Robert’s Rules of Writing by Robert Masello

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Are you ready to work on your writing techniques? This book will help you do it in easy-to-swallow doses. Robert’s Rules of Writing is subtitled: “101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know. On the back cover, there is a second subtitle: “But No One Has Ever Told You.”

Masello is a prolific professional writer, and he makes no bones about the fact that writing is work. Each rule is about two pages long, great for those of us with short attention spans. The first rule shocked me out of my socks: “Burn your journal.” After I recovered, I read on. “If you’re serious about writing—burn your journal and get to work.” His point is that journaling has its place, but, if you want to turn out publishable material, you have to plan, research, and organize as you write. Journaling might give you ideas, but it will not get your work published.

Every rule is useful, although some may go against what you have been taught. There is no “filler.” I read about half the book in one sitting. Then, I decided to read one every day to keep Masello’s “get real” advice uppermost in my mind. At first, I thought it was just for laughs, but he is serious about sharing with other writers the techniques and attitudes that have worked for him.

The book is not for beginners. In the introduction, Masello states that he assumes that you “know the basic principles already and that you don’t need a lecture on how to feel good about yourself.”

Check it out on Amazon. Sample the book using the “Look Inside” feature. Complete table of contents is shown, plus sample chapters.

Subscribers, what’s your favorite book about writing? Share it with us by commenting on this post.

How to comment (for e-mail subscribers).

  • Click on the article title in your e-mail. This takes you to the post on Blog4Writers.
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Guest Post: Don’t Stop Writing

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This article was selected from the free reprint articles offered on Faithwriters.com. As a Platinum member, I have access to these reprints for use on my blog as long as I give credit to the author and don’t change the article. Be sure to visit Bob’s Faithwriters page by clicking on his name below the title.


Don’t Stop Writing

By Bob Valleau

Have you ever felt like chucking the whole writing bit? Do you tire of trying to write something when nothing comes to mind? Does keeping a constant writing routine drag you down? Has the joy of writing dwindled or robbed you completely of inspiration?

If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, it’s time for a gut-check. Most writers, at some point, fall into that dreaded rut of the doldrums. Some people have said that writing is a journey, a quest to self-discovery. But how can it be when you’ve tried to conjure up another piece after the creative well has run dry, or you’re just plain bored with the whole writing scene?

Here are three ideas that may help save your sinking ship of imaginative thought and turn your writing from a frustrating foe into a worthy challenger again.

Dream big. Try to think “outside the box.” For instance, if you are writing an article about a certain topic and you think it’s been well-covered in the past, think of a different angle — no matter how strange or bizarre. Writing a novel and got stuck? Put your characters in a different situation. How would they respond? What would they think or feel? Write it all down, even if you don’t use any of it in your story. Imagine you are the greatest writer of all time. What would you want to convey to others? As a Christian writer, that’s easy to answer. But what avenue would your writing take to convey a message of love, hope or joy? Song? Poetry? Novel? Article?

Dare to do things differently. Sometimes you need a break, and that’s okay. Schedule a writing sabbatical. A little R&R can rejuvenate the senses and rekindle your passion. Just be sure to return to your writing at some point. If no sabbatical, then try writing in a different location. Sometimes changing your environment can help kick-start your creativity. Join a local or online writer’s group for sharing ideas, developing relationships and gaining support.

Determine to write something no matter what. Today’s technology can aid you in your writing quest. Join Twitter and see if you can convey something worthwhile within the limited characters they allow. Start a blog on a topic that interests you or that others may find interesting. Write in a journal any free-flowing ideas, feelings or thoughts. Write about anything and everything no matter if it makes sense or not. Visit your favorite web sites, and if they have a place to leave a comment or want a reader’s response, then do so. Sharing your point-of-view on a particular topic or entering an online discussion may lead you to a plethora of new ideas.

As a writer, the journey of self-discovery, or the desire to help others along the way, may be fraught with pitfalls, detours and unexpected delays. But you can overcome them. Whatever you do, however, just don’t stop writing.

