Fountain Pen on Parchment

Fiction Writing Advice for All Writing

Mary Anne — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:57:02 +0000

I love The Huffington Post. It started out as a small blog with all kinds of interesting, and frankly liberal information and opinions. It was founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Jonah Peretti in 2005 and has since grown to include coverage on a myriad of topics including politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style, the green movement, world news, and comedy. Amidst all that are columns carrying opinions and news. In February, 2011, it was purchased by AOL for a scant (not) $315 million with Arianna now heading up a huge internet medium.

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!

A Writer’s Christmas Story

Mary Anne — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:28:58 +0000

Although this story is about professional writers, we’re all writers, and in this day when 90% of communication is written: you are what you write!! Enjoy this little tale, and whatever you do, remember this: It’s a Wonderful Life made more so with good writing skills.

Wilbers: Good writers protect team members from harsh critics

Zen and the Art of Managing Life in the Digital Age

Mary Anne — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:01:02 +0000

I am overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed with email, Facebook, Twitter, Google alerts, Twitter, my three blogs, LinkedIn, and on and on and on. And, with this feeling of being overwhelmed, I render myself completely ineffective. Add this time of year to the bubbling cauldron and: OUT OF CONTROL!!

I came upon this article: this morning and I have vowed to print it and paste it (permanently) to the wall next to my desk.

So, I share it with you in the hopes that you too can find some Zen-ful tips (and serenity) in this madcap, twirl-a-whirl world of ours.

Irritating email habits and how to fix them

Mary Anne — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:55:32 +0000

Irritating email habits and how to fix them.

You are what you write — this is my mantra and if you think about it, it IS the name of the image game these days. So much of how we interact with others is through text — especially email in business. When you write sloppily, you ARE sloppy. When you write illiterately, you ARE illiterate. When you write crudely, you ARE crude. So, write well, write with precision and care, write professionally, and if you don’t know how — LEARN!!!

Using Writing Exercises to Overcome Writer’s Block

Mary Anne — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:04:51 +0000

For just about all of us writers, writer’s block is one of those black cloud gremlins that hovers about from time to time. Many kinds of gremlins lurk in the shadows, including the:

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.

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…
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.
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.
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.
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.

Penmanship: Going, going, GONE!

Mary Anne — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:07:19 +0000

Here’s yet another commentary. The Net is rife with them these days because the collective curricula of our nation’s schools is relegating the art of penmanship to the dinosaurs. This is a tragedy of maximum dimension! I urge you to take a read of this op ed piece on the topic. Robert Errera not only laments the cultural and artistic ramifications of penmanship’s demise, but he also notes the most critical issue that without a grasp of the art, future generations may not be able to decipher our past — social, scientific, historic, government, and so on. Does the current to the past then fall and become iron? Or are we just being silly in resisting yet another change to cement our commitment to the world of blinking lights, clicking keyboards, and cacophonous phones.

The quaint lost art of writing longhand %7C TG Daily

Mary Anne — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:30:06 +0000

The quaint lost art of writing longhand %7C TG Daily.

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

Techno-Retro: A Case for Keeping Pens on Parchment

Mary Anne — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:13:08 +0000

Robinson%3A Last rites for cursive writing %7C savannahnow.com.

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.

Over-Writing

Mary Anne — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 13:19:03 +0000

Don’t over write. Wow? What kind of a way is that to start out a post? It’s a simple, straight-forward, don’t-let-the-words-get-in-the-way-of-the-message way to start a post. A well-known publication on the Net, which I used to quite revere for its unique view on critical current matters, is now tripping all over its self, or rather, tripping all over its own words. Many of its writers are engaging in a type of verbal acrobatics where the words are the message instead of the message being the message. So it seems the pubs purpose is to see which of its writers can engage in the most clever banter and wit with words? That’s all fine and dany, but the deal is — what the heck are they trying to say?

Remember the wise words of Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message. My conclusion is that this formerly fine publication now presents writing for the writing instead of writing for the message.

My purpose here, then, is to urge you to err on the side of simplicity. Engage in the more challenging task of presenting a clear, concise piece of writing, and indeed, the watchword is — more challenging. A truly great writer has learned to hide behind her words as opposed to tramping all over them to boast of great “talent” (not).

One Brutally Mangled Metaphor Wins(?)

Mary Anne — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:20:52 +0000

Who would think that there is a prize for the most wicked, gruesome metaphor? Well, there is, and here is the winner of this years

Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing