With that said, I came across this article: “Fiction Writing for Beginners”by Jennifer Langione and I was struck by how it not only was great advice for fiction writers, but was also relevant for any kind of writer. For example, # 1 – “Find a place where you feel comfortable.” This is true for any kind of writing, whether it be writing a technical manual or a newspaper article. You’ll do your best writing if you’re free of physical constraints of any kind be it noise, an uncomfy chair, or whatever hinders your word-creation process.

Okay – no more previews. Go ahead and read the article and then tell me what you think.

Enjoy!

Wilbers: Good writers protect team members from harsh critics

• I can’t do it gremlin
• I don’t know what to write about gremlin
• I’m too busy gremlin
• I don’t have big enough chunks of time gremlin
• I got bad writing grades in school gremlin

And the list goes on. If you can’t see yourself in any of these, I’m sure you have one or two gremlins of your own lurking about.

Here are a few writing exercises you can try to send those little critters off into the abyss to which they belong.

1. Set your timer for 5 minutes and complete this thought: The phone rang, and somehow, I knew. I waited until the fourth ring before saying a tentative hello. I dropped the phone like it was a burning coal and began to scream when he told me…
2. Take your current topic and condense it into no less than two words and no more than five. On a blank sheet of paper, put these words in a circle in the center of the page. Then in smaller bubbles that connect directly to the main one, answer who, what, when, where, how, and when. This exercise gives you a visual representation of your topic. It doesn’t matter whether you are working with fiction or non-fiction.
3. Set up a Google alert on your topic. Experiment with keywords until you get the kind of results that will helpful and/or inspiring for your topic. I have quite a few Google alerts on a variety of topics and I find that getting these daily digests inspires and informs me for my current writing topics.
4. Go to your local library. I can get lost for hours in my local library. I peruse the fiction, non-fiction, DVDs, and magazines. I always check out more stuff than I can possibly read in the allotted time and I am always raring to go to get to my own writing.
5. Peruse Amazon books. This has a similar effect as item 4, but can get expensive if you give in to your lusts as I, unfortunately, often do

If you are in the middle of a gremlin invasion, try some or all of these ideas and do let me know how they work for you.

And yet another!! Movement — we need a movement!! any takers out there?

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop!!!!!! As you know, even by the title of this blog, pen and paper are essential tools to my work, to my art, to my heart! Yes, I admit to being ridiculous with my box-full of pens in the garage. I guess you could call me a hoarder, of sorts. But let me not lose sight of an issue that, in my most humble, marks the demise of a culture of sanity and gentility.

Recently I’ve become aware that I am in a retro mode, specifically techno-retro, translated as SIMPLIFY! Several months ago I got myself an android phone and I have been in an agony of frustration ever since. When you can’t hang up from a phone call, it’s time to take a stand. Okay, I admit, it’s me. I’m getting old. I’m getting clumsy and stupid when it comes to this new-age technology.

I can’t believe I am even saying this as I was working with technology and computers before they were on anyone’s radar screen. And I was good — I got it! But as the jet engine of technology exploded exponentially, I struggled to stay abreast of it, with an increasing and accompanying level of stress and a lessening of my ability to “be present,” if you know what I mean.

So, I dusted off the resident pens, went out and got some more, along with a bevy of notebooks, always looking for the perfect combination of pen, ink, and paper, and began my quest to re-engage and be “present.”

Anyway, not to belabor this point, which, if you can’t tell, I am a bit rabid about, I have chosen to engage in techno-retro. I have given my android to my technology adept 24 y/o daughter and instead gotten myself a kinder, gentler, simpler and old style cell phone. I am giving up my futile quest to stay current on a myriad of topics on the internet, I am reading (David Copperfield right now, and I plan to hit up all of Dickens, and then move on to Austen), I am doing crossword puzzles, and playing Scrabble (the brick and mortar version) with my 24 y/o daughter.

Rather, this is about Zen … spirit … grace … prayer … whatever you choose to call that thing inside that surrenders despite a mind hell-bent on past guilts or future anxieties, yesterday’s mistake and tomorrow’s blunder.

So, pen, paper, notebook, keyboard, writing maven that I am, I have come upon a quite remarkable discovery. Remarkable, that is, in my little world. Here is what it is: I have always known that when I lived in New York City my handwriting went to hen-scratching hell, and it remained that way, mas o menos, ever since.

This week we came into the season of Lent and in so doing, I started to breathe. That’s right — simple and pure — breathe. And then I forcibly stopped my usual manic-like fast forward. When it came time to write in my journal, I made myself slow down to make each curl on each letter in slow motion. When I finished writing and I looked at what I had produced, and I was astonished! This was not the sorry scribbling of a hurried mama-babe, this was the calculated, precise and beautiful handwriting of a Zen penning countess!

And, I was absolutely delighted to read this morning, mono-tasking may be re-emerging as an art once lost, now found.

It seems like yesterday when my daughter first starting talking about “friending” people. Huh, my feeble mind wondered? Just another one of those passing kid things, I thought and brushed it out of my consciousness.

Today it is not possible to brush those terms from consciousness. In fact, if you’re working in many professions today, it’s plastered all over the place and summarized in the term “networking.”

Now mind you, networking is no longer your mother or father’s brand of networking. It is no longer going to a few meetings a month, talking to some colleagues on the phone, taking on an office or two in an organization or two, and handling some work off line, on your own time, in a relaxed and focused fashion.

