The Writer January 2013

Begin again. Start over. Revise, revise, revise. Writers know these actions well. Indeed, second only to filling the blank white page is reworking the content on that page. Write it. Revise it. Revise some more. The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to reflect on visions and revisions. What will you write in 2013? How will you become a better writer? What can you do to fulfill your potential? Where will you look for inspiration? If you’re holding this issue of The Writer magazine in your hands or reading it digitally, you have taken – we believe – a reliable step toward answering those questions. Since the founding of this magazine in 1887, the mission has been to support writers, to provide the instruction, information and connection…

If you keep a private journal for your thoughts and dreams and dalliances, you know the delights and dangers that lie within its pages. Of course, for some, a journal is merely a record of events. End of story. But not really. Whether pouring out your soul or simply keeping track, a journal is among the most important writing tools and historical documents we create. First, history. Journals of any form tell a story – even ones that merely list events or activities. Language is always located in a unique era – with popular phrases and linguistic constructions. Say you’re a writer whose novel is set in colonial America. If you study the language of journals from that period – in the late 1700s, the midwife Martha Ballard started a…

I THINK THE AUTHOR needs to have a good time. I could get really pedantic and give you a more scholarly answer, in terms of plotting and things like that. But I think that a much more intrinsic answer would be that the storyteller needs to enjoy the telling of the story. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, you have to find that story compelling to yourself or your reader will not. When I’m writing a book, if I’m getting a little bit sleepy and a little bit bored, then it’s a sure thing that my reader’s going to, too. So I use that as the signal to bump up the pace, to throw in another hazard for my characters, make the dialogue snappier, make the action verbs more active…

IN WRITING ANY STORY, you have to start somewhere and fill in the background details as you go. You can’t cram everything into the first lines. Consider how to entice the reader into the story and, at the same time, convey the important information. Robert Olen Butler introduces the unique circumstances of one of his short stories in its title: Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of Parrot. The first lines confirm what readers suspect: “I never can quite say as much as I know. I look at the other parrots and I wonder if it’s the same for them, if somebody is trapped in each of them, paying some kind of price for living their life in a certain way.” E. L. Doctorow begins his novel Ragtime this way:…

If great writers of the past lived in our world of digital distractions, how would they cope? Imagine it: Jane Austen’s Pinterest boards, Mark Twain’s Facebook rants, Ernest Hemingway’s Tweets. Would these authors have written such groundbreaking work or indulged in Web procrastination? Writers in the age of technology face a constant barrage of Internet distractions. The average American spends 32 hours a month on the Web, a horrifying statistic for time-pressed writers. But rather than waste creative energy fighting these e-demons, you can transform online procrastination into idea generation. Here is how to make digital vices work for you. 1. Find new friends Nearly 25 percent of online time is dedicated to social media, so get inspiration from Internet breaks by following people who motivate you. Many authors have…

We asked our Facebook followers to identify the moment when they knew they were a writer. When do you become a writer, we wondered? At what point does it morph from merely a feeling into a fact? We received a litany of responses, but most people said it was confirmed early in life, often by a parent or attentive teacher. “When I came out of the womb with a pen in my hand?” one reader quipped. Some said the realization came much later in life, and still others said the knowledge has simply always been there, like it was never a question in the first place. • My best friend, who died of breast cancer in 2007, told me that I was a writer before she died, and she made…