Friday 21 January 2011

Write: Jan 21st - More 'In This Life'

I wrote most of this on the walk to the bus stop and as I sat waiting, then I edited it and added in the non dialogue. It needs a little more work to make it readable, but that's going to be tomorrows job.

Read: Jan 21st - Write Sideways

One day I searched Twitter for people directly related to writing and there I came upon a member called @writesideways. They have a website, well, a blog and I found some interesting information on there about the craft.

Just yesterday, the woman who is at the front of Write Sideways, posted something on Twitter that caught my attention. Filter words! It was my source of yesterdays reading.

Anyway, as I clicked on the link to her website a popup came up informing me of a free ebook if I signed up to her website. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

So tonight I've been reading the first few pages. It's not a traditional book in that it's not a fiction book, nor is it a non-fiction book where there's sections you read. It's a wordbook entitled Read Better, Write Better. Suzannah Windsor Freeman, the ebook's author, believes there's some sort of formula to writing a good, publishable novel. In this ebook, she has written a template that can be used whilst reading a book to look at what works and what perhaps doesn't.

I'm interested, I'm ready to give it a try. I don't necessarily want to write a book for publishing, but I do want to write a book. So really, any help I can be given, that's good enough for me!

Write: Jan 20th - In This Life

After a very, very productive week writing wise I was completely surprised by my lack of ability to put pen to paper.

I did, of course, I needed to and wanted to.

But I ended late (12.30 approximately) and my head was so shattered that I couldn't read through, check for mistakes and upload it. That will be today's task, whilst hopefully still being able to do a bit of writing to continue the story.

The distance I am from the end of the story makes my toes curl.

Read: Jan 20th - Filter Words

I read a blog about filter words which was rather interesting and perhaps extremely useful. I used to use filter words, a lot but gradually I found they'd become redundant. When I'm struggling to write something I slip back into old habits, I know I do it, I just can't always stop myself.

But as the blog posts I read in regards to said filter words, both suggested that while it's an easy thing to write, it's also an easy thing to spot when reading. It's something I will have to remember to look out for when I proof read my own work.

I find blogs like this one completely useful for my own progress as a writer. I don't consider myself to be anything of an expert and I still struggle to form sentences. Heck, I still struggle to remember what exactly a verb is and how these adverbs and what not fit into the structure of a sentence.

Like many others, I wasn't taught the craft of writing well enough to know these things flawlessly. Yet I have an interest. I want to learn, to teach myself and have strangers writing blogs from the other side of the world to teach me too. That's one of the things I love most about the Internet.

The lessons, the information. You can teach yourself just about anything with the use of a computer hooked up to the world wide web. I once taught myself basic drumming, just the way the two sticks have to move to different beats sometimes. But I learnt it from a video I found on a website.

That's the power of the internet.