"How to Instantly Become a Better Writer" - hee hee hee

Okay, so I'm a bit of a grammar fanatic.

(N.B. Please do NOT use the term grammar Nazi, which I find offensive. To compare my desire to stick to linguistic rules with any of the horrors perpetrated in the Second World War is... at best inappropriate.)

Okay, so I'm a bit of a pedant too.

Anyway - "How to Instantly Become a Better Writer" graced an email from someone I admire for his work on boosting blog traffic. It made me laugh uproariously!

How to Instantly Become A Better Writer?

Well, you could start by avoiding split infinitives, mate!

For the most part, split infinitives in sentences make me cringe. They sound so UGLY. The beauty of the English language is something I hold dear and I hate it when it's sullied by sloppy syntax.

That's not to say that splitting infinitives is ALWAYS wrong. Sometimes it works, because turning oneself inside out to avoid it leads to some incredibly clumsy phrasing, stilted and unnatural, and could change the meaning of the sentence.

Here's a great example from the linguist R.L.Trask. 

• She decided to gradually get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.

"Gradually" splits the infinitive "to get". However, if the adverb were moved, where could it go?

• She decided gradually to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.

This might imply that the decision was gradual.

• She decided to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected gradually.

This implies that the collecting process was gradual.

See the whole article cited in Wikipedia.
Conclusion: Split infinitive...avoidable.

Or you could just take the path of a few of my friends:

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

Today, I'm taking my inspiration from Confucius Hesay (Yes, I DID once think that was his surname.)

 And in a typical Caroline almost non sequitur leap...when I was at university in Liverpool, I used to listen to dear old Radio City. The very best bit was the quiz section. (And this REALLY HAPPENED)

D.J. :What was Hitler's first name?

Very long pause...

Contestant :(tentatively) Heil?

Your Monday morning entertainment, courtesy of Caroline's Random Memory Bank.

Back to small stones and the carrying away of them.

I have to confess that sometimes I DO get a bit resigned - all this applying and pitching and submitting my work, the contents of my soul, and seemingly, very little or nothing coming of it.

It's important not to lose sight of the mountain to be moved. The bigger picture. What is important to me. That which makes all this stone-carrying mean something.

Yay!

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Some quotes surprise me. Who would have thought Gustave Flaubert said this? Actually, I don't expect he did say it. I expect he said something like...L'écriture est la vie d'un chien, mais la seule vie digne d'être vécue.

(See how good I am at using Google Translate writing in French!)

ratiocinativa.wordpress.com 

  
 A dog's life? I suppose it depends on which dog and to whom he belongs. As a writer, I spend no time at all sleeping on the lawn in the sunshine...

or playing with socks.

I DO spend my time having cuddles though.

Yep, it's a dog's life being a writer...

Sometimes, very little writing gets done!

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

...said somebody or other - errrm, Alan Dean Foster - yes, a writer. Of course.

Perhaps I'm not typical then?

Quite good at getting down to writing, brilliant at avoiding marketing and self-publicising - aside from blogging, that is. If that counts.

In my most humble opinion, there is procrastination and there is procrastination.

 Now THAT, above, is procrastination.

MY sort of procrastination is High Class Procrastination - that is to say, it's not sharpening pencils, tidying my desk, spending too long on Facebook and Google+, generally hanging out.

My sort of procrastination is having something to do that I don't want to do (re-reading and sending off my novel to publishers) and then getting in a piece of work from a client with a tight deadline AND BEING RELIEVED.

Now, NOBODY should be able to accuse me of procrastination because this is a job that must be done.

But somebody does. Every time.

ME!

One more step along the world I go

Here is your ear-worm of the day.  Listen to it once and I defy you not to have the tune running round your head all day. (You'll hate me forever.)

It came to me a little way into the second day of my '5 little steps a day to get me out of the shadows' resolution...

I had a POSITIVE RESPONSE from an animation production company that I e-mailed out of the blue.

It made my five little steps of yesterday so much easier to achieve. Five little steps became six before I'd even realised it, and eight by the end of the day.

Now, I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner...or more often...

That's human nature for you!

By Mel Kadel

Good resolutions are like babies crying in church.

They should be carried out immediately.

Thanks to Charles M Sheldon, minister, for this (dubious) quote. (Babies should be welcomed in church.)

I'm not at all bad about carrying out good resolutions immediately. Less good at sustaining them - but the way I look at it is, even if one only does something for a few days or weeks, at least that effort has been put in and will never be wasted. Better than doing nothing, ever.

