Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Try Writing in Different Places

I usually write in the same place, my study, at the same time, in the early mornings, every day. But today I'm going to try writing at a coffee shop down the street.

Sometimes I try a different place, to see if there might be someplace better. I haven't found anyplace better yet. My study usually works out best, but I'm a different person every day, so who knows. Occasionally I surprise myself.

Where do you usually write?

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Holiday Season, 2009

May there be peace on earth an goodwill toward all! Best to you this holiday.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Don't Only Write

When you write, work on one project at a time. Keep a list of the other brilliant ideas that occur to you on paper in a drawer. Write a couple of lines to remind yourself later what you were thinking about.

But don't spend all you time on your book. Work for a set period of time each day, 15 minutes, an hour, two hours, from 4-6 PM, after the kids are in bed, before work, whatever. But do other stuff you enjoy too. You'll be a happier person and a better writer and your work will be better, too. It can work things out when you're not thinking about it.

All work and no play make Jack a mighty dull boy!

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Work One Project at a Time

Remember this: WOPAAT. Work on one project at a time.

If you're like me, story ideas come to me all the time. Not always good story ideas, but ideas. I get maybe 3 in one day. I can think them up at will, just think to myself, "What if...".

Resist the urge to start them all. Keep a list of titles, i.e. "A bass player kills somebody and stores his body in his hard case," in your drawer.

When you get your current project done and out there, then go back to other projects.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

I Write My First Draft In One Blast

I always write the first draft in a blast. I have the story in my head. I've thought about the characters, story, intro, ending, and it's going to be the greatest thing ever written. Like opening day of the Phillies' season.

So I sit down and begin to write. I hate it. It's terrible. I can't stand it. I want to go back and change it.

I don't.

Even if I think it's the absolutely worst thing ever written, I keep on writing. Only when I'm done do I go back and work on it.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Gauge Your Passion

When I was choosing a dissertation topic back in the early 1970s, my graduate school advisor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told me, whatever I decided to write on, to make sure I had sufficient passion to carry me through the project.

The dissertation would entail a difficult journey of 5-7 years of exciting, but challenging and difficult work. I had to know I had the goods to carry me through.

He was right.

Now I read something by Sunil Robert in Chuck Sambuchino's blog that advises writers to stay passionate: "Depending on your project time lines, you need the passion and patience of a marathon runner to keep you going."

Good advice.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Being a Writer is Not Being an Author

Being a writer is not the same as being an author. Being a writer means you are writing. Being an author means that someone has decided to publish what you have written or what you've paid someone to write for you.

The first can be done by anyone with something to write about, something to write with, and something to write on.

The second, well...

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Understand Your Motives for Writing

Understand why you write. Do you write to see your name in lights? Do you write to get rich? Do you write to touch other people's lives? Do you write because you must?

Maybe it's enough for now just to write, for whatever reason. But sooner or later you should try to understand what you're doing because it will affect what you do with what you have written.

If you want to get rich, and you don't publish anything, how is that possible?

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Invite the unexpected into your life.

To be a writer, invite the unexpected into your life. If you always go to the same coffee shop to write, go to a different coffee shop sometimes. If you always go somewhere the same way, go a different way sometimes.

Join different networking groups where you will meet people you normally wouldn't. Sign up with a temporary help company where you get put in different situations. Drive a cab where you meet different people.

If you sit in your room and write all day, every day, and you will grow stale, and your writing will rot. It's the unexpected that gives birth to fiction.

Consider Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. He's a doctor from Indiapolis, played by Jimmy Stewart. He and his wife, a singer played by (surprise) Doris Day, are in a bazaar one morning and see a man stabbed in the back. Stewart rushes forward to help the man who whispers something in his ear. That kick-starts the action. Other things are going on, of course.

If Jimmy and Doris hadn't been in the bazaar that day, no story really.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Write what you know

To be a writer, write what you know.

Don't write a murder mystery that happens in Antarctica unless you've been there. If you've spent a year a the scientific outpost there and been involved in the life of the place, then go ahead.

On the other hand, think of what you do know about. I, for example, have a Ph. D. in history and spent 8 years or so in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I would have been well qualified to write a mystery about a graduate student who's murdered for her dissertation topic.

Or I could have written a non-fiction book about being in graduate school. Or about an academic trying to make it in the business world.

Would these have been any good, or would anyone have bought them? Well those are different questions.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Write Every Day in the Same Place at the Same Time

To be a writer, write every day in the same place at the same time. Find out what, when, and where is most productive for you and do it.

I write at my desk in the morning every day. For me, mornings are most productive for creative thought. Phones aren't ringing, people aren't moving about, there are no demands on my time. I can just write.

Others may be most productive in the afternoon, or in the evenings, or late at night.

I can revise other times and other places. In fact I find it best not to revise in my study because I'm open to distractions. Distractions loosen your mind for other things.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Write Every Day in the Same Place

To be a writer, write every day in the same place.

Find that special place where you like to write. Maybe it's your bedroom. Maybe it's your porch, or your attic.

Maya Angelou reportedly rents a hotel room and goes there every day at 4PM and writes on legal sized yellow-lined pads.

Marcel Proust supposedly went to his seaside home, pasted paper up over all the windows, then wrote in bed in his pajamas never leaving the room.

I write in my study in the early mornings.

It doesn't matter how unusual or weird it is. It could be at a rest area along a busy interstate or in an airplane circling over Siberia.

Just find that place, then go there to write. You will find after only a little time, you'll associate writing with the place and you'll be more productive.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Write Every Day

I write every day. It's not the only thing I do, and I don't write the same things every day. But when I'm hot on a story, that's the focus of my life.

Some days there are lots of things you have to do. Sometimes emergencies come up. Sometimes I'm tired, or once in a while sick. Sometimes I just don't feel like it. I write anyway, even if it's just a little.

Write a blog. Write in a diary. Write poems. Write about anything.

My goal here is to help writers achieve their dreams. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Only Writing is Writing

Only writing is writing. This may seem obvious, but it isn't to many people.

Thinking about writing is not writing. Sharpening your pencil, or filling a pen, is not writing. Planning to write is not writing. Reading one more book before writing is not writing. Revising is not writing. Doing the laundry or making a sandwich is not writing. Wishing you could get going writing is not writing.

Only writing is writing.

My goal here is to express my ideas on writing and produce more skilled writers. How am I doing?

Entrepreneurship fuels my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

To get a piece of short fiction published, go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com. It's for short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, novel excerpts, short scripts, short plays, or other creative writing. Publication is guaranteed upon payment of a modest fee.

Read my mystery, The Case of the Kearney Music School Murders (2007), for free at wwww.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it out.

For my ideas on buying or selling a house, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Welcome to my blog

This blog will have my ideas on books and writing. Check every three or four days.