Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Sunday Saying - Writing

A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling.
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you." - John Steinbeck

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Memoirs I've Read

Last week I read this tweet by Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner -  "Please don't submit your memoir until you've read 20 good memoirs and 5 books on writing memoir - and learned from them."


Since I'm writing a memoir and want to submit it soon, I started a list of all the memoirs I've read. I didn't think I read 20, but I was surprised. I'm at 30+ and still counting. 
These are in random order and some of these might only loosely fit into the memoir category. 
  1. Picking Dandelions by Sarah Cunningham
  2. Girl Meets God: A Memoir by Lauren F. Winner
  3. O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling by Jason Boyett
  4. Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans
  5. In a Single Bound: Losing My Leg, Finding Myself, and Training for Life by Sarah Reinertsen
  6. Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir by Susan E. Isaacs
  7. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
  8. Thin Places: A Memoir by Mary E. DeMuth 
  9. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
  10. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
  11. The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
  12. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace- One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson 
  13. Left to Tell: One Woman's Story of Surviving the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza
  14. Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
  15. Same Kind of Different as Me by Hall and Moore
  16. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  17. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris
  18. A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman by Joan Anderson
  19. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
  20. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wells
  21. A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer
  22. Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet
  23. Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama 
  24. Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas Sparks and Micah Sparks
  25. Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  26. The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz
  27. Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell 
  28. Gifted Hands by M.D., Ben Carson
  29. Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope by Van Ryn & Cerak
  30. No Such Thing as a Bad Day: A Memoir by Hamilton Jordon
  31. Hear No Evil by Matthew Paul Turner
  32. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert 
  33. Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup
  34. On Writing by Stephen King
Today Rachelle has an excellent post with Resources for Writing Memoir.

Now she's presented me with a dilemma - do I study about writing memoir today or do I actually write memoir ...

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Writer's Write

"Writer's write."

This is one of the pieces of advice Donald Miller gave today. He gave a speech, followed with a question/answer time at the Abilene Christian University Summit. It was streamed live online and I watched most of it. During the Q&A time, one question was, "What advice do you have for new writers?"

"Write!"

"Writer's write."

"They sit down and they write every day."

Okay, let me dissect this advice for my own sake and anyone else that wants to be a published writer, but has a hard time making it happen.

Write. Every. Day.

Monday, July 06, 2009

Finding the Right Words

Over the past few years, I have written a lot of words - I've written the SFD (borrowed from Anne Lamont) about our 6-month trip across the country, our accident in California, my 'almost death' and my recovery from severe injuries. Now I am in the middle of rewriting and I need 'lightning' words to make my boring writing come alive.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~Mark Twain

Monday, June 15, 2009

Writers avoiding writing

Too many days this is how my attempts to write go ....

"Usually, writers will do anything to avoid writing. For instance, the previous sentence was written at one o'clock this afternnon. It is now a quarter to four. I have spent the past two hours and forty-five minutes sorting my neckties by width, looking up the word /paisly/ in three dictionaries, attempting to find the town of that name on /The New York Times Atlas of the World/ map of Scotland, sorting my reference books by width, trying to get the bookcase to stop wobbling by stuffing a matchbook cover under its corner, dialing the telephone number on the matchbook cover to see if I should take computer courses at night, looking at the computer ads in the newspaper and deciding to buy a computer because writing seems to be so difficult on my old Remington, reading an interesting article on sorghum farming in Uruguay that was in the newspaper next to the computer ads, cutting that and other interesting articles out of the newspaper, sorting -- by width -- all the interesting articles I've cut out of newspapers recently, fastening them neatly together with paper clips and making a very attractive paper clip necklace and bracelet set, which I will present to my girlfriend as soon as she comes home from the three-hour low-impact aerobic workout that I made her go to so I could have some time alone to write." - P.J. O'Rourke

Okay maybe I don't sort my neckties, but I sure find many other things to do.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Short Story Continued

Toe pain continues - feels best when leg is propped up. Slight black/blue coloring happening now. Didn't go for x-rays - because even if it's broken, there's not much that can be done. Using a hard-soled boot I have from surgery last year (though I never wanted one - my collection of medical supplies is impressive)
No runs for now :( Maybe some biking next week - cause that won't be as much impact on it as running would be.
So now on the recliner - writing!! Working on my book proposal - pray for wisdom, it's a hard task!

Friday, October 26, 2007

Writing

"Of all those arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."