So yesterday, after my non-existent To Do List for furthering my writing, caused by panic masking as brain fog...

I made a resolution to take five small steps each day to move out of the shadows.

1. E-mailed a healthfood company promoting my copywriting.
2. Sent off a script to a director
3. Set about re-designing my business card.
4. Pitched scripts and writing services to an animation company.
5. Pitched scripts and writing services to another animation company

It wasn't such a great mountain to climb, and...

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.

Guilty as charged, Zig Zigler (but I haven't got a ridiculous name)

Your statement makes me a little world weary though.

by Gale Franey

Yesterday, feeling a little virtuous, I thought I'd Plan Ahead, write one of my famous To Do Lists, so that today I could hit the ground running.

The trouble was, I couldn't actually think of anything to put on the list. I know what my personal creative writing goal is - to get more of my work published or produced - but I couldn't think of a single step to take in order to achieve that. There are countless, I'm sure, but to me it seemed like wading through an ultra sticky morass. Stuck.

So here's a  more comforting, optimistic view of my lack of direction, by C. Joybell. C (another ridiculous name but hey...)

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”

By Violet Sands

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement.

 Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth... But amusing? Never.

Edna Ferber.

 Discuss. Not Edna Ferber, but her statement.

Yep, pretty accurate. Except it CAN be fun, it CAN be amusing. There's very little to beat the sensation of being in the zone when writing, when words flow with ease, without conscious effort and with the ability to surprise because, even as the writer, I don't know where the thoughts came from.

Perhaps it's for those precious moments that we keep on writing?

I think I've had a lightbulb moment.

I love writing. I DO write for my own amusement. (Okay, call me an amateur if you must, Edna Ferber.) But when I've finished a piece of work it becomes Something That I Must Do Something With - something that I must try to get published or produced as a film or broadcast as a radio play - or whatever.

THAT'S when it becomes a struggle.

I have a very firm grasp on reality...

I can reach out and strangle it any time! 

So - as promised yesterday - if only to myself - a reality check about my work.

Of Night And Light - the novel - still waiting to hear back from the commissioning editor.

Dancing With Elephants, The Wilful Child, Belief in Cod, One Of Our Pies Is Missing, Little Red Riding Hood and The Granny Confusion - still waiting to hear back from the animation company.

Filth - short film - at final edit stage.(London) To be taken to Le Marché du Film, Cannes, Short Film Corner.

The Other Side Of Silence - short film - original shoot date disrupted by the snow but apparently it is imminent. (Whitby)

Downtown Abby - short film - script approved and scheduling shoot with Eastenders actor attached. (London)

Caught In The Act - short film - (apparently) to be shot this year. (New York)

 Just For A Moment - a short film which has, apparently, been "on the point of completion" for over two years, (Leeds) - so I will chase it up, now I've remembered its existence! UPDATE: Answer to my query 'Any progress?' - "Sadly no. It's still ongoing. Will be finished though. I promise."

Creep Like A Rat - 22 page short - script approved - (apparently) to be shot within  the next eighteen months (New York)

The Colour Of Her Scream - longer short - loved by director but wants to seek proper funding in order to do it justice. (London)

The Last Assassin - a short script commissioned by a producer, in progress (London)

(The apparentlies in brackets are because I'm relying on the word of a director whom I've never met...)

Aside from all that - I have three feature length scripts complete, another 30 plus shorts, and Quirky Tales - a series of stories for young children, two of which have been broadcast on FunKidsLive, and Earthbaby, an audio story for babies, and Milo Saves The Circus - a long-time-coming interactive iPad story for young children.

So - quite a lot! And quite a lot needing to be done to get that stuff off my computer and out into the big wide world.

Inner Essence Designs

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette

 

 I'll leave you to ponder on that assertion, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, pioneering trader in complex financial derivatives. (Oh, yes, I know EXACTLY what that means...)

To add to that is T.S. Eliot's..."Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

But, reality checks are essential. How else can you know where you're at and what actions need to be taken next?

It's funny how the phrase 'reality check' has a slightly negative connotation (for me, at least) along the lines of "You're living in cloud cuckoo land, Caroline, just look at what REALLY is so and prepare to be disappointed."

With my writing, I have so much going on, but nowhere have I noted exactly what. (Aside from in my head, if you can count that.) This means that there are several projects happening and pieces of work out there waiting for approval (or rejection!) that I completely forget about for long periods of time.

Healthy? Hmmmmm...

I know it has the effect of making me flustered when someone asks me how it's all going.

