The Writer February 2013

OFTEN IN THE MORNING BETWEEN PROJECTS, I’ll steal away from the office to run along a nearby river. I usually tell my colleagues I have a meeting – and I do. A meeting with my mind. It’s the time and circumstance in which I do my best thinking about writing. The bigger secret is that I’m listening to musicals when I run. The pairing is unlikely, but I’ve found that show tunes provide two key elements for inspiration: the familiarity of the music allows my brain to relax, and the lyrics can trigger a playfulness in my inner wordplay. Not heady stuff, but it leads to a freedom of thought I find hard to achieve at my computer. And as meetings go, it’s more productive than most. Writers know the…

A simple Google news search returns hundreds of hits for feature articles, news updates and social media notes about the volleyball player Kerri Walsh. And that is from only the last month. Writing about someone who has been widely covered in the local, national and international media for nearly two decades can be daunting for any writer and extends far beyond the coverage of athletes. Actors, musicians, politicians – in a digital age, most people in the public eye are written about on a regular, if not daily, basis. How do you come up with new angles and ask questions that have not been posed before? One tactic is to tailor questions to the specific outlet for which you are writing. When speaking with Walsh, a three-time Olympic gold medalist,…

Taunya Wright, registered nurse and self-published author of Lemonade and Wild Honey (books one and two in her Brady Boe series for children), sits on her porch in Nashville, Tenn., with her favorite writing aid. Alain Trottier carried his copy of The Writer to the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort, where the Emperor Shah Jahan was once imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb. Trottier found inspiration within the pages of the magazine and in pietra dura, a mosaic technique that decorates the two monuments.…

Wendy Lesser I WAS A WRITER BEFORE I ever edited anything, but the most important thing I know about writing, I learned from my work as an editor. And that is: Each article or story contains within it its own perfect version, and if you can just get enough distance to see that perfect version, you can unearth it through cuts, rearrangements and local rewrites. I have several methods of acquiring the necessary distance. I handwrite the first draft and then correct as I type. I reread each day’s work at the end of every day and make further changes. Finally, I print out a complete draft – with a book, I may do this at monthly intervals – and rewrite it, again and again, until the writing has no…

IN TERMS OF LENGTH, a novella falls between a short story and a novel and runs roughly 15,000 to 80,000 words. It’s not quite short enough to be considered “short,” but it’s not a full-fledged novel, either. Still, a novella requires the same attention to craft as the other forms. In particular, a novella should have fully fleshed-out characters and a tension that builds intensity to a satisfying – although not pat – ending. The length of a work of fiction is tied to the scope of the conflict; the longer the fiction, the wider the scope. A short story might cover one facet of a conflict. Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story A Temporary Matter follows a couple in a strained relationship over the course of a few days when utility…

With 50 percent of Americans now owning smart phones and tablets, our electronics play dual roles as radios, navigators, itineraries and more. So why not use them to write? As the iPhone mantra reminds us, “There’s an app for that.” We scoured the app store and found the top 10 tools for productivity, brainstorming and, of course, writing. 1. Evernote Cost: Free An absolute must-have for all writers, this app compiles your ideas, research, to-do lists, images and notes in one organized place. Sync your computer’s Evernote app with your phone so they’re always at your fingertips. 2. WriteChain Cost: Free This handy little app keeps your writing on track. Set your daily word count goal, enter details about each writing session and review past entries. The more consistently you…