Tag: Writers block

George Orwell Asks Before Writing…Do You?

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[found on writingclasses.com]

 “A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

    1. What am I trying to say?
    2. What words will express it?
    3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
    4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

    1. Could I put it more shortly?
    2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

    1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
    2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
    3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
    4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
    5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
    6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”   

[found on http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/300]**

Follow the Yellow Brain Road

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[found on mindmapping.com]
 
“Mind mapping is a highly effective way of getting information in and out of your brain. Mind mapping is a creative and logical means of note-taking and note-making that literally “maps out” your ideas. 
 
All Mind Maps have some things in common. They have a natural organizational structure that radiates from the center and use lines, symbols, words, color and images according to simple, brain-friendly concepts.
 
Mind mapping converts a long list of monotonous information into a colorful, memorable and highly organized diagram that works in line with your brain’s natural way of doing things.
 
One simple way to understand a Mind Map is by comparing it to a map of a city. The city center represents the main idea; the main roads leading from the center represent the key thoughts in your thinking process; the secondary roads or branches represent your secondary thoughts, and so on. Special images or shapes can represent landmarks of interest or particularly relevant ideas.
 
The Mind Map is the external mirror of your own radiant or natural thinking facilitated by a powerful graphic process, which provides the universal key to unlock the dynamic potential of the brain.*
 

The five essential characteristics of Mind Mapping*:

  • The main idea, subject or focus is crystallized in a central image.
  • The main themes radiate from the central image as ‘branches’.
  • The branches comprise a key image or key word drawn or printed on its associated line.
  • Topics of lesser importance are represented as ‘twigs’ of the relevant branch.
  • The branches form a connected nodal structure.*”
 Mind Mapping graphic

[*found on http://www.mindmapping.com]

Implement a Writing Schedule

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[found on fictionwriting.about.com]
“Carve out a time to write and then ignore the writer’s block. Show up to write, even if nothing comes right away. When your body shows up to the page at the same time and place every day, eventually your mind — and your muse — will do the same. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words, and only 500 words, every morning. Five hundred words is only about a page, but with those mere 500 words per day, Greene wrote and published over 30 books.”

How to Write Fiction: Ernest Hemingway

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[found on openculture.com]

Ernest Hemingway’s tip on How to Write Fiction (from openculture.com)

 “To get started, write one true sentence. Hemingway had a simple trick for overcoming writer’s block. In a memorable passage in A Moveable Feast, he writes:

“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.” “

[found on http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/seven_tips_from_ernest_hemingway_on_how_to_write_fiction.html]


					

	





			
				



	
	

		
10 Techniques to Spark the Writing
	


	

		
			

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10 Techniques to Spark the Writing*


“Andrew  Motion has garnered the highest acclaim as a poet, including a knighthood and the post of Poet Laureate of the UK. In addition to his many books of poetry, Motion has published seminal biographies of poets and been a leading champion of poetry in the contemporary world. Though he has reached the pinnacle, he seeks to write poetry meaningful to all.”


10 Techniques to Spark the Writing


    

  1. Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.
    2. 

  2. Think with your senses as well as your brain.
    3. 

  3. Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.
    4. 

  4. Lock different characters/elements in a room and tell them to get on.
    5. 

  5. Remember there is no such thing as nonsense.
    6. 

  6. Bear in mind Wilde’s dictum that “only mediocrities develop”— and challenge it.
    7. 

  7. Let your work stand before deciding whether or not to serve.
    8. 

  8. Think big and stay particular.
    9. 

  9. Write for tomorrow, not for today.
    10. 

  10. Work hard.
    11. 



From an article in The Guardian / *from writingclasses.com