Should you follow the rules?

Taught two very different classes yesterday, one after the other. In the first - a small group of non fiction writers who have been working together since September - one member was full of apologies for the work she was presenting. It was too short: 500 words when I asked for about 1000. It hadn't involved any research just chatting to her mother again, helping her to remember a time that's passed. It didn't include any of the figures of speech that she had learned in class....it wasn't what it was suppose to be.
It was much better. 
It was a simple, straightforward account of a simple straightforward act of a heriosim by a man none of us knew, in a place we had never heard of, for a cause we didn't believe in and it moved us all to silence. Written straight from the heart to the page, the writer followed the only rule that matters: she wrote. 
The other members of the group had - more or less - followed the exercise which was to focus on one word, research it and then integrate that research with writing of a more personal nature, family history or incidents from their own life. Each one was different. Each one worked, exploring areas of biography and memoir that the author hadn't considered before, may never have written about if they hadn't chosen that particular word and made new and exciting connections. 
I was so pleased. I was delighted. Hours later I walked out into the raw winter night  still feeling a warm glow. All down to me I said....all down to my brilliant exercise. Of course it wasn't, it was down to the writers and what they brought to it. How they made that original small idea entirely their own and in the process turned it into something bigger and better. 
As they trooped out of that London classroom, 20 students for my next class walked in. It's an introductory  class and even though it's Friday night they are a buzzy, lively group, eager to write and very eager to send in their first assignment.
There were questions about it - naturally. Concerns about what was wanted - naturally.
I hoped I answered them all but I have a feeling they would tell me if I hadn't. But one thing I did make clear was that this was creative writing and sometimes you look at an assignment with the best of intentions but your imagination springs to another idea and then another and you find you are writing at a tangent, off message, off the subject that you thought you were focusing on, you're off the page. 
And sometimes it works and it's magic. And sometimes it doesn't. Just like the original exercise you were set. But tangents are interesting places to be...
(NB if any of my university students are reading this remember that you are writing for a very specific and specialized readership - an academic board. So, let's discuss any tangents before you submit...)

More New Year Resolutions

Over on the excellent blog STRICTLY WRITING, Caroline Rance has come up with her own personal writing resolutions.
They include making better use of 'dead' time, writing more in longhand and listening to audio books.
I like her last resolution best - I've given it in full here but you can read them all if you click on the title of this post.

7) Write for writing's own sake

The thought that everything has to be good enough to be published has been holding me back for a long time. So I'm going to have more fun with writing, try out some flash fiction and poetry, and enjoy spending time with the characters in my novel rather than worrying whether I'm really doing justice to the big themes I've stumbled into.

PLAIN SONG and eight gramophone records

This song was broadcast on the radio just before Christmas as one of Nick Parks' (of Wallace and Gromit) eight gramophone records on Desert Island Discs. The musician doesn't have a recording contract but PLAIN SONG has notched up thousands of hits on youtube since it was first heard on Radio Four.
I like it. I like the way he uses an ancient form and makes it his own and the way the voice become another instrument. I like the feel of it but I realise it might seem an odd choice because this is a blog about writing and it is hard to catch many of the words. But that doesn't mean they don't matter. The way they sound and work together contribute to the mood...see what you think



I missed the original programme but I've been listening to Desert Island Discs since a child (it's been going since 1942 so I was a late starter). Just the phrase eight gramophone records is enough to send me back to the days of checked school dresses and socks held up with garters made out of elastic...
If it's not already part of your cultural heritage tune into Radio Four and give it a go. The idea is simple. Each week the guest has to choose the eight records they would take with them if shipwrecked on a desert island. They can also take one luxury which is not allowed to aid their escape and one book, in addition to the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare which have already been washed ashore.
One or two guests have chosen all their own records. Maeve Binchey wanted to dance around the island to the sound of The Ride of the Valkyries. Bob Geldof chose a pack of three as his luxury: 'just in case' .

Even though I've been listening so long, I still haven't come up with my eight gramophone records...thinking of seven New Year resolutions is a doddle in comparison...