Copyright 2011 by Bob Valleau. Bob has over 25 years of writing experience for the Christian market. He was once named Christian Writer of the Year by the American Christian Writers Association. Currently, he freelances and lives in Texas.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITER-MAKE A WEBSITE

The Fifth W of Writing: Who?

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This is the fifth article in the series, The Five W’s of Writing, (Who, What, When, Where, and Why). See previous articles here.

Your identity as a writer is partly defined by What you write and Why. But, Who you are as a person contributes to your personal definition of the other four W’s of writing. We typically define who we are in terms of where we came from, where we are now, and where we want to be.

Where did you come from? Small town or big city? Large family or small? Everything about your background contributes to your identity as a writer. Your innate gifts and talents give you the ability to write, while your life experiences provide content. While one writer may have the gift of story crafting, another may be gifted in teaching through writing. Either writer can use his or her gift to make a difference in the lives of readers.

Where are you now? Periodic evaluation is the hallmark of successful businesses, governments, and individuals. You may be right where you want to be. But, if you’re submitting work and being rejected, you might try taking a writing course or participating in a critique group. It’s possible that your marketing skills need honing. Are you content with where you are in your writing journey? If not, take action. See my article on evaluation.

 

Where do you want to be? Whatever your current situation, you’ll stagnate if you don’t look to the future. You may have your dream for your writing career perfectly defined. You may have your first novel completed and ready to market, along with a couple of sequels in the works. On the other hand, you may simply want to share your experiences and help others by writing articles and nonfiction books. Perhaps you know another writer who is your role model.

 

More Info:

 

Choosing a Biblical Writer as Role Model

Are You an Author or a Writer?

Recommended Reading:

Writers on Writing, edited by Jim Watkins

Writing for the Soul by Jerry Jenkins

Communicate to Change Lives by Jim Watkins

Writer-to-Writer: Quotes from the Pros

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Recently, I was looking for a quote about writing to use in a presentation to a local writers’ group. I found so many great quotes that I’m devoting this entire post to the ones I liked best.

  • I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork. Peter De Vries
  • The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. Mark Twain
  • Write without pay until somebody offers to pay. Mark Twain
  • When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God’s business. Flannery O’Connor.
  • I don’t see success as the goal. Obedience is the goal. Jerry B. Jenkins. Read more from Jerry Jenkins here.
  • Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. Madeleine L’Engle. Additional L’Engle quotes here.
  • A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947.
  • Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. E. B. White
  • If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
    Toni Morrison

If you have a favorite writer’s quote, please share it by commenting on this post.

Sources:

http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/writing/

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/writing.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/write.html

 

What Do You Write?

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This is the fourth article in the series, The Five W’s of Writing (Who, What, When, Where, and Why).

“So you’re a writer. What do you write?” When people ask me this question, I don’t know exactly what to say. I formulate my answer depending on who’s asking. If the question comes from another writer, I get specific about genre and subject matter. But, I try to give a short answer if the questioner is someone asking just to be polite. I might say, “I write magazine articles for a local magazine and some Christian publications.”

First, accept and be proud of the fact that you call yourself a writer. Realize that anyone interested enough to ask you this question might be a potential reader. Then, decide how you will answer the question.

What genres do you write? To answer fiction or nonfiction doesn’t really say much. Fiction writers, do you write short stories or novels? If you write novels, what kind do you write? Take a look at Zondervan’s category list for some examples. Nonfiction works include a vast array of possibilities. See this list of nonfiction categories. You might write short nonfiction works like how-to articles, memoir, essays, poetry, profiles, news, or creative non-fiction. You’ll sound more professional when you identify the exact genres that you write.

What subjects do you write about? If it’s fiction, you just make it up, right? Yes, but you need to be familiar with your physical and historical settings to make your story believable. Fiction writers usually choose settings that they familiar to them. If not, they do a lot of research before beginning to write. Nonfiction authors usually write to share information and/or encourage others. They choose topics for which they have developed expertise. Or, they might write about other people’s unique experiences.

Examples:

  • If I were to ask Ann Gabhart what she writes, I would expect her to say this. “I write historical fiction, the latest set in the Shaker community in central Kentucky near where I live.”
  • Beth Moore might say, “I write Bible studies and Christian living books mainly for women.”