Nope, not like that anymore at all. Today it is a whirling dervish of Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Delicious, WordPress, Blogger, Twitter, text messaging, email, and myriad other digitally-based networking and communication options. Not the least of it is is that today’s super-networkers are doing five or six things at one time. They are involved with a list of groups too long to fit on a single screen. They are constantly in your email, Twitter, etc., their smiling faces making you wonder when they get any “real” work done.

I know of one woman whose face is ALWAYS in mine, digitally of course, whose always leading some seminar or other, who is a member of countless groups and organizations, and an office in just about as many. Oh, and did I mention that she has her own business and is an ordained minister? Phew. She makes me tired. She makes me tired in several ways. First is simply the act of reading and thinking about all she does. Second is that her constant presence is just plain tiresome. Can there be such a thing as overdoing your brand in a digital milieu?

I do believe so. I once asked her how she gets any work done. She didn’t like the question. She didn’t answer. What does that mean?

My son and I were talking about this issue last night, and I proffered that we wise ones are perhaps the last of generations that deal in depth. What I mean is, we have been trained to take an issue, think about it, study it, and delve into it in a deep and thorough way. I think our approach tends to offer results that are more complete, and dare I say, of a higher quality? I mean, if you’re focusing on just one thing instead of multitasking, there has to be a difference in results!

As for the younger set (my 25 year old son does not consider himself a member of this group), the approach is more of a skimming off the top, never delving too deep, and striving to get “it” (whatever that might be) done as quickly as possible.

To conclude: there is obviously a major difference in styles here, and I, for one, have concluded that to try and adopt the multi-tasking, fast-paced style of the digital networking set is simply not going to work for me. In fact, it is a formula for disaster. So stuff it, I say.

The cool thing is, it seems like other people are saying the same thing.

I came across another example yesterday. I was going through a social networking site and came upon the page of a writer that was written in, you got it, all caps! It surprised me that a writer did not know better about presenting herself in her own medium.

On point: please don’t write in all caps, and here’s why:

1. Hard to read
2. Shouting at readers
3. Looks unprofessional
]]> http://www.donovan-wright.com/blog/digital-literacy/2009/dont-use-all-caps/feed/ 0 http://www.donovan-wright.com/blog/digital-literacy/2009/bad-writing/ http://www.donovan-wright.com/blog/digital-literacy/2009/bad-writing/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:53:09 +0000 Mary Anne http://www.donovan-wright.com/?p=196 In just the past two days I have come across two articles, both of which “how-to’s” about good writing, both of which were rife with writing errors. What errors? Passive voice, pseudo-academic style (in other words, difficult to understand), agreement of pronouns and antecedent (That person caught their coat in the door), crazy sentence construction, and frankly — text that sounds like it was written by an ESOL (English as a second language) writer. Take a look for yourself (be sure to come back, I’ve got lots more to say.)

English maven that I am, I left a comment on the site basically saying what I am saying to you. But I want to say MORE to you, because the great highway in the virtual-sky is becoming clogged with crap that multiplies explosively moment by moment. Let me tell you why.

The marketplace is turning inside out, upside down as brick and mortar gives way to the virtual shingle (website, blog, SNS, etc.) I’ll spare you the technical mumbo-jumbo, but to make an Internet presence means to generate content, content content. Translated: articles, essays, blog entries, reviews, how-to’s,m features, interviews. When businesses take the approach of wanting to throw up a bunch of content to get ratings, traffic, etc., they don’t care about quality. They do care about keywords, key phrases, and Search Engine crawlers. What you get on these sites is often times, crap. And, you get crap written by offshore workers whose main language is NOT English, but they are cheap, cheap, cheap.

My purpose here is threefold:

4. As Internet readers, be discriminating about what you read. Look for quality in both writing and content.
5. As Internet writers, don’t ever compromise your standard of quality no matter how desperate for work you are. Trust me, it will come back to bite you
6. As website owners, don’t go the cheap route. Don’t hire people who can’t speak, let alone write, English to prepare written products for you. Think good quality writing and content.
   ]]> http://www.donovan-wright.com/blog/digital-literacy/2009/bad-writing/feed/ 0 http://www.donovan-wright.com/blog/writing/2009/students-are-the-spice-of-life/ http://www.donovan-wright.com/blog/writing/2009/students-are-the-spice-of-life/#comments Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:17:07 +0000 Mary Anne http://www.donovan-wright.com/?p=104 After many years of schlepping my way through one corporate environment after another, I most inadvertently fell into teaching at the college level. The first few years were hell. I remember some of the worst digestive issues I’ve ever had and anxiety attacks that made me certain I would end up splayed all over the floor of my classrooms. But somewhere along the way, something changed, and felt comfortable. Then something changed some more and I felt good. And today, I feel excited and exhilarated every time I get up in front of that class. In short, I have fun! Yes, we get stuff done, too. But we all have fun. The students tell me they really like my classes, which range from Digital Literacy to Business Communications to Writing as a Business.

   Just like anything that “works” anymore, my style is relationship. I seek to know each student — their strengths, their “opportunities,” their personalities, when they’re up, down, and in-between. This is something different for them; they are not used to their professors wanting to “know” them. I work with them in class — in groups and one-on-one. I have meetings with them outside of class. I write copious notes on their papers, I kid them, I allow things to get a little “casual” in my class. And it works. After a few weeks they relax into this new andrological style, and then we have fun. What’s more — they learn!

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