Karinwritesdangerously

Helpful writing advice from a an Oprah selected author:

Pick a better verb: Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked… One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you.

Kill the Cliché: Anything you’ve ever heard or read before is a cliché. They can be combinations of words: Cold sweat. Fire-engine red, or phrases: on the same page, level playing field, or metaphors: big as a house. Sometimes things themselves are cliches: fuzzy dice, pink flamingo lawn ornaments, long blonde hair.Just keep asking yourself, “Honestly, have I ever seen this before?” Even if Shakespeare wrote it, or Virginia Woolf, it’s a cliché. You’re a writer and you have to invent it from scratch, all by yourself. That’s why writing is a lot of work, and demands unflinching honesty.

Variety is the key: Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words–say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy–if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you’re generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.

Explore sentences using dependent clauses: A dependent clause (sentence fragment set off by commas) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you’ve already written. Often the story you’re looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

Learn to write dialogue: 
This involves more than I can discuss here, but do it. Read the writers of great prose dialogue–people like Robert Stone and Joan Didion. Compression, saying as little as possible, making everything carry much more than is actually said. Conflict. Dialogue as part of an ongoing world, not just voices in a dark room. Never say the obvious. Skip the meet and greet.

Wonderful advice to ponder and play with as we all write on!

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Miracles
by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the
edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in bed at night
with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining
so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread
with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim — the rocks — the motion of the waves —
the ships with men in them.
What stranger miracles are there?

May we all see with the eyes of wonder, every day, every moment.

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Graham Greene was born today, October 2, in 1904. Still regarded a master of craft, here’s some of the expert advice he shared on writing one of his earliest books and his later revision approach:

“My long studies of Percy Lubbock’s The Craft of Fiction had taught me the importance of ‘the point of view,’ but not how to convey physical excitement. Now I can see quite clearly where I went wrong. Excitement is simple: excitement is a situation, a single event. It mustn’t be wrapped up in thoughts, similes, metaphors. A simile is a form of reflection, but excitement is of the moment when there is no time to reflect. Action can only be expressed by a subject, a verb, and an object, perhaps a rhythm — little else. Even an adjective slows the pace or tranquilizers the nerve.

“I should have returned to [Robert Louis] Stevenson to learn my lesson: ‘It came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and then a shout from Alan, and the sound of blows and someone crying as if hurt. I looked over my shoulder, and saw Mr. Shaun in the doorway crossing blades with Alan.’

“No similes or metaphors there, not even an adjective. But I was too concerned with ‘the point of view’ to be aware of the simpler problems, to know that the sort of novel I was trying to write, unlike a poem, was not made with words, but with movement, action, character.

“Now when I write I put down on the page a mere skeleton of a novel — nearly all my revisions are in the nature of additions, of second thoughts to make the bare bones live — but in those days to revise was to prune and prune and prune. I was much tempted, perhaps because of my admiration for the Metaphysical poets, to exaggerated similes and my wife became adept at shooting them down. There was one, I remember, comparing something or someone in the quiet landscape of Sussex to a leopard crouching in a tree, which gave a name to the whole species. Leopards would be marked daily on the manuscript, but it took a great many years for me to get the beasts under control, and they growl at me sometimes yet.”

Wow, just consider the Robert Louis Stevenson passage Graham quotes:

… a rush of feet and a roar

… a shout from Alan

… the sound of blows

… someone crying as if hurt

No adjectives or similes, just words that express pure action : rush, roar, shout, blows, crying. What a great lesson on creating drama. Write on!

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“The secret to becoming a writer is to write, write, and keep on writing.”
Ken MacLeod

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? And yet a thousand dragons seem to rear their heads to keep us from doing what we need to do: write, write, and keep on writing.Yet, when we do find the time and will to write steadily and serenely, how much we gain! Think about all the benefits that consistent practice offers us:

We boost our confidence: When we make writing a priority, something shifts inside and outside. We begin to believe in ourselves as writers — not so much in our skill, but in our will to create. This builds a sense of the possible. 