What do you write? Answer this question for yourself. I invite you to share your answer by commenting on this post.

Where Do You Write?

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This is the third article in the series, The Five W’s of Writing (Who, What, When, Where, and Why).

Do you have a special place to do your writing? Or, do you write wherever you are? The key is to find what works best for you.

Home Office: The very word “office” conjures up visions of desk work. Many writers say they get more done when they work in their designated writing place. It’s not necessarily a whole room, just a space set aside just for writing. This has worked well for author Jim Watkins, who has used the same writing desk for his whole career. Here’s what my writing space looks like. And, take a look at two other writers’ home offices. First, there’s Brenda Coulter. And, finally—get ready to have a serious fit of envy— Jerry Jenkins’ home office, The Cave.

Coffee Shop: Some of my writing teachers have suggested that writing in public places gives you ideas that you would not get otherwise. Today’s coffee shops and fast food restaurants with wireless Internet make it easy to write in public without being obvious about it. Here’s an article by Nancy Warren on “brewing up inspiration.” Professional writer Lee Warren has a different opinion.

Public Library: When I need to get away from the distractions of home, I take my laptop to my public library. It goes without saying that libraries are generally quieter than other public places, and ours has both indoor and outdoor tables and chairs, and a number of sofas scattered around the building—plus wireless Internet service. Rebecca Seitz, author of four novels with a scrapbooking theme, has done much of her fiction writing in our library. See her “Writing Process” article, especially noting numbers 35-37.

While Driving: Now, I admit that this never occurred to me until I heard Mark Whitlock describe how he used a transcription service to get his ideas on paper. When Mark was with Thomas Nelson Publishers, he taught a conference workshop on getting past writers’ block. He shared that he engaged a transcription service to put his words in a text file that would be sent to him via email. He often phoned in his writing ideas while driving or when he was too tired to write it down himself.

What about you? Do you find that it makes any difference where you write? Share your ideas by commenting on this post.

Other “Where” Articles:

Organizing your writing place

Where Do You Write?

When Do You Write?

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Remember the Five W’s of journalism, the basic outline for news article structure? The components are Who, What, When Where, Why? I’ve developed a series of articles I’m calling The Five W’s of Writing. This is the second of the series. A while back, I posted the first article entitled “Why Do You Write.”

You’re a writer. Writers write—but when? Whether you have a day job or not, making time to write can be a challenge. Here are some techniques that have worked for me.

Write at a set time each day. “Write for at least one hour every day,” say writing teachers. That means working on your actual writing for one hour, not on market research, networking, or participating in a writers’ group. Whether it be first thing in the morning or after your day is done, writing at the same time every day works well for many writers.

Noted Christian author, Jerry Jenkins, says he has always made time to write every day, no matter what. At a conference a few years back, he said he wrote every day even when he had a full-time job and an family. But, he did his writing after the children went to bed. He joked that he sometimes wanted them to go to bed at 4:00 p.m.

Write during your waiting time. Take a notebook or computer with you when you know you’ll be trapped in a waiting room or on public transportation. If you don’t have a current project, jot down topics you’d like to write about. Make tentative outlines. Journal on a topic that strikes your fancy. Just write when you have the chance.

In the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time in hospital rooms and waiting rooms. I outlined several articles and even finished one major project while waiting in medical facilities. At one hospital, I even had wireless Internet access. Be ready to write when the time presents itself.

Write when you have to. Nothing like a little pressure to make a writer produce. I do my best writing when I have an assigned topic and a deadline. I know the worst thing a writer can do is to disappoint an editor. I never want to miss a deadline, so I get serious about getting the job done.

No editor to crack the whip over you? You can be your own editor. Make a list of articles or stories you’d like to write. Assign a realistic deadline to each of item on the list. Then, start writing. You don’t want to disappoint your editor!

When do you write? Subscribers, share your writing routine by commenting on this post.

More on the “When” of Writing:

Spring Link Roundup

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Last winter, I bookmarked several articles that I wanted to share with Blog4Writers subscribers. I’m spring cleaning my bookmarks, so I’m sharing these great links with you this week.

