"Write Smart, Write Happy: How to Become a More Productive, Resilient and Successful Writer": a minha "review"

"Write Smart, Write Happy: How to Become a More Productive, Resilient and Successful Writer", de Cheryl St. John, foi-me cedido pela Netgalley e pelo editor para que eu fizesse uma apreciação honesta deste livro. Não há de momento edição em português. Publiquei a minha opinião na Amazon e no Goodreads com 4/5 estrelas e a seguinte "review":

"I’ll start to confess that I went to check how many books Cheryl St. John had published: the answer is dozens of them. She knows what she is talking about. She’s a prolific writer that was already getting published in the nineties.

This is not the usual book about the writing process, inspiration, emotion and momentum. This is not about the magic of creation. It’s about organized work and productivity. It's about showing up. It reminds me of some books about time management and setting goals. All this applied to creative writing, with multiple examples. Good book.

I received this book as an eARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review".

3 conselhos de Madeleine L'Engle para quem quer ser escritor / 3 advice from Madeleine L'Engle for those who want to write

"The Writer", Agnes Boulloche

“I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.”

Madeleine L'Engle

7 citações de Madeleine L’Engle / 7 quotes of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ author Madeleine L’Engle

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

“When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.”

“Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.”

“If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.”

Madeleine L’Engle

"Storytelling for Pantsers: How to Write and Revise Your Novel Without an Outline": a minha review

"Storytelling for Pantsers: How to Write and Revise Your Novel Without an Outline", de Annalisa Parent , foi-me cedido pela Netgalley e pelo editor para que eu fizesse uma apreciação honesta deste livro. Não há de momento edição em português. Publiquei a minha opinião na Amazon e no Goodreads com 5/5 estrelas e a seguinte "review":

This book is about a particular way of creative writing. It’s a guide for pantsers. Pantsers are the opposite of plotters. A plotter is someone who plans out their novel before they write it. When they start to write they already know how it is going to end. Because they made an outline. A pantser is someone who doesn’t plan out anything. Pantsers like the freedom of not being stuck following an outline. They can take their novel in any direction they want. That, speaking from my own experience, can be nowhere. Having no plan can mean you end up moving in circles and you don’t know where to go with your story or your characters. You get stuck.

If you are a pantser like me, with unfinished stories hidden in a drawer, read this book. It has great tips on writing in an intuitive, disorganized, untamed way, without an outline or previous plot. Thus, the importance of revising is well explained in this book. It presents pearls of wisdom on a pot (not in!). Really. The whole book is written with a great sense of humor. It’s really easy and enjoyable to read. The author’s writing is vivacious and funny. I recommend it to every fiction writer, not just pantsers.

I received this book as an eARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

"The Workplace Writer's Process: A Guide to Getting the Job Done": a minha "review"

"The Workplace Writer's Process: A Guide to Getting the Job Done", de Anne Janzer, foi-me cedido pela Netgalley e pelo editor para que eu fizesse uma apreciação honesta deste livro. Não há de momento edição em português. Publiquei a minha opinião na Amazon e no Goodreads com 5/5 estrelas e a seguinte "review":

"The Workplace Writer’s Process" is not only about writing, it's a book about structure and organization. It teaches how to write for an organization, how to handle those who influence your writing work and how to overcome external and internal obstacles to a text that is useful to the reader.

This is a book for those whose writing is their job but I think it is also useful for those who simply have writing as a hobby. This book teaches you about discipline, time management, the importance of planning and the fabulous idea of "the incubation effect". So true!

Another truth written by this author is about research: "Excessive research is a dangerous form of procrastination". I know it! But it's good to have it explained!

And "Inspiration tends to follow action, not precede it".

In the end, go to Anne Janzer's site and download the worksheets and checklists from the book. And subscribe to her Writing Practices email list. She really gives good advice about writing!

I received this book as an eARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review".

Podem saber mais no site da autora.