Seven New Year Resolutions for Writers

It's that time of year again and here are my top resolutions for writers and emerging writers and anyone who wants to write. 
1) WRITE
Don't fool yourself into thinking that weaving stories while you travel to work or peel potatoes or sit watching the world go by is almost the same as being a writer. Writing in your head is only an acceptable substitute for writing on paper when you are thrown into a computer-less, pen-less and paper-less environment against your will. (It has to be against your will because otherwise you'd have brought such basic necessities along, wouldn't you?) Something happens when you put words into the hard concrete of type or the softer clay of pen or pencil. You can start a sentence without knowing where it will end. You can bring unconnected ideas together and make something new. Working with your hand and head, you can discover what it is you want to write and it is always always different to the way it seemed when you were just thinking about it.
2) PRACTICE LIKE MUSICIANS PRACTICE THE SCALES
You don't always have to be writing a story or working on a big project. How about finding the right combination of words to describe the colour of the carpet or the exact sound the cistern in the bathroom is making. Or use 10 words to describe the smell of a candle just after it's been blown out.
3) COMMIT TO WRITING
Many professionals live by the thousand words a day rule. It doesn't have to a thousand good words or a thousand words that will some day be published, just a decent wodge of words out of which something like a story, or a half decent idea or a phrase will emerge. Think of it as manufacturing raw material.
But it is important that you don't set yourself up to fail. For most people a thousand words is ambitious. How about 500 words? Or a page of your notebook? Or don't set yourself a word count at all and fix on a set amount of time instead. Ten minutes a day perhaps? Or if that seems too much, make it 10 minutes a week. Just make it something.
4) DON"T BEAT YOURSELF UP
If you don't make your personal goal . It doesn't say anything about you as a writer or as a person if you fail to make your word count, just that life got in the way. There's always the next day or the next week...
5) BUT NEVER EVER SAY YOU DON'T HAVE TIME TO WRITE
Unless you also never ever watch television. There's nothing wrong in watching other people's stories but you can't use them as a reason for not writing your own. And there is something wrong about making excuses. You don't have to be a writer, you know...
6) READ
Read the kind of books you want to write. At least one a month. Read everything else in between. A couple of times a year (this is an absolute minimum) read something that is not "your kind of thing": action thrillers if you enjoy romance, literary fiction if you aspire to writing science fiction. Don't create a reading ghetto for yourself. Venture out now and then and discover new ways of telling stories and creating characters.
7) READ ONE POEM A MONTH
Even if you hate poetry - especially if you hate poetry. There's a lot to learn about using language and writing succinctly from a good poem. If you're not sure where to start I suggest Emily Dickinson (19th century American) and Wendy Cope (21st century British). 


HAVE I LEFT OUT SOMETHING VITAL? Do you have a resolution to add? Do let me know if you have any advice to share.

Guest Blog JANE MURISON On how to write tight

RULES FOR WRITING
RULES FOR EDITING

I've know Jane for about three years and I am delighted she is my very first guest blogger. She is an insightful, imaginative writer who follows her own rules...

JANE MURISON writes:
When we write, there are a lot of exercises for getting the juices flowing.  I thought it would be useful to talk about how to approach editing: how do you make something shorter, tighter and better?
 
I was recently preparing a story for a competition and had to take 600 words out of it to fit the 2000 word limit.  Tough!
 
There’s an easy start by applying some rules to your work.  You should make your own, but lots of authors have come up with lists of these.  The Guardian did a terrific collection of them a few months ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
 
My favourites are:
-       Don’t use speech words other than ‘said’ (‘proclaimed’, ‘yelled’, ‘whispered’),
-       Don’t use adverbs (‘he said, brutally’)
-       Avoid opinionated 3rd person narrator (‘Mary was a daft old trollop’)
-       Don’t say the same thing in different ways (‘The leather bag was cracked and dusty.  It was old and broken.”)

All well and good, but there’s an indefinable ‘something’ you want to get into your writing.  It’s that horrible question you keep asking, ‘but is it any good?’
 
If you’re into design, you’ll have come across Dieter Rams 10 rules for good design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams
 
There is a way of adapting these for writing. But they can serve as a way to allow you to step away from the thing you spun from air and let you look at it as if you are impartial.

   

* Good writing is innovative
   
* Good writing tells you something
  
* Good writing is aesthetic
  
* Good writing is understandable/accessible
  
* Good writing is unobtrusive
  
* Good writing is honest
  
* Good writing is long-lasting
  
* Good writing is thorough down to the last detail
  
* Good writing has a soul
  
* Good writing is as little writing as possible

 
Perhaps you don’t agree with all of them, or you want to define them your own way.

Thank you Jane and thank you for expressing something I've felt for a long time. Good writing isn't cynical. Good writing has integrity. Good writing is straight from the heart to the page.