Comment on this article to suggest topics you’d like to see on Blog4Writers in the future.

Free or Premium: That Is the Question

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FREE--it’s the one word that gets everyone’s attention. Writers, like everyone else, love to use blogs, websites, backup services, and a host of other free-on-the-Web products. Some of them are truly free, while others are free for a limited time or limited purposes, a free trial, so-to-speak. Online businesses have learned that offering the free trial often gains them paying customers. This marketing model is called “freemium.”

Really Free: Google offers a number of free services including Gmail, Groups, Blogger, Google Analytics, Feedburner, YouTube, and many more. Here’s a complete listing. I also use other free services offered by Yahoo, MSN, and Microsoft Office Live in addition to Google.

Free services usually work great, but, if something goes wrong, you have to figure it out for yourself. The “help” section is sometimes no help at all. For example, there was a glitch in the email messages that went to my blog subscribers through Feedburner. Some of the links in the message would not work, and the YouTube embeds didn’t show up at all. I couldn’t find an answer by searching online or in the help section. Of course, there’s no one to call, so I had to come up with my own solution.

Premium (Freemium): Most freemium services offer expanded or premium services for a fee. For example, Mozy online backup offers two gigabytes of storage free. If you need more storage space, you must upgrade to a paid plan. See the details for their free service here. Notice that the free version does not include live chat support or support tickets, which means you’ll have to get help from their support community or knowledge base.

With Mozy online backup, I started out using a free account. I chose not to back up my photos in order to avoid paying for the additional storage. When my computer crashed last year, I lost everything on my hard drive. I restored my documents from Mozy, but I had to rebuild my photo collection from the ground up. Some of the photos I lost did not have backups anywhere. I decided it was worth the fee to have everything backed up on Mozy. Other freemium services I’ve used include Dropbox, Webs.com, WordPress, Bravenet, and Shutterfly.

Time is money? The bottom line is this. Free services may not cost you money, but sometimes they cost you time. It’s been a year, and I still don’t have all my photos restored. I’m waiting for certain people to remember to send me their copies of the photos I lost. The time I’ve spent rebuilding my photo collection could have been used writing new articles. My new rule is that, if a free service becomes a time-saver for me, I’ll probably take the upgrade to the paid version when it becomes necessary.

Subscribers, would you like to recommend a free online service that’s proved useful to you? Please comment and share the URL.

More on the Freemium Concept:

Forbes Blog

Using Free to Turn a Profit

Build-Your-Own-Conference Update

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Planning for 2011, I realized I would not be able to get away for conferences this year, so I decided to build my own. Today, I want to share with you some of the resources I’ve found.

Faithwriters.com: As a “free” member, I had taken advantage of some of their services. However, I discovered that the paid membership offers many other services. I joined as a platinum member for one year. I was particularly interested in the free courses they offer. I’m still exploring, but I think the weekly writing challenge will be what I need to get me back to writing new material regularly. The fee is $10 a month or $120 a year, but that is much cheaper than most conference tuition. I’ll share more about Faithwriters later in the year.

Book Proposal Help from Terry Whalin: As I browsed the Blue Ridge Christian Writers Conference blog, I found a video interview between Alton Gansky, conference director, and Terry Whalin. The interview promotes Terry’s conference classes, but what caught my interest was the news of his membership site devoted to teaching people to write a book proposal. You may be familiar with Terry’s book, Book Proposals That Sell. The course-work is based on the book, but Terry offers additional materials on this memberships site, http://www.writeabookproposal.com/. If you are working on a book right now, this would be a great way to get help from an industry pro without leaving your desk. It’s a three-month (twelve-week) course for only $27 a month. Read the FAQ’s on the site here. Also, see the interview on YouTube here.

Publishing Industry Blogs: A new writer can learn a lot just by following blogs offered by publishing professionals. Sign up to receive these blogs regularly. It’s almost like taking classes from conference faculty. You’ll get more out of it if you comment on posts and/or ask questions.

Subscribers, if you have opinions about the sites and blogs I’ve mentioned today, I welcome comments. Also, if you follow a publishing industry blog that’s not listed, please share the URL by posting a comment on this post.