Escrita: "80% do necessário para o sucesso é aparecer" / Writing: the "discipline of showing up"

Jeff Goins também é um defensor acérrimo de escrever diariamente. No seu artigo "Por que você precisa de escrever todos os dias":

"A ideia é repetição — desenvolvendo uma disciplina de aparecer, fazendo a isto uma prioridade e trabalhando apesar da resistência.

Se você quiser escrever, você precisa começar a escrever todos os dias. Sem perguntas, sem exceções feitas.

Afinal, não é um passatempo de que estamos a falar; é uma disciplina".

A tradução acima é minha. Deixo abaixo o texto original em inglês:

"Jeff Goins is also a wonderful proponent of writing daily. This is from his article ‘Why you need to write every day’:

‘The idea is repetition — developing a discipline of showing up, making this a priority, and working through The Resistance.

If you want to get this writing thing down, you need to start writing every day. No questions asked, no exceptions made.

After all, this isn’t a hobby we’re talking about; it’s a discipline".

Fonte: The Writing Cooperative, em 5 de março de 2017


Já Woody Allen diz que

"80% do necessário para o sucesso é aparecer".

Um conselho para escritores de William Faulkner / William Faulkner's advice for writers

Entrevista a Elizabeth Gilbert sobre o seu processo de escrita / Interview to Elizabeth Gilbert about her writing process

Aqui fica uma entrevista a Elizabeth Gilbert, a escritora do sucesso mundial "Eat, Pray, Love", que eu adorei. Aqui ela fala do seu processo de escrita.

Q: How did you land your first book deal?
A: I spent about six years sending my short stories out to magazines, and collecting rejections. Then one day Esquire bought one of my stories out of the slush pile and published it. It was through this publication that I found my agent (or, rather, that my agent found me). She then negotiated a book deal on my behalf.

I had a collection of short stories written and ready to go, but I had to promise the publisher that I would deliver a novel, in order to seal the deal. Having never before written a novel, this was rather frightening. But you have to deliver the goods, once you sign that contract, or else they get fussy and want their money back — which is a good motivation to get your work done…

Q: You have written both nonfiction and fiction books; is there any difference to your approach or creative process when writing these two different genres?
A: Less than you might think. I feel that it’s more or less the same process, either way. Because all my work is so research-based, it always begins with a long period of study or immersion. Lots of note-taking. Many shoe boxes of index cards are involved. This part of the process can take years, but it’s during the research period that the story begins to grow in my mind, and that helps me to find my confidence.

Once the research is done, I then outline the book as well as I can, which means putting the index cards into some sort of sensible narrative order. Then I sit down to write. For me, the writing itself is usually pretty fast — but that’s only because I’ve always over-prepared so much. (When it comes time to write, then, it’s kind of like painting a house that’s already been very well prepped: now I just get to roll on the paint.)

And in both cases — with fiction and non-fiction — I make sure that I’ve decided exactly to whom I am writing the book, long before I even begin. Each one of my books has been written to a different person, and always to somebody I know well. I find that this is almost the most important decision (“Who exactly is it for?”) because that intimacy with my imagined reader will completely determine my voice and how I tell the story. I think it’s important to keep that one reader in mind as you write, and to hold yourself accountable to the duty of delighting them or transporting them as well as you can. It keeps me honest, somehow, and gives me a more human touch, I hope.

Q: In your opinion, what’s the best way to self-edit?
A: Fearlessly, and fast. Ask yourself if this sentence, paragraph, or chapter truly furthers the narrative. If not, chuck it. (Keep a document open at all times called SCRAP, and throw your cuts in there. This will give you the security of knowing that the words are not lost forever. That said, once you’ve made the cut, try not to look back.)

Try to move thorough the document quickly, rather than getting bogged down in debating every single semi-colon. Don’t overthink it; your first instinct is usually correct. You have a story to tell here, after all — so use a machete to get you there, if you must, but keep telling the story and keep chopping through the underbrush that stands in the story’s way.