We strengthen our commitment muscle: When we keep writing through ups and downs on the page and outside on the stage of life, we begin to feel better about ourselves. The more we write, the better we feel, and the better we feel, the more we write. A virtuous circle keeps us in the loop.

We learn and improve: The more we write, the better our chances of honing our craft and building our skills. As we keep writing, we keep exploring, discovering, uncovering. We venture into new territory, we play with new forms of expression, we let go of old tropes that aren’t working.

We fall in love again: As we write and learn and grow, our enthusiasm blossoms. We get excited about newfound skills, newly hatched projects, new directions we can veer off into. All this can reignite our passion and remind us of why we started writing in the first place.

Just a small step in the direction of writing steadily can reap big benefits in confidence and skill. So let’s make wordsmithing part of our life in ever-more exciting and inventive ways as we all write on!

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“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

“You will never be able to escape from your heart.
So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Here’s a tale worth telling: In 1988, Paulo Coelho, a little-known Brazilian author, published The Alchemist, a short novel that traces a young shepherd’s search for his treasure. The spiritual fable was penned in just two weeks and Paulo believed it was destined for greatness. His publisher disagreed and dropped the book. 

In response to this crushing setback, Paulo left Brazil and spent 40 days in the Mojave Desert. He returned determined to continue his struggle to get into print. He was “so convinced that it was a great book that [he] started knocking on doors.” As he told Oprah on a recent “Super Soul Sunday, “There is a sentence in the book that says, , ‘When you want something, the whole universe conspires to help you,’” he says. “I said, ‘I wrote this. I have to live by these words.’”

So he single-handedly turned his flop into a global bestseller by deciding to literally knock on publishing doors until he found someone who’d help him “The first door that I knocked, the guy opened. A very important publishing house in Brazil. And I said, ‘I have a book that was published and did not sell. But I trust this book is going to sell,’” Coelho recalls saying. “The guy said, ‘OK, I’m going to publish it.’ Three years later when the book already sold half a million copies in Brazil, I asked him, ‘Why did you accept a book that was already published and it was a flop?’” Coelho says. “And he said, ‘I don’t know.’ 

Fast forward: Some 25 years later, The Alchemist has sold 65 million copies and stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for more than 315 weeks. It’s been translated into 80 languages and holds the Guinness World Record for the most translated book by a living author.

To this day, the publisher still can’t explain what possessed him to take a chance on the little-known author and his failed book. But Paulo believes he knows the answer: It was the universe conspiring to help him because he believed in his work. So let’s take a tip from Paulo and just believe. And keep on believing and knocking on doors until our dreams come true. And write on!

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The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.” Brian Tracy

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs.” William James

Waking angels: A dear mentor and friend of mine says that they are all around and everywhere, just waiting for us to call upon them and summon their help in our endeavors with intention and for beneficial ends. To me, this is just one more reason why as writers and creative souls, we need to aim high.

What makes a story stand the test of time? What makes it great? Above all else, most of us would agree, that we love and cherish authors who take on universal themes: honor, heroism, justice, love. They grapple with the big moral issues that transcend time.

They’re not afraid to tack timeless truths—the same ones we all hunger to understand because they can help us understand ourselves. Considèr Charles Dickens, one of my favorite authors. While Dickens may be melodramatic, he moves us because his characters embody virtues and vices in ways that compel us as readers to want o see that justice and harmony prevail. He makes us long for a world that works.

Dickens, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow — when we read authors like these, we know they are going to write about circumstances and moral dilemmas where the stakes are high. And just like them, we all have huge oceans unsailed within us, as Brian Tracy says so well. Let’s set sail boldly and write dangerously!

