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Bearing Fruit

February 21, 2012 by Jamie

A year and a half ago, we bought our first home. In the yard are a fig tree and an orange tree, which I thought were very cool bonuses. I’d never lived with fruit trees before, and I soon learned the pleasure of walking out into the yard and finding breakfast. Because someone had the wisdom 20 or more years ago to plant these trees, I get to enjoy their fruit now. We have since bought a few more fruit […]

Categories: Advice for Writers, Creativity, Random Stuff • Tags: creative process, writing, writing life

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Reading Aloud

February 20, 2012 by Jamie

Until I had kids, I didn’t do any reading out loud. Now I do it every day. Mostly, the books we read are stories I’ve pre-selected for quality, and they work well when read to an audience, but occasionally, we come across one that I haven’t pre-screened, and invariably, if it’s not a well-written book, it’s even more of a chore to read aloud than it is to read to oneself. I read one book over the holidays to myself […]

Categories: Advice for Writers, Creativity, Reading • Tags: children's literature, creative process, editing, read, reading aloud, reading to kids, revision, revision process

3

It Doesn’t Always Feel Like Magic

February 18, 2012 by Jamie

“Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.” ― Stephen King It’s true. You can’t judge whether your work is going well by how it felt […]

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Reading Great Books

February 13, 2012 by Jamie

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” ― Kurt Vonnegut Oh, yes. It is a blunt, grubby little crayon too. Kurt Vonnegut was the first male author I truly loved as a teenager. I’ve always identified more with what women authors have to say, but Vonnegut grabbed me and made me laugh and think and laugh some more. Right now I’m re-reading authors I admire to see how they do what […]

Categories: Advice for Writers, Creativity, Quote of the Day, Reading • Tags: E.M. Forster, Faulkner, Kingsolver, quotes about writing, reading, Vonnegut, writing

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Too Much Noise

February 8, 2012 by Jamie

My head hurts. I’ve been working too much. There’s a lot of noise in my life, and I always struggle to tune out enough of it to hear what I have to say as a writer. Being a writer means being quiet and listening. A lot. It means sitting still and pondering. Or taking long walks and pondering. Preferably both. Do you have enough quiet time in your life to hear your story speaking to you?

Categories: Advice for Writers, Creativity, Random Stuff • Tags: creative process, noise, quiet, writing

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Your Most Important Audience Is You

February 5, 2012 by Jamie

We writers can get so caught up in worrying about finding an audience, selling books, and gaining recognition for our work, that we forget to love our work. We are our own first readers, and we should each be writing the book we would most love to read. That should be your test of every idea you have for a book and every sentence and paragraph and scene you put on paper. Do you love to read it? Is it […]

Categories: Advice for Writers, Creativity, Reading • Tags: audience, book ideas, reading, selling books, writing

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