiential lives of characters out of thin air and suddenly find myself depending on the real as a tool for seeing. We do this a lot, of course, writing about things of which we have no real knowledge. That’s part of the challenge, to call into this realm a made up thing, a borrowed life, and make it real. Not just believable, but believed. Inevitably we must occasionally fall back on personal experience and empathy, the remembering and imagining.  

X is what I remember doing in a similar circumstance. This character is similar to her and she’d react by doing X. If I were in that place I would feel X and then do X. Perhaps our unwritten memoirs are where the answer hide.  

In that conversation with the barely real I would have flashes of the true, like vainly trying to speed read but only comprehending small amounts of the story, tantalizing fragments of a puzzle. Real and strangely evolved scenes from my life would come up for a gulp of air after spending my lifetime at the lightless bottom of the sea. That caused chain reactions of other memories. The snapshots were quickly becoming film.

So my memory has rebooted over the last year, energized further by past workshops with George Ella Lyon (Don’t You Remember?) and Karen McElmurray (Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey) and devouring every autobiographical phrase ever penned by Chris Offutt (The Same River Twice and No Heroes) and taking Jason Howard up on his instruction that we “must discover, understand, communicate, preserve.”    

Though I’m getting older and my memory isn’t what it used to be, at this mid-life point in life I’m actually remembering me more and more. The novel effort was intended for consumption from the beginning. I’m not so sure about the life story thing. I’m doing this for me. If, in the end, I can take the mundane and semi-exciting chapters of my life and sift them clear and beautiful upon the page, perhaps there’s potential for someone learning from them. In the end, however, it’s about re-meeting me.

© Larry Thacker for Writers Community, 2009. | Permalink | Join the Discussion (4 comments) | Follow Writers Community on Twitter | Tell others: delicious.com, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
Post tags: Arts, Chris Offutt, George Ella Lyon, Jason Howard, NaNo, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Online Writing, Same River Twice, Writers Resources, Writing

These days tend to be more about process, for me at least. I do not accomplish more than usual on days like this–quantitatively, that is. I ease myself into the process and try not to set goals that will cause me to let myself down.

Days like this can be amazingly productive in one sense. They encourage a wandering mind. Where do you go next? What happens when you leave here? Where did you come from? How is this shaping your story? Is your story somehow shaping you?

Today’s Writing Prompt

Write about a cloudy, rainy day. What do you, or your characters, do to pass the time? Is this a languid time for you, or an empowering time? What processes happen during this time that otherwise get no attention?

© Joshua Dodson for Writers Community, 2009. | Permalink | Join the Discussion (2 comments) | Follow Writers Community on Twitter | Tell others: delicious.com, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
Post tags: Arts, Cloudy, Coffee, Energy, Gray, ideas, Inspiration, Prompts, Rain, Time, Writing, Writing Prompts

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class or attended a fiction workshop, you’ve heard this clear set of directions:  “Show.  Don’t Tell.”  That seems easy enough, but I admit I’ve had to give a lot of thought to that at times to ensure I’m not guilty of the reverse.  How do you not tell when you’re telling a story?  The nuances of those words must be given some serious thought to find the answer.  One way to practice showing is to be sure you write with the senses.

Flanary O’Connor wrote about what she called “the texture of existence around you.”  I’ve been reading her collection of essays published as Mystery and Manners, and I’ve found a lot of good advice that is certainly still applicable several decades later.  Here are some words of wisdom to consider:

Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses.  No reader  who doesn’t actually experience, who isn’t made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him.  The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched. Now this is something that can’t be learned only in the head; it has to be learned in the habits.  It has to become a way that you habitually look at things.  The fiction writer has to realize that he can’t create compassion with compassion, or emotion with emotion, or thought with thought.  He has to provide all of these things with a body; he has to create a world with weight and extension.”  (91-92)

When reading this, I was taken back to a few months ago when I was workshopping with other writers.  One of the workshop participants was Rodney, a sometimes difficult reader to sell and, therefore, one of the best readers I can have critique my work.  After I read and Rodney was ready to comment, he referred back to a what I considered a minor detail in the scene.  Near the end, as one of my characters was preparing for bed after a long day of working in the summer, I wrote, “He still felt the heat of the day inside him.  He was sure it radiated off him.”

Rodney said those two short sentences had struck him because he had experienced that sensation himself.  He went on to talk in more detail about how your skin feels after being in the sun all day and how it makes you tired.  He talked more about those conditions than I did in the scene, because with those two lines, he gained a stronger identification with the character.  That made the rest of the scene seem more real to him.

Now, this happened to be the feeling that hit Rodney over the head.  It may not have the same effect on other readers, but it’s my hope there are other details that might evoke the same sort of attachment for someone else.  Let me correct that last sentence.  I don’t just hope this, I plan for this by providing details about the smell in the air, the way the moon shines into the room after the lights are turned off, the feel of the newly washed bed sheets, the quality of the summer air as it blows through the open window.  Not all of these details will work in the end, but try to consider the senses from the beginning and cut the excess out later.

O’Connor goes on to say many writers educate themselves about the senses by painting.  The author Silas House says to visualize your scenes as frames in a movie.  I think still photography often can serve the same purpose and help deepen your understanding of what you see around you.  Journaling is another good way to practice recording details about textures and smells and tastes, as well as the kinds of impressions that come from your experiences with the senses.

Remember that these details must never become too technical.  As Flannary advises, use only essential details to move your story forward.

© Denton Loving for Writers Community, 2009. | Permalink | Join the Discussion (5 comments) | Follow Writers Community on Twitter | Tell others: delicious.com, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
Post tags: Arts, Fiction, Flanary O'Connor, Magazine, Online Writing, Silas House, Weblogs, Workshop, Writer, Writers Resources, Writing

As it turned out, I was promoted three short weeks after my arrival, apparently some sort of record for a secretary, and for no other reason than that I could spot and fix errors in punctuation or grammar better than my boss. I remember looking over an article he’d written and spotting the sorts of errors unworthy of anyone who actually makes his or her living off the printed page. I could have just fixed his mistakes;I suppose it was my job to do so, but I didn’t. Instead I marched into his office. “Um, about punctuation, spelling, and grammar,” I said. “I’m confused. They stopped mattering in writing, when?”

He looked up from his work; then he blushed. “It’s that bad?”

“We’re talking conduct unbecoming a writer,” I told him. “If I were your boss, you’d be fired.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re not my boss,” he said.

“And it’s a disgrace I’m not in editorial.”

(...)
Read the rest of Unbecoming a Writer, or, Exploding Cigars (2,414 words)

© Liz Lamont for Writers Community, 2009. | Permalink | Join the Discussion (10 comments) | Follow Writers Community on Twitter | Tell others: delicious.com, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
Post tags: Actor, Arts, Broadway theatre, Editing, Editor, Hell's Kitchen, New Jerusalem, New York, New York City, New York City Ballet, Theatre, Times, Waiting for Godot, Writer, Writers Resources, Writing