I can't answer properly because I don't actually know. That seems kind of irresponsible.

Today, I'm thinking about it. Tomorrow I'll write it down.

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.

Sometimes, yes, Marilyn vos Savant.

From Arts For Change

 I suppose it depends a bit on your definition of multi-tasking. Sometimes, for sure, mine is as a result of me lacking focus, being too easily distracted.
BUT...

Sometimes it's a conscious decision which actually proves to be very effective.

When I'm writing, it can be a struggle and sometimes...

Alex and Rienne

I mean MY brain would explode if I tried to coax a single new word out of it.

Battling on can be counter-productive so if I set up alternative tasks - what I call 'brain breaks' - then I can switch quickly from one to another and thus, not waste time. Somebody or other (insert name here) would be proud of me.

This is how, in the last week, I've nearly completed a 15+ page screenplay - Creep Like A Rat - AND managed to redecorate half of the upstairs landing - which, as people who've visited my house will know, is no small task.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense!

To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

A wee visual clue to let you know who said this, if you didn't already know.

So, today I MIGHT finish - as in the conventional sense - the first draft of a screenplay for an NYC director. It's called Creep Like A Rat...

That finishing is only the beginning.

I once optioned a script to a producer, for the princely sum of £25. Believe me, for a short film script that IS a princely sum, because usually the amount paid is a...

However, although the contract I signed was twice as long as the script itself - go figure! - nowhere in it, not even in the small print, did it say that because I had been paid I was no longer interested in what happened to it.

The producer seemed to think it did. Or rather, he CHOSE to think that. He even told the director that I was no longer interested. (And, by the way, wouldn't tell me who the director was!) The director, bless him, was so surprised he contacted me in private...and we collaborated happily.

I am NOT completely precious about everything I write. I am more than happy to receive - in fact I seek out - constructive criticism and new ideas and then I'll quite likely amend and rewrite - as long as I can make it organic and not compromise the spirit of the original piece.

But no longer interested? To consider my work is finished just because it's in someone else's hands?

“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you."

"If you don't have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you'll stop at the first giant hurdle.”

Absolutely, George Lucas.

(smart bodyguards!)

I can't count the number of hurdles I've been stopped by, for it felt like forever, then jumped over...hours, weeks or months later in the writing of Of Night And Light. Too, too many of them.

Another few scrambled over yesterday.

• Finished yet another revision
• Arranged for it to be sent out for a report...to a commissioning editor, it turns out
• Lost my nerve and read through it 'just one more time.'
• Printed it out.
• Packed it up

And today, off to the Post Office 

I can't decide whether the hurdles are getting bigger or smaller.

And will this be the last one?

Who knows?

Just call me Gail Devers.

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”

One day, I had to quote from Anthony Robbins. Today is that day.

Yes, I'm grateful, there is abundance...and other weird cosmic things.

It seemed as though the minute I accepted the fact that I DO want to be a full-time creative writer, the universe took that on. Good old universe.

Or, to put it another more worldy way - misquoting Wendy Cope from Serious Concerns - a favourite anthology:

Bloody Film Directors

Bloody film directors are like bloody buses
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

(By the way, none of the aforementioned film directors are in the slightest bit bloody, either literally or metaphorically!)

SO a week or so ago, my script Filth was produced. The director is coming down next week to show me the rushes and discuss future projects.

AND I received a mail out of the blue from a director in NYC asking to option Caught In The Act. He has also asked me to write a script for him from one of his ideas

AND I received another mail out of the blue from a young film maker wanting to make The Other Side of Silence

AND a good film-making friend of mine wants us to create a film for next year's Raindance Festival.

by Henry J Cowdery

Head.

Mine.

Spinning.

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day..."

" and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”

Neil Gaiman by Adrien Deggan

I wonder if only writers can understand what it's like to be a writer?

All I know is, that it is the BEST feeling when my writing goes well. I'm trying to think if there's any other experience that comes close. The only thing for me is when I'm riding and we (either Alfie or Poppy) are so much in harmony that we're like one being. (Sorry Peter, if you're reading this!)

Without wishing to sound too far up myself (she says, proceeding to do that very thing...) this kind of experience, to me, has been best described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness

In essence, "flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity."

Note to self: Must re-read.

Yep, how to achieve happiness...

But tell me, someone, how do you achieve FLOW?

“You must write every single day of your life..."

"You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders..."

Mansfield College, Oxford

 "to sniff books like perfumes..."

Kuroda Seiki

  "and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads..."

 "may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

Thank you, Ray Bradbury.