Also, don’t edit as you go. One of the greatest time-wasters in the literary world is to edit as you work, sentence-by sentence. This gives off the illusion that you’re actually being disciplined and productive (after all, you’ve been sitting at your desk for three whole hours, laboring over that one paragraph!) but it’s a lie. You aren’t working; you’re just messing around and calling it work.

So move, move, move. Keep the pace. Think of it this way: Have you ever tried to walk on a tightrope? It’s far easier to do if you’re running, than if you’re looking down and deliberately choosing every step. If you slow down or even stop, you risk wavering and falling. The best writing comes at an uninterrupted tightrope-running pace. You can always fix it later. Better yet, just finish it and hand the manuscript over to someone else, and let them edit you with fresh eyes. And for heaven’s sake, listen to their feedback.

Fonte

Esta frase tem cinco palavras / "This sentence has five words"

 

Harry Rutherford

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

Gary Provost

Escrever não é uma coisa científica

 

Juan González Alacreu

"Eu não tenho um método. Tudo o que eu faço é ler muito, pensar muito, e reescrever constantemente. Não é uma coisa científica."

Gabriel García Márquez

3 dicas para escritores iniciantes / 3 tips to aspiring writers

"1. Tear into it

In her book, Practical Tips for Writing Popular Fiction (Writers Digest), novelist Robyn Carr suggests you study fiction to become a better writer. This is great advice. Read a book once as a dreamer, a second time as detective. Start looking at how other authors are doing it. How do they structure their sentences? How much dialogue do they use? What are the main plot points? Don’t just do it on good books but on those that disappointed you. Try to find the knocks in the engine.

Picasso said to copy others was necessary but to copy yourself is pathetic. That’s a good point. I’m not suggesting you copy or steal other stories – but to look at the structure behind the stories of others. You then start to use this to build your own stories.

Tip: Type out the first page or chapter of a novel you’ve read. You’ll be so close to the work, you’ll see the structure emerge first hand.

2. It’s in the detail

When learning our craft, we learn to pay careful attention to detail. We start to see how important it is to paint our words with the right colour, shape and size. The right detail makes your writing come to life, and helps us build a believable story world.  Sometimes we forget that what we see in our minds as writers isn’t available to the reader – we have to make sure it’s on the page. We learn to gather and organise these so they draw the reader in.

Tip: Visit a coffee shop. Write down all the fascinating and mundane descriptive details. Fill a page or ten pages.  Find the ones that give a mental picture of the place. Choose just five sentences from your pages that give the best ‘snapshot’.

3. Take off the training wheels

Reading and studying about the craft of writing can teach us a lot – and writing is about learning and improving all the time. But ‘studying’ can also turn into a form or procrastination. We don’t get back to our stories and put (perfect) theory into (sometimes-clumsy) practice. 

We all have our own approaches to writing. No one can tell you how writing will work in your life and your career. This is something you have for figure out for yourself.  But as they say: ‘Learn the rules before you break them.’

Tip: Have a Journalist Day. Find the one event in your day – or even a friend’s day – and write a 300-word article, poem or mini-story about it. Give yourself a 5pm deadline. Keep it. Get in the habit to writing to a deadline. 

Making up stories is easy. Finding the language, structure and focus to shape your imagination into a novel, screenplay or short story is a lot of hard work".

Fonte:Writers Write

20 citações de William Zinsser sobre como escrever melhor / 20 Inspiring Quotes From William Zinsser's "On Writing Well"

20 Inspiring Quotes From William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" from Glenn Leibowitz

21 dicas de escrita inesperadas de grandes autores / 21 unexpected writing tips from great authors

1. The first draft of everything is shit. -Ernest Hemingway


2. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass. -David Ogilvy


3. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker


4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. -Paul Theroux


5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee


6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ― Jack London


7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell


8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham


9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King


10. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman


11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die. – Anne Enright


12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. – William Zinsser


13. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. – Kurt Vonnegut


14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway


15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway


16. Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk


17. Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain


18. Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you.― Neil Gaiman


19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar Wilde


20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ― Ray Bradbury


21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.– Lev Grossman

 Cody Delistraty

Fonte

10 dicas sobre escrita criativa de Zadie Smith / Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing

1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3. Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9. Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.