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“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
Muriel Rukeyser

Bravo, Muriel: Spoken like a writer! And surely, this view is shared by the people who run the National Diary Archive Foundation in Pieve Santo Stefano, Italy — a small Tuscan town known as the City of Diaries. Some of the stories on its shelves were scrawled on scraps of paper, some were typewritten, and some penned in longhand in leather-bound journals. In all, more than 10,000 memoirs and letters by ordinary people from all walks of life crowd the archive’s shelves, the earliest dating back to the 18th century. 

Unbound by paper or convention, at least one diary was scribbled on a bright white wedding bed sheet by Cielia Marchi, a barely educated woman from Mantua, who began recording her life story when she was 72 and delivered her bed sheet to the archive in 1968. A superstar in the archive’s firmament, Cielia’s labor of love has inspired both artists and playwrights. 

So have the 39 scraps of paper that were scribbled in a Rome jail by Orlando Orlandi Posti, an 18-year old arrested in February of 1944 for warning his friends about a planned roundup by German soldiers. Written over six weeks, he smuggled them out of prison rolled up in the collars of shirts sent to the laundry. His poignant, makeshift memoir is all that remains of his story. He was executed on March 24, 1944 — one of 335 Italians partisans who lost their lives fending freedom. Orlando’s story has become a book, a play, and an exhibit, along with Cielia Marchi’s wedding bed sheet

The City of Diaries: It sounds like the title of a novel, doesn’t it? What a remarkable idea! In this day of tweets on X, isn’t it oddly comforting to contemplate a diary scrawled on a bed sheet? Yes, Muriel, the world is made up of stories. And we have plenty of them to share as we all write on!

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Autumn

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

Emily Dickinson

In the Library

The library always smells like this:
an ancient stew of vinegar and wood.
It’s autumn again,
and I can do anything.

Dorothea Grossman

“If there’s a story in you, it has to come out. “

“Don’t be a ‘writer.’ Be writing.”
William Faulkner

Sometimes a concentrated dose of wit and wisdom from one writer can give us a shot of adrenalin. Since today, September 25, is William Faulkner’s birthday, I’m sharing gems from the storied writer:

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors, try to be better than yourself.”

“I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written about it.”

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.”

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

With hearts lifted by William’s inspiring words, let’s all write on!

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Today, September 24, is National Punctuation Day. It was started in 2004 by a guy named Jeff who wanted to encourage a deeper appreciation of the joys and challenges of proper punctuation. 

In honor of a day that we writers should surely celebrate, here are some myth-busters about punctuation that might prove helpful:

Conjunction injunction: Thou shalt not begin a sentence with “and,” “but” or “because” — so the saying goes. Who said it? No one really knows. Actually, there’s no definitive rule prohibiting the use of conjunctions at the beginning of sentences. And starting a sentence with one of these hardworking words can give your writing a dramatic boost — so go for it! You’ll be in good company — plenty of revered authors have done the same. 

Confusion profusion: There seems to be a lot of confusion on the article front as to whether there’s a strict rule about using “a” before consonants, and “an” before vowels. The real rule is this: Use the article “a” before words that start with a consonant sound and “an” before words that start with a vowel sound. Example: “He has a unique point of view on the subject and talked about it for an hour.” The “u” in “unique” makes the “y” sound — a consonant sound, so the correct article is “a,” while the “h” in “hour” sounds like it starts with “ow,” a vowel sound, so the second article in the sentence should be an “an.” Ow! Sounds a bit tricky, but this does clarify a question I had.

“None” fun: “None” seems like a word that should always be treated as singular, but actually it swings both ways. “None” is singular if it refers to “not one” or “no part.” But it can also be plural when referring to “not any.” Examples: “None of the apple was eaten.” “Apple” is a singular noun, so you’d use the singular verb “was.” In contrast: “None of the ballplayers were on the team bus.” Here, “none” refers to “not any of the ballplayers” just as much as it refers to “not one of the ballplayers,” so making it plural is clearer.

And I hope this sheds some light on the subject. Write on!

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