Zadie Smith

Fonte

6 dicas para escritores de John Steinbeck / 6 tips on writing from John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, vencedor do  Pulitzer e do prémio Nobel dá 6 dicas para escritores, numa entrevista em 1975, para The Paris Review:

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Fonte

10 dicas sobre como roubar como um artista / 10 tips to steal like an artist

 

Este é um livro relativamente breve, simples e original sobre criatividade. Recomendo. Lê-se muito facilmente e surpreende-nos pela sua excentricidade. Neste livro, Austin Kleon desenvolve a sua mensagem em torno de 10 tópicos:

1. Steal like an artist.
2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.
3. Write the book you want to read.
4. Use your hands.
5. Side projects and hobbies are important.
6. The secret: do good work and share it with people.
7. Geography is no longer our master.
8. Be nice. (The world is a small town.)
9. Be boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.)
10. Creativity is subtraction.

Saiba mais AQUI.
Infelizmente desconheço a existência de alguma tradução em português.
 

"originalidade", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2013, http://www.priberam.pt/DLPO/originalidade [consultado em 30-06-2014].

Excentricidade.

"originalidade", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [em linha], 2008-2013, http://www.priberam.pt/DLPO/originalidade [consultado em 30-06-2014].

As melhores citações de Oscar Wilde sobre escrita e criatividade / The best quotes from Oscar Wilde on writing and creativity

The Best Quotes From Oscar Wilde on Writing and Creativity from HubSpot

20 citações para inspirar escritores / 20 quotes to inspire writers

10 Quotes to Inspire Writers from Rock the Deadline

10 Quotes to Inspire Writers from eBook Review Gal

De onde vem a inspiração? / Neil Gaiman on where ideas come from

"For me, inspiration comes from a bunch of places: desperation, deadlines… A lot of times ideas will turn up when you’re doing something else. And, most of all, ideas come from confluence — they come from two things flowing together. They come, essentially, from daydreaming. . . . And I suspect that’s something every human being does. Writers tend to train themselves to notice when they’ve had an idea — it’s not that they have any more ideas or get inspired more than anything else; we just notice when it happens a little bit more".

Neil Gaiman

10 dicas para aspirantes a escritores / 10 things aspiring novelists should know

Someecards

10 Things Aspiring Novelists Should Know

by Amanda Patterson

1. Your novel is not a personal journal. Consider the reader. 
2. Writing is a business. You enter into an agreement with a reader. You agree to entertain in exchange for their money and emotion. You agree to inform for their time.
3. Readers don’t like charmless heroes. Just because your protagonist happens to be an anti-hero does not mean you are free to make him or her 100% unlikable.
4. Only experienced novelists who have successfully completed two published books should attempt to use an anti-hero as a protagonist.
5. Antagonists should be people, not things.
6. If you aren’t willing to listen to advice, if you aren’t able to learn from your mistakes, and if you aren’t prepared to let go of stories nobody wants to read, you will probably not succeed.
7. You have to read a lot to be able to write.
8. Using examples of famous authors who were published more than 30 years ago to justify long passages of description in your boring manuscript is not a good idea. Publishing has changed. Readers have changed.
9. Self-publishing does not mean you don’t need to pay somebody to proofread and edit your book. Readers are insulted when they find mistakes in books. It’s like serving guests dinner on dirty plates.
10. Always delete the first three chapters of the first draft of your first three novels. It will always be filled with backstory you don’t need. 

Fonte: 

Writers Write